"Have Patience"

 

"Be patient then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near."

           

            Fanny Crosby wrote the hymn "All the Way My Savior Leads Me." The second verse is:

"All the way my Savior leads me;

Cheers each winding path I tread,

Gives me grace for every trial,

Feeds me with the living bread,

Though my weary steps may falter,

And my soul athirst may be,

Gushing from the Rock before me,

Lo! A spring of joy I see."

            It is a winding path that leads us along in life to the return of Christ. It may look straight and fast when you are young, but it is not at all. There are mountains in the way, and the road curves here and there, and some of it is very steep. There are areas of congestion where you go slowly and don't seem to get anywhere, and there are any number of dead ends. The road in life is a winding road. Fanny Crosby was right about that. It is easy to get lost and hard to get anywhere quickly that you would like to go.

            A few weeks ago we were in Central California, in the hills above San Jose, and it seemed to be that the state of California is one winding road, or many winding roads, and it is just about impossible to tell where you are or to follow anybody's directions to where you want to go. I think life is a lot like that. There is a good bit of frustration in finding our way. The steep parts are exhausting and the detours are many, and the dead ends seem so pleasant and inviting. It goes back to Genesis and Adam and Eve, and the thistles and thorns in the land and making your living by the sweat of your brow. The hymn says that the Savior cheers the winding path. It does not say "straightens it out." On the winding path the Lord meets us with encouragement and gladness and lifts the heavy load. The hymn says there are trials along the way and that the soul gets thirsty, and our steps become weary. Then a spring of joy comes from a Rock placed before us, an unlikely place for water, and you might have missed it.

            James writes this letter to people in a number of churches who walk the winding road. They wonder just how to live this life in Christ, when they have to deal with landowners who refuse to pay their wages, and merchants who take the value of their labor to enrich others, and they live with desires that battle inside them and try to hold back their tongues that seem out of control when the heart of the day and the unfairness of it all gets to them. James is written to people who live on winding roads.

            James writes to them, "Be patient, until the Lord's coming." I'm not sure if that is always such good advice, is it? Sometimes it is, when you have to wait an hour for a plane or a day or two for some issue to resolve. With children, ten minutes of patience can be a wonderful gift. But when the wait is long, I'm not sure the advice works so well.

            Maybe we don't understand what James means by "patience." To us it means being calm, confident, cool, sure of what is coming next. It is a kind of strategy. It works in sports and sometimes in cooking.

            In the Bible this word for "patience" has a richer meaning. First of all James does not tell them just to be patient, he tells them to be patient because the Lord's coming is near. He is telling them to live in the nearness of the Lord. That is an essential task of the spiritual life. We learn by prayer to place ourselves each day in the nearness of the Lord. Jesus told a parable about a landowner who went away on a trip and left some servants in charge of the estates. Some of them began to live in his distance. Because of his distance they began to beat the other servants and to get lazy and neglect their tasks and get drunk. After all, he was a long ways away. But others of the servants lived in the nearness of his return. They did not know when he would return, but they lived as if it would be soon. So when he arrived suddenly, unexpectedly, one day, he found them busy about the tasks he had given them to do. It seems to me that he found them content, focused and not anxious. They were doing his will, and I think enjoying it. That is a biblical picture of patience.

            We are patient because we live in the nearness of the Lord. We know his will. We know our tasks. We are giving ourselves to them. Some of you have been gleaning this summer. Some have been serving our older members who needed help. Some have been taking kids to camp. Some have been faithfully involved in leading worship, in teaching children, in bringing furniture to those in need. You have been patiently doing the Master's business.

            So James says to be patient. The biblical meaning of patience is much more active than just quietly waiting for something good to happen. David Nystrom says it is very close in meaning to perseverance. It means living with endurance and fortitude. Craig Blomberg says it means on the one hand not being overly zealous so that you might turn to violence to accomplish your goal, and on the other hand not overly passive so you might give up in adversity.

            James then gives three examples of patience: the farmer waiting for the rain, the prophets speaking God's Word, and Job persevering in suffering. In that part of the world the rain comes twice a year, in the fall and in the spring. So that determined both planting and harvesting. The farmers had patience in waiting for the rains to come. If you have been a farmer, or known a farmer or lived in a farming community you know that farmers are not calm and cool and perfectly peaceful as they watch the weather. Farmers worry, they get concerned. Most I have known were able to take a long view of things and realized that there are weather patterns; too much rain, too little rain. But I don't think James is saying that farmers are models of calm and confident patience in the midst of unpredictable weather. Rather, his focus here is on the activity of the farmer. Farmers are known for their purposeful working while they wait. It is really about their courage, to plant with no guarantees and work hard through the summer with a willingness to wait to see what the weather will bring.

You cannot speed up the return of Christ, but you can live every day with courage and devotion to the ways of God, as if each day was the last day. James says, "be patient and stand firm" or "strengthen your hearts." Craig Blomberg writes, "You strengthen your hearts to keep hoping when delay seems interminable, to keep trusting when God's timing seems questionable, to keep working for righteousness when results seem meager."

            Next he lifts up the example of the prophets who were patient in suffering. Again, this patience was not a calm spirit or a quiet resignation. The prophets were very aware of the cost of their obedience. Some of the words they were asked to speak were exceedingly difficult. Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet. Their patience was in their faithfulness to the call of God in difficult times. Blomberg says that "As the prophets suffered they still sought the glory of God in what they said and did." They were patient in that they lived for God's glory when the common thinking ran against them.

            Finally, he lists Job as being an example of patience. "The patience of Job" is a common expression. But if you actually read Job, you find he is full of complaint and he cries out in his suffering. There were other Jewish writings about Job which described a long period of suffering and commended Job for his endurance. Perhaps James was thinking of those writings. The point is that Job stayed close to God, even while he voiced his complaint. Patience does not always have to be quiet.

            The supreme example of this type of patience is Jesus, who went to the cross to fulfill his mission on earth. Luke chapter 9 tells us that Jesus knew what was ahead for him, and yet he continued in his mission, he went to Jerusalem and endured the cross. He did not die silent, calm, heroic. No, in his agony he cried out, even voicing his feeling of being forsaken by God. But he did the will of God and was faithful to the day of resurrection.

            So we are called to be faithful, to live near the Lord, to wait for his return by doing his will. We live for the Kingdom of God even in the winding roads of life. Then our song of "All the way my Savior leads me" comes to its completion with the joyful call of faith, "Jesus led me all the way."

            Amen.