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“Patient Endurance”
James 5:1-20
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
In our attempts to be better parents and calm a bit of the mayhem that is our household, we took some advice from a Parents magazine and instituted what we call “the pink plate.” It’s just a regular of fiestaware plate, but it has helped us to be a bit more thoughtful of each other. Here’s how it works: When we’re all four at home sharing a meal, and we remember, we give one of the people in the family the pink plate. And we start our chant: “Pink plate, pink plate, tell me what you appreciate.” Then each person needs to think of all of the things that we appreciate about the person with the pink plate. It makes the food digest a bit better sometimes, and it gives us pause to be thankful for each other, even when thoughts of violence seep through our brains.
Last night, I had the pink plate. Amanda said she appreciated that I was patient. Kim and I looked at each other in amazement. Maybe she was saying that that day, I was more patient than other days. There are times when I am decidedly impatient. I don’t think of myself as a very patient person. But for some reason, Amanda thought I was patient.
What do you think about when you think about someone who is patient?
I know when I think of someone who is patient, I think of someone with nerves of steel or incredible ability to be in denial.
Popular Christianity has given us the piety of patience where people have endured suffering without complaint. Martin Luther King once talked about how difficult it is for oppressed people to be patient when the words of “wait” usually translate into “never.”
I think of workers at the U who will be taking a strike vote this coming Wednesday and Thursday. They are in a cooling-off period during which time they are patiently waiting for management to make a counter offer. But one can only have so much patience.
I think someone who is patient is someone who is actively pursuing something. A patient person has not forgotten their goal. They have simply chosen a different path to getting it. So maybe someone who is patient is someone who is persistent in their pursuit of their goal.
Today’s scripture opens with some pretty harsh words from James. He seems to have lost his patience. He lets loose a diatribe against the wealthy who have made their money on the back of the poor.
Hear it again:
“Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten, their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the God of Hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.” (5:1-6) James doesn’t mince words in his judgements upon the rich. He condemns them for their luxurious living and for their oppression of the poor.
He borrows some of the thinking from Sirach of the inter-testimental literature which says, "To take away a neighbor’s living is to murder your neighbor: To deprive an employee of his or her wages is to shed blood.” (Sirach 34:22) My understanding of why the clerical workers union is contemplating a strike at the U. is because the U. is depriving them of their wages and calling for a wage cut for the worst-paid employees.
James lets loose this
apocalyptic-sounding judgement on the luxurious-living and oppressive
rich. But he does not call them to
repentance. That’s because he’s not
talking to them. He’s talking to the poor, misused members of his
And he calls on those who are poor to have patience. Four times in the next four verses, James calls on the people to be patient. Wait patiently until God comes. Be like a farmer who works at the field waiting for the harvest. Be patient and strengthen your hearts,” says James in 5:8. It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to be patient in such a situation.
But James doesn’t only encourage them to be patient, he also tells them to endure the suffering that they are experiencing. In verse 11 he adds his own beatitude: “Blessed are those who show endurance.”
It’s been 20 years since I ran my one and only marathon. I was doing great for the first 18 miles, which was the longest I had ever run in my life. But at about mile 20, I hit the wall. If you want to know what that feels like, think of someone dropping a grand piano on your back. It was painful and demoralizing. It was pride that got me to make the last six miles or so. I figured it would be easier to endure an hour or so of pain than a lifetime of regret. When I hobbled across the finish line, I was grateful that I could endure the race so that I would not have to endure the self-imposed humiliation of not finishing. Maybe that’s why I have only run one marathon. I know better. But I’m still drawn to endurance sports. I still like to run and to bike. I was never all that fast in sports, but I could usually outlast others. I don’t think this is what James had in mind when he was talking about endurance, but the principle is that endurance takes discipline, focus and determination.
So James wants us to be patient and to endure.
What can he mean by that?
Are the people supposed to patiently endure all of that mess in front of them?
Are they to be doormats and let the wealthy continue to walk all over them?
I think it all depends on how we translate patient endurance. It depends on how we live our own patient endurance.
