II Peter 3:8-18 "Sticking with It: Patience" Scott Hoezee

There are many words that could be used to describe Americans. "Patient" is not one of them. It seems that the faster life becomes, the more impatient we are. Modern cars and highways allow us to get around with a swiftness unimaginable to people not so very long ago. Yet road rage boils over in only minor traffic delays. A few months ago when the S-curve construction project began, the Grand Rapids Press and local TV stations devoted so much coverage to the possible delays you would have thought this was one of the most vital stories of the new century. If the pope came to town he wouldn't get that kind of coverage!

Similarly, many of us fly on planes more often now than ever before. Even with typical delays we can easily cross the country or an entire ocean in hours. Yet impatience has gotten so bad that the airlines have enlisted the aid of the FBI to assign agents to every major airport so that the more surly of airline passengers can be arrested on the spot. Cell phones allow people to be in touch constantly in ways that was the stuff of science fiction fifteen years ago. But if one of those phones doesn't work right, people fly off the handle at the horrid inconvenience of having to wait until they can find a pay phone to make a call!

And the faster computers get, the faster we want them. What's that you say, you have only a 28k modem? Pshaw! You simply must upgrade to a 56k so that web page can download in ten seconds instead of , gasp, twenty! What's that you say, you're actually still using a modem? Don't you know about high-speed Internet connections via AT&T cable?

Ironically, as I typed this sermon last week, I did so on a computer which was behaving pretty wretchedly. Some glitch caused my computer to slow down remarkably. I actually found myself timing how long it took to launch a new email window. When it clocked in at over 30 seconds, I nearly blew a gasket!

In many ways the kind of patience that can help us get through these frustrations is a minor league patience compared to the major spiritual forbearance we focus on this evening. Yet they may be connected, too. Impatient people tend to be just generally impatient. Nurturing the fruit of patience, therefore, may well be something which will help us in all areas of our lives.

Biblically patience mostly has to do with long-term situations. The two Greek words are hupomone meaning "steadfast endurance" and makrothumia meaning "longsuffering." These are not words you would apply to a doctor's waiting room but rather they would more sensibly apply to the whole sweep of your life.

Basically the fruit of patience means having the ability to dwell gladly in your life. The opposite of patience is the kind of restlessness that causes you to forever be craning your neck to see what's coming up. And many people live this way. They end up wishing their lives away. Instead of enjoying your kids at whatever age they are at, you find yourself pining for the day when they get older and will be more independent. Instead of investing yourself in your work, you pass many days hoping for a promotion, a transfer, or anything which will change your lot in life. In the short term you live for the weekend.

But all of that suggests a basic unhappiness. The present moment is forever impoverished by the fact that we let ourselves be mostly occupied by some future time. When you live this way, you tend to have a much shorter fuse. If you are impatient with the entire shape of your job, you will also be prone to explode at the little annoyances that crop up. If your job involves a lot of telephone work but you hate the whole job, then you may at times find yourself slamming the receiver back down because of no more than a busy signal. If you pine for a time when your kids will be older, then every dirty diaper or spilled glass of orange juice is more than just a little something to clean up--it's a disaster!

Abiding frustration is a sign of impatience. The patient are able to live more happily in the present moment, and the reason they are able to do so is because they possess a larger picture of what life is all about. Patient people are able to "hang in there" because they sense that they are participating in something larger and grander--they are driving toward a divine purpose that transcends the moment even as it imbues the moment with a certain gravity.

That is what Peter told his readers. Already late in the first century Christians were becoming impatient with the fact that Jesus had not yet returned. They were the first to experience the delay of Christ's return in glory. And they started to regard the intervening time as fruitless and empty. It was filled with suffering and discouraging setbacks. So they asked, "What in the world is God waiting for? We didn't think Jesus would take this long!" So in this his last letter Peter tells his readers to adopt a divine perspective on time. God's time is not our time. God's "blink of an eye" is our decade.

That's one thing to keep in mind, but not the most important thing. The more important truth is that this intervening time is not empty but full. It's not that God has forgotten that his yesterday was our millennium. No, God is well aware of our time, its passage, and what's going on here. But he has a purpose for letting the time pass: he's filling up the kingdom with more folks! Keeping this purpose in mind can shore up patience.

