Is It Time Yet?

 We are impatient people. We want what we want when we want it. But sometimes "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" isn't good advice. My sermon today explores why.

I’m going to begin today’s sermon with a quiz. Don’t worry; it’s an easy quiz. All you have to do is to raise your hand.

First, raise your hand if you have ever taken a car trip with children. If you don’t have any children, but you took a car trip with your parents when you were a child, raise your hand, too.

Now, keep your hand up if the children on that car trip were impatient. If you were one of those impatient children, you keep your hand up, too.

Finally, keep your hand up if you were ever stuck in traffic with impatient children. And if you were an impatient child stuck in traffic in a car with your parents… well, you know the drill.

OK, you can put your hands down, now.

I don’t know how many of you raised your hands, but I’ll bet it was most of you! What memories do you have of those trips when you were stuck in traffic with impatient children in the car? Are they happy memories – or are they a little bit painful?

I can remember when I was a child, maybe 10 years old, and my mom and dad, my sister and I all drove over to Indianapolis for the Indy 500 time trials. On the way back, we got stuck in traffic. Those were the days before interstate highways, and the only way home from the race track was right through the center of town. It was also before cars routinely had air conditioning. It was broiling hot that day – at least, it seemed that way to me – and we got stuck in traffic right next to a big, loud, smelly semi-truck. There we sat. I remember it so vividly! I was hot; I was thirsty; I was bored; and all I wanted to do was to get out of that traffic jam so that we could go home! I tried to remember that episode when our own children were small and we traveled with them. That memory might have made me a little more patient when one of them asked for the ten-thousandth time, “Are we there yet?” No, not yet. “How much longer?” A little while yet. “How much longer is a little while?” You know the routine. We’ve all been through it.

Right now, we’re all traveling together along our journey of life; and we’re stuck in a traffic jam. Except that this time, the jam isn’t with automobiles on a highway. It’s a jam that has been caused by COVID-19. We don’t want to be here. We’re tired; we’re bored; and we just want to get out of it and have some normalcy to our lives! But, just like that long-ago traffic jam in Indianapolis, we’ll get out of it when we get out of it; and not a minute before. We can’t pull off on another road, or veer over and drive down the sidewalk. We’re stuck. We are all incredibly impatient to get this COVID thing over with so that we can get back to living the lives that we are used to living: eating out, going to sports events, and going to church! Most of you know by now that our church council recently decided that we will not reopen for physical worship until the first of the year. None of are happy about that, because we want to go back to worshiping in person! We’re impatient! We’re like the children who keep asking, “Are we there yet? How much longer?” Well, we’re not there yet; we don’t know how much longer it will be before we can worship together again; and deciding that we aren’t going to wait any longer will only make matters worse.

The text that I read you this morning is a stark warning about forging ahead at all costs (I Samuel 13:1, 5-14). Saul was a military man; and his military training told him that waiting too long to go into battle could be costly. Samuel, though, had told him to wait, because Samuel was the only one who was authorized to offer a sacrifice to God. But while Saul waited, he became more and more concerned. The Philistines had a huge army; big enough to frighten even a seasoned army commander. Some of Saul’s men saw it and ran away to hide. Others deserted. The men who stayed with Saul were frightened out of their wits: “quaking with fear” in the words of the text. More of them deserted. Finally, Saul decided that he had waited long enough. He offered the sacrifice himself; and no sooner had he done so than Samuel showed up. “What a stupid thing to do!” Samuel told Saul. “Who told you that you could offer this sacrifice? Because you haven’t followed God’s orders, you will lose the kingdom to someone else.” Sometimes we need to wait, even when we don’t want to wait at all.

The book of Ecclesiastes says that “for everything there is a season.” (3:1-8) As I read part of that passage a few minutes ago, I’ll bet that you didn’t like some of the options nearly as well as you liked others. “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh.” Laughing is wonderful; but no one likes to weep. “There is a time to keep and a time to throw away.” Keeping is easy, but throwing away… It’s a lot harder! Just ask anyone who has ever cleaned out their attic. “There is a time to be born and a time to die.” We’re good with being born – who doesn’t love babies? -- but we’d just as soon skip that death thing. We don’t get a choice, though. Both of the options are a part of life, whether we like it or not. Ecclesiastes might well have added, “There is a time to go forward and a time to wait.” Right now, whether we like it or not, we’re in a time of waiting.

So, let’s change the question that we asked when we were children. Instead of asking, “Is it time yet?”, let’s ask “What time is it?” It may not be time to gather for physical worship, but it’s time for several things. It’s time to love and support one another. Right now, we need all the love and support that we can get, no matter who we are! It’s terribly difficult to constantly monitor our health condition so that we don’t catch COVID, which might be lethal for some of us. We could all use some TLC! It’s time, too, to have compassion for those who are hurting; and many of us are hurting right now. Some of us are suffering from chronic conditions that are making our lives difficult, while others are facing difficult medical conditions. If you know someone who fits into one of those categories, give them a call, write them a note, or sent a text message! You have no idea how uplifting it is to hear from a friend saying, “I just wanted to know how you are doing.” It’s time for something else, too. It’s time to discern how we will move on from here. When we do open the sanctuary for physical worship again, it will probably be with some significant changes. How will we worship together safely? How will we do mission when we can’t gather to assemble blessing bags or wrap Christmas gifts for our adopted families? How can we safely gather for fellowship? COVID will be with us for some time in the future, vaccine or no vaccine; and we need to make plans for the future taking that into account. It may not be time to gather together again, but it’s time for love and support, for compassion, and for discernment. If we do all of those things while we are waiting, I don’t think that our time of waiting will be wasted. And I’m pretty sure that God won’t think so, either.