SERMON – Fruit of the Spirit. Week 4: The fruit of patience
One day while he was at kindergarten, little Johnny was having trouble putting on his boots. His kindergarten teacher, Miss Thompson, came over to help. To her surprise, Miss Thompson also struggled to pull Johnny’s boots on. She tried as hard as she could, wiggling and pulling, but the more she tried, the harder it seemed. Finally, the first boot went on. As she began working the second boot over Johnny’s other foot, he said to her: “Miss, they’re on the wrong feet”.
Miss Thompson looked down, and sure enough, they were. With a deep sigh, she struggled with the boots all over again. Eventually the first one came off, and she swapped them over to the right feet. She helped Johnny up. “There you go!” she said.
Johnny looked down at his feet and said: “Miss, these aren’t my boots.” Miss Thompson breathed deeply and calmy replied: “I’m sorry sweetie…let’s get them off and put yours on.” When the boots were off, Johnny explained to her: “These boots are my brother’s. My mum said that I had to wear them today.”
Miss Thompson could feel her blood pressure rising, but she knelt down and did battle with the boots again. After they were on, she asked Johnny: “It’s cold out here…let’s get your gloves on while we’re at it. Where are they?” She asked, looking around but not seeing them nearby.
Johnny replied, “I didn’t want to lose them, so I stuffed them into the toes of my boots.”
How would you go if you were standing in Miss Thompson’s shoes? I don’t know about you, but I’m not at all good at being patient. Have you noticed that there seems to be an impatience epidemic in society? On the one hand, our fast-paced world conditions us to expect to have, do, get whatever we want…NOW. No one likes waiting—waiting in doctors’ surgeries, waiting in queues, waiting on hold, waiting for traffic lights to change. You’re familiar with the saying: “A watched pot never boils”? Last week I caught myself tapping my foot while I waited 30 seconds for the microwave to heat my lunch. Even 30 seconds was too long for my impatience! But on the other hand, when people are in such a rush we have no tolerance for anybody who makes a mistake or who hinders our immediate needs, plans or wants. Every day in the office we hear someone pulling up at the lights triggering a cascade of horn tooting and unleashing a tirade of abuse at someone. How many service providers do you visit that have a sign: “Please treat our staff with respect.” Someone should have told that to the McDonald’s Drive-Thru customer down here on Morphett Road over the weekend. As we drove up to the screens to order we soon noticed that they had been smashed. Obviously someone wasn’t so Mchappy about a perceived lack of service.
As Christians we are not exempt from impatience. we usually think first in relation to others. Remember that it is to the church (at Galatia)—who Paul initially addressed:
“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” (Galatians 5:13-15).
Notice Paul begins with a charge to serve one another in love. We cannot love and be impatient at the same time. To love is to be patient, and that’s the shape of love in 1 Corinthians 13: “love is patient”. It follows, then, that impatience is unloving. We can be impatient with those who disagree with us, or who have hurt us, being quick to write them off in our hearts even if we are civil to them with our words. We might be impatient for a new program, or new direction—or we might be impatient with those desiring those things. Typically, we turn to our default way of thinking and behaving—the flesh. We seek to control the outcome, lobbying those who share our point of view, rallying the troops around our particular cause. Then the church is directed politically rather than walking by the Spirit, and in the zeal to arrive at an outcome, dissensions, factions, discord, division, and envy result. Rather than being built up, the church becomes divided, perhaps even splintered.
Paul urged the church at Ephesus to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:1-3). Being patient is not a casual option for the believer, but it is to be an intentional action as we get ready for the day ahead, much like putting on this virtue as a part of our daily wardrobe:
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 whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3:12-14).
Many of the Scriptures dealing with patience relate to the believers’ patience with God. We can be impatient with God himself. Waiting for him to intervene, like turning suffering into joy, is really hard too. When God freed his people from slavery in Egypt, he led them to the Red Sea to be hemmed in between the shore and the pursuing Egyptian army. Powerless to help themselves in the face of such military might, God was teaching them to look to him alone and to wait on him for their help and salvation. Moses said to the people “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:13-14).