Christians tough it out and hang in there in this world because they already believe God has the whole world in his hands. Christians already believe that God is at work, that he knows what he's doing, that what looks like no more than the random, chaotic, booming, buzzing nature of history contains a hidden plan for the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God, Jesus made clear again and again, is for now a hidden reality, but it is a reality. It may be the mustard seed in the soil, the yeast in the dough, the treasure buried in the field, but it's there, it's working, and will one day burst into view in a way no one will miss.

Somehow, in ways we don't always see, we believe that we are participating in that kingdom in that we are already citizens of it. That helps us to press on. That keeps us from despair. In the Bible God's patience with us is what gives his compassion the chance to save us. Over and again in the Old and New Testaments we read that God is slow to anger and that precisely this patient slowness is what keeps him from any snap judgments. God's ability to stick with us desperately flawed folks is what mediates between wrath and grace.

In a way patience can have a similar function in our lives, but in our case patience mediates between hope and despair. We believe in the reality of Jesus as Lord. But for now we experience emotional and physical pain which sometimes comes very close to blocking our ability to see God at all. Patience is what makes us take a deep breath, take a moment to review the content of our faith, and then go on with hope and confidence still intact. As such, patience is like a steel girder which lends strength and shape to the edifice of our faith. Patience is like the spine which gives us posture and the ability to stand tall.

But couldn't someone allege that the Christian focus on God's kingdom is pretty much the same thing as wishing your life away? Don't Christians pine for a future in a way not so very different from the mother who lives for the day when her kids will be older? In other words, what keeps the kind of kingdom focus I'm talking about from degenerating into something which makes believers so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good?

Let's admit that this would not be a bad point for a cynic to make. Let's further admit that there have been and still are not a few Christians who have used their hope for God's coming kingdom as a reason (or an excuse) for not engaging this world now. But that's wrong. That view turns Christian patience into a placid and passive waiting game. This is patience as a quiet sitting out of life on the sidelines of the world. But the fruit of patience is not about sitting still. Patience is an active word in the Spirit-filled life. Patience is not placidity. Patience is not passivity. Patience is perseverance in action!

And the reason for that action is precisely because the kingdom of God is not some future reality which will one day come into being but rather the kingdom of God is already real and we know it because Jesus lives in our hearts right now. We are citizens of God's kingdom not later, not tomorrow, not after we die, but now! That is what girds us up to act accordingly. It's our vision of Jesus on the throne today that helps us to have the patient "stick-to-itiveness" to witness to that Christ in all we do and say.

Of course, we have to do that in a sinful world where there will often be a sad sense of incompleteness. Two weeks ago we noted the irony that the fruit of joy can make you weep as well as laugh. Now we see the irony that the fruit of patience does not rule out all frustration but keeps us going in frustration! If we patiently work toward a vision of the kingdom, we cannot help but be frustrated at times to see how far away we still are from the pure loveliness of God's ways. We are already today citizens of a kingdom in which one day there will be no more tears. But for now we have plenty to cry about. We are citizens of a kingdom in which one day no one will ever harm or get sick. Yet we ourselves are sometimes guilty of causing harm and each week's church bulletin bears witness to how common sickness is. That's frustrating! But the fruit of patience keeps us going by keeping us from sliding into debilitating despair.

But patience also keeps us from undermining the kingdom by rash actions or words in response to frustration. In a few weeks we will consider the fruit of kindness--a fruit that is on the endangered species list as frustration in the so-called "culture wars" leads people to angry and unkind demonstrations against this or that area of society that is not cooperating with us. But the same patience that helps us keep plugging away for the kingdom should also keep us from rashly unkind reactions to the frustrations that come.

Again, all of that is also the apostle Peter's bottom line. God in Christ is coming again. But it's taking a while. Yet the end will come. A cleansing fire of renewal will sweep the cosmos, creating "the home of righteousness." That's Christian hope. But what does Peter do with that? Does he say, "Therefore, sit around, scan the horizon, sit on the sidelines of this world and just wait it out until you get your promised reward"? No! Peter pivots from the ultimate Christian hope to advise his friends to live for God, to witness to Christ, to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Even as God's patience means he is very busy bringing people to himself, so our God-like patience must make us busy, too. We've got work to do and the patience to help us stick with it despite imperfect results.

