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For college, I attended a different sort of place. At St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, our education was centered around reading the Great Books of Western Civilization, and our classes were just seminar conversations about what we had read. Each Monday and Thursday night, we would gather in groups of about 15-20 of us with 2 of our professors, who we call tutors, to discuss the biggest and best of these books.
In my sophomore year, one of my seminar tutors was fairly new. He interjected a lot. I can barely remember his name because, frankly, he often didn’t really have a lot that was important to say.
Our other tutor was the more experienced Mr. Umphrey. Mr. Umphrey was a former boxer turned philosopher. This gave him well-toned physique that coupled with his Socrates-like beard gave him an air that really fit a college centered on the classics.
His life as a boxer also made Mr. Umphrey much more methodical. He took his time and was deliberate. He walked everyday from his home to campus, and he always did so in very clear cut lines and angles.
Mr. Umphrey’s deliberateness made him careful and focused. He wouldn’t say much of anything in seminar, except when you said something he liked. Then he would smile, agree, and give a short statement on why what you said was the thread our conversation should follow.
I adored Mr. Umphrey. I wanted to be him. I still do really. Here was a man who was slow, deliberate, and methodical, and his path was the one that led to great wisdom.
Mr. Umphrey’s approach isn’t new. It isn’t even old. The slow, thoughtful pace is one that has been adopted by cultures for centuries. It is one that we would be wise to listen to the current generation of Zoomers as they are on this trend of slow living.
This also happens to be the approach God takes.
Our epistle today, 2 Peter, speaks of God’s longstanding patience. God is not a being who acts immediately. God takes time, thousands of years even, to enact a plan. God’s time and patience far outlasts our own.
The thing is, we don’t need 2 Peter to tell us that. We can see it throughout our own reading of the rest of Scripture. We see it looking at our own readings today.
The “Comfort, comfort ye my people” passage in Isaiah comes specifically from what we know as Second Isaiah. You see, the Book of the Prophet Isaiah is really 3 books in 1, 3 prophets from the same school. First Isaiah is the prophet we all know from the times of the Ancient Kingdom of Israel. Second Isaiah comes in when the Israelites have been conquered and exiled from their homeland.
Even in this exile, God has a plan. God is still there protecting them. God is leading the Israelites to a new promise, a return to home, and a time that will be better than what they are living in now.
The Israelites do return home eventually, yet that is not the end of God’s plan. There is more time needed to enact something beyond their scope to even comprehend at this point.
What God, in having the Israelites return home is doing is setting things up salvation, not just for the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well. God is using the Israelites situation to bring forth the salvation not only of their people but of all people.
That is why in this passage, as well as in our Gospel, we hear of “the voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’” The Ancient Israelites won’t fully know what that means for a long long time. It refers to John the Baptist, the one who will prepare the way for Jesus to start His ministry and eventually save the world.
God plays the long game. God waits and is patient. God takes centuries to enact a plan, and even within that plan, and all the failures by us in it, God leads the way for something grand like the salvation of us all.
If we are to get even close to following God’s example, we are going to have to play the long game too. The world is changing around us, and many in the church want us to react immediately. Yet we can’t just be reactionary. We have to have an eye to what God has done in the past with the other eye set on the slow, steady stream of what God is working to for the future. We don’t know what that is, so we must be like God and be patient. We must take the time to formulate our plan and wait to see where God is leading us for what lies ahead.
What more appropriate time to start than in this season of preparation? This is the period where we learn how God’s plan was finally enacted through the voice spoken of through the prophet so long ago, the voice preparing the way for God’s own human form in this world no less. This is the perfect moment for us to stop and think. We don’t have to have an answer now. We simply have to learn to be patient and wait, just like God. In this way, maybe we can start and see what it is the Lord is actually working, and maybe then we can figure out what our role in that great plan will actually be.