Readings – Acts 1: 1 – 11; Luke 24: 44 – end
Well, Hampstead pulled all the stops out on Sunday, and I think David may have done so literally on the organ at some moments – and we gave Father Stephen a terrific send-off on his last day as our Vicar. He didn’t quite go up to heaven on a cloud, but it was the next best thing we could manage.
Despite Stephen leaving us at the time of year when we think about Jesus’ Ascension, we mustn’t of course take the parallel too far. But now, rather like the disciples after the Jesus’ Ascension, we begin a period of waiting. We don’t know how long it will be, but we do know that it will be some months before our next Vicar arrives. So I thought we would think today about waiting. What are we doing when we wait? Why do we often find it so difficult? What might it teach us?
There are, of course, many different kinds of waiting. Waiting for a birthday is quite different from waiting for your turn at the dentists. Then there’s waiting for exam results – some of us will be doing that later this year. Waiting for a door to open – that can be literal or metaphorical. Waiting for someone to come home. Waiting to stand up and sing a solo. Both of our choirs know what that feels like. The waiting feels very different depending on whether we are looking forward to something or dreading it – sometimes perhaps it’s a bit of both. Sometimes we wait together, sometimes alone. But we still have to wait.
We’re told the disciples waited together, and they chose to go to the Temple to pray while they waited. Often we wait together at the beginning of a service before we process into church. Someone in the choir needs a hymn book (there never seem to be quite enough) or a surplice or the curate has disappeared to lock a door. Or sometimes, Junior Choir, you all have to wait until everyone is watching David before you can begin to sing. That kind of waiting emphasises the corporate nature of what we are doing. We all have to wait until everyone is ready. We clergy can’t lead the 10:30 service or choral Evensong on our own; the Junior Choir can’t sing until everyone is ready and concentrating.
Our society is one that values busyness. A full diary makes it clear to everyone just how important we are. Other people depend on us. There’s even perhaps a subtle pleasure to be had from keeping other people waiting. We like to think that we’re self-sufficient, in control; waiting expresses our neediness. We need the thing or the person that we’re waiting for – otherwise we wouldn’t bother to wait. Waiting reminds us that we are dependent. Perhaps that’s one reason why we find it so difficult.
We’re only prepared to wait if we care enough about the person or the thing we’re waiting for.
We are now waiting for a new vicar. We do, I hope, care enough about Hampstead Parish Church for this to matter to us. I hope we’re prepared to wait, for the long haul.
But in what, I wonder, does our waiting consist?
Loving people usually involves at some point the pain of letting them go. We may be waiting in sadness that Father Stephen has left us as our Vicar. We wait trusting that our sadness will turn to gratitude for all that his ministry has meant to us.
Any member of the Junior Choir I’m sure knows that we can’t sing together unless we listen to one another. Our waiting needs also to include listening – to one another and to God.
Just like the choir and clergy at the beginning of a service, we have to wait for one another. Wait until we’re ready to move forward together into whatever is the next phase for our church. This applies in a particular way to the PCC as they draw up our Parish Profile and discuss the qualities needed for our new Vicar.
I’m sure, Junior Choir, David has told you how important the rests are in a piece of music. The time when you don’t sing, but you may still have to count. (I’ve never been much good at that). The music doesn’t work without those moments of silence. They are just as important. Taking the long view of Hampstead Parish Church, we need our moment of silence now, our time of waiting.
Let’s have the courage to hold the silence and to let it be waiting. To wait for one another and with one another and to see what the waiting tells us. Because we wait knowing that God waits with us and for us. I pray that we may discover our need of one another and of God in the waiting.
Amen