Advent 3
December 11, 2022
William G. Carter
Be patient, therefore, beloved, 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. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is
near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be
judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! As an example of suffering
and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
The
word for the Third Sunday of Advent is a word we all know. We have heard
before. We know what it means. It is a well-tested word. This is a virtuous
word. Mostly it is a very slow word. This word does not move quickly. We cannot
rush it. We have to wait for it.
I’m
talking about a word that has been tried, and in turn some of us find it
trying. Children and adults alike have heard this word, been exhorted to
practice this word, but the word goes unclaimed. So many people push against
this word, only to discover it will not budge.
The
word for today is patience. Patience. James says, “Be patient, therefore,
beloved, until the coming of the Lord.”
Patience
is the second cousin of Anticipation. Two weeks before Christmas, some of us
know about anticipation. Patience means that we do not open the corner of a
wrapped package under the tree and peek inside. We have to wait until the time
is right, and then all things will be revealed.
If
we are not patient, it can get us into trouble. Like that speeding ticket on my
record. It’s not that I haven’t gone speeding, but that I was finally caught. I
was zipping a stretch of the Northeastern Extension of the turnpike that is normally
neglected by the police and frequented by garbage trucks. I won’t tell you how
fast I was going, because I would lose what little respect that two or three of
you still have for me.
Suffice
it to say, it was fast enough that if my loved one ever found out, they would
have given me a lecture much like the lecture that I got from the State Police
officer. And if I had not been speeding through a construction zone (about
which I should have known better), the lecture I received would not have been
quite so long.
Once
I slowed down, I did a quick survey of my spirit. Why was I traveling so fast?
Did I think I could get to my destination sooner? Was I hoping that by going
faster I could cram more into the limited hours of my day? Was I already
internally racing, and pursuing a speed that kept up with my spirit? The answer
to all three questions, of course, is “yes.”
The
cause of my speeding ticket was impatience. Life didn’t move as fast as I
thought it should. And I wanted to sprint through all unpleasantness – I’ve
never liked that long stretch of highway. I always want to zip right past it
all. That’s a metaphor for how many people want to race through life. Do you
know how that is?
It
happens in church. A woman once told me she hated to sing all the verses of all
the hymns. Couldn’t we simply sing the first verse and sit down? Get on with
things: “I have a lot to do,” she said, “and I don’t want to spend the whole
day in church.” Not that we were expecting a whole day out of her – just an
hour…and she was in such a hurry.
The
protests cut across all denominations. There’s a church nearby where people
stand outside and smoke while the service proceeds inside. At the proper
moment, they snuff out the butts and go inside for communion. They don’t want
to wade through all that other stuff. Just get the body and blood and keep
moving.
The
truth is nobody grows spiritually by rolling through a drive-in window. It
takes a while. It takes a long while.
That’s
why the Bible is so hard to read. Not merely because of the big names or
long-ago cultures - - but because it is a thick book. It has layers and
nuances. It is written in different forms and genres, and you must ask what
kind of literature you’re reading. And parts of the Bible are so well-written
that they are subtle. You can’t sit on a bulldozer and scrape it away. There’s
too much below the surface. You must read it over and over. When you do, some
of the Bible begins to sink in. Not all of it, and not all at once - - because
you have to keep at it. You have to cultivate some patience.
Some
of the Bible comes to us as poetry. Not the kind of poetry that rhymes - - but
the kind of poetry that slows down the words.
And
some of the Bible comes to us as a series of wise sayings. It’s accumulated
knowledge, piled-up wisdom, like snow falling in accumulated layers. At first,
you might think it’s all light and pretty. But as wisdom piles up, it begins to
sit heavily on your shoulders.
The
word for today is patience. Spiritual growth comes through patience. Sometimes
it takes years, and that’s why some people cruise on by, never understanding a
word of it. They are running so fast that they forget where they are. And they
miss more than they realize.
I’ve
told many of you about conducting a funeral and a cell phone went off. To everybody’s
astonishment, the owner answered it and began to talk. “Hey Sally…Where am I?
I’m in a funeral right now… No, I didn’t know her very well… Oh, but she was a
nice lady… Her husband looks like a wreck… Oh yes, there’s quite a crowd here…
I didn’t expect a crowd this big for him…”
By
now, everybody else has stopped what they were doing, turned, and looked at
this man. He looks up, smiles, nods, so self-important, because he could not
wait until the twenty-five minute service concluded before he answered the
phone.
