Sermons

The Samaritan Woman and Us

March 12th, 2020

A sermon prepared for the Third Sunday in Lent, March 15, 2020, by Christopher L. Webber

The first ecumenical discussion group met beside a well in Samaria almost 2000 years ago. Jews and Samaritans had been separated for about 500 years – about as long as Lutherans and Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. Like Christians today, they both had the same basic Bible, they both traced their descent from Abraham. But those who were called Jews had been through a 70-year period of exile in Babylon during which time the way they expressed their faith had been radically changed. The exiled Jews had added to the Bible and they now insisted that worship had to be centered in Jerusalem. No wonder the Samaritans weren’t prepared to go along. It’s not too different from the way non-Roman Catholics object to what seems to them additions to Biblical teaching and the new idea that everything has to be centered in Rome.

Even so, it was probably more a matter of class that divided them since the Babylonians had taken only the leadership group into captivity and the Samaritans were those who had been left behind, the so-called “people of the land,” the farmers, the blue-collar workers, the people least likely to cause trouble for the Babylonian occupation troops. In a similar way, there were economic issues in the Reformation that may have been more important than the theological issues. Christians in the north of Europe, for example, objected to the way their tax money went south to build St. Peter’s when they could have used that money to improve their own conditions. So at any rate there were all these issues dividing Jews and Samaritans and they basically didn’t talk to each other.

Of course, Jesus was different. He told a story, you remember, about a Samaritan who was a better neighbor to a wounded Jew than the Jewish leaders who went on by. And now he sits down beside a well and begins a conversation with – not just a Samaritan – but a woman. A Jewish man shouldn’t have done that. But Jesus had this idea that people should love one another, that divisions should be broken down, that people should come together and work together. So he ignores all the taboos, the prejudices, the traditions, and starts a conversation.

The Gospel tells us that the disciples had gone away to buy food so they weren’t there to check up on what Jesus was doing. It tells us that when they came back “they were astonished.” You bet they were. What if the Secret Service reported for duty some morning during a presidential trip to the mid-East and found the president deep in conversation with somebody in a turban? Some things you just don’t expect.

But what I want you to notice is how Jesus begins this conversation. He asks for help. “Please give me a drink.” Bad enough he’s talking with a woman of an alien sect, but he asks her to help him. The disciples would rather have died of thirst. But I said this was the first ecumenical discussion group, and if you want to break down barriers, there’s no better way to start than to admit that the other has something you need. You and I know that we have what Roman Catholics need: the freedom to use our minds and make decisions that seem right to us without waiting for word to come down from Rome. But if we set out with that attitude, we won’t get very far. “Look, my way is better than your way; let me show you how to do it better.” Most people don’t want to hear that. “Listen, I can make a better pie than you can; let me give you my recipe.” No, you’ll get along a lot better if you start out asking advice. “Your pie crust always seems so light and flaky; how do you do it?” “We always seem to be having these arguments; how do you keep everyone on board?” Start from weakness, not strength; from need, not superiority. It works in families, factories, congregations, government . . . every level of human relationships. How can you help me, not how can I help you. Suppose the President were to call Nancy Pelosi and say, “Look, we’ve got to get a solution to . . . . well, you name it: the border, the budget, the virus, whatever) and I’d really like your thoughts.” He’d have to persuade her it wasn’t a hoax . . . but just suppose.

Or churches: maybe if we spent more time trying to learn from the evangelical churches they’d be more open to learning from us. Its worth trying. Jesus’ example is always worth following. Moslems pray five times a day and fast all day for thirty days in a row. Is there something there to open a conversation that might be more productive than urging them to accept the Trinity? Well, that’s point one. Think about it in terms of any relationship that isn’t working for you; any division from someone else that concerns you.

Then notice this: once the conversation is going, Jesus moves it on to deeper things. Not just water from the well, but the life-giving water that God alone can give. We all need the same things. It doesn’t matter whether you are Episcopalian or Baptist, whether you are Christian or Moslem, all human beings need a deeper relationship with God. And, yes, Jesus alone can provide that and he makes that perfectly clear, but not on a “You want it; I’ve got it” basis. No, what he says is, “There is this water of life that you need and it’s available if you only ask.” Always he respects her freedom. It’s up to her to ask and he will not force it on her. Most people don’t want to be threatened or coerced or have their arms twisted. There are churches that come on with an attitude: “Join us or go to hell.” It works for some people, but not most. Most of us, I think, given a choice, would rather stay where we are than accept a gift under compulsion. Maybe your neighbor has the latest thing in computers and you’re still using a pencil or a beat-up old typewriter and they come along saying “How come you’re so stupid; let me give you a computer and show you how to use it so you can be almost as smart as I am.” No, it doesn’t work. “Let’s go together, grow together” works better. Jesus offers but never insists.

