“Waiting on the World to Change”

First Sunday of Advent

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Isaiah 64: 1-9                                                                                                                                    

Psalm 80: 1-7, 17-19                                                                                                                                                                     

1 Corinthians 1: 3-9                 

One of the most talented singer-songwriters of recent years is a young musician named John Mayer.  Not only is Mayer an incredibly gifted guitarist, but the lyrics to many of his songs have a depth that is somewhat rare in modern pop music.

One such song is called “Waiting on the World to Change” from his 2006 album Continuum.  The song explores the discontent that exists in the minds of many in his generation – those who see pain, suffering and violence in the world, and want things to change, but who know that they do not yet have the power to effect those changes.  

Mayer sings,

Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There's no way we ever could

Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change

The song, which at first can be misunderstood as promoting either a cynical or a passive view of the world, is actually a song of hope.  While Mayer laments the world’s difficulties, he still lives in the hope that the world can – and will -- change.  And so they keep waiting – waiting on the world to change.

Interestingly, the song does not reflect the self-assurance and almost utopian idealism that marked many protest songs in the 1960s and since.  It is not a song that rests in the confidence that “The Times are a-changing” or that young people will automatically bring about the transformation of the world in some quick or easy way, as previous generations had sometimes claimed about themselves.

In one of its later verses, Mayer names the fact that the power to effect change will eventually come to those who are presently in the younger generations – but, even then, there is an ambiguity as to whether even they will be able to change the way that things are.

One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change.

But what should one do in the meantime -- when one sees the difficulties and levels of suffering in the world, but does not have the power to change the world – nor the confidence that such change will be easy?  Should one react in anger and in protest, or give up in despair?  Or should one seek to live in hope, in spite of the challenges, and keep waiting on the world to change?

What is interesting for us to realize is that the sentiment that is expressed in that song finds a powerful parallel at the very heart of the season of Advent.

Today marks the beginning of Advent.  It is, as we all know, a season of preparation and of expectation.  Soon, we will be unpacking the Christmas lights, setting up the tree, making a list and checking it twice, and preparing ourselves for the celebrations of Christmas.

Because of the time of year that we celebrate the season of Advent, we have come to believe that Advent is intended as a time to prepare ourselves for the celebration of Christmas, the celebration of the incarnation.  During this Advent season, we read ancient texts about prophets, angels and virgins expecting the coming of a child; and about wise men and shepherds being guided into the presence of the Christ child.

But Advent, in its fullest sense, is not really about Christmas.  At its heart, it is not about preparing ourselves to remember something that happened over two thousand years ago. 

Rather, Advent is about preparing ourselves for a future yet to be revealed.  As Christians, we, too, are waiting on the world to change. 

So what are we waiting for?  What change do we want to see in this world?   The biblical vision that Advent sets before us is a vision of a world in which love, justice, truth and compassion become the reality in which all of God’s beloved children live; a world in which the suffering, the hunger, the violence, the inequalities and in the inhumanities that are so evident in this world will be no more. 

There is, in fact, nothing particularly unique, in the Christian faith, about this dream of a better world.  Many philosophical, political and religious systems throughout human history have shared that same hope for a better world. 

But there is something unique about the Christian version of this dream. That uniqueness is rooted in the fact that even as we long for, work for, and dream of such a world, we also know that the dream will not, and cannot be realized strictly on the basis of human effort, however valiant those efforts are.  The history of humanity seems strewn with the wreckage human systems which have attempted to create that world of peace and justice.  The Roman Empire, with its dream of the Pax Romana, imploded into a state of internal conflict and power-hungry corruption; the supremacy of the medieval popes and European emperors presaged centuries of war; the dream of the enlightenment and of the inevitability of scientific progress paved the way for Auschwitz and Hiroshima; the hopes of Lenin and Marx for a society in which the products of labour would be equitably shared created the genocidal regimes of Stalin and Mao; the rapacious consumption patterns and unchecked confidence of free market capitalism have contributed to an environmental crisis of catastrophic proportions and to the implosion of the world’s financial markets.  Human systems cannot achieve the dream.