This is not an easy world in which to have faith and hope. God knows that. Why else do you think he has his Holy Spirit nurture the fruit of patience in us? We'd never make it without patience. And in its "steadfast endurance" mode patience provides us with the ability to hold onto faith even when fond ambitions for this or that kingdom project fail to be realized, and yes, even when we are woefully disappointed in our own sins.

Two weeks ago when we looked at the fruit of joy we said that what gives us joy is that ultimate sense that because of what Jesus did, life is, at bottom, "all right." We're going to make it. We will one day visibly see the kingdom. Our sins, failures, and incomplete projects cannot spell the end of a kingdom already firmly established in Christ. And so swaddled in grace and awash with the presence of a very patient Lord Jesus Christ who sticks with us, we press on.

But it's not just the wider world that tries our patience but it's also the church. The church may be a part of God's kingdom and it may also be true that the church is supposed to be that one place where the kingdom of God is made visible, but it's not perfect. There are times when it, too, challenges our ability to hold onto a vision of God in Christ Jesus.

That can happen institutionally with an entire congregation, but it can happen just as often because of individuals within a congregation. There are church policies that try our patience but there are also church members who do the same. We can talk about the "unity of the body" all we want, but we all know that it's not that neat for now. We don't all get along as well as we'd like. We may be more or less of one mind when we say the Apostles' Creed together but the same is not true when we discuss church music or the deliberations of the Council.

What holds, or should hold, us together, what makes us patiently stick with the church anyway, is that faith-filled vision that Jesus is among us. He's patient with us (thanks be to God!), actually manages to get a tremendous amount done through us, and he calls us to be patient one with another, too. No, that does not mean we put up with anything and everything. That does not mean that if one church member abused or swindled another member that we are all called placidly to just "take it." Of course not! But what the fruit of patience does suggest is that in the ordinary foibles of life, we stick with each other.

But I sometimes wonder if on this front we are not letting this fruit shrivel and dry up like some freeze-dried apricot. Maybe it's a Grand Rapids thing, maybe it's the same all over, but it seems too easy to bail on a congregation. I'm not trying to make anyone feel unduly guilty on this point. Some of us have made such congregational switches in our lives, and for some of us this was an agonizing choice, fraught with tears and bathed in prayer. We are forced to make tragic choices sometimes, and I'm not denying that. But there are some who hop around perpetually, never quite finding a congregation that is altogether to their liking. There's always something to prompt a move--a disagreeable hymn, a sermon emphasis, a building project, a minister who's not friendly enough. Something is amiss and so the search goes on for that perfect place which will not offend in any corner.

Yet that may be a failure of patience, not in the sense of waiting a certain minister out or waiting until your opinion prevails. It's a failure of patience in the sense of not imitating the patient heart of a God who knows he's never yet been able to find a perfect congregation, either. But he never stops working in and through most all of those congregations anyway.

Last week we noted the interdependent nature of the fruit of the Spirit. You need all of them to have any one of them. So here: proper patience requires also the fruits of love, compassion, and kindness. It requires the ability to stick with and love really quite seriously flawed folks like you and like me.

My great-grandmother spent fully 50 years praying for one of her sons who had become wayward and far from the church. Late in his life when my great-grandma was well into her 90s, he returned to the faith. "Just goes to show you what a little prayer can do," she said to me. I was all of 18 at the time and thought I already knew something about praying for a long time. Great-grandma showed me a patient faith I knew nothing about at that time and still maybe don't fully possess today, either. But she had the long look of eternity, the long look of the kingdom, and an abiding faith that God in Christ was here and heard each of that half-century's worth of prayers for her boy. She stuck with prayer because she knew God was sticking with her. That's not always an easy truth to reconcile with a world as fractured as this one. But the fruit of patience motivates us to keep trying as we patiently stick with the God who patiently sticks with us. Amen.