And a third thing: don’t get bogged down on the outward and visible. The Samaritan woman wants to talk about things she understands like, “Is it better to worship in Jerusalem or Samaria?” “This mountain or yours?” And Jesus just won’t go there. “God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.” If you’re having ecumenical conversations with Roman Catholics what matters is not the number of statues you have but the love of God. If you’re talking to evangelicals the issue is not that we use vestments and they don’t. The issue is the love of God. The issue is the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in your heart and mine. People come into an Episcopal Church and see some people crossing themselves and some people genuflecting and that’s what gets their attention. Do Episcopalians have to do all that? No. They don’t. Many find it helpful. Some don’t. At the Last Judgment, I don’t think this will even come up for discussion. Does it matter whether you worship God on Mt Gerizim or in Jerusalem? No, it matters whether you worship. It’s better to be a good Roman Catholic than a bad Episcopalian; a good Moslem, than a bad Christian. “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship God.”

I need the help of outward and visible things: a church building, a sense of beauty, candles and crosses and vestments. But Jesus was born in a stable and I can worship God in a stable. I’ve prayed in pretty simple surroundings and it’s doable. Yet if I take the time to beautify my own home and leave God’s house bare, I’m not sure the Spirit is present. I’m not sure I can claim to be bringing my best, really offering my life to God if I leave the floor unswept and last week’s programs lying on the floor and a vase of drooping flowers on the altar and conduct the service in an old flannel shirt and blue jeans. But it’s not the vestments that matter or the location of the church. Those may be evidence of the Spirit but they are not the Spirit, and God is looking for the Spirit, for lives that truly honor God.

Week after week we hear about Jesus healing or Jesus teaching or Jesus doing miraculous things. But I suspect what made the real difference was the way he talked with people: last week with Nicodemus, this week with an un-named Samaritan woman, next week with a blind man: listening, showing respect, allowing them their freedom, pointing them toward the things that matter. And like most things we hear in church, it shows us some things we ought to pay attention to and remember and act on.

Wilderness or Desert?

March 1st, 2020

A sermon preached at All Saints Church, San Francisco, on March 1, 2020, by the Rev. Christopher L. Webber.

Well over three thousand years ago the Hebrews were a nomadic tribe wandering in the deserts of the middle east. All around them were people who were learning to be farmers: Egyptians, Babylonians, Canaanites who raised wheat and barley and melons and other good things to eat. And because they depended on the sun and the rain and the rivers, the soil and the seasons, and because these were not always favorable, these agricultural people prayed to the powers that they thought determined success or failure, abundance or hunger, and they made statues and images as a focus for their prayers.

The Hebrews, however, were nomads. They had no crops to raise, so they had no need for gods of that sort. For them there was one God, invisible, all-powerful, known in the uncontrollable volcano at Sinai and the desert storms.  So when the Hebrews came into the promised land and tried to learn farming themselves they looked to the Canaanites for advice and they were told, “Well, here’s what you do: you set up a pillar or carve some statues of wood or stone and you make offerings, and you cry out to Baal or Astarte or whichever god you need at the moment for rain or sun or whatever crop it is.”

Some of the Hebrews tried it out and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but they thought it was better to do it than not do it. Hey, you never know. But others resisted and said, “No, the God of our ancestors commanded us to make no statues because our God is beyond all possibility of representation. And our God also cannot be influenced by the size of our offerings or anything like that. We can try to line up with God but no way we can get God to line up with us.”

That was a conflict that went on for centuries. The Hebrews were divided by it with prophets and their visions on one side and the practical people on the other. The prophets said, “It doesn’t matter where you are or what the agenda is; there is one God, no other. You can serve God, but God can’t be bribed to serve you.” But the practical people said, “Look, the Canaanites have the experience and the smart thing is to hedge your bets, not put all your eggs in one basket, always backup your computer, don’t take chances.”

