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Sunday, December 12, 2010
How to Have Patience…Right Now!
By Rev. Jerry Herships
James 5:7 – 11
7Be 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. 8You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. 9Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! 10As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
OK….I cheated. This is one of the lectionary passages…plus I added verse 11. It seemed weird without it. So sue me. I think it is pretty easy to see what the major theme is for this passage. The first two words make it pretty clear. Be patient.
I don’t think I have ever preached on patience. Part of the reason, I am sure, is…well I suck at it. Like most Americans, I find myself wanting something and wanting it…well NOW, actually, yesterday. Long term patience does not come easy to me. That is part of the reason I never thought I would make through the ordination process. I am Definitely an outcome person, NOT a process person. If you have to stay up all night every night to get the sermon done…so be it. Stop complaining and start working. If on the other hand you get it done in a day, then the night is yours, enjoy. In the end, it is about the final product not the process.
This is not always the best route. Part of today’s passage tells us that the farmer is waiting for both the early and the late rain. Some things just take time, God’s time.
No one in my family is of the patient type. Waiting for Christmas to come? Forget it. It was so hard for us to wait in our family that we started doing CHRISTMAS EVE GIFT. Do any of you play this game? Is ours the only family?
Christmas Eve Gift came about because apparently as my brother and sister were growing up they were even less patient that I was. The idea was that on Christmas Eve, whoever shouted “Christmas Eve gift” the loudest got to open ONE of their presents a day early, on Christmas Eve. You had one less on Christmas day but you got to open ONE early.
My brother and sister didn’t stop playing when they moved out. They would sometimes call at 6 in the morning….then 5….then the night before at midnight to be the first one. I did have the advantage of still being at home. I would shout “Christmas Eve Gift!” as soon as I heard the phone ring…Again, outcome oriented.
This passage is telling us that maybe, maybe there might be something to gain by showing a little patience.
It tells us that this is the season that we have to focus on Peace. If we follow the advice of this passage we will get through this holiday season with more peace, which is what the Prince is bringing us when he arrives. Now this peace is spelled a little funny. We are going to spell it PES and it is going to stand for the three things that we see throughout this passage.
The passage focuses on three main themes: be Patient, Endure, and Strengthen your heart. Let’s look closer at each one.
PATIENCE
We all have to have patience in different areas of our lives. To continue on with the idea of my writing sermons, I have to be dedicated to the process and discipline of writing but also stay open to allow ideas (and some would call the Holy Spirit) to flow in and out of the sermon writing process. As I write these words, I have no idea how this manuscript will end. That is many versions and edits from now. I love what I read in Deepak Chopra’s book, Why is God Laughing.
He tells the story of the time when a Broadway composer was asked how he came up with his wonderful tunes. His reply was: “Wait, Drift, Obey.” Love that. What is at the core of that is you have to be patient.
It reminds me of that often quoted phrase, “release outcome.” It is focusing on the here and now and not spending too much time focusing on the future. I believe patience must be practiced and I now believe I am better at it now than I was five years ago. The process of ordination forced my hand. There are moments when the only requirement IS to wait. You must be at a church for a year. You must be a provisional candidate for two years, You must have a three year degree. Waiting is a huge part of the process. The process itself teaches patience.
Where in your life could you use more patience? Where do you find yourself thinking, “Enough God, Let’s get on with it!” In what part of your life do you feel stuck? This section in James is titled “patience in suffering.” Who in the world wants that? For me I am always trying to find the lessons in any given moment, and to be honest, there are times I just don’t see any lessons learned. This does not mean I stop looking. I stay on the path. I keep taking life one day at a time. Which leads us to our next major point, endure.
ENDURANCE
Endurance is not a game for the timid. It says, “I can see where life stands now. It might not be that great at this moment, but let’s wait and see what things look like at the end. It is recognizing that God might be putting a comma where you, at first, put a period. That is one of the great things about reading the Bible. We know how it turns out. We can flip to the back of the book. We don’t have that luxury in our life, so we must endure, knowing that God has a great plan for us. It is like we read in Jeremiah. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
It might not feel like it right at this moment. You might feel rejected or in pain or lost and not knowing where to turn next. KNOW that this is not God’s plan for your life. I know of NO ONE who gets out of this life without some struggle. I know of no one who has gotten through this life without some degree of pain. We were never promised a pain free life. The good news is, IT WON’T LAST. You can endure. You can beat the hard times, get through this part. Endure, have patience. God has a very bright future for you. Use this time to do the last thing this passage tells us to do…strengthen your heart.
STRENGTHEN OUR HEARTS
How do we do this? How do we strengthen our hearts? I can tell you how we don’t do it. It’s not about getting on the treadmill. It’s not about running a marathon. We do strengthen our heart by using it and making it stronger, but we do it in a different way. We find ways to love more. We find ways to give more. We find ways to care for each other more.
I have found that when I am busy strengthening my heart in one of these ways, my patience increases. It increases because I’m not staring at the clock. I am too busy DOING. Time flies when you serve others. I find that my attention shifts off of me and mine, to theirs and them. I become less selfish when I am strengthening my heart by serving people besides myself.
It is also easier to endure the hard times when I strengthen my heart because it often puts my life and problems in perspective. Here is an example. Every Tuesday at St. Andrew we have a staff meeting. It is exactly as fun as it sounds. It usually last between one to two hours. When it’s done, there is meeting overload. It is easy to get into a grumble and complain mode.
I leave right from there and go down to hand out lunches and communion in the park. That hour in the park reminds me of how silly so many of my problems are and it reminds me what REAL problems look like. Enduring MY problems becomes a lot easier.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know there are REAL problems that people have that an hour of handing out water won’t cure. I totally get that. I guess all I’m trying to say is, when we go beyond ourselves and think of others, our pain becomes reduced.
This advent season, let’s all do our best to go outside ourselves and find a way to strengthen our hearts as we prepare for the coming of Jesus. When we do this we will find our patience increasing, as well as our ability to endure. Christmas becomes less about what sales to hit and what presents to buy and more about the message that Jesus coming into the world is supposed to signal: new light, new hope and new ways of doing things in this world.