There is a very famous play by the British
playwright Samuel Beckett called Waiting for godot. In it, two
characters spend their time sitting at the side of a road, waiting for someone
called godot to arrive. From the beginning of Act 1 to the end of Act 3, they
sit there, idly and vainly, going round and round in circles in the same absurd
conversation. At the end, they are still waiting as futilely as at the
beginning. They sometimes wonder whether they are really waiting for anything
or anyone at all. Yet there is nothing else for them to do but to sit around
and wait in utter futility. Even the name of the person for whom they are
waiting, godot, sounds like a diminutive form of God.
There is an emptiness, an aching void, at the
centre of godless modern man. He is aware of this emptiness, and will go to any
lengths to avoid it, or to fill it. Godless modern man is waiting for
something, but he knows not what. And he sees no hope, no meaning, because he does
not know for whom or for what he is waiting. It is an empty waiting, dark
with ignorance, bereft of hope, bleak with despair. Godless modern man is still
waiting for godot, and godot, like tomorrow, never comes.
How different is the waiting of the Christian for
God! The Christian inhabits the same world as godless modern man; sees
the same sorrows; experiences the same suffering; is assailed by the same evils.
Often the Christian sees his work corrupted and come to nothing in the same
way. The Christian knows, as surely as godless modern man, that there is
something desperately wrong with this world of ours, something that urgently
needs to be set right. And yet, in the face of it all, the Christian is not
beset with despair, but filled with hope. Ahead lies not impenetrable darkness,
but unquenchable light. And the reason for this completely different response
is simple; for the Christian is not waiting for godot; he is waiting for God!
It is this that makes our waiting a waiting of
such joy, a purposeful waiting in hope. Here, now, in the season of Advent, we
relive that joyful hope as we prepare to celebrate the feast of Christmas, the
feast of the birth of Jesus the Saviour amongst us. In the midst of sorrow,
suffering, tragedy, even apparent meaninglessness in the world, the Christian
has glimpsed the glory of the Lord. All the dark and ugly things we experience
are things which the power of God overcomes, are even things which he can use
for our good. And all of them ultimately make sense because we are waiting for
a God who really is coming, a God whom we can and do know face to face. The
God for whom we wait is a person, and he has come to save us.
The darkness of this world is for us merely a
shadow which will be banished forever when God sheds his glorious light upon
us. It is significant that the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation,
is a book which practically explodes with a message of hope in the midst of
disaster. And the climax of that book, in its final verse, is the cry
"Come, Lord Jesus!" Let this be our hope, our message for this
Advent. Let us not be a hopeless people, waiting in despair for a godot who
never comes. Rather, let us be a people brimming with hope and joy, our eyes
fixed on the glorious future He has already prepared for us; let us be a people
waiting - for God. Amen.
Fr. Phillip