Chapel – Dave Roberts
GEORGE SWEEETMAN: Let's continue in a posture of prayer for a moment as we embrace that rest that Christ has given us this morning and every morning.
Oh God, you have already met us this morning. You've met us in the voice of our brother and sister that sits to the left or right of us. You've met us in the dappled light that streams in through these remarkable windows in this place, this holy, sacred place. You've met us through the words of songs, as their voices have raised to give you glory. You have met us in the mundane, the getting up, the brushing of our teeth, the eating of our breakfast, the walking, driving to this place. You have met us already in the extraordinary events of this day. You meet us continually, and we are open to that, to that engagement God.
Rip open our hearts and our souls that we will be attentive to your word and your presence, moment by moment, not just at select hours on select days. May we be attentive to your spirit's movement in our midst and around the world, a world that is so desperately in need of your touch. God, this morning, as we start to anticipate the anticipation, the season of anticipation, that of Advent, I pray that we, as a congregation, as people here at Tyndale University, will open ourselves to that sense of hope, the hope that all is not lost, the hope that you are in control, the hope that you are sovereign and Lord and King, the hope that warfare and conflict, division and polarities will cease not just one day, but even in our midst, may we be those ambassadors of your shalom, of wholeness, of right relationship of beauty.
And God today for our speaker, Dave, as he comes to share your Word with us and that sense of hopeful expectation, I pray that his preparation will be a light to us, because he is sharing the light of your son. So God, we come with expectant hearts, even now we pray in Jesus name amen.
As mentioned in the prayer, our special speaker this morning is Dave Roberts. It's a particular pleasure for me to introduce Dave to you. Dave's a good friend of mine, and he and I worked here at Tyndale for a number of years. Obviously, I'm still here, but he's not. Really interesting circular motions of his professional life after he graduated from then OBC, he and his wife, Sandy, shortly after, headed over to Zambia for a significant period of time. While they were there, they increased their family by three including Jason Roberts, who works here at Tyndale as our maintenance coordinator. After in the midst of all that, he also completed a master's degree at Columbia International University down in South Carolina, came back to Canada and started working at Tyndale as the mission mentor and eventually as Associate Dean of Students. Left Tyndale to go to West Highland Baptist Church in the Hamilton area, and he was there for about six, seven years, and then decided I'm going to go back to Zambia. So he went back to Zambia with Sandy for about five more years and came back to Canada and went back to West Highland, and now here he is at Tyndale again. So Dave, I think you can stop.
We're just really happy that Dave is with us. Dave has indicated, I've already indicated, is married to Sandy. They have three children, Becky, who lives in the US, Sarah, who lives in the Hamilton area, Jason, who lives literally downstairs. And he is the proud grandfather of five grandchildren, including the very cute Cassian who lives here at Tyndale. And he is actually one of three or four generations of Tyndale, four generations of Tyndale graduates in its different iterations through the years. So we are so grateful that Dave has come from the Niagara region to be with us this morning, to continue our our conversation in waiting and hope Dave.
DAVE ROBERTS: Well, good morning. It's lovely to be back in my old stomping grounds and always a privilege to share the Scripture, familiar scripture that we want to look at this morning briefly is Isaiah chapter nine and verses two to seven. Isaiah chapter nine, verses two to seven.
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy. They rejoice before you as people, rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day of Midian's defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning. Will be fuel for the fire. For to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, The Prince of peace, of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this, the word of the Lord For the people of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
You can bookmark that passage and we'll come back to it in a moment. Well, how well do you wait? I just returned this weekend from a 5000 kilometer plus, two week trip. Whenever the traffic was clear enough and moving well, I would lock in my speed via the cruise control as close to the posted maximum speed limit as possible. At that consistent speed, I would estimate that over those two weeks of travel that I maybe passed 1% of the vehicles I encountered. That's probably a high estimate, which means that 99% plus of the other vehicles on the road passed me, many at very high speeds, with lots of tailgating and traffic weaving going on. Without saying more here in terms of our driving culture, I would suggest that our need for speed and hurriedness does not set us up nicely for waiting well.
