Colossians 1:9-13
August 26, 2012
For this reason, since the day we
heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled
with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so
that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear
fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be
made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may
you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving
thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the
saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and
transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins.
Have you ever thought about how many stories in the Bible
are about being patient and waiting for God? Of course not. Why would you
wonder about something like that? But I wondered because it’s my job to wonder
about stuff like that. So yesterday I did a survey of the Bible, looking for stories
where people had to wait patiently for God. What I discovered is that virtually
every main character of the Bible, at one point or another, had to be patient
and wait for God. In effect, if you are a major person in the Bible you had to
spend a significant amount of time in faith and hope waiting patiently for God
to act.
For example, look at the story of Abraham and Sarah. They
had to wait. They prayed to have a child, and it did happen, but only after
they thought they were way past childbearing age. The story of Joseph is of a
man who was sold into slavery, and then imprisoned. He spent years as a captive
in one form or another. You can imagine Joseph, sitting in his slave quarters
or dungeon at night, asking God over and over, “When will you release me from
my captivity? When will you take me from this injustice?” Joseph had no choice,
if he was to remain a man of faith, to be patient and hopeful despite his
suffering. And he was rewarded in the end with more than he could have
imagined.
The Israelites, as slaves of the Egyptians, had to be
patient for generations as they prayed for God to release them from slavery.
And when God did release them, they had to be patient for forty years as they wandered
the desert, waiting to enter the Promised Land.
When we think of David, and his being anointed by the
prophet Solomon, we make the assumption that he quickly became king afterwards.
He didn’t. In fact, because his anointing so threatened the present King, Saul,
David had to live as an outlaw in the desert for twelve years. Imagine his
frustration. Out of nowhere Solomon appears to tell him that he is the rightful
king of Israel. He then defeats Goliath, which cements him as the rightful
leader in the Israelites’ eyes, and still he has to live hand-to-mouth as an
outcast for twelve years before he can become king. Imagine David’s prayers in
the night, asking God to take away this injustice.
The list of characters who had to be patient in their
faith goes on and on. Elijah spends forty days in a cave, waiting for God to
speak to him. The Israelites endure seventy years as slaves in Babylon. Jesus
spends forty days and nights in the desert. The early Christians had to wait
patiently on the Day of Pentecost for the Holy Spirit to come. Paul, even Paul,
has to be patient. When we think of Paul’s blinding conversion on the road to
Damascus, often we assume that quickly afterwards he was sent on his mission as
an apostle to start churches in Turkey and Greece. That’s not what happened.
Paul had to go into hiding, where he spent about three years living in the
deserts of Arabia. Then he lived another eleven years in Tarsus (present-day
eastern Turkey) before he was called to become an apostle. Paul had to wait
patiently.
Plainly put, the Bible constantly teaches that waiting
patiently for God is a crucial part of faith. It also teaches that a lack of
patience is perhaps the biggest killer of faith. Think about this in your life.
How many times have you complained to yourself or another that God is taking SOOOO
long? The complaint of many people who’ve walked away from Christian faith is
that they prayed and prayed and nothing happened. So they gave up. They may have
had the faith to pray, but what they lacked spiritually was the faith to wait
for God to do what only God can do.
How many times have you struggled to trust God because
what you are hoping for, what you are praying for, isn’t happening? Are you
struggling now? Maybe you’re unemployed and can’t find a job. That has happened
to a lot of people, especially in this economy. When you’re unemployed and facing
fears about the future, having to wait for God is agony. Maybe you’re lonely
and can’t find a mate. That especially happens to a lot of people when they’re
younger, but it can really cause people who are older and either divorced or
widowed to struggle. Doesn’t God understand our loneliness? Doesn’t God care
about what we’re going through? Maybe you’re sick or injured and aren’t getting
well. Again, when we are struggling with an illness, especially one like cancer
that can lead to death, waiting for any kind of healing can be demoralizing.
