Waiting Means Serving
By: Dr. Gregory S. Neal
In the early 1990s, while still struggling mightily with accepting the reality of my sexual orientation, I decided to take a break from my graduate studies at Duke and, for 9 months, I tested my vocation as a monk in the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. I got to know the monks of their order thanks to their presence at St. John’s House in Durham, NC, and the fact that a couple of them were students at Duke. Their quiet spiritual devotion and sincere hospitality appealed to me and drew me to them, and so I decided to test my vocation to be a monk. I went to Cambridge, MA, where their Mother House in the USA is located, and became first a postulant and then a novice of their society. I went through months of study, prayer, worship, and service. I opened myself to what God was saying to me about my identity as a follower of Jesus, a human being, as a gay man, and as a Methodist. Through those months of intense spiritual formation, I discerned that I wasn’t called to be cloistered behind the walls of a monastery but, rather, to a life of ministry as a pastor among God’s people. And, so, I left the brothers and returned to my graduate studies and ministry in The United Methodist Church. I learned many things during my time in the monastery – at what I affectionately called “the monkary.” One of the things I learned was how to wait: wait while listening and, yes, acting.
Sometimes we can best understand what the scriptures are saying to us through examining the meaning of its words in the original language. The Psalms, being in the Hebrew Bible, were written in … well … Hebrew. In Psalm 130 we find two different Hebrew words conveying the idea of waiting: Ka’vah and Ya’khal. In the NRSV the word Ka’vah is translated “wait” and the word Ya’khal is translated “hope.” In truth, however, both words contain aspects of both concepts: we are called to wait hopefully, and hope waitfully.
What does it mean for us to wait for the Lord? What does it mean for us to wait, expectantly, for God? What does true hope mean? These are all related ideas, concepts, and experiences.
Waiting can be a struggle: we want to be doing, not waiting; we want to be active, not passive; we don’t like to wait … but sometimes that’s all we can do. During the COVID-19 pandemic, while others worked so very hard — doctors and nurses, researchers and scientists, farmers and ranchers, police and fire fighters, grocers and reporters — to maintain life and provide what we all need to live, most of us were forced to wait. And, for most of us, it wasn’t fun.
Indeed, waiting is very hard work and involves several components: listening, reflecting, resolving, doing … and all with patience, because none of this happens fast. In the monastery I learned that waiting involved listening to what God was saying in the silence. The challenge is to listen for God’s voice in different ways; we must listen anew, with fresh and receptive ears, to what God may be saying in the midst of life. What is God saying to you, today? And this is where reflecting comes in. We must listen, while also giving critical thought to what we’re hearing. Distinguishing between our own ideas, the ideas of others, and where God may be moving in the midst of both, is the objective. Once we’ve listened and reflected, we must then respond to what we’ve heard and discerned by resolving to act.
All of this calls forth from us patience … and patience may be the hardest part of waiting: we must allow time for hearing, reflecting, resolving, and doing. But we don’t like that. We want immediate results; we want results yesterday! But change and transformation takes time: it takes time to listen, reflect, resolve, and act.
"My soul waits for the Lord." There’s an aspect of that word “wait” which comes out well in English, and particularly in older forms of English. Waiting doesn’t mean to just passively sit and do nothing; it means to act by serving. Think of a “waiter,” or a restaurant’s waitstaff. “Wait” can mean to “serve,” which is a very active concept, and one that plays a role in “waiting for the LORD.” How do we serve God? How do we serve others?
The Church stands at a crossroads; that’s true for all churches and other communities of faith. How we “do church” is very different today than it was just a few years ago. Change had always been happening, but the COVID-19 pandemic brought focus upon the need to change as well as enormously accelerating the pace and scope of change. We had to learn new ways of waiting, new ways of listening, reflecting, resolving, acting, and of being patient. We had to learn new ways of serving God and each other. The need to serve isn’t changing, but how we serve has changed and will always continue to change.