We crossed back into Canada Sunday afternoon at border control, and of course, we played the which line is faster game. Do you play that game too? A quick assessment of the various line options, which one is shorter, which one is moving faster? Who's coming behind me? That's forcing me to commit. And once I have committed, I lock in on that blue pickup truck next to me, who is also eight cars back from the front, and then I watch to see if I've made the right choice of line, and this goes on until I'm up next. Did I win? Well, grocery store checkout lines offer the same game opportunities with the possibility for victory or defeat. I'm winning. I'm winning. And then the person up front pulls out the no frills flyer to price match their purchases. How well do you wait?
Down where I live in Niagara on the Lake, we have the regular challenge of getting across the Welland Canal and not being caught by one of the lift bridges in the lock system. If we do and the ship is going out, we usually give ourselves to waiting the five or so minutes that it takes for them to exit, If, however, they're going into the lock, which is a much slower process. And then we'll drive the extra five kilometers out of our way to the next bridge, hoping it's available, rather than wait the extra 10 minutes for the bridge to go down and allow us to cross, extra mileage, extra gas, extra cost, just to save 10 minutes in wait time. Why do we struggle so with waiting? I would suggest that some of the factors are value related.
We place a high value on being in control, masters of our own destiny, able to fix and determine and make happen what we will when we will it. Having to wait, as opposed to choosing to wait, pushes back on our control valve, and we've commodified time in monetary terms. Time is money. We spend time, save time, invest time, and we see waiting as wasting time. And that irks us, in spiritual terms, it's bad stewardship. And of course, our high value on productivity connected to doing over being, checking off our to do lists, means that our impatience with waiting can easily be justified. Waiting is just not productive. Did you know that our time tense world view orientation also contributes to our frustration with waiting.
Those of us in what we call the Western world, which in numbers of people, is the minority world, we generally hold a future present time tense orientation, whereas the majority world, more communal in nature, holds a past present orientation, we tend to be constantly thinking ahead. We plan and we structure for the what next. We front load our education and invest in the future, thinking about retirement years long before their reality. We put great energy into risk management planning, for something that may or may not happen, just to be ready to be in control if perhaps we face a crisis down the road, future, then present time orientation. Some of you right now are thinking about lunch. You're thinking about this afternoon's class or tomorrow's assignment, while trying your best to listen to me too. Our future orientation makes it hard to be present and certainly hard to wait.
I liked to think of myself as a pretty patient guy, even before the many years of living in Zambia and serving in other majority world countries among Past Present time oriented people. Yet the values that I held around time and productivity and control rose to the surface and tried my patience over and over again. Thankfully, I grew to learn new values that centered more around being present and deepening relationships and waiting has become something that I embrace in those early years of living interculturally, I would make my to do list as usual. I'd set my agenda for the day and be just about ready to get at it, and someone would show up at my gate. These were the days before many of you were born, before internet and cell phones, even land phone lines were scarce. And so when you wanted to see someone, you just pitched up at their place, no warning. And so my day, my plans, my to do list, was often interrupted before it got started.
Traditional greetings were had, and then my seemingly polite question asked, How can I help you? Seemingly polite to me, but read otherwise by my Zambian friends. How can I help you? Was seen as agenda focused. My agenda part of an addition to my to do list. And of course, it was transactional in nature, in one direction, assuming that the other had the need and I had the resource to meet it. It was not relational, in a true sense of mutuality. I learned that I needed to erase that phrase from my vocabulary, and so I did. And so someone would pitch up at my place unannounced, and I would greet them and invite them in, engage in open conversation, and then, wait, wait for them to set the agenda, to state their reasons for showing up, to listen to their heart expressed. There were often long periods of silence, and after some time, the agenda would be stated, often being well, I just came to see you. That was it. No help needed, just the desire to be together for relationship, I would then express my thanks. We would likely pray together and then move on to the what next for them and for me, of course, you never left someone at your door or at your gate, so walking together towards their next destination or inviting them along to yours was expected.