Maybe you want to die and it won’t happen. That sounds
like an odd thing to say, but I’ve been around people who struggle because they
are ready to die and their bodies won’t comply. Many years ago we had a member
here who struggled with this. Her husband had died, her daughter had died, her
other daughter lived on the other side of the state. She was suffering from
macular degeneration, meaning that she couldn’t really read anymore. Whenever I
visited she would complain that there wasn’t much left to live for, and that
she didn’t understand why God would let her suffer. Maybe you’re waiting for
something significant to happen in your life, and it isn’t happening. Whatever
it is, you are stuck waiting, and the spiritual question is, can you be
patient.
I have an odd thought for you—probably one you haven’t
thought of. Did you know that whenever you have to be patient and wait for God,
you are being biblical and spiritual,… even it doesn’t feel that way? For
whatever reason, being patient has always been a crucial part of being faithful.
The apostle Paul knew it, which is why he wrote so often about it in his
letters. He not only wrote about it in our passage for today, saying “May you be made strong with all the strength
that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure
everything with patience,…” Paul
wrote about patience when listing the fruits of the Spirit. In virtually every
one of his letters, he talks about the need for patience.
I recognize how hard it is for people to be patient when
they are really struggling. I remember a conversation I had with a woman many
years ago following her divorce. She was lamenting that she had been divorced
for a year and hadn’t met anyone she felt she could fall in love with and spend
a life with. She had dated several people, but they all seemed to be like her
husband, who had been emotionally abusive and neglectful. I said to her that I
thought part of the issue was that she needed to undergo a transformation so
that she could start to become attracted to healthier men who would treat her
well. I said that if she wanted to fall in love with a good man, God had to
lead her to change, and that takes time. She could either find a man quickly,
who was just like all the other men, or take the time to grow, which meant
being patient. It was only when she could become comfortable with being alone
that she could find the kind of man who valued her for who she was. The issue
wasn’t that she wasn’t meeting anyone. It was that she wasn’t attracted to the
kind of men who would treat her well. She ended up struggling like this for
three years, but eventually met and married a man who did treat her well. And
she said to me, “I would never have fallen in love with him three years ago.
But now it’s wonderful.”
I didn’t come upon my insights accidently. I was able to
give her this kind of advice because I also had to struggle with being patient
while waiting for God to act. Twice in my life I’ve been unemployed for long
stretches. I was unemployed for 16 months between 1982 and 1983. I was lost
during that time. I kept praying for God to get me what I wanted, but in the
end I realized that God had used those 16 months to transform me into what God
wanted. It was this time of waiting for
God that led me to join the church for the first time at age 23. It was also
this time that led me eventually to go to seminary. Without the struggle of
those 16 months, my life would have been very different, and much more
self-indulgent and self-focused. I also was unemployed for 8 months between
finishing my Ph.D. and becoming pastor here at Calvin Church. It was during
that time that I began to write my first book. I figured that I had just
finished writing a 400-page dissertation, so why not try a book. Something good
happened out of that time of patience, something that set me on a path to be a
writer.
So why does it seem like we always have to wait so long? Why
does God make us wait when God could easily take care of things much more
quickly? I have two thoughts.
The first thought has to do with Kairos vs. Chronos. These are two ways of understanding time.
“Chronos” is the time we live in. If you look at the watch on your wrist, it’s
official name is “chronometer.” In other words, it measures time. A chronometer
measures chronos, and we live in chronos. Chronos is steady, sequential, and
passes by in a measureable way. Because we live in chronos, we experience time
passing by in a relatively steady way. We can say something took a short time
because it passed by in seconds or minutes. Or we can say something took a long
time because it passed by in hours, days, weeks, months, years, or decades. So
when things take months or years to happen, we struggle because it takes an
objectively long time.
Kairos is different. Kairos is God’s time. I literally
means “the Lord’s time.” God does not live in chronos. God created it, but God
is not bound by it. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t work in our time. It’s
just that God lives in a time beyond our time—beyond chronos. God’s time isn’t
sequential and passing. God lives in a time in which past, present, and future
are one, which is basically unimaginable to us because we are trapped in
chronos. What feels like a long time for us may not be for God.
