Sermons for the Month

Lord, Give Me Patience…
DATE: December 16, 2001
TEXT: James 5:7-10
“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

"Lord, give me patience -- and hurry it up, could you?" Has that ever been your prayer? Patience seems like such a good and useful quality to have, especially at this time of the year. If I had more patience, maybe I could smile and wish a "merry Christmas" to the person writing a check for her 19 items in the "12 items or less, cash only" line. If I had more patience, I could drive through the Chapel Hill Mall area without clenching my jaw and muttering, "come on, come ON, Honda, green means GO!" If I had more patience, maybe I could make it through a day without jumping all over my kids for being messy and noisy and irresponsible and -- well, for being kids.
"Be patient, therefore, beloved," the apostle James writes, "until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient." Now obviously, James must be talking about more here than waiting in traffic or in the checkout line. Just prior to this passage, he has been talking about the suffering of the poor and the powerless, who live with continuous hardships repeated injustices, and chronic frustration. In the last verse of this passage, he refers to the sufferings of the prophets, who endured all manner of persecution because of their faithfulness to the Lord.
James would seem to be talking about the "big stuff" of life, the trials and tragedies, the major tests of character and courage that come to us all over the course of a lifetime. In the face of those challenges, James counsels patience, "because the Lord's coming is near." Patience is possible because we know that God has not abandoned us, and is not unmoved by or indifferent to our struggles. One day Christ will come again in glory, as the Judge who divides things up equitably, as the One who makes things right again in an unjust world.
But let's face it -- in terms of quantity, most of us spend far more of our lives "sweating the small stuff," than we do wrestling moral questions of historic import, or facing the prospect of martyrdom for the sake of the faith. For most of us, most of the time, it's in the sheer everydayness of life that the rubber meets the road in this business of Christian living. How I respond to the day-to-day, minute-to-minute challenges of family life, work life, church activities, neighborhood issues, and the prospect of Christmas shopping is where I am trained and conditioned - or not -- for faithful living in response to the "bigger" trials that will come for those who are followers of Christ in the midst of a world that tries to muddle along without him.
When we look at Scripture, we quickly realize that "patience" is much more than just a good and useful quality to cultivate in polite society, like remembering to say "please" and "thank you." Being patient, or "longsuffering" as some English translations have it, is first of all the distinguishing characteristic of the Lord God. Over and over again in the Old Testament, Israel's God is described as "the Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger - patient - and abounding in steadfast love." Jesus gives us the image of God as a shepherd patiently searching for his wandering sheep, and of a father watching and waiting for however long it's going to take his runaway son to come to his senses. The apostle Peter writes that if Christ has not yet returned, it's not because he's slow to keep his promises, but rather because "the Lord is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
And over and over again in the earliest writings of the New Testament, the very first Christians (and we too, of course) are told that to be patient is a distinguishing characteristic of those who follow Jesus, who are called to be God's people. Paul includes it in his letter to the Corinthians, in that 13th chapter where he spells out in such beautiful detail the meaning and the essence of Christian love - "Love is PATIENT," he says, "love is kind…love never ends." He instructs the Colossian Christians to "clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and PATIENCE. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have." And Paul includes patience along with love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, and self-control as one of the seven fruits of the Spirit, the qualities that the Holy Spirit will produce in the believer.
O.K. - so if I think patience would be a good thing for me to have, and God thinks patience would be a good thing for me to have - why don't I HAVE it yet?? The truth is, there's a big, big part of us that would rather hang on to our impatience, or at least to the illusion that it supports, and the motivation for THAT is very fundamental and as old as the first people God ever created.
Impatience is nothing more nor less than a manifestation of our selfish pride. One side of it is the inner conviction that the things I have to do, the places I must be by a certain time, the responsibilities I have taken on, Superwoman that I am, are just so much more significant than whatever it is you are about that you just ought to get out of my way! It's a radical self-centeredness that frankly gets a little embarrassing when it persists for decades after adulthood has theoretically been achieved, but there it is.
And the flip side is a self-conscious fear - if you don't get out of my way, or get with my program, you're gonna make ME look bad; in Genesis 3 Garden of Eden language, you're going to blow my cover of fig leaves and there I'll be in all my ordinary human foolishness and inadequacy. If my kids aren't well-behaved, hard-working, and successful, then everyone is going to know that most of the time I'm just winging it at this motherhood business. If my congregation isn't growing in numbers, balancing its budget, and being high-profile for its good works in the community, then people are going to think that I'm not a charismatic, innovative, highly-effective leader; they'll find out that I'm just another poor preacher making it up as I go along. So obviously, you people had better get with it, huh??
I suspect that this is what James means when he says, "don't you be grumbling at one another;" you're all in this together, just be patient, with yourselves and with one another, and the way to do that, the way to let the Holy Spirit grow that kind of patience in us is to "strengthen your hearts."
No, he's not talking about a heart-healthy diet and a daily cardiopulmonary workout - or is he? The word James uses that we translate "strengthen," or sometimes "establish" has the connotation of a certain toughness, an intentional, determined effort to take a stand, or to move steadily in a particular direction. We strengthen our hearts with a steady diet of the Word of God, in Scripture and in the Sacrament, with the truth about who God is and about who we are and will be. And then we exercise that knowledge every day with the routines and practices that the Lord prescribes - prayer, study, worship, caring, sharing, serving.
Patience doesn't come to us in a package under the tree, or in a big lump in a stocking. It's a gift that is sown in us and grown in us by the Holy Spirit as we learn to keep our eyes and our hearts and our attention fixed on the Lord. That keeps our eyes and our hearts and our attention off ourselves; and that starts to diminish our impatience and irritation, and begins to make room for understanding, for gentleness and kindness, maybe even a moment of inspiration, a better way to face the situation.
You see, it's all so marvelously freeing! The Good News is that I really am inadequate! I really am! I do things I know I shouldn't do; I fail to do the things I know I should - and so do you! We are every one of us simply sinners, redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ. We're all in this together! We can drop the pretenses! Hurray!
And THEN the Lord can really do something with us, as we pray and praise and study and serve together. You know, it's always easier to be patient when you have something interesting to do in the meantime, and good friends with whom to do it. What a Christmas gift God gives us - the endlessly fascinating task of growing into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of learning to love and embrace the world as He does. And yet another gift -- look around you at the wonderfully-wrapped friends He gives with whom to share this precious treasure called life!
AMEN