I learned patience with increased measure, to be fully present, to embrace the wait. These were wonderful lessons to learn. So how well do you wait? We all have to wait now and again to be in places where we are not in control and are subject to the will of another, maybe another person, often God himself. It is not just that we wait. We may not have a choice. We often do not have a choice, but rather, how we wait that I think is important. Are we waiting patiently or waiting anxiously? Are we trusting God in the wait, or are we giving in to our fear? Are we waiting with expectation, and is that expectation filled with worst case scenarios, or is it filled with hope?
I remember the three weeks we waited for a pathology report. We were temporarily living at the site of the Zambian Bush hospital where one of our kids had been operated on to remove some suspicious lumps. Our two year old child with a possible cancerous diagnosis, our missionary service, which had just begun, they lay in the balance and the expectation in my waiting bounced back and forth between disaster and victory, one of the hardest waits of my life. And I learned so much in that wait about my theology, bad theology, mostly. And I grew in my faith, my hope, my understanding of my heavenly Father. It's been said that crisis is the litmus test for what we really believe. Well, that crisis and that season of waiting was revelatory for me.
My parents graduated from Tyndale, then called TBC in 1949, they began their studies as a married couple three years prior. Four years before that, my dad gave my mom a promise ring and asked her to wait. She at age 19, said that she would. He was 20 years old, about to embark on a journey across the ocean to join other Canadian forces near the front end of World War Two. He would go on to serve for three years as a stretcher bearer with the medical corps, picking up the bodies of his fallen peers, some without life, others broken and bloodied. He and mum wrote to one another faithfully by snail mail throughout those three years, and mom waited. She waited with expectation. It was hopeful in nature and also realistic, as many did not return. That was one possible outcome of her waiting, disappointment and sorrow, yet her waiting and her writing was hopeful. Not with surety. It couldn't be, but it was hopeful.
The apostle Paul, in writing to the church at Thessalonica noted that while we mourn, we grieve, when we experience loss, we do so in contrast to those who are without hope, as believers in Christ, we are promised an eternal home in the presence of God, and this Sure hope provides a different perspective on death, rooted in the belief that death is not final, and those who have died in Christ will be reunited with him and reunited with us, this sure hope infuses our expectations even as we grieve, the same, I would suggest, should be true of our expectation as we wait, infused with a sure hope. Have you ever felt hopeless? A sense of despair, that all is lost, that there's no way out or forward?
I've had the privilege, the eye opening, the value testing, hard privilege of living and working among those who live in poverty. Now, poverty is relative of course, we're all rich and we're all poor in relation even to the woes that you are sitting next to just now. Some of those that we deem poor, do not see themselves as such. One of the greatest lessons that I've learned, at least I hope I've learned, is from those who have demonstrated a wonderful contentment with simplicity of life, living with little and yet not longing for more. They live a richer life than many who have material resource in abundance, and yet there are those who have very little, if any, resource, who live hand to mouth, who lack what we deem to be the basics of life, of food and water and shelter, let alone access to medical care, whether preventative or curative, there are those who live in what we would call overt poverty. Have you seen it? How would you define it?
I have long deferred to Bryant Myers' ideas as presented in his book "Walking with the poor". He contends that poverty is essentially about broken relationships, the solution then really being the gospel, healed and reconciled relationships. I believe there is much truth in that idea. One of my friends, a brother who recently passed from this earth with whom I team taught Christian Community Development, he held to a definition that challenged and shaped my understanding of poverty. He said that poverty is when one loses hope of the possibility of experiencing abundant life. Poverty is one is when one loses all hope of the possibility of experiencing abundant life. Poverty is then defined not only by physical resource, but also by a state of mind and spirit. Hope is a critical element in that equation.
