Sermon Archive

It's good to see Claudia Hall back here this morning. Last week, in her hospital room, our beloved Claudia found herself waiting for her doctor to come—waiting a first day, …and waiting a second day, …and waiting a third day, …and still her own doctor had not come. Then it was discovered that the staff had copied down the name of the wrong doctor, so that her own doctor had never been notified. Good to see you, Claudia.

Around the world today, millions of persons living with AIDS are waiting, …and waiting, …and waiting—some for diagnoses, some for medicines, some for family members to stop rejecting them and start loving them again, some waiting for death.

Here in the USA today, our whole nation is waiting, …and waiting, …and waiting—for the outcome of an election that began four weeks ago.

And, on the church calendar, this is the first day of Advent—three weeks of waiting, …and waiting, …and waiting—in anticipation of the birth day of Christ, in anticipation of new and different things coming to pass, better things, far beyond our ability to imagine or predict.

Have you ever gone to a play and then, just several minutes into it, realized that you really shouldn’t have come, that, for whatever reasons, you aren’t able to appreciate this play and aren’t going to enjoy it at all? Well, I had that experience back in the 1960s when I went to see Samuel Beckett’s tragicomic drama of the absurd Waiting for Godot (and yes, please note that when Beckett attended rehearsals of his play in London in 1984, he specifically asked the English-speaking actors to accent the first syllable, Gó-dot.)

The central characters of Beckett’s play are Estragon and Vladimir, two travelers, two wayfarers on a wearisome journey. Their nicknames are Gogo and Didi. Gogo and Didi are waiting for Gódot. Many have wondered if Gódot is meant to be a God-figure, but Beckett steadfastly denied that Gódot is God. Indeed, Beckett kept insisting that he himself had no idea at all about who or what Gódot really is!

One critic has contended that Beckett is playing with his audience, that through his use of religious symbolism elsewhere in the play Beckett is decoying us into the blind alley of interpreting Estragon and Vladimir as faithful adherents to God, adherents waiting for some messianic figure to come.

In any event, the play is about Gogo and Didi who’re waiting for Gódot, even though neither of them has any idea whether Gódot will come, or whether they’re waiting in the right place or at the right time. And neither of them has any idea why they’re waiting for Gódot.

Beckett depicts the qualities that fill the lives of these characters as ignorance, uncertainty, irresolution, and impotence, and Beckett underlines these qualities by pestering us with dialogue in which hundreds of questions are left unanswered and countless stories remain unconcluded, pestering us with numerous actions that go unexplained, and multiple images that point to loss, disorientation, befuddlement, bewilderment.

Estragon and Vladimir, amidst their ignorance, uncertainty, irresolution, and impotence, are preoccupied throughout the play with trying out a myriad of new ways to simply “pass the time.” They try athletic exercises, light diversions, language games, insults—but nothing is satisfying.

Well, as I said, when I went to see Waiting for Gódot, in the 1960s, I was totally unprepared to appreciate theater of the absurd, with its absence of logical plot development, of meaningful dialogue, of intelligible characters. And from the play’s very first image of Estragon struggling to take off his left boot, with great effort and no success, to the final image of the travelers Estragon and Vladimir once again not moving on after having once again agreed to move on—from first image to last, I found myself bored and trying desperately to develop my own strategies for simply “passing the time,” strategies like fidgeting, and snoozing.

You see, I’d been brought up to be too polite to bolt for the door, and too cheap to leave at intermission when I’d paid for a whole play, so I waited, …and waited, …and waited for something to happen, and of course it never did. I left the theater wanting to forget the whole experience, and for a long time I succeeded in doing just that.

But several decades later, I was led to read Waiting for Godot—mind you, nobody would have gotten me to go see it again—and I at last came to see how profound the play really is, and how strongly I reject its message—for amidst its absurdity Beckett’s play proclaims quite a clear message, namely: Life is meaningless, and religion is a blind alley. So waiting for meaning to appear is an exercise in futility.

