• Original picture by Patrick Konior from Unsplash

What are You Waiting For?

Many years ago, I spent a lot of time waiting for buses.

My journey to school across south London from my home in Clapham involved two different buses, with a change at Brixton (later infamous for the riots of 1981). Buses then were quite regular and efficient, but even so over my six years of schooling I must have spent a good few hours standing in a bus queue. I don't remember doing anything very positive in that time. No mobile phones to gawp at, of course – daydreaming was the order of the day. I doubt whether those hours of waiting had much influence on my development towards adulthood.

Not so one of my schoolmates. I used to see him quite regularly waiting for the same bus. He was usually doing the same thing – playing chess. He had a small portable chess set often known as "travel" chess, where the miniature pieces plugged into a very small folding chess board and could be packed away at any time for the game to be continued later on. He seemed to have a small group of friends that he played with at different times.

• Picture is public domain via wikimedia

It was a big school – I had no interest in chess, and our paths never crossed. It was not till many years later that I discovered who he was, and what he had achieved. He had started playing chess when he was six. At 19 he wrote his first book on chess, the first of many, and in 1976 he was awarded the title of Grandmaster, the highest accolade possible for a chess player. He represented his country in tournaments across the world, and for many years up until 2019 he was the chess correspondent to The Times newspaper. Practising his moves whilst waiting for the bus was obviously just one small step of many on the road to outstanding success.

• Picture from chess-fest.com

So, two young lads, waiting for the bus, but with very different approaches to the waiting experience.

Waiting for something to happen is of course a common part of the human experience and quite unremarkable. But what is remarkable is when you come across a large and diverse group of people all waiting for the same thing, and whose lifestyle is moulded by their expectations for the future.

The New Testament introduces us to such a community: committed, vibrant and expectant, the first-century model for today's community of believers in Jesus.

Jesus' promise

When Jesus left his disciples, he left them with a promise:

"... This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

• Acts 1:11, NIV

They never forgot that promise. It was right at the centre of their preaching, the focus of the new Christian community which exploded into life over the next few years. Essentially, they were a people "in waiting". How they lived reflected their conviction that Jesus was coming back to take them to himself and establish his Kingdom. Some of them took it so seriously that it seems they gave up working to focus on preparing themselves for Jesus. Paul had to warn them that it was not going to happen straight away, that a lot had to happen before he came back, but come back he most certainly would (See 2 Thessalonians 2:2–4).

The apostles were simply building on the foundation that Jesus had already laid in his parables:

"... be like men who wait for their master, when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately."

• Luke 12:36

When Paul congratulated the Christians at Corinth on their generosity in giving to the other churches, he saw it as evidence that they were:

"... eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ."

• 1 Corinthians 1:7

He reminded others that they should not see themselves as citizens of the world, because he says:

"... our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ."

• Philippians 3:2

Notice how many times the apostles use the word "eagerly" to describe how they should be looking forward to Jesus' return. Here is Paul again:

"... If we hope for what we do not see, then we eagerly wait for it with perseverance."

• Romans 8:25, see also Hebrew 9:28

So this waiting for Jesus is not the resigned, bored and mindless wait of my schoolboy self at the bus stop, but the chess player’s focused preparation for a future epoch-changing event. This is what it was like for the earliest Christians as they waited for Jesus.

We look around at the various Christian groups of our day, and we ask, what happened to this "eager waiting" for Jesus? The established churches still pay lip service to the return of Christ in their formal creeds, regularly recited by worshippers, but it barely features in their services or their preaching, such as it is. Many see Christianity as just a personal moral code, or maybe a programme of social reform, but the idea that Jesus will quite literally come back and take this world by storm is ludicrously naive, so it seems. Others believe that Jesus in some figurative sense has returned already, despite all evidence to the contrary.

This is a huge change from the first century. How has it happened?

Christianity changes

The changes that took place in the early church in the first few centuries after Christ are well documented. This is how the famous historian Edward Gibbon tracks some of these changes, in particular how they affected the fundamental doctrine of the return of Jesus and the establishment of the Kingdom of God (the one thousand years reign of Christ on the earth, referred to here as the "Millennium"):

"The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium was intimately connected with the second coming of Christ. The assurance of a Millennium was carefully inculcated by a succession of fathers from Justin Martyr and Irenaeus… It appears to have been the reigning sentiment of the orthodox believers… But when the edifice of the church was almost completed, the temporary support was laid aside. The doctrine of Christ's reign on earth was first treated as a profound allegory, was considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless opinion and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of heresy and fanaticism."

• Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire chapter 15

So it's no surprise that there is not too much "eager waiting" going on in most churches today. It is the tragedy of our times that when all the signs point to Jesus being very close, so few expect him and most will be quite unprepared for his return.

As a game of chess draws to its conclusion, the players enter the "endgame". Only a few pieces are left on the board. Every move is crucial. Now is when hours of preparation and practice reap their reward, to bring the campaign to a successful conclusion.

Now is our time. We believe the waiting is nearly over. We can identify with the eagerness and enthusiasm of the earliest Christians, commit ourselves to Jesus in faith, embrace the promise of his return and prepare ourselves to meet him.

" To those who eagerly wait for Him, He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation."

• Hebrews 9:28