Nevertheless

Rejoice in the Lord always; I will say it again, Rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God [Philippians 4:4-6].

Waiting can be quite difficult for many, if not most of us. When I want to draw upon my strongest feelings about waiting, I reflect back to my freshman and sophomore years at Wake Forest, now more than 50 years ago. Then, before the completion of I-85 and the rest of the interstate highway system, it took me almost six hours to drive from Wake Forest—the university, not the town—to Due West, South Carolina. Many of you will remember what, or shouldn’t I say “who,” was in Due West in those days.

Indeed, during my first two years at Wake Forest, my beloved Jane was a co-ed at Erskine College, the small, church-sponsored college way out in the country, some 35 miles or so south of Greenville. And so, at least one weekend each month, I drove “Due West”—although it was actually “South-South-West”—to see “my Jane.”

We each drove to hometown Gastonia one weekend each month. That meant that for at least one weekend each month, sometimes two, we didn’t see each other at all. During that time period, I came to know what waiting—and even longing—meant. As many of you know, during the summer after our freshman year, we settled upon a prescription for our waiting “sickness”; we’d wait one more year—until after we had matured and turned 20—and then we’d marry.

There are, of course, many other kinds of waiting. Some excitedly—and sometimes anxiously—wait for the birth of a son or daughter, or a grandchild. Others wait for the next paycheck or Social Security deposit, for news of a job possibility—or a cut in the workforce—or for a diagnosis. Some wait for a phone call from a loved one that may never come due to bitter estrangement. Others wait for news from a sibling or friend that will announce a word of dreaded finality, “She’s gone.”

Holy Scripture is replete with stories of those who are required to wait. For example, the apostle Paul was quite accustomed to waiting. By the time we get to the Epistle reading for this upcoming Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent (RCL, Year C), Philippians 4:4-7, Paul has been languishing in a Roman prison cell while he waits for his trial. Elsewhere in this letter to the church at Philippi, we see that those in the little ecclesia are waiting for news from their beloved founder. And so, Paul writes to his friends to give them news. He rejoices in the manner in which this beloved little church has cared for for him, at how the Philippian church made provision for his ministry even when no other church would do so [see 4:15].

Indeed, the church at Philippi, afraid for Paul, and desirous of meeting his physical needs during his incarceration, had earlier sent Epaphroditus to care for Paul while Paul waited in prison. Thereafter, however, the church was given one more worry—one more thing upon which to wait—as Epaphroditus became so sick that he almost died [2:27]. Waiting and hoping for Epaphroditus’ recovery, waiting, and hoping for “Father Paul’s” release, they have prayed and prayed. To be sure, Paul sends word that Epaphroditus has recovered, but Paul is still confined. We, who know how the story ends, know Paul’s release will come only through his death.

Waiting—how so many are waiting. Many brave souls are waiting for relief as they remain abandoned and imprisoned in Afghanistan. Ukrainians wait as more than 100,000 Russian troops are poised along their border. Will the Russians invade as they did in Crimea in 2014? Will aid come from outside their country? They must anxiously wait.

China might certainly be called a land of waiting. According to a report by the U.S. Department of State, more than 1,000,000 Chinese Muslims have been imprisoned in as many as 1,200 state-run internment camps throughout Xinjiang. According to the State Department, detention in these camps is intended to erase ethnic and religious identities under the pretext of “vocational training.” Forced labor is a central tactic used for this repression. While we continue to trade with China and send our athletes to the next Olympic Games, the Chinese Muslims there must wait and toil in captivity.

Although there is no moral equivalent between our plight as we move through the pandemic and the plight of those I have just named, we recognize that we also wait. We watch COVID-19’s roulette wheel. Will the virus land on “our number,” or worse, will it stop on the number of someone we love? Will that third shot protect us from the Omicron variant? Must we wait for a fourth, a fifth? Must we wait for additional variants? As we listen to official advice that seems to change week by week, as we wait for the next in the continuum of pronouncements, are we really just waiting, whistling in the darkness?

