Christmas Prayers; How Long Till Christmas?

First Sunday in Advent

December 3, 2006

December is traditionally a very busy month. End of the year business matters, Christmas shopping, parties, church events; the song tells us that it is the season to be jolly but is also the season to run-run-run!

In order to maintain our spiritual focus during this Advent Season, we are going to give our attention to the matter of prayer. In this very busy time, we are going to focus our attention on our relationship with God as we live out that relationship in the life of prayer.

Today, I want to talk about “Waiting.” Much of our prayer life is absorbed with the issues of waiting; fearing something that could happen, hoping for something that could happen, waiting.

The man says to the child, “Do you know how many days until Christmas?”  The child answers, “I don’t know but it is coming soon and I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I can’t wait.”  The man says, we have 23 more days and the child says, “That long? Can’t it come sooner? I can’t wait!”

The child is caught in a season of waiting – waiting for something good.

Ask some of the children in our community, “What do you want for Christmas?” and you will be surprised by the answers. “I want Mommy to get well.” “I want Dad to come home.” “I want my disease to go away.”  “I just want it to stop hurting.” They too are waiting and hoping and afraid of disappointment – waiting.

This group of children and their parents and grandparents may sound a little like the scripture that we just read. It is all about waiting.

Listen again to the first 4 verses of Psalm 13, sometimes called “The Unlucky Psalm.”

¹ How long, O Lord ? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and every day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

³ Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

⁴ my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

When he wrote this Psalm, David was doing some serious waiting!  “How long, O Lord? Are you going to forget me forever?  Will you hide your face from me forever? Will you ever lift me from this pit of despair? 

One has to wonder how this stuff ever got into our bible!  If faith is supposed to keep you out of trouble and if God is supposed to protect us from all difficulty, then why is David the Psalmist in such a mess? The answer is, whoever said that God will immunize us from all problems. The promise is that God will get us through the valleys, not that God will keep us out of the valleys. Psalm 23, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for You are with me.” That is the promise, “You are with me.”

Even as we wait, God is with us, that is the promise of Christmas.

In recent weeks, I have renewed my commitment to prayer and have been reading about it. Those who have prayed the hardest and the longest and thought most deeply about it, all agree about this, in our practice of prayer, there will be seasons when we simply must wait. There will be times when it seems that God is far away. There will be times when we will wonder if God has forgotten us or if God ever knew us or if God even exists. Those dry times, those desert times, those times in which we simply wait – they happen in the life of prayer.

David, the Psalmist, did us a great favor in writing Psalm 13. He taught us how to pray when we are waiting. He gave us the words to say. “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever…. Will you hide your face from me?”  He taught us to cry from the bottom of our hearts, “Where in the world are you?” He showed us how to be simply honest with God.

Did you notice the Advent hymns that we sang this morning?  Both are hymns of waiting. Both have an almost sad sound, a yearning soulful sound. Listen to the sounds of waiting.

Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us; let us find our rest in thee.

Jesus, please come to us. Please set us free. Release us from our sin and fear. The writer, Charles Wesley, is simply pleading for Christ to get on with the work of salvation for his people. It’s about a season of waiting.

Listen to the second.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear,

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

The word “Emmanuel” means “God is with us.”  And yet, it doesn’t quite feel like it. This ancient hymn pleads with Emmanuel, to come to us and save us. It is a song of waiting, soulful and even painful waiting.

David wrote, “How long, O Lord….”  How long?  Are you going to forget me forever?

It appears that something happened in David’s heart between the first verse and the last. In the first verse he pleads, “How long?”  Now listen again to the last verses of this “Unlucky Psalm.”

⁵ But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

⁶ I will sing to the Lord ,

for he has been good to me.

As he prayed his honest prayer to God, something happened. He remembered that God had been faithful in the past and he made a decision to trust in God’s unfailing love.

In the words of that sad old Advent hymn, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee….” 

We wait because we believe that God will come to us.

How long till Christmas? Twenty three days until December 25. How long must you wait until God answers your prayers? We do not know the answer. We simply pray with David, “I trust in your unfailing love.”

A week or so ago, Kansas University played Dartmouth in a basketball game. The outcome was settled before they ever walked onto the court. The Jayhawk talent was simply superior to Dartmouth. Before they ever played, the outcome was a done deal! But still they had to play all 48 minutes of the game.

About 2,000 years ago, Jesus was born. Emmanuel came. It is a done deal. But we still live our lives. We still walk through the valleys and wonder, How long…Will you forget me forever?

And we pray sincere, heartfelt, soulful prayers to God. We speak the truth of our hearts just as David, the psalmist, spoke his heart to God without fear.

And in time we remember Emmanuel. God is with us. Right here in the valley, if we are in the valley, he is with us. And we say , “I will trust in your unfailing love.” I will trust in your unfailing love.

Christ has come. The game has been settled. I will trust in your unfailing love.

Do you remember the story of the Christmas shepherds?  They were in the field near Bethlehem when the angels of God appeared and announced that the savior had been born. It is such a sweet and beautiful story that we sometimes forget the little fact that the shepherds had been excluded from the worship of God in the temple. Because of their jobs, they were ritually “unclean” and therefore not allowed in the temple. And we know from the historians of the period that most shepherds did not make enough money to pay the temple tax and because they could not pay, they were not allowed in. They were excluded as debtors and excluded as being unclean.

It was to this little band of “cut off” shepherds that the angels announced the birth of Emmanuel. God is with us!

And someone said, “Let us go to Bethlehem to see what has come to pass.” Let’s get up and go to Jesus. Jesus came to them but they also had to go to Jesus!

To celebrate “The Lord’s Supper” today, we invite you to get up and go to Jesus. We are borrowing a ceremony from some of our sister denominations and inviting you to leave your pews and walk to the place where the symbols of Christ’s body and blood are present.

As you walk and wait, I invite you to silently and honestly pray. Silently and honestly say to God that which is on your heart.

Please come forward now and receive the elements of “The Lord’s Supper.” Come forward now as though you are going to meet Jesus.