The Days Are Coming … Waiting and Expecting

“In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety…it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’ ”  -  Jeremiah 33:16

It is not unusual – finding places like this in the Bible where a city is given a new name.  (It even happens to people in some of the most dramatic stories of scripture – think Saul/Paul, Simon/Peter/ “Rocky”).  Here, in the first Advent reading of this year, the Holy One announces that the maps will have to be changed.  When God’s justice covers the land, Jerusalem will be renamed, “The Lord is our righteousness.”  Not a bad reminder that the new creation will not be our doing. 

Whenever a major change takes place, even if to something welcomed and good, some difficult work of remembering the past is required.  In the Bible the people are constantly admonished to “remember, once you were slaves in Egypt.”  In frequent visits to my mother-in-law, now a dementia burdened nursing home resident at age 97, I need to remember the woman who, for decades, took me on over my politics and social change focused faith.  If I look only on the person she is now, I will deprive myself of the richness of the gift of her full life.

How we “wait” for Godot makes all the difference.  Waiting in the spirit of Jesus – waiting for the “justice and righteousness” promise of Jeremiah – Advent season waiting in Christian community – such waiting is not unidirectional.  At both ends of the story we live by, there is good – a good that is of God.  Remember, in the beginning creation was declared “very good.”  Our story announces that in the end whatever is coming at us is “all things new.” 

“In between” is where we find ourselves.  We are waiting and expecting people.  We are both the burdened and the fortunate ones.  We know what once was, what is that should not be, and what is yet coming.  We have been renamed in our baptism in anticipation of Jerusalem’s new name.

Can you imagine anything better?  Advent begs us to live the promise our given “Christian name” stands for.