Waiting through the darkness—it may seem that just when we thought there was no more “wait” left within us, we turn the church calendar to Advent, with its images of darkness and a far-off dawn. We move through Advent, with its emphasis on waiting, and many of us shout to our Lord, “Enough, must we also wait for You?” While we wait, we ask our Lord, “Isn’t there something we can do in the meantime?” And Paul sings back to us in a clear answer: we must rejoice.

Incredulously we cry out, “Rejoice? Are you serious? Lord, can’t you see what’s going on around us? How can we rejoice?”

We can rejoice—we can respond with Joy—because the Lord is near. In this week’s Epistle lesson, Paul, who is quite serious, says:

Rejoice! … The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God [Philippians 4:5].

Whatever fear the Philippians feel, whatever anxiety they have about Paul’s future, about their own, or about their friends such as Epaphroditus, they are to respond with Joy, because the Lord is near.

As Karl Barth so eloquently put it almost 90 years ago in his densely-packed, Church Dogmatics, in Paul’s Philippian epistle, Joy is a defiant “Nevertheless!”Is Paul in prison? Yes, nevertheless, he will rejoice. Are the early Christians subject to persecution, even torture? Yes, nevertheless, they are to respond with Joy. Do we live in a scary 21st century world? Yes, nevertheless, we are to respond with Joy. And now, during the season of Advent, in these moments—no, weeks—of waiting and longing, we are to respond with Joy, since our Lord is near.

Paul’s defiant attitude can be misunderstood. He isn’t telling us to pretend the source of our despair isn’t real. He doesn’t tell us to pretend it isn’t there. He doesn’t expect us to ignore the horrible things that are ongoing in the world around us. We are to rejoice—to respond with Joy—since the only solution to the world’s problems, our Lord, is near. How long will it take us to understand that only God can rectify the world. Only God can save the world from itself. Only God has already done that in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord, Jesus Christ, whom the apostle Paul assures us, is near.

Rome may imprison Paul. It may (and will) kill him. It has already done that to Jesus. The suffering in cells in Rome—or China—won’t end with human activity or intervention. Paul understands that the salvation of the entire cosmos does not depend upon his powers, but the powers of his Lord. Our faith acknowledges the injustices around us. It offers up, however, a powerful “Nevertheless” in Jesus Christ. In the face of sin and shortcomings, in spite of the injustices that are pervasive within our world, nevertheless, we are to respond with Joy.

There’s one more point, and it’s a difficult point to make. It’s difficult not because I hesitate in saying it. It’s difficult because it sounds so counter intuitive. You see, Paul’s core idea—Paul’s fervent plea to us—is that the Lord is near to us, where we currently are. In that sense, there is a flip side to Paul’s “nevertheless.”

Christ is near to us NOW. Christ isn’t on some sort of mathematical trajectory to meet us at some point in the future, when we’ve got our act together, when we’ve tamed our sins and have been released from the bondage that those sins cause, when we’ve completed our carefully-crafted penance, when we’ve allocated sufficient time to give to the church, or to the mission, or to whatever cause we think might suit the situation at that moment in the future toward which we think we might be moving.

Christ isn’t near when we’ve pulled together our financial resources in order that we might weather any storm. Christ isn’t near to us when we’ve negotiated our situation with friends and family. He is near to us NOW. It is, therefore, now, within our current circumstances that the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ will become manifested. Paul’s “nevertheless” means that no matter what our current situation, we must respond in Joy. We cannot postpone that Joy for later, for it is HERE and NOW that Christ is near. During this Advent time of waiting, we may have already come to the conclusion that we are not yet ready of our Lord. That, however, is an irrelevant issue, for He is near, NOW, whether we’re ready or not.

I tell myself that I don’t think I’m ready. I hear Paul’s clear and strong response, “Nevertheless, rejoice.”