Whew, what a week. I’m still catching my breath. It quickly got out of control and for a while I was feeling like I wasn’t up to the task presented to me. Let me explain. One of the tasks my team (the worship team of Discipleship Ministries of the United Methodist Church) is tasked to do is to help local churches do worship to the best of their abilities to enhance the making of disciples and to connect with the world around them. We do this in a variety of ways, some of which I am still discovering. But perhaps the most obvious, or certainly the best used, are the worship helps that we post on our website. We try to do them far enough ahead so that as people are planning their worship service we will be ready to help.
This week we discovered a problem with the notes for the worship series in November. So, I agreed to do my best to produce something for us to send through the system to get posted ASAP. So, I wrote. And wrote. And read and thought and prayed. Prayed lot. And wrote some more. Late into the night sometimes. Trying to get something ready to send to our editor.
When I sent it out late Thursday night via email, I wrote in the email that while I felt good about the project basically, it was not my best work. The pressure of the deadline caused me to cut some corners that I wouldn’t normally have cut. I would have taken more time to make the material more rounded, more resourced and more collaborative. But it was, in short, good enough.
Good enough? What’s good enough? And how often do we settle for good enough? In way too many arenas of our lives we have been settling for good enough. We’ve been getting by, making do, too accepting of the way things are, too apt to say, well, things are like that these days. We shake our heads, we still complain, but then we shrug our shoulders and say, “what can you do?”
Romans 8:22-25 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
You might be wondering where I’m going here. And the truth is that I’m not sure. Except that as I thought of my experience this week, rushing to get something done, with a deadline past due, and knowing that I could have done better if I had more time, and I thought about patience. Patience is listed in the fruit of the Spirit passage that we enjoy so much. It is something that Paul talks a lot about. Jesus doesn’t seem to use the word, except in a parable about forgiveness. You remember that one? There was a man who owed an impossible sum. As Jesus tells the story, the man owes ten thousand talents. I’ve heard various interpretations of how much a talent represented. One point of agreement is that it is a lot. The smallest amount I heard described was everything a person could earn in a year. That’s one talent. This man owed ten thousand of them. Ten thousand years worth of income. Be patient with me, he said to the creditor and I’ll pay you everything. How patient isn’t defined in the story. Ten thousand years patient seems ... excessive. But here’s the kicker. The creditor says, what the heck, just forget it. I beg your pardon? Yeah, ten thousand talents here, ten thousand talents there. No big deal. (Note to self: send this parable to the people who hold our mortgage! Matthew 18:23-35) Ahem.
Of course there is a part two, and patient appears there too. The only time the word appears in the Gospels, any of them. The guy just forgiven a debt of ten thousand years worth of wages, runs into a guy who owes him a buck fifty. No, that’s wrong, it was more. A hundred denarii. That’s not something to be sneezed at. Almost a third of a year’s worth of income.
When we first went to England, we went to work in the British Methodist Church. It was an amazing and sometimes troubling experience. But the reason I bring it up is that in the British Methodist Church the pastors are paid once a quarter. Up front. So, I arrived and was handed a check (actually it was Britain, so it was a cheque) that had three month’s wages in it. Dang! It was a little startling to say the least. But I was smart. I did the very smartest thing I could think to do, I brought La Donna with me. Whew. She of the lists and organization and budgets. I would have been living on the street begging for left over fish and chips inside of a month and half without her. Well, maybe not. But my point is it was not an insubstantial amount of money.
So, the guy forgiven the huge debt stumbles on the guy who still owes a significant (compared to the other hardly even registers on the Richter scale!) amount, who says the exact same thing that he just did. You have to wonder if the second guy was listening to the first guy make his plea and recorded it on his phone so that he could play it back when it was his turn. Be patient with me. But the forgiven guy says, no! Give me my money or go to jail.
Patience is in short supply it seems. Yeah, the guy gets in trouble for his lack of grace. The master says he will go to jail until he pays the last penny. So, he’ll be there for at least ten thousand years. And when he gets out he will have nothing. And be really old.
We wait for what we don’t see with patience. That’s what Paul says in the passage I chose to show. Wait for what? Wait for what we hope for. And what’s that exactly? Well, um, I dunno. What do you hope for? Paul is want us to be hoping for a new world. A different reality. The Reign of God. The Kingdom of Heaven. That’s what we’re waiting for. But not some abstract strumming harps on clouds kind of thing. No, this is a new earth too. It is a better way of living. A way of trusting and caring. It’s a way of working collaboratively and way of honoring those who think and act and look differently. About acceptance and inclusion, not about name calling and finger pointing, not about sending home those who might be a different shade, not about so narrowly defining love of nation that unless you want exactly what I want then you must hate my country, not about finding things to complain about in others when someone tries to hold you accountable for your words and actions. We are hoping for something better than what we see in front of us every day. We don’t see it, says Paul. It seems to far from us, and moving farther from where we are and who we are becoming than ever before. But still we hope. And we wait. With patience.
But, here’s the key. Patience, especially waiting with patience, is not about sitting still. About keeping your head down and waiting for the hammer to fall, the change to come and then coming out and taking our place. No, patience is about writing. Even though you’re behind the deadline. Writing the best you can, working the best you can, speaking and sharing and living and giving the best you can. Patience is not letting the lack of reign of God sightings keep us from looking for them. And better, keep us from doing them, those sightings, those glimpses of a better world. Others can come and wait with patience with us because they see in us the hope put into action. They see the kingdom because they see it in us. They hear it in us, they read it in our words, they feel it in our love.
That’s the key you know. Patience isn’t really one of the fruits of the Spirit. Because there is only one fruit. Go look it up. I’ll wait, it’s singular. The fruit of the Spirit is ... Love. That’s what it says. Not the fruits of the Spirit are .... Singular. The fruit of the Spirit is love. But it is love that is joyful, and love that is peaceful, and love that is patient, and it is love that is kind and generous and faithful and gentle, and it is love that is under control. Patience isn’t a thing in and of itself, according to the Spirit anyway. Patience is an aspect of love. Often when we run out of patience it is because we’ve run out of love. If we come back to love, we just might find more patience. Remind yourself of the love you have for those who are trying your patience. Or the love you are called to have with them. Even when the deadlines loom and the work piles up. Return to love. That’s a job we can’t put off, but can’t rush either. We wait for it with patience.
Shalom,
Derek
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