First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: James 5:7-11
If you ask my wife and daughter, they will tell you that patience is not one of my virtues. I could challenge that, I suppose. Consider Christmas presents. Leave mine in the hall closet three weeks before the big day….tell me they’re in there….tell me not to go in there….and I won’t. Not only won’t I peek, I won’t even open the door. If I know something good is coming, I can wait.
After all, it wasn’t my fault that Kris and I got engaged while waiting at a stop light at the corner of Telegraph and Grand River. “Not a very romantic place,” you say. “Right on,” I say. But one of us knew that I had been to the jeweler that afternoon….knew that I hadn’t been anywhere since stopping at the jeweler that afternoon….figured that the result of my visit to the jeweler must be in the car somewhere that afternoon….and that’s the short answer as to how it was we got engaged at a traffic light.
But I know that Kris and Julie are right….about me lacking in patience, I mean. It is evident, not so much in the way I push my churches (which I’ll admit to), but in the way I push elevator call buttons (which I hate admitting to). Even when I can see the people waiting….even when I can see that the desired button is already lit….I push it anyway (two or three times, in case the contact is weak). And if the elevator doesn’t come in ten or twelve seconds, I push it again. I mean, why take things for granted? But what else would you expect from a man who’d rather climb an escalator than ride one?
In a crowded restaurant, I’ll give them my name in exchange for their beeper. But I don’t trust beepers. I trust head waiters. Even though they say they can signal me, I want them to see me. So I don’t go to the outer limits of their signal. I go no further than the outer limits of their sight. That way, I check in with them, every six or seven minutes, to see whether my name is moving up the list.
“A flatter stomach in forty days,” the announcer promises me. But the one who captures my attention is the one who promises a visible reduction in forty hours. Or better yet, a solution I can drink before bedtime that will trim my body while I sleep. Too good to be true, I thought. And apparently it was, given the lawsuits filed just last week.
There is an impatient child in me that sings with Maria (the teenage lover in West Side Story….still one of my favorite musicals): “Today, the minutes seem like hours….the hours go so slowly….no better than all right.” Truth be told, I am a whole lot more patient than I used to be. But I am still a man in a hurry….albeit living (I suspect) in the midst of a people in a hurry. After all, they don’t call us “movers and shakers” for nothing.
Which is why I am not comfortable….nor will I ever be completely comfortable….with my esteemed colleague’s warning that ours is not a faith for people in a hurry. He goes on to write:
If you are in a hurry, you had better hurry on out of here….and out of the Christian faith….because you are in the wrong place. If somebody has sold you a bill of goods, suggesting that if you just say three prayers, do three acts and come to three services, all will be well, they probably have a bridge in Brooklyn they will be willing to sell you next. If, however, you want to take the Christian faith seriously, you had better get used to disappointment, postponement and delay. Because that is the experience of people who believe in something very much worth believing in, but is not yet present or experiencable except in spurts and sputters. (Peter Gomes)
Which is why this little word from the book of James (which Martin Luther once called “an epistle of straw”) constitutes my signature text for the third Sunday of Advent.
Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.
But what in the world does that mean to people like us….people for whom the coming of the Lord has more to do with “was” than “will be”….and more to do with yesterday than tomorrow?
My friend’s daughter, Jennifer, asked her preacher father, Eric: “Daddy, why do we prepare for Jesus’ birth when Jesus has already been born?” To which, after thinking about it for a minute, he said: “Because Jesus still needs to be born in the hearts of people who overlook, ignore or simply pass by his manger.” Which is a good answer, insofar as it goes. It is sort of like saying: “Sweetheart, the world has seen the truth. What the world needs now is for the truth to sink in.”
But when James issued his cry for “patience until the coming of the Lord,” he was talking, not about things already seen, but about things not yet seen. He was talking about things having to do with the Kingdom that John the Baptist said was coming….the Kingdom Jesus was supposed to bring….complete with all of the promises we proclaim during Advent (to the point that they are almost clichés). I am talking about promises like:
Light over darkness,
Hope over despair,
Meekness over might.
Valleys lifted….mountains leveled,
Crooked things straightened….rough places smoothed,
Highways in the desert,
Nations streaming up the mountain of the Lord,
Lions and lambs lying down for a mid-afternoon nap under the same blanket.
Blind guys seeing….lame girls walking,
Peace poles in everybody’s front yard,
Along with a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage
(or was that Franklin Delano Roosevelt?).
Jesus came. But not much of that stuff came with him. And if it did, it didn’t last. Which is why we are still waiting. Not for another baby in Bethlehem. Been there. Done that. Instead, we are waiting for nothing less than the coming of Jesus Christ in glory. Haven’t been there. Haven’t done that. The first coming had to do with the introduction of God’s plan. The second will have to do with the fruition of God’s plan. Getting it launched was one thing. Getting it right, quite another thing. James knows that his readers have been to enough “welcome the baby parties.” What James (and his readers) are waiting for is a victory celebration.