There’s another factor to this. Kairos isn’t just a time
beyond our time. It’s also a fullness of time in which more takes place. A way
of thinking about it is that when we ask God to relieve our suffering by doing
something for us now, we are usually asking God to, in essence, move the
universe to meet our needs, and to do it quickly. We don’t take into account
all the other prayers that people are sending God’s way, asking that God move
the universe to meet their needs. I believe that God answers all our prayers,
and actually moves the universe to do so, but God does so in a full way that
also fits with God’s eternal plans. So God may find us a job, but God does so
by caring for everyone in the workplace we will go to, the workplace we came
from, for all those others seeking the same job as us, etc… God, coming from
kairos, is looking to respond to our prayers through fullness—through a way
that is grace-filled for all who are praying.
So, this all adds up to us having to be patient for God
to act in that fullness. God is doing much more than we realize. We have to be
patient. We have to wait for that fullness of God’s time to work. God is
always working beyond our awareness to do more than we could imagine.
A second thought is that we need to recognize the
connection between patience and suffering.
In Christianity there is an intimate connection between patience,
suffering, and growing spiritually. This is one of those areas that really
points out the differences between Christianity and Buddhism. Both deal with
the reality of human suffering, but they do so in different ways. Buddhism
teaches that suffering is caused by attachments in life that give rise to
passions, passions that lead to acts that cause suffering in us and others. So Buddhism
teaches us to let go of our attachments and passions in order that we act in
ways of compassion. By seeing that life is illusory, and by seeing that what we
think really matters doesn’t matter, we let go of our attachment to a worldly
life. We let go of our attachment to possessions, ambitions, expectations, and
anything that leads to suffering in ourselves or others whenever we bind our
lives to them.
Christianity doesn’t see suffering in the same way.
Christianity recognizes that suffering is inevitable in life. People suffer
because of poverty, illness, accidents, relationships, the indifference and
animosity of others, and more. In effect, Christianity recognizes that nobody
gets out of life alive, and that we will suffer at some point. But Christianity
also recognizes that suffering can lead to transformation if we trust God.
Think about the times you’ve been most transformed. Often it’s been after a
time of suffering. That certainly was true for me. My 16-month unemployment
completely transformed me. When you are in the hospital you are called a
“patient” because you are suffering, and also because the medical staff will do
something to transform your body to deal with whatever the problem is.
Christianity recognizes the spiritual significance of
patience. The word “patience” literally means “to suffer.” It comes from the
Latin root, pati, which means to
suffer. It is the same root as the word “passion.” We think of passion as a
strong emotional drive to do something—we have a passion for football, or a
passion for music, or a passion for our jobs. But passion is suffering. That’s
why the Mel Gibson movie from several years ago was titled The Passion of the Christ. It was literally “The Suffering of the
Christ,” and the movie really centered on that suffering of Jesus prior to and
on the cross. When we are patient, we are willing to undergo suffering, because
we have faith and hope in God. We work hard to hold onto that faith and hope,
even though we are in pain.
Christianity doesn’t try to avoid or get rid of
suffering. It recognizes that suffering is part of life. We can diminish
suffering by caring for those who suffer. This is a Christian calling: to
relieve the suffering of others when we can. We can also diminish suffering by
detaching from things that cause our suffering. Christianity does have some
connection with Buddhism there. But Christianity also teaches that suffering is
transformative, and if we are willing to be patient in our suffering, we can
experience great transformations.
This message of patience as suffering and as being
transforming is present in the story of the crucifixion. Jesus was willing to
go through being arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and crucified, and he did it
with a sense of suffering patience. He hurt, but he still was willing to endure
the pain for what was to come. The result was that it led to a great
transformation of him and the world as a result. This is the message of
patience: if we are willing to be patient, if we are willing to suffer for a
while, greater things will happen in the end.
No matter who you are in life, you’re going to face a
time when it seems like God is either absent or not working fast enough. If you
are able to wait upon God, it’s wonderful what God can do—and your patience will
make a difference in your discovering God.
Amen.
