The Fruits of the Spirit: Patience

Today, we continue our series on the fruits of the Spirit, and we turn our attention to the fourth fruit on that list: patience.

Now, I must confess that I was a bit excited to begin studying this particular fruit because oftentimes I find myself lacking patience.  I mean, a lack of patience is why I enjoy fishing for bass and not for catfish.  When you fish for catfish, you throw your bait into the water and just sit and wait.  And wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Sometimes, you can wait an entire afternoon or an entire day, and nothing happens.  This is very, very tough on me.  I personally don’t like it one bit.  But in bass fishing...well, that’s an entirely different dynamic.  You are constantly throwing your lure out into the water and reeling it in.  You can cast far away.  You can cast nearby.  You sometimes have to work though the weeds.  You are in constant motion even if the fish aren’t biting.  You aren’t just standing or sitting around waiting.  You don’t have to be patient.  Yet, they do say, “Patience is a virtue.”  So, I was hoping to cultivate patience so that at the very least, I might become a better fisherman–at least for catfish.

Ah, but then I started digging into the meaning of the word patience.  On Monday, I sat down and pulled out my commentaries.  I began looking up the word patience in the original Greek.  And I discovered something.  I discovered that there are actually two words in Greek that are translated into the English equivalent “patience.”  One of those words indeed meant simply waiting for something to happen.  But then there was the other one, and here is your Greek word for the day–a word that I am sure you will not remember five seconds after I speak it.  The Greek word used for patience right here in this list of the fruits of the Spirit is makrothymía.  It does not mean simply waiting.  No.  It has a much different nuance.  Let me read to you what Strong’s Concordance gives as its definition: “Makrothymia comes from the Greek words makrós, "long" and thymós, "passion, anger"–properly, long-passion, in other words waiting sufficient time before expressing anger. This avoids the premature use of force (retribution) that rises out of improper anger (a personal reaction).”  So, patience as Paul lists it here as a fruit of the Spirit is waiting a sufficient time before expressing anger.

This means patience, as a fruit of the Spirit, means not only being able to wait in the doctor’s office; it means being able to wait in the doctor’s office knowing that your appointment was at 10 a.m. and that it is now 11 a.m. and you still have a pleasant disposition.  You haven’t become angry.  It’s also the type of patience showed by the man pushing a cart with a screaming baby at the supermarket.  As he goes up and down the aisles, he softly says, “Keep calm, George.  Don’t get all excited, George.  Don’t yell, George.”  A lady watching with approval says, “You certainly need to be commended for your patience in trying to quiet little George!” The man said, “Lady, I am George!”  That’s the patience spoken of as a fruit of the Spirit.

And as I continued on with my study, I found that this word was used by Jesus only a few times.  One of those times, I’m going to deal with in the adult Bible study today, so you are welcome to join in on that.  But probably the most significant time Jesus used this word was in a parable that is very familiar to us.  It is a parable that I literally spent three weeks preaching on not too long ago in my sermon series on forgiveness.  Many of you might remember the parable of the unforgiving servant.  As I sat and wrestled with the true meaning of this word and how it was reshaping my entire understanding of what I had thought patience was and how it related to Jesus’ teachings,  I had to stop.  Literally. I had to stop and just let things settle.  I got up from my studies, grabbed my car keys and headed out to visit one of our members who was in the hospital. 

I mean, have you ever had such a thing happen to you?  Have you ever thought that you knew exactly what something meant and how it played out only to suddenly have everything changed?  Have you ever thought that you had studied something and understood it only then to have one more piece of information change your perspective drastically?  I had to go from understanding patience as simply enduring waiting for something to understanding patience as a slowness to anger.  I had to let my mind process that switch.  Now,  I am wondering if you are having to process this information in the same way.  I am wondering if you are having to re-think your understanding of patience just like I did.  I am wondering if you need some time to let your brain settle in just like I did.  If that’s the case, then maybe I should stop the sermon right here and give you a week to think about it.  Then, next week, we can all come back, and I will finish this sermon when we’ve let the dust settle.

Now, most of you know that I’m not able to do that.  I can’t preach a sermon where I don’t even mention the Gospel of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, so, that means I’m going to have to press onward.  Therefore, I am going to ask those of you who may be struggling to try and hold onto the definition of patience as: slow to anger.  And perhaps turning to something familiar will help us do that as we look briefly again at the parable of the unforgiving servant as we find it printed in our bulletin today.