If you are like me, you can probably count the sermons you have heard about the Second Coming on the fingers of one hand. More to the point, you will probably have several fingers left over. I’ve engaged in such exercises before, and will probably do so again. But not today. Nor do I wish to get all bogged down in speculation about the specifics of the Second Coming. Because I’m rather vague about the specifics.
Will Jesus come visibly or spiritually?
Don’t know.
Will Jesus come imminently or futuristically?
Don’t know.
Will Jesus come violently or mercifully?
Don’t know.
Will Jesus come cataclysmically or developmentally?
Don’t know.
Will Jesus come in Rome, Wittenberg, Geneva, Epworth or Salt Lake City….in the air or on the square?
Don’t know.
When he comes, will we all be left standing or will some of us be left screaming?
Don’t know.
And will the resultant Kingdom come only in heaven, or also on earth (as it is in heaven)?
Don’t know.
Which is not because I’m stupid, but because there are a few things that are not mine to know…. such knowledge being above me, beyond me, unavailable to me, unimagined by me and (don’t miss this) too wonderful for me.
Sure, I have my opinions.
A. I think we are in for a long wait….yet.
B. I think God’s plan is workable….here.
C. I think bits and pieces of the Kingdom are visible….now.
D. I think that any return of Jesus will have more to do with perfecting all of us, than with killing off half of us.
E. And I think that the authors of the wildly successful “Left Behind” novels are as wrong as they are rich….giving us wonderful characters wrapped in terrible theologies.
But I could be wrong. Meanwhile, we wait. So how do we wait for the coming of the Lord? I’ll tell you how we wait. We wait collectively, confidently and constructively. That’s how we wait.
Collectively, first. This morning’s title, “A Survival Guide to the Waiting Room,” suggests hospitals and people who go there. Not necessarily people who go to be treated, but people who go to wait for the ones who are being treated….especially to wait for those who are being cut, being chemo-ed….or being cared for during comas. There is easy waiting and there is hard waiting. There is short waiting and there is long waiting. There is “no big deal, she’ll be back up to her room in no time” waiting. And there is “tough it out, touch and go, we really won’t know anything for 24 to 48 hours” waiting.
And thinking I was going to talk about that kind of waiting, Carl Eicker e-mailed me on Friday asking if I was familiar with that particular category of saints known as “with’ems.” It’s spelled just like it sounds….W I T H E M S (although you need to add an apostrophe between the H and the E). I’m talking “with’ems” (as in “with thems”)….as in people who come to the waiting room where the waiters are waiting, and wait with’em. These are people who don’t necessarily know surgery….don’t necessarily know pharmacology….don’t necessarily know psychology…. and probably don’t know much in the way of theology. But they do know sitting….and coffee-go-foring. You know ’em. You need ’em. The with’ems. Can’t wait without ’em. And in the great yawning delay….while waiting for Christ’s second coming….maybe that’s a primary role for the church. To be “with’ems” for each other, I mean. How do we wait for the coming of the Lord? Collectively, that’s how we wait.
And confidently. When you engage your search engine this afternoon to see what famous people have said about the word “patience,” you will discover this little gem:
I am extremely patient, provided I get my own way in the end.
Can you imagine who said that? I’ll tell you who said that. It was Margaret Thatcher who said that (back in the Iron Maiden’s prime in 1983).
But let me twist Margaret’s words just a bit. My confidence consists, not in the fact that I am going to get my own way in the end, but in the fact that God is going to get God’s own way in the end. Which has been a recurring theme of mine since September 11, last year. I keep reminding you that you need not waste any Kleenex on the Almighty….that God means to win….has the means to win….and will win. How do we wait for the coming of the Lord? We wait confidently.
And constructively. “Wait like the farmer,” James says, which constitutes the final clue. For patience is the essence of farming. Unless it is hard work that is the essence of farming. Or could it be that hard work, coupled with patience, is the essence of farming?
Peter Gomes’ father was a bog farmer….meaning that he grew cranberries. It takes seven years to build a producing bog from start to finish. We’re talking seven years….which makes cranberries perhaps the most biblical prop of them all. But we’re also talking seven years of unremitting physical labor, coupled with a precise understanding of how water, sand, ice, insects, birds, bees and frost all contribute to the fragile ecosystem that makes a bog (and upon which the berries depend).
Peter then writes: “One day when we were in his garden, and I (then a young fellow) told my father that I thought I wanted to go into the ministry, he looked at me without missing a beat with his hoe, and said: ‘I always hoped my son would do honest work.’”
Well, says Peter, I have since discovered that what is true in farming is also true in ministry.
A. That the harvest is the result of incredible patience (and)
B. That the harvest is the result of incredible work.
Waiting, alone, will not do.
Working for the sake of keeping busy….keeping out of mischief….keeping bread on the table, will not do.
Working at that for which we wait, that will do.
“My father is working and I am working,” said Jesus. So who are you to be sitting on your duff?
Note: During this Advent season, I owe a debt of gratitude to Peter Gomes of Harvard for distilling three decades of preaching in Memorial Church of Harvard University. On a pair of occasions, Peter turned to the book of James and the subject of patience. As always, I find his reflections instructive.
