It would be fair to say that patience isn’t my long suit. I have a tendency to want what I want now. I’ve been known to make impulse purchases, which seem to me at the time to be very sensible, but clearly could have been delayed without any negative impact. And I have not always been prudent in some of the minor decisions in life. On the other hand, some of those decisions have turned out to be good. I was well aware of the counsel I had received from many to wait until we finished college to marry. We were in the same class and waiting one more year would put our marriage after our graduation. We didn’t wait. And things turned out very well. By marrying in college, we had a year of being married under our belts before heading off on the big move to Chicago and graduate school. I think it was good for us to have confidence in our relationship and some experience in making joint decisions before tacking a move that, in those days, was a long way from home.

That aside, waiting can be hard.

We Americans don’t spend much time practicing our waiting. When a decision or a purchase or a project has to be delayed, we invest our time and energy and enthusiasm in working toward achieving the goal.

There are, however, times when waiting is what is required of us.

When a family crisis occurs or we loose a loved one there is the process of waiting for distant relatives to travel. There are some fairly prominent buildings in our town that have waiting rooms built into them: the terminal at the airport, the bus station, the hospital, doctors and dentists offices. They call it a “lobby” instead of a “waiting room” but you can see people waiting in banks and accountants offices and even the outer offices of business executives. We wait for job interviews and calls from loved ones.

But we are not very good at waiting.

Like other skills, waiting improves with practice, but most of us don’t want to practice such a quiet event. We prefer action and activity.

Today is a day of waiting. It was a day of waiting for Jesus’ disciples. After the headlong rush of the journey to Jerusalem and the first heady days of the entrance and preparations for the passover and teaching in the temple the mood switched with the arrest and trial of Jesus. Although Jesus had to face his trial alone, his disciples must have been nearby. We know that Peter was in the outer court at Caiphas’ house while Jesus was being questioned there. There was nothing they could do but wait.

The law clearly prevented the bathing and anointing of the body on the Sabbath, which ran from sundown on Friday to sunrise on Sunday. That meant that the women whose task it would be to set everyone in the shroud properly and lay out the body had to wait to accomplish their not-so-pleasant task.

We too wait. The traditional service for Holy Saturday is called the Great Vigil. Most of our congregations hold a highly stylized and heavily adapted version of the Vigil. In the early days of the church it was an intense time of preparation for membership in the church. The vigil began at sundown on the evening before Easter and concluded with a sunrise worship service, though the entire night was filled with liturgy and worship.

They waited until it was dark, a condition that was even more intense because the candles of the church that had been extinguished on Good Friday and removed from the sanctuary had been replaced with new candles, not yet lit. The first fire was usually a small bonfire lit outdoors. From that fire a taper was used to light the new Paschal candle with special ceremony. The Paschal candle was raised three times with responses and worshipers lit small candles form the Paschal candle, passing the flames from person to person until everyone had a candle. Then, with special ceremony they entered the church to light the new candles.

After the service of the light there was often a pause for silent prayer and meditation. In some churches this pause could be as long as a couple of hours. It was followed by a service of the word, in which the major stories of the history of the church were read from scripture: the creation of the world, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, the exodus form Egypt, the words of the prophets. Each reading would be followed by a psalm, a special prayer and a hymn. After the Old Testament readings, there would be a reading of an Epistle and finally the story of Jesus’ Resurrection from one of the gospels. Depending on the tradition, there would be a short homily or sermon after each reading, or perhaps a single sermon following the reading of the Gospel. The service of the word could take as long as two hours. This, too was followed by a time of prayer.

The third service of the night-long vigil would be a service of baptism with vows and the sacrament of baptism for new members and a renewal of baptismal vows and sprinkling of the faithful.

After another time for prayer the celebration of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, would be held, the first such celebration of the Easter season, with fresh linen and clean vestments.

We’ve collapsed the entire service into an hour, straddling the actual sunset. It will still be light out when we kindle the new fire and light the new paschal candle. The readings have been shortened, the sermon dropped, the baptismal remembrance shortened and the communion brief. We’ve a lot of practice in making things short.

Then we wait. Sunrise service will still be more than ten hours away.

And for now we wait for that service.

Perhaps we can even learn that waiting is a gift and not a curse.

I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.