The prophet Isaiah recorded in chapter nine, which we read earlier, was given words of hope to speak to God's chosen people. The scenario is one of a people living in darkness. The descriptors that are given in the preceding verses the end of chapter eight include being distressed and hungry, famished, in fact, marked by fearful gloom, not just relative darkness, utter darkness, not just relative poverty, overt poverty, without hope of the possibility of experiencing abundant life. And the words of hope that Isaiah speaks are of an unsurpassed joy that emerges as light dawns in that darkness, the heavy yoke of oppression that is burdened, that is weighed down, that is enslaved a people is now broken. It shattered, freedom and new life are a possibility at last. This hope is fully shouldered upon the One who would come. For to us, a child is born to us, a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of peace, of the greatness of His government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
There would be a 700 year waiting period between this prophecy spoken and this prophecy realized in the birth of the child, Jesus. God's people waited and waited and waited. I wonder how they waited. Waiting was not their choice, it was God's. They had no vote on the waiting. Yet they had input into the nature of their waiting, as do we in greater degree, I would suggest, because God has given us His people, His children, the greatest resource to enable us to wait with long suffering patience, to wait with unwavering trust, to wait with unspeakable joy, to wait with a sure hope, to wait with excited expectation. He has given us His Holy Spirit to live within us, to empower us, to teach us and transform us, to lead us into truth, to pray with and for us, it's ours then to choose to lean into and onto this resource God himself, as we too wait that we would wait well.
There were two men dressed in white who appeared to the disciples after Jesus' ascension, recorded in Acts chapter one. Men of Galilee, they said, Why do you stand looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come back in the same way that you have seen him go. And so we too wait for Christ's coming, His coming again, and we wait, not passively looking up into the sky. We wait with purpose. We give ourselves to the Commission given us to disciple the nations as we go, wherever we go, as we follow Him, we invite all those who God puts in our path to know this same sure hope of freedom from the oppressor's yoke of new life abundant in the very light of God's presence.
In John 1, we read in him the Word made flesh In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in darkness and brings hope. We continue to wait for him and on him and in him, pray with me.
Father, God, we choose to wait with hope filled expectation on you. We thank you for your spirit who indwells and enables us to wait well to trust your will and ways knowing they're for our good and your glory, and we wait with expectation for that day when you will come again and all things will be made new and right and the darkness will be no more. We commend our waiting and our way to you in Jesus name, amen.
GEORGE SWEETMAN: Thank you so much, Dave for that rich and refreshing word, a word that I think many of us needed to hear this morning just before we, I offer the benediction. I just wanted to bring to your attention again that this week is Global Engagement week here at Tyndale, one of the reasons that we invited Dave to come as his work with SIM in Zambia. But this afternoon, 12:30 in about half an hour, you have the. Opportunity to hear from a panel of professionals in the Tyndale Commons who are going to be talking about intercultural ministries, both locally and globally. So if you want to grab your lunch, head over to the commons for 12:30 we would love to have you there, and then tomorrow, you're invited to join Sierra Ballantine, who has worked with ELIC and will again be working with ELIC this coming summer to hear a little bit more of her work and preparation for the work that she's done overseas.
And then on Thursday afternoon, during the lunch hour, we have the Tyndale community Christmas tree set up down in the dining hall, and we would invite you through DIAC, our diversity inclusion advisory council here at Tyndale, to come and watch the lighting of the tree and to share your stories, your your diverse stories of Christmas celebrations here at home in Toronto or In Canada, or perhaps those that you have celebrated in previous locations around the world. So we hope that you will join us for all three of these opportunities. If you need more information, you can talk to Chad Muise in the center for academic excellence. Social media has information on it. The screen is around Tyndale, and there were emails sent out about it. Let's pray together.
As we wait with great expectation, expectation of arrival and with it, peace, joy, love, hope. May we be people of hope by His Spirit allow hope to live in your hearts and to share the hope of Christ with all you meet. Share hope by looking into the face of another share hope by listening, really listening to another story. Share hope by praying for our world near to us and all the places that need to know Jesus' presence. As we approach the Advent season, we need to see, feel and share hope so this morning, as we go out into the world and to the wonder of God's creation, share hope with those you meet. Pray in Jesus' name. Amen, go in that hope.
