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"The Gift of Patience" Luke 13:1-9 A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley March 11, 2007 University Baptist Church Minneapolis, MN
We are at the third Sunday in Lent. We have done a fine job so far of claiming our gifts. Last weekend’s Cabaret was a wonderful example of people’s gifts coming to the fore. Gifts of poise, of humor, of music, of bravery, of poetry, of ventriloquism, of cooking, of hospitality, of generosity all came forward. I hope you are looking at the gifts of God sheet I had you fill out on the first Sunday in Lent during that big snowstorm. I hope you are remembering and expanding on that list of gifts. The past two Sundays we have looked at the gifts of endurance and discernment. Today we are looking at the gift of patience. Patience is a virtue, so they say. Patience is something that is often tested if you have children. They have minds of their own and don’t always want to do the things we want them to do. From time to time, I have needed to give myself a time-out in order to regain my patience. Patience is a gift I don’t always possess. I have found myself praying to God, "Give me patience and give it to me NOW!" The Gospel reading for today addresses patience when it refers to the fig tree. A man is impatient because the fig tree has not born fruit in three years. Jesus encourages the person to wait for another year. Be patient. The book of Revelation says that there is a special status granted those who display patient endurance. Planting a fruit tree is an act of faithfulness. Faithfulness requires patience. Fruit does not come on a tree in the first year. If it does, it’s not very plentiful. It takes many years for a tree to bear fruit. When we were visiting our sister church in Nicaragua four years ago, our group met with a man who had been working a farm. He was part of a collective of farmers who got some land and some aid in order to try and make it as farmers. He did what few others did. He planted fruit trees. These trees would take at least seven years to bear fruit. But he knew that making a long-term investment like that would pay off. He had the patience, the endurance, the discernment to see that this was the right thing to do. Now, he’s able to feed his family and sell his produce while others have given up on farming. It took patience to deal with the years of no fruit. It took patience and a bit of resilience to be the brunt of other people’s jokes. And in the end he bore fruit because of his patience. In today’s parable, the planter is impatient because after three years his fig tree has not born fruit. He wants to cut it down and try another kind of crop. Jesus encourages the planter to be patient with the fig tree. I’m no horticulturist and maybe I’m confusing it with it’s cousin, dates, but even four years is pretty quick for a fig or date tree to bear fruit. In fact, it likely takes ten times that long. Planting a date tree is the ultimate test of patience. It means that those who plant are seldom if ever going to eat the fruit from the tree. Those of us who eat dates or figs do so because another generation has planted them. Planting trees is an act of faith. It is a giving to the next generation. It is more than patience. It is faith at work. Patience. It’s a word that people throw around when others are being uppity about rights or dignity or fairness. "You gotta have patience" is another way of saying "be quiet and don’t make so much of a fuss." But there are some things that patience cannot hold back. I’m reminded of how Martin Luther King spoke from his Birmingham jail cell about the supposed virtue of patience: "My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience."
There are plenty of things to be impatient about these days. There is the crisis in Darfur. There is the granting of rights to same-sex couples which actually has made some headway in the legislature this week. There is the constant killing in Afghanistan and Iraq and soon Iran. We’re impatient to find a solution. There is the silence in the face of violence. There is the impotence in the face of depression. There is the powerlessness that faces people who are unemployed or underemployed. We are rightfully impatient about all of this. We want solutions. But do we want sloppy, messy impulsive solutions? We could argue that anything is better than nothing. Creative impatience demands change and is a Godly act of defiance. There’s an aspect of patience, which reminds us that the long arc of history bends toward justice. And that sooner or later there will be fairness and equity. Patience in this context might just be seeing the larger picture and never forgetting that God walks alongside us when we feel most vulnerable and alone. Patience is not a virtue if it means sitting back and doing nothing. That’s not patience. That’s laziness. Patience is really waiting in anticipation, on the edge of our seats, ready to seize the moment when it arrives at our door. For many of us, it’s already here. Patience isn’t the same thing as passivity. Patience is refusing to respond with impudent spite to something that drives you nuts, because responding brings you down to another level. Patience is not a passive posture, but a prayerful committed presence in the midst of chaos. I have been following the Soulforce Equality Ride on www.soulforce.org. These 52 young people are on busses visiting college campuses in order to have patient dialogue with students and the campus community about full inclusion of the LGBT community. They were in Sioux Falls, Iowa on Friday and their bus was painted with hateful graffiti. They were arrested as they tried to lay a wreath at the statue of a gay soldier at Notre Dame yesterday. And yet, their persistent, prayerful presence is changing hearts and minds. They are putting faces on an "issue". They are refusing to react with violence to the violence they receive. This kind of patient endurance is a gift. Patience means resisting with nonviolence. Patience means knowing who is really in charge. Patience is taking back your power. It is a transforming initiative where you remember who’s in charge of the world and that we have a choice in how we act and react to our world. Patience is telling the truth and not getting caught up in the drama of defending yourself to the extent that you lose your groundedness. Patience is the ultimate groundedness. Several years ago, my grandmother had a stroke. It wasn’t a real bad one with all of the paralysis, but she did have trouble with her words and her logic. The doctors prescribed putting her in a nursing facility. But my grandfather knew better. He kept her at the farm for that entire summer. He waited on her hand and foot. He surrounded her with the familiar things of her life and constantly reminded her of who she was. He kept the family close around her. Sure enough, by the end of the summer, her cognitive function had returned and she was able to regain her independence. That steadfast, committed patience is one of the legacies of my grandparents. He learned it from his own parents, I know. I hope that I can pass it down to my own kids. What trees have we planted? What do we leave for our next generation? What is our legacy? How do we live with patience and purpose at the same time? What we plant now may not make a difference to us, but it will to our descendants. May they bear fruit because we have patiently tended the gardens and planted the trees with deep roots of faithfulness, we have nurtured their branches with prayer and we patiently await the day when we sit down and feast together on the banquet of their fruit. |