[Sermon preached on 10 December 2017, 2nd Advent / 3rd year, ELCF Lectionary]
I remember how as a young child I became very impatient when Christmas was drawing near. Not so much because of Christmas, but because I also had my birthday. Like most kids, I also had many things on my wish list. My mother would go and buy the birthday presents well in advance. Sometimes, she would come home and quickly disappear into the master bedroom with a shopping bag. I knew what that meant.
So as soon as I got the chance, I would sneak into my parents’ bedroom, open the linen closet and look for anything that could be a potential birthday gift. When I found something, it was mostly wrapped in gift paper already. I would feel it carefully to get an idea of what it could be. Of course, my mother expected this. So she would often pack small gifts into big boxes to confuse me.
Every child is born with a tremendous sense of curiosity. Curiosity comes naturally. It is in our DNA. But patience isn’t. It doesn’t come naturally. It takes time and effort to become patient. And for some of us—me included—it is so contrary to our nature, that it seems we never learn.
Our society does not encourage patience. This is a “here–and–now” world. You notice it in the Christmas commercials. Virtually every large store offers irresistible deals: “Buy now—pay next year!” Instead of first saving the money to see whether we can really afford something, we are told to buy it right now. So just take it home with you, and you will get the bill sometimes next year. Can you imagine how many people are in big trouble when, after the Christmas season is over and almost forgotten, bills start coming in and it gradually dawns on them that they bought far more than they could ever afford?
Patience is a virtue that we all need very badly. We need it to learn to wait for the right time. If we don’t have patience, we are consumed by our curiosity and the uncertainty of what is to come—or whether it is going to come at all. We need patience to learn to limit our greed, our appetite, and our consumption.
But we also need patience in our relationships. Of course, if you are a parent of a young child, you know this better than I. Young children can really test our patience. They are driven by an enormous sense of curiosity. They have to find everything out for themselves. It just doesn’t help to tell them what they can or cannot do. They have to learn the hard way.
When they get older, they want to test the limits they experience—limits set by their parents or teachers, or by the law, or by their physical or mental capacity.
But let’s face it: We need patience just as much with other adults. When, in his letter, James calls us to be patient, he contrasts it with grumbling:
“Be patient! … Don’t grumble against one another.”
And Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, puts patience and forgiveness facing one another:
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one.”
The word that James and Paul use for “patient” actually means “longsuffering” or “long-tempered”. In the Old Testament, the corresponding word means “having a long nose” or “taking a long breath”. It is like saying: “Take a deep breath first before you react—before you do are say something.”
For good and lasting relationships, we need patience. Whether it is with our children, our spouse, our brothers and sisters in church, our colleagues in the workplace, or our neighbors, we need patience in dealing with people who or different from us. The church as a community is called the body of Christ. It is made up of different parts, different members. Our difference is our strength. But only, if we are able to bear with one another, to cope with the differences in character, temperament and culture and the differences in gifts.
Let me give you a personal example. I hope you don’t feel hurt. It has been my dream that when we start our Sunday worship service at 2 pm sharp, everybody would be there. It has been my dream that our first song of worship would be so powerful that the walls of the church would shake. But after almost four years of dreaming and wishful thinking, I have come to understand one thing: the majority of our congregation will not be there at 2 pm when we start. It is cultural. It is because many of you were brought up in Africa with an entirely different concept of time. So I will simply have to live with that. And honestly speaking, even though I do understand the cultural difference, I still find it hard to accept this. I regularly run out of patience on Sunday afternoons, as some of you may have noticed. Sometimes I even feel ready to give up altogether. — Why come here at 2 pm when others don’t bother?
James and Paul call upon us to be patient. Patience is in our mindset, our way of thinking and feeling. Do we tend to get irritated when others do not play by our rules? Do we feel resentment towards those who always mess up our great plans and dreams? Do we easily get angry with others for presumably doing us wrong, or for simply doing things differently from what we expect them to do?
The Bible tells us that patience is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Paul writes to the Galatians:
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
That means that, in order to get patient, we first need to have the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Without him, our natural, selfish and short-fused character will call the shots.
But fruit doesn’t come as a full-grown and mature gift. The Bible doesn’t say that patience is a gift from the Holy Spirit. It is the fruit, and therefore it needs time to grow. It starts as a little seed and it takes time to grow and mature. And besides time, it also requires care.
A Chinese friend acquired a small plot in a community garden. He tried to grow some things there that normally don’t grow in Finland. For a couple of years, he failed completely. Then he started to try out new methods of growing vegetables organically. In no time, he found himself spending most of his leisure time in his little garden, taking care of the plants, watering them when needed, providing better soil and organic fertilizer. The result was phenomenal. After a few years, he raised great crops—great both in quantity and quality.
The Holy Spirit can bear tremendous fruit in our lives. But we need to provide fertile soil and give him our attention and care. Patience comes and grows when we allow it to grow, and when we cherish it as an important quality of our lives and our relationships. We need to tell ourselves to be patient. Sometimes we need to swallow a few times instead of expressing our irritation or disagreement right away. Sometimes we need to smile when our mind is angry. Sometimes we need to count to ten, or to 77, before speaking or acting.