But the prophets didn’t give up; always there were prophets who insisted God is beyond all this and if this becomes an idol God can and will destroy it and God can even destroy you, the chosen people, if you turn to your own ways, because God is always beyond, always greater than we can imagine and God asks us to respond in a freedom that lacks the apparent security of walls and borders and images and festivals and buildings and laws. God is not limited by our constructions. God is free. And God calls us to respond in freedom giving ourselves without limit to the God who loves us without limit.

Well, that’s what Lent is about: it’s a reminder that we are by origin a wandering, wilderness people with an unconfined God, a God who is free and calls us to freedom. Lent summons us to remember who we are and respond to that challenge. For forty days every year we are challenged to follow Jesus back out into the wilderness of our nomadic ancestors where there is none of the security of plowed land and settlements and walls and well-traveled roads. The Prayer Book speaks of Lent as a time of “special acts of discipline and self-denial.” It asks us to find out whether we can get along without the images and the idols – the things, the possessions, that give us a feeling of security. Can we put them aside and learn to live with God alone?

All the old traditional disciplines of Lent,  giving up candy and movies and television – the images of Canaan and Babylon – are basically about that: how addicted are you to the local idols? how dependent on material things? what is it that takes the time you might have used for prayer or the energy that might have been used to help someone in need or to work to change a society that seems indifferent to the needs of others? It’s probably not something as simple as candy or computer games. It’s things that have become part of the very fabric of our lives and it will hurt to tear them out. The idols are where they are because we’ve learned to love them and depend on them and believe we need them. Lent asks us to focus on the question: who is your God?

One of the old mystics used to say, “This, too, is not God.” It’s a good line to remember. “This too is not God.” I think some of the most divisive arguments in our public life, church and state, are about idols – not God. We still want our images, things to hold onto; we are still afraid of the desert.

The church today is being torn apart by those who insist on this reading of the Bible rather than that one, my way of reading the law and the security it gives me rather than your way which makes me nervous. And not enough of us are prepared to stop and say “Let’s really listen to each other; let’s admit that my way and your way both are inadequate images, neither one is an absolute and final and complete picture of God and never can be. So let me hear how what you have to say honors God and let me try to explain why I believe my views honor God and one way or another let’s recognize that we both are seeking to honor God and God is not honored by our anger or by a narrow clinging to images. Let’s confess our limitations and try still to love each other even if we no more understand each other than we truly and fully understand God.”

The church I served for twenty-two years, like this church and many others, follows the old English custom in Lent which wasn’t purple but monks cloth. You come into church on Ash Wednesday and the crosses and pictures are draped in simple sack cloth and it always feels to me like spring cleaning – the visual distractions are covered and there’s a sense of simplicity and cleanness.

The Russian Orthodox have a custom called pustina, which has to do with going into a bare cell, a room with four walls and no more, to spend a day or two days or more – with nothing to see, nothing to hold on to – “sensory deprivation,” I think might be the modern phrase, removal of distractions. And who needs some such practice more than 21st century Americans whose lives are so full and whose souls are so empty? Lent is a time to clean house, to be rid of idols and images and preconceived notions and start afresh.

Now, let me ask you to look at it another way:  we speak loosely of the desert or wilderness, but years ago, when I was in Israel, we had a guide who took us down from Jerusalem to Jericho – down through the barren land where Jesus spent those forty days – and along the way he showed us a bright splash of green down the side of a steep cliff and he said it came from a break in a conduit taking water to an ancient monastery and he said it shows you that this is not truly desert but wilderness. There is a difference. Desert, true desert, he said, is where nothing can grow. Wilderness is where growth can take place if only it has water. When the spring rains come it bursts into bloom. When the aqueduct springs a leak, the barren land turns green.

Think about that this Lent. Yes, go back out into the desert, get rid of the idols, but then ask yourself this: where I am, can anything grow? Am I in the desert or the wilderness? Go out onto the paved street outside the church and pour some water on it and watch for awhile. Probably that’s desert, not wilderness. Probably nothing can grow there. Try it in your office or place of work. Pour some water in a corner near your desk or work place and watch for a week or so and see what happens. Try it at home. Pour some water on the television set, maybe a quart or so every day for a week. Does anything grow? Does any life emerge? Did it ever? But it might do good things for you anyway if you water it well. I will guarantee that if you do that you will have a better social life, your thinking will clarify, and you will lose weight. But seriously, Lent is a time to ask whether I’m in a place where life can come or not: desert or wilderness: which is it?

