Sermon 12.21.25 I'm Willing to Wait for It
- standrewcin
- 5 days ago
- 7 min read
This week as family and friends come into town, or some of us travel to see those whom we love for Christmas,
Remembering that the Holy Family also travelled,
In as much as we are reminded of Jesus’ words that his mission of restoring the world would tear families apart,
We also recognize at seasons like this, that his ministry also brings people and families together.
I’m moved to preach to you: “I’m willing to wait for it.”
Particularly, I want to encourage you right now that whatever it is you are waiting for in this season, you have the strength to endure the wait.
John Brother Cade was an American historian, anthropologist, and folklorist.
Born and raised in Georgia, he was a lifelong educator.
Before he earned a purple heart and Distinguished Service Cross on the fields of France in World War 1, Cade and his friend Harrison Pinkett taught their 2,300 fellow African American soldiers how to read as they sailed across the Atlantic to take part in the War.
When he came back from France, Cade entered into Atlanta University, joined Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and went on to graduate school at the University of Chicago, where he began a new kind of folklore project.
Folklore studies and anthropology were one of the booming areas of study in the early 20th century, particularly in the 20’s and 30’s.
People like Anti Aarne, Stith Thompson, and Vladimir Propp made the collection and archiving of folk stories an academic and “scientific” course of historical study.
Anthropologists like Claude Levi-Strauss and Branislav Malinowski embedded themselves in cultures that were not their own to try to find out how culture worked in human societies.
In many ways, John B. Cade, was participating in the popular academic endeavor of his time,
But Cade, wasn’t just interested in traipsing across the world to find curious cultures, or to collect the myths and histories of people around the world.
Cade wanted to collect the stories of people like his family members who had endured America’s version of the Babylonian Captivity; slavery.
For several years, as he trained his students to become historians, Cade collected and archived the stories of formerly enslaved men and women from all over the United States.
Some of the men and women who were interviewed, like Lewis Parker from South Carolina didn’t think that they had much to offer, “History,” Parker said in his interview, “what’s dat? I doan spech I got none, boy.”
But many others had waited many decades to be able to tell their stories.
Cade and his students gave them that opportunity.
In retrospect, what John B. Cade did with his folk history project is obviously important.
But I wonder how urgent it felt at the time when he was doing it, especially to his students.
I wonder how aware they were that they were in the presence of people whose stories would fade from memory, if they weren’t captured.
To us, that may sound absurd, but I want you to think about the person in your life, who tells you the same story over and over again.
You get to a holiday gathering, and you know you’re going to hear the same story or stories that you’ve heard before.
We often take these kinds of interactions for granted.
I’m sure the same was the case for John B. Cade’s students.
I wonder if we feel that way about our biblical stories sometimes.
We know them so well.
We rehearse them, we pageant them, we know where the story is going, and maybe sometimes we wish that we could just get to the end of the story,
The place we know it’s going, so we can move on to the next thing.
In these last few days before Christmas, we can often get so caught up in the hustle, in the hurrying from here to there to get things done.
We can get impatient with the waiting game, with our families, with lines at stores, with traffic lights and people who drive too fast or too slow, people who run that red light, because they weren’t willing to wait…
But, I think also – on an existential level - with the fact that Jesus’ entry into the world was supposed to bring Justice and Restoration, release of the captive, a new and brighter world.
We are impatient for that perfect world that was supposed to be here already.
We wonder with the psalmist, “Oh Lord, God of Hosts, how long will you be angered, despite the prayers of your people?”
We may feel inundated with the bread of tears and chalices filled to the brim with weeping.
But if we’re willing to wait, the story of our redemption is being written right now in our midst.
Just like John B. Cade’s archives of the formerly enslaved people of the United States,
Our scriptures are a testament to the memories of people who suffered as they waited for a better world to emerge.
The people of Isaiah’s day wondered well their help would come from.
They were so tired of waiting that they couldn’t even imagine asking God for what they needed anymore.
King Ahaz says that he won’t put God to the test, but what he is really saying is that he is too tired and too depleted of spiritual fortitude to hope that things could be different.
Isaiah gives him a message of hope about a young woman bearing a child, which for a king, means that the royal line would continue.
In later days, the Hebrew people began to believe that this heralded the dawn of a new messianic era that would come, that this promised child would bring vindication and release from captivity, but they had to wait for it.
It took several hundred years for the completion of that story arch to culminate in the birth of Jesus,
For the angel to repeat the words of Isaiah to the scared and skeptical Joseph, to let the world know that the messiah of the ancient Hebrew people was now at hand.
The world had to wait for it.
Our woes and worries right now seem huge to us.
This has been a difficult year in many ways for many in our community as we watch so many roll backs of the imperatives that we have long sought.
We may have interactions with family that are difficult because of personal history, holiday stress, personality conflicts, or political divides.
We may opine that we live in difficult times, and to be sure we do sometimes,
But, what the folk history project of John B. Cade allows us to see is that when we look to the past, we can actually see how far we’ve come and how much we have to be grateful for.
When we think of the plight of those who were enslaved in this country, to be sure we think of the terrible ways that people were treated and punished.
Those come through in Cade’s historical sketches, but what breaks the heart even more – something that we often take for granted – is the holiness of the family.
One of the interviewees, Jourden Louper, among all of the horrific things he endured recalled that the most heartbreaking was remembering his mother’s outstretched hand as she reached to take him with her after she had gathered up her things as she was stolen away to another farm.
Louper recalled that the mistress of the house, Mrs. Rebecca Clayton, looked at his mother and told her, “leave that boy alone, I want him to wait on me.”
He never saw his mother again.
People like Jourden Louper did wait. They waited on redemption and on release from captivity.
They endured and kept their dignity and humanity in the most cruel of ordeals that the world can visit on a person.
Their stories were collected not so that we could gawk at suffering, but so that we could fully realize the gift of their fortitude.
They survived so that we could be surrounded by family.
As we look to the coming of the Holy Family to Bethlehem again, let us not forget the families who face separation right now in our own time; either because of estrangement from one another or the newest system of oppression that tears them apart.
In recognizing our own hardships and the signs of the times that would point us toward despair, or make us wonder if our wait for true justice will ever arrive,
I want to reassure you that history shows us that those who are willing to wait will see signs of hope.
And so against all odds, I call us into a season of hope.
God is still at work.
Victory over sin and death is at hand.
We have been given another year to look toward the coming of Christ and to take his story and his salvation into our very hearts, if we’re willing to hear the story again and open up a space for him.
As the old song proclaims, “How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv’n, So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of His heaven. No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him still, The dear Christ enters in.”
As we await the final verse, where our Emmanuel will abide with us.
I call us to a waiting filled with hope that in a world where Good News can seem so silent compared to the evils of our world, that if you wait with patience and intention,
If you hear that story one more time
If you allow Christ to enter your heart this Christmas,
If you pray for the new world’s appearing,
Then when it comes, you will see its coming,
And the bread and wine of tears and weeping will become for you the body of the Lord of Hosts,
And a new generation will behold his redemption whatever that looks like for our generation.
Whatever you’re waiting for, be willing to…
Wait for it.
Amen.
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