The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Seventy years ago, Irish playwright Samuel Beckett wrote a play that’s considered these days to be a modern masterpiece. The play’s about two men who are waiting under a tree for a man called Godot. The two men are unsure exactly who Godot actually is, and they don’t even know if he’ll ever really arrive to meet them under the tree. So they talk for a long time in search of hope, and they make meaningless conversation, and absurd events — and sometimes cruel events — take place as they stand there waiting under the tree. They’re never exactly sure what they’re waiting for, or what will happen if or when Godot shows up. As the play comes to an end, night falls on the helpless and unfulfilled men, and the man that they wait for — Godot — never comes. You see, in the play entitled Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett assumes the mouthpiece of the unbelieving world, accusing Christians of spending their lives waiting on impotent promises made by a nonexistent God. It’s an anti-Christian play. It’s still, by the way, rather popular to this day.
While Beckett and Waiting for Godot are wrong about impotent promises and a nonexistent Lord God, at least Beckett’s partially right about this: namely, human history is fundamentally about waiting — for God, or for a god, to save us from absurdity and meaninglessness and ultimate savagery. You know, there are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, which is divided into 31,173 verses. Mankind was sinless and stood before God’s face to face in all holiness and righteousness and innocence for only two of those 1,189 chapters, and only 61 of those 31,173 verses. That’s how brief a time the Scripture represents Adam and Eve — and humanity — as sinless, as designed by God, lasts. After that, Adam and Eve plunged themselves and all of God’s creation into sin by one single act of rebellion. In that one act, the world and everything in it was cursed and separated from the Lord God, the Creator. God was angry, and He cursed Adam and Eve and all creation with thorns and thistles, with difficulties, trials and tribulations, sickness and illnesses, and ultimately death. Yes, even to the cosmos. God despises — and does despise — rebellion against Him. But we see that God’s wrath is always overshadowed by His grace. As God was expelling His fallen children from paradise on earth, He promised them, and all the descendants of Adam and Eve, that Eve’s offspring would come forth, and He would crush the head of the serpent, earn the forgiveness of sins, and ultimately undo everything that sin had done to all of God’s creation. God promised there in Genesis 3 a Messiah. And from that point on, all mankind has an innate desire for God to return, or for God to deliver a better version of the world that we now live in. From that moment on, all of mankind wanted and waited to be rescued and restored.
Christians, both in the Old Testament and New Testament — versions of both — have been waiting for the Lord God to fulfill His promises since the day He began to issue them: the promise of the Messiah’s first and His second advents. So when it comes to waiting, especially waiting on the Lord to do something for us or to us, human beings — Christians included — aren’t very good at waiting. My children really get annoyed waiting. It just seems like such a waste of time and not very productive. Waiting is a hard thing for us under normal circumstances. But when hardship befalls us — sicknesses and the like, broken families — waiting can seem to be eternity itself.
There is one of the underlying themes in all of the Old Testament, and it is about waiting. In ways subtle and bold, the written Word of God points to the need for, and the promises of, a promised Messiah. But it’s a future promise. Whether it was through the Old Testament events that foreshadow the salvation that was to come about, or by the bold prophetic utterances of those who spoke God’s Word on behalf of God, every single book of the Old and the New Testament tells of man’s inability to save himself from himself, and of God’s promise to save and restore us — all of mankind and creation — to what it was originally supposed to be.
For all of our faults, though, the Lord God did not forsake or leave us alone to wait by ourselves for His coming and for His deliverance. People often had to wait on the Lord on account of their sins, but the Lord didn’t require them to just go it alone. God the Father knew that waiting for His return was hard, and He knew that He needed to be with His children in order to make that waiting last. So He ordered them to build a Tabernacle in the Old Testament, so that He would be with them throughout their wilderness wanderings. In the Tabernacle — which means God’s dwelling place — they were to come into the presence of God, hear God’s Word read to them and explained. There they were to offer sacrifices of blood, guilt and sin offerings, for the remission of their sins, as they waited on the Lord for His first Advent, for Christmas.
But one generation after another in the Old Testament sinned grievously, and in abhorrent ways, against the Lord God. God sent one prophet after another to confront them with their sin and to call them to repentance and true Christian faith. The prophets made it clear that God was indeed very angry with His children, and that unless they repented, He would punish them sorely. Through the prophet Isaiah, God warned His people of the day when all would be carried to Babylon and nothing in Israel would be left — that’s Isaiah 39:6. And so it ultimately happened, for they did not repent. Still, the Lord God remained true to His promise: the Messiah would come; the first Advent and Christmas would arrive. And Isaiah saw the days of captivity made to their full, but the Lord also gave him the vision to see the deliverance — the new age, the age that would come with not only the first, but also the second Advent of the Christ, His final return. That was the reason for Isaiah’s rejoicing in the Old Testament text this morning: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God… For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up… For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give… and you shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” Imagine that: before there was the Babylonian captivity, before there was the war with the Babylonians, before 70 years of captivity, Isaiah was given to see it all — all the way to the end, all the way to the new heavens and the new earth, which is what he writes about in the Old Testament lesson this morning.