For all the visual richness of our society a lot of it is desert: dead as it can be and deadening to those who come there. But we are not like the wilderness plants; we can move; we can pick ourselves up and put ourselves in a place where life can emerge and develop – real life, the life of the spirit, life that can transcend even death itself. And we can carry that life with us and make things bloom where we are. I trust this church is such a place. I trust your home and place of work can be such a place. But it depends on what you bring to it from here, from the sacraments ministered here, from the Word of God read and proclaimed and taught here. I suspect that this community, the places you work in, the places you live in are wilderness, needing what you can absorb here and take there and capable of real life.

But it’s not automatic and it won’t happen unless you want it to happen. God twists very few arms. God wants us to respond in freedom. But God does want us to grow. God does want us to focus on life. God does want us to turn away from all that which is not God to come to the One who is.

Being Christ

February 15th, 2020

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at All Saints Church, San Francisco, on February 16, 2020.

Why do we do what we do?

The New York Times bestseller list has two kinds of nonfiction: a general category, mostly history and biography, and a second category called “Advice, How to, and Miscellaneous.” “How to” books make up most of the list.  Usually they offer a couple on love, there’s probably one on diet, and maybe one on dealing with alcoholism. This week there are three on leadership and that might be appropriate reading for a parish seeking a new Rector, but one title I noticed LEADERSHIP STRATEGY AND TACTICS BY A FORMER NAVY SEAL  might not be a good fit.

The “how-to” book is is an old, familiar, American phenomenon. We are a nation of doers. If things aren’t right, we want to change them. And we have this pervasive idea that if we just knew how to do it, we could solve any problem. Through the years, religious books have often been at the top of the “how to” list. I remember one called “the power of positive thinking,” and more recently one called “the Be Happy attitudes.” Currently there’s one co-authored by the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu called “The Book of Joy.” Joy, happiness, God on your side. It’s an age-old search. And all too many of us, even if we’ve outgrown it ourselves, try to push it on our children. I’ve heard it 100 times: “I want little Suzy to be in the Sunday school because I think it’s good for children to learn about God and how to behave and get some ethics.”

Christianity is often cheapened into a self-help program, a self-improvement program. But Christianity is not primarily an ethical system and you can’t just simply teach behavior. Children are not dogs to be trained; they are people to be loved. And, anyway, behavior is not the point of Christian faith. It’s a byproduct at best. The church is here not so much to teach children as to love them.

Do you know that Sunday schools were only invented about 100 years ago, and only then to serve children whose families were unchurched? It’s only very recently, two generations, maybe three, that the idea took hold that churches should teach Christianity to children in separate classes. And it happened, I think, because so many families had a feeling that they were failing to do the job but it could somehow be taught.

But it’s interesting to notice that in the Episcopal Church, about 50 to 75 years ago, a counter movement began with the growth of the “family Eucharist” or “Parish Eucharist.” We still bought in to the general belief in Sunday school, though we tended to call it church school, but we began to combine church school with Eucharist. Somehow we knew that there was more to learning than teaching; that Christian faith could not be reduced to a classroom experience.

And especially Christian education can’t be reduced to a matter of good instruction

Why do we do what we do?

I remember a story told by the Bishop of Long Island back when I was in that diocese. It happened during the height of the Cold War. A Russian bishop somehow had gotten permission to travel and had made his way to Long Island and had met with the Episcopal bishop. And the conversation was very stiff at first, and Bishop DeWolfe gradually realized that the Russian bishop was concerned about being overheard. So Bishop DeWolfe got his guest into a car and went for a drive and finally the visitor felt free to talk about the problem of being a church that was forbidden to teach. So what can you do? asked Bishop DeWolfe, and his guest said, “We have the liturgy.”