That message of Beckett’s could not be more different from the message proclaimed in this morning’s two scripture lessons. For the message of the scripture lessons is this: No matter how bleak things may currently seem, life is meaningful, God’s promises are sure, and waiting for a day of justice and righteousness to dawn is an exercise not in futility but in well-placed hope.

Says God in Jeremiah (33:14–15):

“The days are surely coming when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David[, an offspring of the royal line]; and he shall accomplish justice and righteousness…”

And says the psalmist (25:1, 5b-c):

“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;…
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait.…”

In 1975, Beckett did something quite unusual. He directed his own play in a German translation. It was produced at the Schiller-Theater in Berlin. And for that performance, Beckett created a production notebook that offers many insights into how he understood and interpreted his own play.

For example, at the beginning and end of each of the two acts and at four additional moments in the course of each act, 12 in all, Beckett directed that there be a “waiting point,” a tableau, a freeze-in-action to highlight that the play’s principal motif is indeed waiting, …and waiting, …and waiting.

Beckett also labeled a section in his notebook “Doubts, confusions,” and he devoted three whole pages to listing instances where doubts and confusions cause bewilderment to his characters.

Beckett labeled another section of his notebook “HELP.” There he enumerated 21 occasions in the play where one character asks for help from another. And he noted that on 14 out of those 21 occasions the request for help is totally ignored. As for the other 7 occasions, analysis has shown that the help offered turns out, with but one exception, to be either useless or harmful. The helper provides no significant relief, and instead usually increases the woe of the person needing to be helped.

Thus Beckett sets forth his viewpoint that human sympathy and helpfulness are unpredictable and of negative value. Hope for help from a god is, of course, futile, and hope for help from a human is almost as futile.

In stark contrast to the pessimistic cynicism and despair of Beckett stands the optimistic expectancy of Jeremiah and the psalmist, two who wait with hope for help from God, two who wait with hope for what the English poet Matthew Arnold has called “a spark from heaven.”

Arnold’s poem “The Scholar Gypsy” was published in London exactly 100 years before Beckett’s play was first produced in Paris. Arnold knew nothing of the theater of the absurd, but he was highly critical of the intellectual cynicism of his own day, mired, as he saw it, in uncertainty, irresolution, and intellectual impotence. Arnold described himself and others in this way:

“Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled;
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new,
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose tomorrow the ground won today…”

In “The Scholar Gypsy,” Arnold celebrates a student of yore who was rumored to have escaped the confines of Oxford University and to have wandered afar, nursing an unconquerable hope for receiving a spark from heaven that would illumine the darkness of the world around him.

The awaiting of heaven’s spark by this scholar gypsy was a waiting of active pursuit for that which was new and different, not a waiting of sodden entrapment in the baggage of the past.

Arnold advises the scholar gypsy to stay far afield from Oxford and never return:

“…fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
For strong the infection of our mental strife…”

Only by staying far afield from intellectual cynicism would the scholar gypsy be able to keep alive his unconquerable hope for a spark from heaven, a spark that could ignite the joy in living that frees people from pessimism, doubt, and confusion.

Waiting actively for a spark from heaven—that's like the psalmist who said:

“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
…for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait.…” (Psalm 25:1a, 5b-c)

This Advent, like Arnold, I urge us all to stay far afield from those places where doubt and confusion are sown, where cynicism and despair are spread, those things that Arnold called “…this strange disease of modern life.…”

I urge us all to spend these next three weeks waiting expectantly, actively seeking that “spark from heaven” that ignites joy in living. I urge us all to visit and immerse ourselves in those spaces where hope for help with the travails of life reigns—spaces and seasons of hope like those this church offers for worship and meditation. Each Wednesday evening vesper service offers a space and season of hope. Come! Each Sunday morning service also offers a space and season of hope. Come!.

And as you see each candle of the advent wreath being lighted—the first, the second, the third, the fourth, and, at last, on Christmas Eve, the Christ candle in the center—as you see each candle lighted believe that in this season of waiting and expectation sparks from heaven are descending to help dispel the darkness of our world.

Advent, a season of waiting for the sparks from heaven that will surely come.

Let us pray: