Waiting on God
a sermon based on Luke 12:32-40
by Rev. Randy L Quinn

Good things come to those who wait, they say. But I wonder.

I don’t know about you, but when I go to a restaurant, the quality of service is as important if not more important than that of the food. I’m not a bad cook, nor is Ronda, so I don’t need to go someplace else to eat food prepared in a crowded kitchen with dozens of orders going on at the same time. I go out to eat so neither Ronda nor I need to set the table or do the dishes. We go out to enjoy being served.

To me, the serving staff at a restaurant is far more important than the menu.

I can only remember sending food back one time. But even then, it wasn’t the food as much as it was the service. Melissa was young – maybe two years old. We were seated in a fairly central location and we saw waiters and waitresses go by. Each time they did, we’d hear, “Someone will be with you shortly.”

Meanwhile, we were feeding Melissa crackers. You know, the little packs that sit on the table in some family restaurants. One package. Then another. Then another. We fed her six packages before someone came to take our order. Ronda ordered a hamburger the way she likes it – plain. I ordered fish. Then after almost 20 minutes the waitress came back and informed us that they were out of fish.

So I ordered again. This time I asked for chicken.

We waited a long time. And I think we waited fairly patiently.

By the time the food came, we had been sitting at our seats for over an hour. And Ronda’s hamburger was not only cold it also had sauce on it.

The waitress didn’t listen to her order, or she didn’t write it down, or she didn’t pay attention and took the wrong one. But we were convinced it had been waiting since my second order was taken.

I don’t know if mine was good or not. We left. We went home and fed Melissa before finding something for ourselves.

I wasn’t going to wait for them to fix it.

Do good things come to those who wait?

In her book, Waiting: the True Confessions of a Waitress, Debra Ginsberg (HarperCollins, 2000) tells about her experiences as a professional waitress. She helps people understand what it’s like “on the other side of the menu” as she recounts her twenty years of serving tables in a variety of restaurants in a variety of cities.

Each time she took a new job waiting tables, she saw it as a temporary thing, until something better came along. But in her conclusion she says that while she was waiting for something else to happen, life was happening all around her. She was most effective as a waitress when she stopped being passive in her waiting and became active in it .

I thought of her words as I wrestled with our text for today.

For the most part, Americans have a hard time waiting. We don’t like waiting in lines and we don’t like waiting for traffic. We put money in a savings account and are disappointed when we learn how long it will take to double in value.

We want instant food. We want instant answers. We want things now.

And to us, Jesus says, “good things come to those who wait.” God has already given us the kingdom, so there is no need to worry. We are simply to wait until the day we receive our inheritance.

But we don’t know when that day will be, so we need to live in a constant state of readiness.

For several years I served as a volunteer firefighter. When the whistle blew – day or night – we were expected to drop everything and respond to the call. In those days, I was always aware of the exits in a building – in case the whistle blew and I needed to run. When the whistle blew in the middle of the night, I would jump into my boots and pull the suspenders of my turnout gear over my shoulders as I was heading out the door.

I never knew when an emergency would come, but I was always prepared.

In the same manner, Jesus encourages us to be “at the ready” for his knock at our door.
o That knock may come in the form of a request to serve on a church committee.
o That knock may come in the form of an offering plate in church.
o That knock may come in the request of a child who needs help with their homework.
o That knock may come in the form of a lost traveler looking for directions.

That knock may come in many forms. The key question, however, is whether or not we will be ready to answer when there is a knock at the door.

I don’t know how many of you watch Sesame Street on TV, but if you have watched it recently, you might remember one of the characters is “Baby Bear,” a friend of Elmo’s.

Melissa and I were watching it one day this week – well actually Melissa was watching it and I was overhearing most of it – when Baby Bear started telling a different version of the story of “The Three Bears.” Baby Bear wanted to like Goldilocks, but he didn’t like what she did.

So in his version of the story, the Three Bears – actually he calls them the Four Bears – decide to prepare for guests while they were walking. They made sure the door was unlocked and they put out an extra bowl of porridge on the table. Father Bear made a chair for Goldilocks to sit in, and Mother Bear made sure the spare bedroom was ready for company.

And while they were walking, Goldilocks came to their house. She was pleased to find a bowl of porridge waiting for her. And after eating it, she sat in her own chair. She even took a nap on a bed made just for her.

And when the bears came home, they didn’t complain about their porridge being eaten because she ate her own porridge. And when her chair broke, no one cried because it was her chair anyway. They didn’t even mind her sleeping because they each had their own beds to go to if they wanted.

Baby Bear’s story was interesting to me because it made me realize how upset I would be if someone came to my house while I was gone and ate my food or broke my things.

The way Baby Bear told his story, Goldilocks became their friend. And all it took was a little bit of “preparing for company.” In many ways, it was his variation of Tom Bodette’s Motel 6 television ad where he says they’ll keep the lights on for us.

The Four Bears made sure their home was ready for company and as a result, they became friends with Goldilocks.

When Jesus comes, “as a thief in the night,” we can be ready for him. We can have the lights on. We can have our turnout gear set beside the bed. We can welcome his company and become his friend.

Or . . .

We can sleepily come to the door and groan. We can ignore the knocks and go back to sleep. We can bolt the door and make sure we will never answer the call of Christ.

Some things are worth waiting for. Some people wait in line for hours to see important people lying in state or to meet some dignitary at a formal dinner. I wait in lines at the airport all the time because it’s still quicker than driving.

Jesus says that it’s God’s pleasure to give us the kingdom. And that, it seems to me, is worth waiting for, even if the way I see the kingdom is as the servant, as the table waiter, or as the door keeper.

I’m more than willing to wait on God while I’m waiting for God.

For I believe that good things do come to those who wait.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.