In this morning’s Gospel, we have a part of the sermon on the Mount which we have been reading for several weeks now, in which Jesus seems to be teaching his disciples how to behave;

“You have heard that it was said to the men of old, you shall not kill; and however kills shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment. . . “

“You have heard it said,” Jesus says again and again, and then he goes on, “but I say. . . .” and what he says is beyond any possibility of doing: “Do not be angry – – do not desire – – do not be limited by law not be unlimited in love.”

Down through the centuries scholars have argued, “Did he mean it? Did he have in mind an impossible utopia? Did he expect the kingdom to come in his lifetime and was he condemning us all to hopelessness? If it weren’t that Lent is coming, we would come back next week and hear the end of this section and Jesus saying “You must be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.”

Is that the gospel? Is that the bottom line? “Be perfect.” Is that Good News? Are we really to teach our children a way of life we haven’t even tried and can’t follow ourselves? Or is Christian behavior like the 55 mile an hour speed limit: a swell idea as long as nobody really expects me to accept it?

But I think we miss the point when we look at Christianity as primarily a way to behave, a system of ethics. There was a fundamentalist college in Upstate New York, near where I grew up, where girls were required to wear long sleeved dresses. Smoking, drinking, card playing were all no-noes. That trivializes something intended to be far more revolutionary than just being nicer to others. These commands of Jesus are serious and, yes, they are meant for us. But if we are called to be like Christ, called to perfection, then we have only two alternatives: to fail in a futile effort to do it ourselves, or to give up, admit who we are, and die to self – and let Christ remake us in his image. I think that’s the goal: Christ in us. I think that is what baptism is all about. I think that’s what the Eucharist is all about.  I think that’s  what prayer is all about. It’s about dying to self and letting Christ live in us. It’s about being born again. And as that happens, behavior will take care of itself. We will become a new person and act like that new person.

I happened to have a talk show on the car radio one day years ago and the subject was alcoholism. A woman called in and told how she was living with a man she loved a lot, but he was alcoholic and would get depressed over something, and get drunk, and beat her and her child. “Get out!” said the talk show host. “Go to Alanon. Hear about it from people who have been there. But you can’t change him. He has to change himself.” There was dialogue back and forth and finally the woman said, “well, all right, but what about him? Should he go to a meeting?” And the talk show host, a psychiatrist, said, “of course he should go to a meeting. He should stop drinking. But should is a meaningless word. You do what you have to do.”

“Should is a meaningless word. You do what you have to do.”

Well, how often have you and I said, “I know what I should do, but – – –“ haven’t you said that? What controls your life: “should” or something stronger? “You do what you have to do.” Exactly right. And what we have to do is what we are, what’s in us, our inner nature. Which doesn’t mean we are simply helpless victims of our genetic inheritance and environment, that we “can’t help ourselves” – – a kind of “no-fault” ethics.  No, it means that we need to concern ourselves not so much with the rules we learn as with the relationships we form, and with the environment we choose to live in, not so much with what guides us from the outside as with what shapes us from the inside, what in-forms us, not so much with what relationships we create as with what relationships re-create us.

Why do we do what we do? “A bad tree,” Jesus said, “cannot produce good fruit.” You can say “should” to it all you want; it won’t happen. What matters is the soil and the rain and inherited genetic traits that form that tree over the years from within. So too we may hear sermons that tell us “should” but they will have no affect on us unless we have found a source of life in the Eucharistic community that enables us to grow into the life to which we are called.

Jesus said, “do this,” and he took bread and said, “this is my body.” That’s what we need. His life transforming ours. Why do we do what we do? Because Christ in us so shapes our hearts and minds that we love what he is and do what he does and become who he is. When that happens “should” becomes a meaningless word.

Patience

December 15th, 2019

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at the Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco, on the Third Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2019.

The Epistle says, “Be patient.” Just before Christmas is probably the time when we needed that advice the most.

Years ago and in another city, I used to go to a dentist who understood me. He did one thing that showed more understanding than any other doctor I ever met. He would get to that point in doing a filling – – you probably remember the experience – – when your mouth is full of all kinds of dental equipment and packs of cotton and most dentists walk away and say, “Now just sit still for a few minutes while it sets.” And you sit there with your mouth full of cotton and dental equipment staring at the ceiling for what seems like eternity. But this dentist – I will never forget him – would give me a newspaper to read before he left the room. It made all the difference.