Patience is something we also need when we deal with God. In the Book of Psalms alone, in ten different Psalms, king David and others cry out to God: “How long, O Lord!” Those words were written in many different situations. Often, the country was besieged by strong enemies, and it looked like the army of Israel couldn’t hold out much longer. Sometimes, drought brought famine to the land several years in a row, starving many men, women and children to death. So often, it seemed that God was nowhere to be found—that he had turned his back to the people and walked away.
For centuries, the people of Israel cried out: “How long, O Lord, before the Messiah, the anointed Son of David, is going to free us from the tyranny of foreign powers?” In fact, they were still crying out to him like this, when Jesus had already come to live among them. In their impatience, they had become blind to see that the answer to their prayer was right among them.
Also, the early church cried out to God: “How long, O Lord, before Christ is coming again to deliver his people?” That is the context of the letter that James wrote:
“Be patient until the Lord’s coming.”
“You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.”
I am sure that there was something of a “here and now” mentality among the church members. Since they believed that Jesus was coming again, he better come immediately. They wanted instant gratification of their needs and desires. And it seems that both Jesus and James were promising just that.
But there were other reasons. It was also a matter of credibility. James wrote primarily to Jewish Christians. There were Jews who did not believe that Jesus was the fulfilment of God’s promises and were still waiting for the first coming of the Messiah. And then there were those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God. The latter had a firm trust in the promise that Jesus would come again really soon. We talk about a matter of weeks, months or years. But Jesus stayed away. He did not return. And the Jews who did not believe in Jesus said to the Christians: “You see? He was not the Messiah after all. He was a fake. If he were what you claim him to be, he would have returned already.” So it was quite an embarrassment for the Christians to boast that Jesus would be back any time, and then to see nothing happen.
But there was a third reason why they were impatient. Christians were being persecuted more and more. First, on a local scale, the Jews who did not believe in Jesus, were after them. They threw them out of the Jewish community.
But quite soon, also the Romans were after them. Christians claimed that Jesus was their king, not the Roman emperor. Christians claimed that Jesus was the Son of God, not the emperor. You can imagine that the Romans did not digest that very well.
So throughout the Roman Empire, Christians faced persecution. Some of them were arrested, some had their property confiscated, some had to leave the city empty-handed. In Rome, many Christians were fed to the lions in the circus. Or they were set on fire to light the streets of the city. The suffering of the Christians could become unbearable. And for those who had escaped the atrocities so far, fear was taking them in its grip. So they cried out, perhaps in the words of Psalm 13:
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget us forever?
How long will you hide your face from us?
How long will our enemy triumph over us?”
No wonder, then, that they were impatient for Christ to return soon and deliver them.
Today, many Christians face persecution: in Muslim countries like Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, or in totalitarian states like China and North Korea. Like in the time of the early church, their survival is dependent on a speedy return of Jesus, or some other radical intervention from God.
But most of us have nothing much to worry about. Our lives are fairly safe and secure. And yet we may be impatient for Christ to return. Or would it be more honest to say that we are impatient for God to intervene in our lives—to come to our aid in matters that we hold very important?
We may pray to God to heal a terminal disease. We may ask him to secure a positive decision in an appeal for asylum or residence in this country. We may ask God to get us out of an awkward position, or to open a door for us when it seems that there is none.
I am sure that there are many of us who ask God to act on our behalf, and to act now. And yet, it seems that God doesn’t hear us. It seems that he is not in a hurry at all, the way we are. A young woman with cancer dies too young, even though the whole church prays for her healing. A young Christian is sent back to Iran to a certain death, because Immigration doubts the sincerity of his Christian faith. A family with three children is separated for many years, because the father is sent back to his home country. And in all these cases, God fails to intervene.
We need patience because the reality is what it is. God often does not seem to agree to our plans and solutions. He often refuses to act within the framework of our timetable. That can be very frustrating.
The Bible addresses the problem of why God seems to be slow to act. Peter writes in his second letter:
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
The reason why Jesus hasn’t come back yet, Peter says, is that God is patient. He is patient with us. He is patient with all those who have so far rejected him. He wants to give them another chance to repent and accept his offer of salvation.
Think of how often you have sinned against God. Think of how often he has been patient with you and forgiven your sins, even though he could have passed judgment on you right away, and wiped you from the face of the earth into everlasting fire. But he didn’t. He was patient with you, and he still is.
Therefore, we should be patient as well. With God, with one another, and with ourselves. We should teach ourselves the art of being patient. We should cherish the fruit of the Holy Spirit whom God has given to us. We should constrain our anger and irritation. Instead, we should deal with others with the same patience and compassion that God has shown to us. We should trust that God knows what is the best thing to do for our needs and our wishes. We should trust that God knows what is the best time to act on our behalf.
Therefore: Be patient! Trust in God! Let God be God in your life. Amen.
