Grace and
peace to you from him who was, and who is, and who is to come. Amen
Lord, give
me patience, and I want it NOW!
There are
few among us that can say that we are patient.
And those
that can say we are patient may need to work on our humility.
Part of
the problem may well be
that we
have so few opportunities to practice patience nowadays.
I remember
our Friday night ritual as a family about once every two weeks.
After
school, we would come home, and wait for my dad to come home from work.
Then we
would go as a family out to the shopping mall.
The first
place we would go was the bank.
My father
would patiently wait in line
to get his
paycheck cashed,
and get
the money out that he needed for the next couple of weeks.
Meanwhile,
my brother and I would patiently sit and wait.
No texting
for me, no iPod for me, no Candy Crush saga for me;
no
hand-held movie machine for me.
Just a
stack of several-months-old copies of TIME magazine
waiting
for my next arrival.
Being the
odd child I was, I liked reading TIME magazine.
After what
seemed an eternity,
my dad
would be finished,
and we
would go out to eat somewhere.
Every time
I take the kids on an errand
and they
complain,
I trot out
the old ‘going to the bank on Friday night’ story.
Because,
you see, there was no such thing as an ATM or direct deposit,
the bank
wasn’t open on Saturday or Sunday,
and you
couldn’t deposit your money by taking a picture of a check
and
sending it over the Internet to your bank.
I’m told
you can do that nowadays.
My phone doesn’t
do that.
So we have
less opportunity today to exercise patience.
Our second
reading begins an exhortation:
Be
patient!
But the apostle
James is not talking
about the
patience we need in everyday life,
waiting in
line, waiting in traffic, waiting for Christmas morning to come,
or at
least for Christmas to be over.
Neither is
he really talking about the patience a farmer needs,
working
through the year in order to receive the yield of the crop at harvest time.
Rather, he
is talking about the patience we need to exercise
while God
is working his purpose out.
‘Be
patient until the coming of the Lord.’
Now if we
are encouraged to be patient about something,
it goes
without saying that in some way we ought to be impatient about it.
James
writes these lines
not in
order to commend patience as some kind of virtue,
but in
order to acknowledge the impatient desire his hearers have
for God to
bring all things to their heavenly goal.
This is
what we say in times of great stress, tragedy, or sorrow,
for
example when one day before the nation remembers
the death
of elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut,
another
shooting happens in a Colorado school
only miles
from where the movie theatre massacre happened last year
and also
close by the location of perhaps the quintessential school shooting,
which
happened all the way back in the year 2000
at
Columbine High School.
We pray,
‘Lord, have mercy!’
God,
intervene! O Lord, come!
Let all of
this come to an end!
Out of our
anger, frustration, fear, disappointment and sorrow,
we grumble.
We find a scapegoat.
We blame other
people, we blame society,
and some people
blame God.
At the
beginning of the liturgy we prayed for the goals we cannot reach.
We can fly
machines to the moon and to Mars,
we can destroy
the world at the touch of a button,
but there
are some things that only God can do.
We pray
for the peace that only God can give;
for our
salvation from sin, death and evil;
for the
peace of the world, the healing of the Church,
the unity
of all peoples.
Lord, have
mercy!
These are
the things we desire,
and if we
do not desire them in our heart,
if we are
always simply focused on the next distraction, the next election,
the next
momentary satisfaction,
then we
have reason to reexamine ourselves and our faith.
Be
patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord,
says
James.
God has
not yet worked his entire purpose out.
But he is
working.
His
working is hidden,
like a
seed working up toward the earth,
like an
earth that needs to be softened by the early and late rains.
And so we
are patient while God works.
James
warns us that while God is working,
the
temptation is for us to look around
and
grumble about the others,
those who
perhaps are getting in the way of God working,
or at
least getting in the way of our having a peaceful life.
Instead,
the apostle recommends looking at the life of the prophets;
those who
waited in their time for God to work,
and who
proclaimed his mercy and love as he was working.
Who knows.
Perhaps we
are part of God’s working out of his purpose.
That would
seem to be a right understanding of why we are here on this earth,
why we are
part of the church:
to be used
by God in the healing of the world.
Be
patient, brothers and sisters.
And yet
when you are impatient,
you at
least are in good company.
John the
Baptist,
the one
who proclaims the coming of the Lord,
the one
who baptized Jesus in the Jordan River,
has been
put in jail.
He sees
nothing but defeat,
and Jesus
is out there in Galilee doing who knows what.
In
impatience,
John sends
messengers to Jesus,
saying,
perhaps not without some exasperation,
‘Are you
the one who is to come,
or are we
to wait for another?’
This cry echoes
in our heart as well.
Two thousand
years after that first Christmas,
and we are
yet waiting for the peace announced by the angels
to be made
clear in the world, in our lives.
So with
John we need to hear the words of Jesus as well.
This is
what is happening in Jesus:
‘The blind
receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf
hear, the dead are raised’
and,
miracle of miracles:
‘the poor
have good news brought to them.’
Think
about it.
When he
healed people,
Jesus was
doing things that other prophets and faith healers
were doing
at the time.
He was not
unusual in this regard.
What the
gospels seem to focus on is the meaning behind the miracles:
the fact
that Jesus did them accompanying his teaching
was to
give weight to the teaching.
Over
millennia, prophets, healers, and scientists
have
indeed done all the miracles that Jesus was said to have done.
But only
God brings good news to the poor,
those who
are forgotten by the people of the earth.
Only God
forgives sins,
Only God
can promise life in the face of death.
God is
still working his purpose out.
Jesus is
present in our world by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Be
patient, therefore, brothers and sisters,
until the
perfection of God’s plan,
until the
ripening of the harvest.
Pray,
‘Lord, have mercy.’
Long for the
kingdom of God
and see it
in the small things:
how it
forgives sin, heals wounds of body, mind, and spirit,
and
redeems people from evil, suffering, and despair.
Work and
do your part as God calls you.
And at the
coming of the Lord,
you need
not worry if you are least or last,
for even
the least and last will receive the reward
of those
who have waited upon God and his love.
