Creekside Church Sermon of November 29, 1998 "Patience, Please " Romans 12:1-2	Rev. David Bibbee
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Why? Christmas has been taken over. It has become so wrapped in layers of superficial manufactured emotion, nostalgia, and commercial that its significance is barely recognizable. Whatever slight allusion might be made of Jesus' birth is framed in retrospect...something that happened a long time ago...ancient history. I don't know about you, but I don't get terribly enthused about ancient events cut off from what I must deal with here and now.

Remember when your kids were little and asked for a lick of your ice cream cone? They ended up licking so much you didn't want to lick after them so you said, "Here...you may as well have the rest of it." I feel the same about Christmas. We may as well let the world have it. That way we can have Advent to ourselves and not simply "remember" Jesus' birth, but anticipate his coming into the world in a way we have yet to see or experience.

In the concluding exhortations of James' epistle, we read, "Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord." The first Christians lived with the expectation that Jesus would soon return...in their lifetime, they thought. Patience isn't a problem when you think that what you are waiting for is just on the horizon. They were ready for him, ready for all the wrongs to be made right, ready to see Jesus' promises fulfilled. And they waited, and they waited. They grew weary under the weight of their waiting. It has been a long wait since then, and Advent finds us waiting still. The posture of Advent has been likened to being in a concert hall. The house lights go off, the foot lights come on. All the talking stops and everyone waits for the curtain to rise. The violin bows are poised, the conductor's baton is raised, everyone is focused, ready for the performance to begin.

So many centuries have come and gone since then waiting for God to intervene, that we have stopped counting. I know few people who maintain rapt attention, waiting day in and out for Jesus' appointed return. It's hard to do all alone, so we come to church, encouraging each other to stoke the fires of hope in the meantime. It's easy to sing the words, "Come, thou long-expected Jesus," but to orient our expectations around this hope is unfamiliar. We have been waiting a long, long time. No wonder we spend more time in recollection than anticipation. Being the realistic, down-to-earth people we are, it's a stretch hoping for a future as the Bible describes it. The lion lies down with the lamb? While it is having the lamb for lunch, maybe. The meek shall inherit in the earth? Based upon what we see at this moment in history, it won't be any time soon. To us a child is born, and the government shall be upon his shoulder...a kingdom of justice and righteousness. Not as long as we have the best Congress money can be. It's apparent that the kind of future that the Bible envisions isn't here...not yet.

"Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Like the farmer who waits patiently for the early and late rains to produce a crop, so you must be patient." But we aren't farmers. Patience isn't second nature for us. This is perhaps why patience is mentioned so often in the letters to the early church. Galatians 5:22 says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and patience. Colossians 3:12 says that as God's beloved we clothe ourselves with all humility, gentleness and patience, bearing each other in love. For Christians, patience is a necessary virtue, but it is a very difficult one.

We probably have a harder time hearing James' counsel than any generation in history. Our culture breeds impatience. We drink instant coffee, eat fast food, get our pictures developed and our eyeglasses in one hour. We are happy with the new computer until we learn of a new one that is even faster. Lest you think I say this because I am a patient man, think again. I will not fish in any spot for more than 15 minutes if I don't catch a fish. I am not a charitable person when driving on a two-lane winding road behind a car going 10 miles an hour below the speed limit. And do not be ahead of me in the checkout line with a ton of groceries and a stack of coupons and then go to pay for it with a check that needs the manager's authorization. I have important things to do. The sands of my precious time are slowly slipping away.

There are times, aren't there, when we should be impatient. When institutions need change but resist it, they urge patience. "Rome wasn't built in a day, you know." How long should we be patient while millions of children are starving? How long should we tolerate racial injustice? How long will we continue to poison our environment? Don't plead for patience when we should be doing something to right the wrongs that are rampant in the world. That's the Christian thing to do, isn't it? James exhorts us to do this very thing earlier in his letter. "Don't be hearers, but doers of the Word."

The farmer who patiently waits for rains to produce a harvest doesn't sit passively, doing nothing. He must invest his labor. He works for what he is waiting for. He does what he can and entrusts God for the rest. Most of the time our impatience is the result of flawed perception...the notion that I have the know-how to fix any problem and that I am in control of what happens in my life and in my world.

I heard someone say we have three important lessons to learn: (1) Life is hard, (2) You aren't in control, and (3) Life is not about you. There's no fudging the fact that we have work to do. Jesus said we are to be a light to the world, but the project isn't ours, it's God's. It's not about us and God is not obliged to act according to our timetable.

How often have you heard this..."You've got to live for the moment," or "It doesn't get any better than this"? Well, if the present situation is all there is, and if we can't look forward to anything better than the present arrangements, we're in trouble. If this is the way it is, then there is no hope for the future. We will just fear the future. A recent Harris poll showed that 3/4 of all adults and 2/3 of high school students feel the future will be worse ten years from now. My money, my health, and my friends might all be gone. Fearing the future our lives become selfish and small. We are concerned with our wellbeing only and are indifferent to the pain and plight of others.

We need Advent because it tells us there is a future to wait for and work for. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that in the universe there is a powerful God who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and history." We won't be helped by a God whose revelation stopped at Bethlehem. God is not locked in antiquity or on the cover of the Hallmark card. God is not confined to present circumstances, for they have much to be desired. That leaves us the future which holds the substance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

Gloom and despair are unbecoming of Christians. We believe in a God of power who is at work to redeem the world, not as some faceless force, but in the person of Jesus Christ. Be patient until the coming of the Lord...not just the first coming. The world knows that a recollection of something that happened once upon a time isn't much help. A world that doesn't have much to hope for uses Christmas to temporarily fill the void with too many presents and too much partying. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la and Bing singing "White Christmas" won't do it.

Let the world have Christmas. We'll take Advent. God's best is yet to come. We'll adopt an outlook becoming of Christians who wait patiently...not fearful or frantic, not with the presumptuousness of those end-time forecasters who claim to have knowledge Jesus said even he didn't have. It may not happen next week, next year or next century. When isn't our concern. Our concern is being about his business in the meantime. Like the farmer who works and waits confidently for the harvest, we can live patiently and expectantly.

On Wednesday I spoke with John Berkebile about his father who has been moved to a nursing facility. Dialysis three times a week and a weakened condition are more than John's father desires to bear. He knows to whom he is headed and so he is letting go. As John talked about his father, I detected an obvious spirit of confidence, not in John's capacity to cope, but confidence that his father would go on and one day they shall reunite. This is a picture of patience with God.

I'd like to revisit a scene I shared with you some time ago. A receptionist escorted an elderly little lady into the office and the doctor did a double take. In all his years of practice he had never done psychotherapy with a patient like this. He studied her stooped shoulders and silver hair and said, "Mrs. Reynolds, do you mind if I ask your age?" "Not at all, I'm 85." He shook his head and asked, "What in the world prompted you to seek therapy?" With a sparkle in her eye she said, "All I have left is my future."

That's a statement of faith and this is the orientation of Advent. The future doesn't hinge upon our urgent projects or whatever elaborate schemes the world might devise. The future is God's doing, and we wait for it best by trusting it to him, and doing the bidding of Jesus as we wait for his advent. Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

And now, if you would, I'd like you to turn in your hymnals to number 345 and let's sing the chorus which captures the hope that sustains our waiting.

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