I don’t know how people can sit in a dentist’s chair or a bench on the N-Judah or the #7 bus with nothing to read. How do they do it? Of course these days they have their cell phones. But still I see people in offices, shopping lines, buses, even park benches, just sitting. They don’t have a book or magazine or newspaper. They just sit there. I don’t understand it. I envy them. I really do. Because it seems as if they know how to be patient and wait. And I don’t. But it’s something we all need to learn. Many of these same people, by the way, will tremble at the thought of sitting quietly in church for even a few minutes or going on a retreat.

The lessons today talk about patience. They say, “Be patient; God will come.” If you want God to be present in your life, you often have to wait. This a season of waiting and it‘s nearly over. We are waiting, and sometimes we focus on the small things – the presents, the turkey or roast beef or vegetarian salad, the lights on the tree, the cards to send, the small stuff – and not the great thing: for the gifts of God, for peace, for joy, and especially for the birth of a child. That’s the hardest kind of waiting, but also the very best. We wait with Mary for the birth of a child – a child who brings hope to a hopeless world, who makes a difference, a real difference.

So let me point out three aspects of waiting, three things we can learn to do, if only we learn to wait.

The first thing waiting teaches you is how to deal with need. No one ever waits if they don’t have to. But when you need something and it isn’t there, you may have to wait. There’s a helplessness involved in waiting. And that’s one reason it’s hard. We don’t like to be helpless, we don’t like to face the fact that we are not in control. Children may be better at waiting just for that reason. Children are born helpless. We all are. We start out totally dependent. And we have to wait: wait for parents, wait for food, wait for help, wait for birthdays, and wait for Christmas. But do you know what we do wrong? We teach children that when they grow up, they won’t have to wait anymore. We create a myth. We want to believe in it ourselves, and that’s why we teach our children the myth. We know better, but still we teach them that grownups are not helpless, don’t have needs, don’t have to wait. And that’s a lie. We fool ourselves into believing it because we want to believe that we grown-ups really are in control. And if all else fails, we can always find a book, a magazine, a newspaper, so we won’t have to wait, won’t feel helpless. That’s the first aspect of waiting: not being in control.

The second is confidence. We wait in confidence. Why do we sit in waiting rooms or buses or anywhere else? Well, surely we wouldn’t be there if we didn’t think we stood to gain by waiting. The doctor will come back. The bus will arrive. We hope. Waiting involves a certain degree of hope and trust and confidence. Lacking that, you would move along, you would search. You would look for a doctor who could help you sooner, a means of transportation you could rely on. You wouldn’t wait; you would act. So we wait with patience – and we wait with confidence..

And\, third, we learn the value of waiting. We live in an age that tries to relieve us of the need to wait. There’s instant everything – or almost everything. But there’s a limit to the value of the instant everything. In the age of instant everything, it’s probably useful sometimes that we don’t have to wait for potatoes to be mashed or the television set to warm up. But what parent wants an instant adult? What adult wants instant birthdays? But it’s either that or wait, and sometimes there’s no alternative – so we wait. It sometimes seems as if, we spend our lives waiting: for a child to be born, to grow up, to come home to visit, to be married, to produce grandchildren. And however much we want any one of those things, they all involve waiting. And often the waiting itself adds to the joy, and waiting itself is a joy. Don’t spoil that. Don’t miss out on the joy of waiting. Advent is a time to wait, to practice waiting, and to learn our need to wait, and to remember God’s power, and to know the value and the joy of waiting.

Children have the advantage on us because they have to wait, and we don’t. We are grown up and we can make the rules and if we don’t want to wait, a lot of times we don’t have to. We can buy all the presents by Columbus Day if we want to and we can open them right after Thanksgiving. And we can put up the tree three weeks early and take it down on the 26th. We can be done with Christmas before it’s really begun. And we can be like everyone else and be in such a rush to have Christmas that we never really have it at all. We can be in such a rush to carry out our plans that we failed to carry out God’s plan or receive the gifts God prepares for those who wait. So remember the value of patience. Let’s refuse to let ourselves be rushed. We have time to wait, and we can wait because God know our needs, our real need, and we know that need will be met in God’s good time because God has promised and given us in the coming of Christ and the joy of Christmas the evidence of a fulfillment beyond imagining which, once given, will never be lost.

Meanwhile, right now, there’s the joy of waiting.