Now, by way of the Law, Isaiah sees sickness, sin, corruption — an idolatrous people that will be taken captive as punishment for their sin. But according to the Gospel and the promises given to him, Isaiah also sees a repentant and forgiven people who become, and are, the very glory of God — because the Messiah comes the first time to make them clean, and the second time to usher in the new heavens and the new earth. Thus the Becketts of the Old Testament would point out all of the future tenses in the reading this morning — “shall” and “will.” They’ll say, “Promises, promises.” And listen, we ourselves get a little impatient. We sometimes wonder: “All things work together for the good to them that love the Lord” — and some days we’re not so sure we love the Lord all that much, that things are going to all work out that well. But this is a promise. We’re promised a new body, sinless. We’re promised an eternal life with no tears or regrets, nor sin nor death. God’s people lament, and they cry out for rescue and restoration all the time. And what happens, according to the Becketts of this world? They wait in vain. But they’re all wrong. For God has made good on almost all of His promises. There’s just a few left.
The Gospel lesson this morning is the story of Simeon. And Simeon was a real man in the real temple who held the real baby Jesus — God and man — in the flesh. But Simeon was also a type. He was a type of Israel and Judah. Simeon, like many Israelites of his age, had waited for God’s Messiah. But what was different about Simeon is he had been given a special and unique promise, just to him: that he would not die until he had seen the Christ of the Lord with his very own eyes. So Simeon waited. He waited in true Christian faith. Now, we don’t know how long he waited. We picture him as an old man, just like Anna the prophetess, an old woman. But there’s no age indication whatsoever in the biblical text. He could have been a young man, he could have been an old man. Church tradition says he was an older man, so we portray him in that way. All that can be said is that he waited — unlike most of us — well and patiently, in true Christian faith, not doubting that one day he would see the Christ of the Lord, for Christ had promised. Just as God promised, the Messiah came. And just as God promised the Messiah would fulfill the letter and the spirit of the Law of Moses, so He was brought to the temple. And there Simeon was. The Scripture says that the Holy Spirit had come upon Simeon. This is how he knew that the child that was being carried into the temple in the arms of his mother Mary was really and truly the King of all creation, the promised one of Genesis chapter 3. And as he looked at the child, born humbly in a most inglorious fashion, Simeon knew that his waiting was not in vain. It was no impotent fantasy, as the Becketts of this world seem to see. So Simeon said: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.” That’s the hymn that we sing, the liturgy that we sing — the Song of Simeon — after the Communion: for salvation has come unto us. We are no longer waiting for God to reconcile us to Himself. He has done it in the person and work of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said on the cross in His final words, “It is finished.” And it was: God and sinner reconciled. At your Baptism, you were washed, renewed, and grafted into the body of Christ, and Christ grafted into you. You are forever bonded to the one Christ who has conquered sin, death, and the devil — all on your behalf. Promises fulfilled.
Now we still wait for God, but we wait differently. We wait knowing, in true Christian faith, that Christ the King has come — that He has lived the perfect life in our stead, died on the cross as the atoning blood sacrifice for guilt and sin, and rose on the third day, that we too will enjoy the resurrection of the dead in a sinless and new body. We wait for His return and the new heavens and the new earth. But Christ has promised to come and to take us to the place where He lives. And it is true: we wait to see, so that we can look on Him and see Him face to face, knowing that we have nothing to fear — as the unbelievers do — as they stand in the holy presence of God. Because of what He did for us in His first Advent, we’re ready now for the second Advent. And He will fulfill those promises of the second Advent as He has the first. So we wait for the day when our tears are wiped away and our joy becomes complete — which is why we sing “Joy to the World” as the first Christmas hymn each and every year. We do not wait in idleness and absurdity, as the characters in Godot. They wait, and their waiting sinks into chaos and absurdity, until finally the day is gone and all is lost. But Christ comes to us. He abides with us in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church. For where the Word of God is preached, and where the Word of God is sung, and where the Word of God is read — there is Christ Himself, for He is the Word made flesh. There He gives Himself, in the benefits of His substitutionary death on the cross, to all who offer here their worship and praise. We will always be here in the church where He is, and He will always be with us where we are. In this church, He promises that in the Lord’s Supper: “This is My body, this is My blood, given and shed for you for the remission of your sins.” And as you wait for Christ to come again, or you wait for God to deliver you or a loved one from illness and distress, know that you are not waiting alone. God is in this temple, in this place, in the ministry of the church. Christ is with you, and He has given you brothers and sisters in the church who understand and share your burdens.
The world is full of Becketts these days — more and more, producing them by the pound every single day — who accuse Christians of waiting on promises that are impotent, and on a God that does not exist. But rest assured: the Lord has given this promise. The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations, and the nations will see your righteousness, and the kings will see your glory. Jesus says to the devil: you will no longer hurt My children — at that second Advent. And He’ll say to you: “Well done, good and faithful servant. For you have been faithful over a little; now I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” That call will come to each and every one of you at the end of your waiting. So as you muddle through and struggle through the burdens and trials and temptations and hardships of this life, take a lesson from Isaiah and look to the end — look to the glory. That’s why Paul wrote in Romans: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” in the day of Jesus Christ. Why? Because the first Advent fulfilled all the promises. Your sins are forgiven. There’s no doubt about that. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.