Take, for instance, the reality of live streaming of worship. Prior to the pandemic, many churches had an online presence and live-streamed or delayed-broadcasted their services. In my own ministry, I had been offering video sermons online for more than ten years, and audio sermons for twenty. But during most of that time, people could still attend worship. With the pandemic, the church became necessarily limited in how we could meet for in-person worship. Mostly, we met via the internet and partook of multiple means of grace through live-stream services. That was true for most of us for more than a year. Now that we can meet again … and many of us are meeting again … does the livestream goes away? No. It can’t. Our live-stream worship services are an important way of reaching people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is an effective and powerful way of reaching beyond our walls to the community around us, to the community around our community, to the surrounding city, state, nation, and world. Through the internet we can reach out to where people are with the good news of God’s unlimited, inclusive, never-ending love. There are so many negative, judgmental voices on the internet – condemning, belittling, demeaning voices. We can be a positive voice, a voice of love, a voice of inclusion, a voice of acceptance for those who have been pushed out and marginalized by the church. And we can take the message of God’s love to everybody wherever they are … even to people who, otherwise, might never darken the doors of a church. We can bring the message of God's love to those who are looking for a new church home, and invite them to experience a small taste of what our worship and study life is like. That’s been happening for a long time, and those churches that had a strong internet presence have grown as a result. Those that didn’t have such a presence … well, they didn’t grow very much if at all. And it’s even more true now – particularly with the millennials, young families with kids, and the youth of today. They’ll look up a church online, sample its worship services, read about their ministries and positions on various issues, long before they’ll ever visit. Hence, a robust and compelling online presence is an onramp to the church for those who are outside, looking in; it is the first introduction to our church that most people will have. And, above all, it’s a way to share the Gospel, the message of God’s unending, unlimited love, with all regardless of if they’ll ever show up in-person. It is a critical aspect of how we are in ministry in the 21st century, and it’s not going away.
Waiting for the LORD means patiently listening, reflecting, resolving, and doing. Waiting means serving – God and our neighbor – with love and acceptance, grace and peace.
Sometimes we can best understand what the scriptures are saying to us through examining the meaning of its words in the original language. The Psalms, being in the Hebrew Bible, were written in … well … Hebrew. In Psalm 130 we find two different Hebrew words conveying the idea of waiting: Ka’vah and Ya’khal. In the NRSV the word Ka’vah is translated “wait” and the word Ya’khal is translated “hope.” In truth, however, both words contain aspects of both concepts: we are called to wait hopefully, and hope waitfully.
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in God’s word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. (Psalm 130:5-6)
What does it mean for us to wait for the Lord? What does it mean for us to wait, expectantly, for God? What does true hope mean? These are all related ideas, concepts, and experiences.
Waiting can be a struggle: we want to be doing, not waiting; we want to be active, not passive; we don’t like to wait … but sometimes that’s all we can do. During the COVID-19 pandemic, while others worked so very hard — doctors and nurses, researchers and scientists, farmers and ranchers, police and fire fighters, grocers and reporters — to maintain life and provide what we all need to live, most of us were forced to wait. And, for most of us, it wasn’t fun.
Indeed, waiting is very hard work and involves several components: listening, reflecting, resolving, doing … and all with patience, because none of this happens fast. In the monastery I learned that waiting involved listening to what God was saying in the silence. The challenge is to listen for God’s voice in different ways; we must listen anew, with fresh and receptive ears, to what God may be saying in the midst of life. What is God saying to you, today? And this is where reflecting comes in. We must listen, while also giving critical thought to what we’re hearing. Distinguishing between our own ideas, the ideas of others, and where God may be moving in the midst of both, is the objective. Once we’ve listened and reflected, we must then respond to what we’ve heard and discerned by resolving to act.
All of this calls forth from us patience … and patience may be the hardest part of waiting: we must allow time for hearing, reflecting, resolving, and doing. But we don’t like that. We want immediate results; we want results yesterday! But change and transformation takes time: it takes time to listen, reflect, resolve, and act.
“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in God’s word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” (Psalm 130:5-6)
"My soul waits for the Lord." There’s an aspect of that word “wait” which comes out well in English, and particularly in older forms of English. Waiting doesn’t mean to just passively sit and do nothing; it means to act by serving. Think of a “waiter,” or a restaurant’s waitstaff. “Wait” can mean to “serve,” which is a very active concept, and one that plays a role in “waiting for the LORD.” How do we serve God? How do we serve others?