What
is his hurry? And yet, the really big things cannot be hurried…
- You worry about your health, and you
pray, and there is no quick response.
- Your daughter is unhappy in her
marriage, and you hope that things will turn around.
- The new management at work is
demanding a lot, and you don’t know when they will lighten up.
- You find out you are pregnant for the
first time, and after all the pregnancy stories you’ve heard, you really
wish you could skip the next eight months.
- You lose a loved one unexpectedly,
and you don’t know why you can’t fast-forward past all the scattered
things you’re feeling.
Here
is the corrective of faith – the psalms know it, others know it, James knows it
– in all things, we must wait for the Lord. There is no amount of hurry that
will bring God quicker.
Patience
is an Advent word. The church has known this ever since Jesus ascended to
heaven. We are forced to wait for him, wait until he returns, wait until he reveals
himself. No amount of praying, no amount of rushing around, no amount of
activity on our part will speed up that return. Because, you see, here’s the
point: we are not in charge. We are not in charge of anything – that
is the corrective that patience provides us.
We
would like to think we are in charge. That was the fallacy of many
Presbyterians about a hundred years ago. A good number of them believed that if
the church only worked hard enough, if it cleaned up the society and did all
the good deeds, somehow the Lord would be impressed enough to come and bring
the kingdom.
The
last time anybody looked, we’re still waiting…
Pay
attention to those who work the soil. Brother James points and says, “Look at
the farmer.” The farmer prepares the soil, plants the crop, and waits for the
rain. He doesn’t stand over the seed and scream to “start growing.” It takes a
lot of time – and a lot of patience.
I
learned this from my grandfather, who was a potato farmer. He did his work and
then it went underground. Time passed. One day when we had almost forgotten
about it, Grandpa would announce, “It’s time to gather the spuds.” It wasn’t
time, until it was time.
On
my bookshelves across the book, there are about twenty books by Eugene Peterson.
He was a pastor, and I had the pleasure of being in his presence a few times. He
may have been a rock star of the spiritual world, but one of the
slowest-talking people I’ve ever met. He points out that nothing ever happens
quickly in the church or the world, because nothing ever happens quickly in the
Bible. But there is a kind of “apocalyptic patience” that is a basic
characteristic of God’s people. They hang in there. They stick it out. They are
the kind of people who are “passionately patient, courageously committed to
witness and work in the kingdom of God no matter how long it takes, or how much
it costs.”[1]
They
stay at it, he says, because they comprehend two basic realities of the
spiritual life: Mystery and Mess. Faith deals “with the vast mysteries of God
and the intricacies of the messy human condition. This is going to take some
time. Neither the mysteries nor the mess is simple. If we are going to learn a
life of holiness in the mess of history, we are going to have to prepare for
something intergenerational and think in centuries.”
God
is dealing with the Mess of the human situation: we are prone to sin, we get
addicted to counterfeit gods, and we foul the air and poison our own soil. We
turn on one another. Those are glimpses of the Mess…and it’s going to take a
long time to undo.
The
way God deals with this Mess is with a Mysterious Christ who is crucified and
raised. The Mystery doesn’t happen on our terms, or on our schedules. All we
can do is pay attention to what we’ve seen - - pay attention to the power of
love, the unlocking of forgiveness, the necessity of self-giving, the
perseverance of prayer - - we pay attention to these glimpses of God’s very
being: love, forgiveness, self-giving, perseverance.
We
pray to align ourselves with God, to ask for God’s will, even to participate in
God’s timing. And we don’t pray, we have no means to endure. Pretty soon, we
strip mine our neighborhoods and our institutions- - taking what we can grab,
as cheaply as we can, and then we move on to do it all over again somewhere
else.
That’s
the hurried, plundering way of our culture: grab what you can, and move on
quickly. It’s a favorite way to avoid the Mystery and the Mess, God and
ourselves. By running off to the next job, or the next church, or the next
spouse, or the next life circumstance, we miss that God will not run to meet us
in the Next One - - but right here, right where we are, provided we are patient.
The
word for today is patience. It was the Jewish mystic Simone Weil who said, “Waiting
in patient expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” In that, she echoes the continuing refrain of
the Psalms: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your courage; wait for the
Lord.” Because that’s about all we can do. Wait for the Lord. Be strong. Take
courage. And pray…
(c) William G. Carter. All rghts reserved.
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