Even the Church has not been able to accomplish that vision.  We may hold that hope at the heart of our faith, but our ability to achieve it has not been a complete success. The survivors of the residential schools of this country, to say nothing of a sad history of the mistreatment of women, homosexual people, and people of other faiths remind us that the church must seek that dream with self-critical humility.  

But neither will dispensing with religion achieve that transformed world.  There is very little evidence to support the self-assured confidence of modern secular humanism.  Their confidence that we as humans will be able to save the world, if we just use less fossil fuels, or get the most inspiring politicians, or perfect some piece of legislation, or create the most progressive articulation of human rights, or stamp out any human aspiration towards those delusional ramblings called religious belief -- all of these assumptions, while well-meaning and helpful, do not really have the power to transform the world.  If they did, anti-religious secular regimes in places such as Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, or the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia would not have been quite as genocidal as they turned out to be.   History offers ample evidence of the fact that a world that is truly just, truly peaceful, truly free, truly compassionate, is not going to be created by a political ideology or a philosophical or religious system.  

We need a Saviour.  And so, as Christians, we wait on his arrival for the world to change.

Which is the real subject of Advent hope. 

Consider our reading from Isaiah.  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…so that they nations might tremble at your presence.”  The prophet’s plea was that God would be revealed, putting an end to the oppression and dominance of the arrogant of the earth.  The prophet knew that he, nor his people, had the power to effect the types of changes that were needed – their only hope was that God would act in human history.

The prophet knew, of course, that such a powerful intervention would not always be comfortable – that it would lead, in fact, to judgement on the world.  He confesses, “we have all become like one who is unclean….there is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you…”  In spite of the judgement that would come, however, the prophet nonetheless longed for that day, in the confidence that in spite of their sins and failures, God was still the potter who was moulding and fashioning the people.   

But, one might ask, did not Jesus have a more loving and hopeful approach – perhaps a little less rooted in divine judgement?  Perhaps.  But with all of our focus on Jesus the loving, powerful, kind teacher, we sometimes tend to overlook the fact that he seems to have embraced at rather apocalyptic vision of the future.  Today’s reading from Mark 13 reminds us of this dimension of his teaching, as we read about a cosmic apocalypse, when the sun and moon would be darkened, the stars and heavens would be shaken, and suddenly, and without warning, the judge of the earth – the Son of Man -- would come.   

Such passages shock us, and have often been used and abused to instill fear or apprehension instead of faith.  They have been used to fuel cynicism or indifference towards the world, and even to inspire speculations and theories about when these cataclysmic events are going to take place.

But what is forgotten, when we read such passages, is that their real intention is not to help us to predict the end of the world, but rather to motivate us to live in hope.  When everything seems to be crashing in upon us, and when everything in which we have placed our confidence seems to be shaken, we are called, as the passage states, to live in hope.  Keep awake.  Stay alert.  Do not be lulled into cynicism or complacency.  Face even the most difficult situations, in this life, with hope – because even when all hope seems lost and the world seems to be falling apart, God is still sovereign; God can redeem even the most brutal realities;  God will be revealed. 

Which means that we are called, at every moment, to live in hope.  Christians are never allowed the luxuries of despair, of cynicism, of passivity or of indifference.  Despair and cynicism are not options, since it is impossible for us to give up hope on a world that has been so deeply loved by God.  Nor can we simply sit back, in passive indifference, when we see situations in which injustice, oppression, and hatred are destroying the abundance of life that God intends for all people.  

We are called to use our power to allow the reign of God’s love to become a reality in this world.  But, even as we seek to serve, we must remember that even our best efforts will not lead to the type of transformation that is ultimately needed.   Our work will never accomplish the goal towards which we are striving, and for which our hearts long. 

That goal will only be accomplished on the day of Christ’s return.  And so, it is in that spirit of expectation and of hope that we begin our journey into this Advent season, proclaiming the mystery of our faith -- that Christ has died; that Christ has risen; and that Christ will come again. 

Which is another way of saying that we keep on waiting – waiting on the world to change.