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This is one of those sermons that I never wanted to preach. But here we are, and here is the word that God opened to my heart this last week. It starts with a confession. A couple of months ago, when I was mapping out the thematic trajectory for my homilies for Lent, I found myself more driven by the place I wanted to get to instead of the message that is in the scripture itself.

I felt it appropriate in Lent this year to focus this Sunday on the theme of waiting. And I kind of grasped at the straw of the gardener's plea to wait in chapter 13 of St. Luke's Gospel, but... I wasn't really sure what else I had to work with. And then I was surrounded by the profound impact of waiting these last two weeks.

My father-in-law, Mike, would observe on occasion that he had never lived more than 30 miles from Searcy, Arkansas, where he was born. I was never quite sure if that was purely an observation, a badge of honor, or some sort of lament. But considering how much of a homebody he was, I think there was at least a statement of contentment in that observation. It was a fact of his life that he accepted as he waited for the rest to unfold. And I think maybe... He's also content, having gone to his eternal rest in that same town of Searcy.

Searcy and Des Arc and Higginson and Beebe, some of these little towns that hardly anyone has ever heard of, are all clustered towards the western edge of the great Mississippi alluvial plain, where waiting is the way of life. This land is a land like... every land it charts its own course and farmers and farmhands and whole families and communities watch and listen and wait for just the right time to act driving to and then back from Julie's hometown.

I watched this mighty expanse of delta region as we flew by on Interstate 40. I watched as just now the John Deere box drills get out underway, seeding this year's row crop of rice. In a week or two, they'll probably turn around and do the same with soybeans and corn and grain sorghum. But none of that is ever guaranteed. Each season brings its own timeline, its own season of waiting and responding.

And all of this is to say nothing of the waiting we did as a family, waiting for the paperwork to get filled out, waiting for family to arrive, the obituary to get published, the visitation, the service, the burial to happen. In a land of waiting, we waited too. And the more that I sat with this waiting, the more I thought about how much waiting actually does permeate our readings for today.

If we go back and look at our first reading from Exodus chapter 3, we are immediately centered in a great act of waiting. Our lesson begins with verse 1, but if we look back to the second half of chapter 2, immediately before our reading today, we are reminded that Moses is in Midian because he stood up to Pharaoh's oppression of his people and had to flee. And we are reminded, too, as the very last verses of chapter 2 indicate, that the people of Israel have now been waiting a long time to see their salvation.

As verses 23 through 25 of chapter 2 say, after a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Out of the slavery, their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God... took notice of them.

In our gospel passage, we have a little bit of an odd situation. We have this ostensive question that the crowd is posing to Jesus. It is not framed as a question, but what they are actually doing is bringing this situation, a group of Galilean Jews who were killed while making their sacrifice, to Jesus and asking him to confirm their suspicion that these folks were killed because of their sinfulness.

They were unrighteous, and therefore they suffered, right, Jesus? The same basic reality is true of this 18 on whom the tower fell. But Jesus, in responding, challenges them in this assumption. Are all to whom bad things happen sinful, unrighteous people who deserve what they get? Not in God's kingdom. Not in the reality of God's work in this world.

That is the purpose of the parable. Sometimes we are the landowner, the judgmental crowd, wanting the thing not bearing fruit or not producing goodness to be uprooted and destroyed. Sometimes we are the plant, the Galilean surrounded by hardship and calamity, wanting desperately to experience fruitfulness and new life. Sometimes we are in an in-between space where we do not know which direction is up or down, which way to turn, or what to do next. Where we are located in such a paradigm or parable.

Sometimes, sometimes the great gardener, Christ, calls us to let new care and cultivation take root and simply wait. To wait to see where we are located. To wait to see what happens next in the next phase of life. And that's true no matter where we fall in the larger scheme of this story and the story.

In 1 Corinthians 10, St. Paul is unpacking some similar truths. Now, we always have to be mindful with the epistles that the universal truths embedded in them are framed contextually. Written to the communities to whom St. Paul was writing, dealing with the issues of the day that those communities were struggling with. But we are invited this morning to be curious about the universal truths being communicated in this historical and contextual community. What are we being tested on today? I think. Maybe that one place is precisely this spiritual practice of waiting. Because I think often we find ourselves falling into a kind of sinful or unhelpful practice in waiting or our inability to wait in two significant ways.

First is that discipline of waiting itself. In our culture, in our context, in our larger society, we do not like to wait. We have a culture of immediacy. We want and we want now. When one or another person offends us, we want recompense and restitution now. We want immediate action. We crave instant response. That is a practice, a sin in our culture that has to be uprooted and transformed.

But similarly, we have sometimes a practice of waiting without action. We wait in inactivity. And that, too, is a sin that needs to be uprooted and destroyed. Sometimes, as the culture around us continues to move, we, in our waiting, stay immobile. When in fact, we ought to be acting. We ought to be responding. Even if we do so imprecisely. Even as we do so in the context of further discernment. Further insight. Further listening for what God will have us to do.

I think we often have this attitude of waiting that makes it synonymous with inactivity, that we wait without a sense of doing. But anyone who is close to the land will tell you that this just isn't true. My father-in-law, for decades, was in the family logging and timber business. And that's an industry that is also rooted in waiting. Waiting for trees to mature. Waiting for just that right time to cut down and harvest the lumber that will be used in so many industries in this country.

But that waiting is not inactivity. There is much to be done to make the soil and the land the proper and appropriate land for growing and strengthening these trees. Much to do to maintain the health of the growth as you're waiting for that season of harvest.

My father-in-law was also a very avid outdoorsman. And one of the most poignant moments in these last two weeks was just a day or two before we left. We have about 35 family acres just down the road from their house. Another 35 to 40 that we manage in a lease for hunting property and my brother-in-law walked those 80 acres, and we talked about all of our hopes and aspirations for cultivating that land for the purpose of having grains, having seeds that deer can forage on, having a proper wetland for ducks, and all of that driven by this love and this desire to be connected to the land, to hunt and be able to have an appropriate kind of place that animals will find appealing and attractive.

And as we wait, as we wait for the time of the hunting season, we cultivate and we care for the land. The waiting is not an activity, but intimate and detailed attention to the actions and activities we are called to in that time of waiting.

And so this morning, as we continue this arc through our Lenten journey, as we reflect on these building blocks of having first emptied ourselves in this time of transition and growth. As we reflected last week on the act of deep listening, we are invited this week to think about the importance of waiting in that time of listening and emptying. Because to listen is to wait. To listen is to hear, to hear the voice of God as we practice spiritual disciplines of stopping, of pausing, of waiting.

And that doesn't mean that we do nothing. We continue to go by and go about our lives, caring for, loving, cultivating the places, relationships, and cares that we are called to cultivate and maintain.

But equally, we are called to have this time, to have this time in which we wait. We wait. We wait to hear more fully the voice of God, more fully the call to respond, more fully the time to harvest, to move forward in ever more fulsome action.

And so this morning, as we empty ourselves, as we listen, and in that emptying and listening as we wait, may we hear and experience and know ever more fully the presence of God who comes to us in this time of waiting. Who transforms us ever more fully for the work that lies ahead. And prepares us ever more fully for his coming kingdom. For the time of true and full action in which all things will be made right and restored to their greater goodness and glory.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.