But it wasn’t a lesson God’s people learned well. All throughout their history, God’s ancient people struggled with impatience. As God led them through the wilderness, they grumbled against him. When he brought them into the Promised Land, they didn’t want to wait for Moses, who was so long in coming down from the mountain. So they gave their gold jewellery to Aaron to fashion into a golden calf. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. (Exodus 32:1-6).
They didn’t want to wait for God; they wanted spiritual life on their own terms, in doing so breaking the commandments before they were even given. But Moses pleaded with God to relent from his anger, and God did, and still went with his people even though they had turned aside from him in their impatience. Later, in their trials and troubles throughout their history Psalm 46 would be important for them as God called them to “Be still and know that I am God” (v10)—to wait on him patiently.
As we look around and see a world tearing itself apart, with so much darkness and gloom, God’s call through the Psalmist to be still and look to God, waiting on him patiently, is just as relevant for us, today. We might impatiently long for Jesus to return, and demand that he return right NOW! James spoke about this when he said: “Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord return is near.” That’s a text we often have during Advent, when we focus on our waiting for the Lord to come again. James uses the analogy of a farmer sowing seed to reap a harvest, to illustrate the Christian life of waiting for Christ’s return. The farmer can only wait. They can’t extract rains from the heavens or make the seed unfold into a plant, either. All the farmer can do is watch, and wait. So James exhorts the church: Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door! They are to follow the example of the suffering and patience of the prophets and be steadfast like Job, remembering that the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
We can be reminded to be patient, we can be taught about how to practise patience…but we still struggle to do that which we know we should do. What is the problem? From the moment of conception, our human orientation is to the self. From the moment we leave our mother’s womb, human nature is absorbed with ourselves, and the immediate satisfaction of our desires. Patience, then, is not natural—not something we can conjure up within ourselves. If love consists of patience and God is love, then the origin and quality of true patience is super-natural—something g that must first come from outside of ourselves and be worked in us by God.
God does work his patience in us, as a fruit of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. As God gathers us around Christ and his ministry to us through his word and sacraments, the Holy Spirit goes to work to strengthen the seed of faith he first planted in us—to not just believe things about God, but truly trusting that God is sovereign and in control of all things, so that we relinquish our instinct to grasp for control, and instead patiently wait on the Lord for him to work and act in what would otherwise be impossible situations in our daily lives. Patience is resting in the God who is in control of all things and wilfully submitting to his plan, his methods, his timing, and his will.
God is patient with us. We human beings are very slow to cotton on to the ways of God. God wants us to go to his word as the first thing we do, but often it is the last. We are usually too busy for God each day, and therefore too impatient to sit and meet with him, distracted by the human vision of shaping our life and accomplishing our goals. So God often intervenes and frustrates our direction. Sometimes God doesn’t give us what we want straight away, and he doesn’t give us everything we need all at once. He wants us to learn to relinquish our strategizing apart from him, and to instead wait on him for our daily bread, to sit and rest with him patiently, and wait for him to light our path by his word, so God’s Spirit can produce his fruit in our lives.
Apart from his Spirit and the fruit that he grows in our lives, all of this today would be little more than a pep talk to attempt to do what we cannot do by our own strength. But God does more than just give us his commands, otherwise he would set us up to fail. He gives us his Spirit, to bear the fruit of patience in our lives, so that we can be patient with others, and with God, just as he is with us, each day of our lives—each day that is a day closer to Christ’s return. How we wish that were now. Come Lord Jesus, come! As Peter says: But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 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.” (2 Peter 3:8-9).
We know that God wants all people to come to repentance when we look to the Cross, and see the costly, selfless lengths God went to in order to redeem the world by the precious blood of his Son. As Jesus prayed even for those who mocked him there: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” we catch a glimpse of God’s own patient love for the whole world helpless to help itself. That divine patient love is also for you. For Jesus invites you to his table today, to personally bring Calvary to you, and give to you his holy and precious body and blood and all its saving benefits. As we are filled with Jesus’ own life, and our old self is crucified with him, may others see more and more the Holy Spirit at work, growing in us the fruit of patience, so that in our dealings with others the world may catch a glimpse of a God who is also waiting patiently for them. Amen.