The Church stands at a crossroads; that’s true for all churches and other communities of faith. How we “do church” is very different today than it was just a few years ago. Change had always been happening, but the COVID-19 pandemic brought focus upon the need to change as well as enormously accelerating the pace and scope of change. We had to learn new ways of waiting, new ways of listening, reflecting, resolving, acting, and of being patient. We had to learn new ways of serving God and each other. The need to serve isn’t changing, but how we serve has changed and will always continue to change.
Take, for instance, the reality of live streaming of worship. Prior to the pandemic, many churches had an online presence and live-streamed or delayed-broadcasted their services. In my own ministry, I had been offering video sermons online for more than ten years, and audio sermons for twenty. But during most of that time, people could still attend worship. With the pandemic, the church became necessarily limited in how we could meet for in-person worship. Mostly, we met via the internet and partook of multiple means of grace through live-stream services. That was true for most of us for more than a year. Now that we can meet again … and many of us are meeting again … does the livestream goes away? No. It can’t. Our live-stream worship services are an important way of reaching people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is an effective and powerful way of reaching beyond our walls to the community around us, to the community around our community, to the surrounding city, state, nation, and world. Through the internet we can reach out to where people are with the good news of God’s unlimited, inclusive, never-ending love. There are so many negative, judgmental voices on the internet – condemning, belittling, demeaning voices. We can be a positive voice, a voice of love, a voice of inclusion, a voice of acceptance for those who have been pushed out and marginalized by the church. And we can take the message of God’s love to everybody wherever they are … even to people who, otherwise, might never darken the doors of a church. We can bring the message of God's love to those who are looking for a new church home, and invite them to experience a small taste of what our worship and study life is like. That’s been happening for a long time, and those churches that had a strong internet presence have grown as a result. Those that didn’t have such a presence … well, they didn’t grow very much if at all. And it’s even more true now – particularly with the millennials, young families with kids, and the youth of today. They’ll look up a church online, sample its worship services, read about their ministries and positions on various issues, long before they’ll ever visit. Hence, a robust and compelling online presence is an onramp to the church for those who are outside, looking in; it is the first introduction to our church that most people will have. And, above all, it’s a way to share the Gospel, the message of God’s unending, unlimited love, with all regardless of if they’ll ever show up in-person. It is a critical aspect of how we are in ministry in the 21st century, and it’s not going away.
Waiting for the LORD means patiently listening, reflecting, resolving, and doing. Waiting means serving – God and our neighbor – with love and acceptance, grace and peace.
The Reverend Dr. Gregory S. Neal is the Senior Pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Des Moines, Iowa, and an ordained Elder of the North Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church. A graduate of Southern Methodist University, Duke University, and Trinity College, Dr. Neal is a scholar of Systematic Theology, New Testament origins, and Biblical Languages. His areas of specialization include the theology of the sacraments, in which he did his doctoral dissertation, and the formation and early transmission of the New Testament. Trained as a Christian educator, he has taught classes in these and related fields while also serving for more than 30 years as the pastor of United Methodist churches in North Texas.
As a popular teacher, preacher, and retreat leader, Dr. Neal is known for his ability to translate complex theological concepts into common, everyday terms. HIs preaching and teaching ministry is in demand around the world, and much of his work can be found on this website. He is the author of several books, including Grace Upon Grace: Sacramental Theology and the Christian Life, which is in its second edition, and Seeking the Shepherd's Arms: Reflections from the Pastoral Side of Life, a work of devotional literature. Both of these books are currently available from Amazon.com.
As a popular teacher, preacher, and retreat leader, Dr. Neal is known for his ability to translate complex theological concepts into common, everyday terms. HIs preaching and teaching ministry is in demand around the world, and much of his work can be found on this website. He is the author of several books, including Grace Upon Grace: Sacramental Theology and the Christian Life, which is in its second edition, and Seeking the Shepherd's Arms: Reflections from the Pastoral Side of Life, a work of devotional literature. Both of these books are currently available from Amazon.com.