Patience

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Clare L. Hickman

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale

November 10, 2019—Proper 27C

Job 19:23-27a; Psalm 17:1-9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38

          “[W]e beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed…” (2 Thess 15:1b). We beg you not to be shaken. We implore you not to be alarmed. Instead, may you find comfort. Instead, may you be strengthened (v. 17).

So speak the leaders of the early church to the community in Thessalonika. Speaking to a community who had been promised the imminent return of Jesus. Speaking to a community who are beginning to lose hope. Whose foundations are shaking. Whose alarm bells are ringing.

Was it all a lie? And does that mean everything they had been told about Jesus is a lie? Does that mean everything they know of him, everything they have experienced of him, everything they draw such inspiration and sustenance from is a lie as well?

Because they were told it would be soon. Like, before any of them died! And quite honestly, they wanted it to be soon. They didn’t want to have to wait, didn’t want the wait to stretch into that unknown quantity of “the future,” that meant that life as they knew it continued to have to be worried about and planned for and lived through.

They didn’t want the second coming to be long, and slow. They weren’t too crazy about doing this in God’s time, rather than their own.

As humans, our perception of time, frankly, is limited. Not only can we not comprehend eternity; we can’t even really get a firm grip on linear time, because context skews our experience. If we are anxiously looking forward to something, or in terrible pain, it seems to take forever before we get that thing, or receive the relief we need!

Our desire and our need warp our sense of time. We want it so badly. We need it so badly. We can’t wait; we are afraid it will never come; we are shaken to the core.

Be patient, comes the voice of God.

One of my favorite poems by Pierre Tielhard de Chardin is “Trust in the slow work of God,” and this is what I hear in 2 Thessalonians today: Be patient. God’s work happens more slowly than you might want. But it happens.

Be patient.

This is, of course, easier said than done. We know patience is a virtue (we saw it embroidered on a pillow once), but we also know that it’s a hard one. Of all the qualities I’ve heard people ask for help with, patience has to be number one. Patience with the pace of recovery from illness. Patience with your children. Patience with your own continued faults. Patience with your spouse’s continued faults. Patience with life’s inability to work out the way you would like it to. Patience.

Because it all happens for way too long. Because it all happens way too slowly.

Patience. We’d love to pretend it’s not that important. But clearly, it is. In fact, Egyptian lawyer and preacher Adel Bestavros suggests it might be EVERYTHING, when it comes to the spiritual life. Patience with others, he argues, is love. Patience with self is hope. Patience with God is faith.

These things require time. These things require the ability to allow things to happen, and to happen slowly. These things require us to trust in the slow work, rather than demanding they happen in our time, the way we would have designed it.

Be patient with others. Oh, goodness yes, be patient with others. Be patient with them as they are bumbling through this life and trying to figure things out. They are trying to figure things out, aren’t they? Give them a little time before you declare that they aren’t (look, some people aren’t and they might actually be toxic and only deserve your patience from a really far distance). But most folks actually are trying to figure this life thing out as best they can; be patient. Give them as much room to grow and as many chances as you’d hope others would give you. Not as many as YOU would give you: that might well be none. But as many as your best and gentlest self would want to have.

Because patience is generous. And spacious. And understanding that we are all imperfect. Patience lets things develop; it offers assistance; it knows things sometimes need to be re-done. Patience is fine with that. Patience knows the work of God is long and slow. Patience, indeed, looks a lot like love. Patience for others is, in fact, love.

The next one might be harder: be patient with yourself. Be patient with yourself, because that is hope itself. Hope: the thing that defies expectation. Hope: the thing that allows you to keep going, even when things look the least promising. Hope: when you can’t imagine the way forward.

And yeah, that’s sometimes how I feel about myself. When I’ve been battling the same weaknesses for 40 or 50 years. When I still make the same kinds of bad decisions, or fall into the same unhelpful patterns. That feels pretty hopeless, honestly. Because it feels like, if I haven’t done it YET, then it will never, ever (ever) happen.

Hope, however, asks me to be patient with myself. Asks me to place myself in the midst of that long slow work of God, that happens bit by bit. Inch by inch. Almost imperceptibly. Know that God is working within you, it whispers. Like the ocean smooths down sea glass: it takes time. You are a life’s work. Be patient.

Be patient with yourself. Be patient with others. And oh, my sisters and my brothers, be patient with God. Be patient, even when you feel like those Thessalonians, who looked around and wondered whether God was EVER going to show up! Be patient, and trust in the slow work of God in the world, work that is slow even when God’s workers are hustling their tails off, doing kingdom work as hard and fast as they can.

Patience with God is faith, because God’s work doesn’t happen the way we would want or expect it to. We want it so bad, need it so bad, that it seems like it’s taking forever. And it will probably take more than our lifetime, just as it took beyond those Thessalonians’ lifetimes. But it isn’t forever; it isn’t eternity. It’s just long and slow. It’s also real and true and good, and it’s unfolding, all the time, whether we can perceive it or not. It’s unfolding, even when it seems like everything has just fallen to pieces.

Everything has just fallen to pieces, in your life or in the world. To be able to sit (to be) in those times, without panicking or despairing, is to have patience with God. Is to have faith in God that something is happening. Something is becoming. And the long slow work is all around you.

Patience, my friends. Trust in the slow work, and have patience with others, for that is love. Have patience with yourself, for that is hope. And have patience with God, for that, my friends, is the essence of faith. May it be so, Amen.