The older youth were given a choice of what to study this year. They chose the book of Revelation. Throughout the first three chapters of Revelation, seven small struggling illegal underground subversive churches were praised for their patient endurance in the midst of an empire that was out to destroy them. But it did not stop with their own pious suffering. The work of their church was not to simply endure the ways of the world until the second coming of Christ. The faithful witnesses needed to find a way to live and thrive in the midst of a world where the empire told them their faith was at best folly and at worst treasonous. Enduring this patiently meant opposing it. Latin American Liberation theologian Pablo Ricard wrote that a better translation of Patient Endurance is “persistent resistance.”
That gives it a whole new flavor doesn’t it?
Someone who patiently endures could be someone who just takes suffering over and over again. Remember that Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day and other nonviolence teachers remind us that suffering for suffering’s sake is never a just thing. Suffering should only be done in order to change the world. One chooses to suffer to expose an injustice, which will in turn cause the adversary to reconsider their action. This is what we call voluntary redemptive suffering. It is a form of persistent resistance and it leads to a better life for the victims of injustice.
James ends his book by telling his struggling church that it is all about persistent resistance. That’s what he meant when he said in the first chapter to be doers of the word and not hearers only. You do the word by remembering the widows and the orphans and by not being stained by the world.
In chapter 2, James said that we need to be involved in the working out of our faith, which is another way of saying living our beliefs or walking the walk instead of just talking the talk.
In chapter 3, he calls us to have true wisdom and to try to approach the wisdom from God which is above all worldly wisdom.
In chapter 4, we are told to refrain from judgementalism.
And finally in chapter 5 we are told that we are to practice patient endurance or persistent resistance. Knowing that there are forces out there who need to be resisted, we know that in the end they will not hold up. In the end, anything that advocates injustice is against God’s purposes. The stature of a Christian, therefore, is to know what’s really going on in the world. That means knowing who is ultimately in charge. Remember, it is not this leader or that leader as much as it is God who is ultimately in charge. And we faithful people are to follow God, even when that means that we look foolish. This is the essence of patient endurance. It is the realization that this world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through.
It is the realization that God’s preferential option is for the poor. God’s preferential option is also for those who side with the poor.
It is the realization that as long as we are working out our faith on behalf of the poor, we are doing God’s work.
James was written to a community in need of hope. Their lives were at stake because of their subversive stand for Jesus Christ and his ways and against the ways of the world and the state. It was hard to live in the world and not be defined by it. But that’s our task, too.
The only way to live in a situation like this is to persistently resist it.
The best way to resist a world that by definition seeks to stain you is to be with a community of people who are likewise committed to resistance.
At about mile 24 of the marathon, I was about to call it quits. I started to rationalize that I could endure all of the shame of not finishing. As I trudged along the street, looking for my exit, a friend of mine saw me struggling from the sidelines. She came out into the streets and trudged along with me for about a half mile. She talked to me, encouraged me and lifted my spirits. My pace quickened. I could see the end of the race in my mind’s eye. Her persistence kept me going and helped me endure the pain and resist my own self-doubt. I owe that successful marathon to Jill as much as I owe it to my months of training.
Church is like that. When we support each other, we are more powerful. We are more focused, we can all endure more than we thought we could.
If we do nothing else here as a church, I hope we remind each other that we are not alone. We remind each other that the road ahead is a hard one and that the rewards although great, might be far away. But together, we are a formidable resistance movement.
We are a people who know God’s purposes, or who at least strive after them.
We are a people who know that in the end, the long arc of history bends toward justice. And until that time, we join hands with one another and re remember that we are not alone.
We join hands with one another and commit ourselves to persistently resist the propensity to be stained by the world.
We join hands with one another because we know that when two or three are gathered together, God is there with us.
We join hands together, because deep in our hearts, we do believe that we shall overcome some day.
Sisters and brothers, we are the hands and feet and bodies and hearts of Christ here in this room.
Rejoice and remember that you are not alone and together we can and do make a difference.
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