Just to recap, we know that a master who is wealthy beyond imagination begins settling accounts with his slaves.  A particular slave is brought before him who owes the equivalent of $6 billion.  There is no way possible this slave can pay his master back.  The debt is entirely too large.  Therefore, the master is going to sell this slave along with all the slave’s possessions and the slave’s wife and children to recoup the debt.  The slave falls down, kisses his master’s feet and says, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you everything.”  When I preached on this parable, I was under the assumption that the slave was begging for time.  I thought he was trying to convince his master that given enough time, he would pay back the debt–although we know this is an impossibility.  But, alas, this was the wrong assumption.  This is not what the slave is saying.  The slave is saying, “Don’t let your anger burn against me; don’t let your wrath be turned against me; be slow to anger, and I will pay you back everything.”  That’s actually a pretty big difference in what is being said because we know that the master has every right to be angry with this slave.  We know that the master has every right to unleash his wrath upon this slave.  This slave has managed, God knows how, to lose $6 billion of his master’s money.  That’s not chump change in the least.  That’s an overwhelming amount of your master’s money to lose.  Anyone who’s lost a substantial sum of money on a bad investment will tell you how angry that makes you.  But this slave is appealing to his master’s compassion.  This slave is appealing to the master’s love.

And guess what?  What does the master show?  Compassion.  The master has makrothymía.  The master is tremendously slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  Jesus is reminding his listeners–and us–of the reality of what God is like; a reality echoed even in the Old Testament in Nehemiah 9: 16-17: 16 ‘But they and our ancestors acted presumptuously and stiffened their necks and did not obey your commandments; 17they refused to obey, and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them; but they stiffened their necks and determined to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them.”

And that is exactly what the master does here.  The master swallows the debt.  The master writes off $6 billion and frees the slave.  This is the heart of the Gospel.  This is exactly what Jesus does for us on the cross.  We come before God owing a debt that we cannot possibly pay.  Our sin is overwhelming.  We have sinned against God in thought, word and deed.  Every time we have sinned against our neighbor or against the creation, we have sinned against God.  And we can never commit enough good to erase that debt.  We can never, ever pay it off.

Yet, justice demands that it must be paid.  And so, God pays it Himself in the person of Jesus.  Jesus takes our debt upon himself and faces the anger that we should have faced.  Jesus takes our debt upon himself and pays the price that we should have paid.  The cancellation of our debt is free for us, but tremendously costly for God.  But such is the compassion of our God.  Such is the grace of our God.  Such is the love of our God. 

But the cancellation of the debt is only half of what happens, for our God now gives us His righteousness.  Our God then clothes us with glory.  Our God then gives us garments that are whiter than snow.  “For as many of you who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have clothed yourselves with Christ...”  (Gal. 3:27) Not only has our sin been removed and have we been rendered spotless, we have also become children of God.  Jesus has made us His brothers and sisters so that we will share in His inheritance.  And that inheritance was gloriously revealed in the resurrection.  Just as Jesus was raised from the dead, we will be raised from the dead.  Just as Jesus suffering was transformed into good, our suffering will be transformed into good.  These are the things that happen to us when we place our trust in Jesus’ work and not our own.  These are the promises we can hold onto when we trust in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of our lives. 

And when we understand the makrothymía that God has had toward us; when we understand how slow to anger God was with us, then we will have makrothymía toward others.  We will be slow to anger toward others.  We will understand that we were and still are broken people.  We will understand that we needed a savior.  And we will be patient when others sin against us.  For we know that they need grace just like we need grace. 

Ah, but that does not mean that there is no time and place for anger.  That does not mean that anger completely vanishes.  Remember makrothymía means slow to anger.  Jesus reminds us of that in the remainder of the parable because the servant who received compassion from his master fails to extend that same compassion to a fellow servant.  A fellow servant owes him the equivalent of $10,000, and when the fellow servant pleads for makrothymía–that anger might be slow, his pleas are unanswered.  The one who was forgiven fails to forgive. 

And then, the One who was slow to anger, becomes angry.  The one who had forgiven, reinstates the debt and throws the one whose heart was not changed into prison where he must pay back the debt.  And we know, that this debt will never be repaid.  The one who had been forgiven will spend eternity in prison.  Jesus rams home the message, if you who know that you have been forgiven and you fail to forgive, the result will be eternal punishment.  Makrothymía has its limits.

There’s a story about a truck driver who dropped in at an all-night restaurant in the western U.S.  The waitress had just served his meal when three drunken bikers came in and asked him for a fight.  One grabbed his hamburger, and another took a handful of his french fries, while the third picked up his coffee and drank it.  The trucker didn’t respond as one might predict.  Instead, he calmly got up from the table with his check, left his money at the cash register, and walked outside.  As the waitress took his money, she watched the man drive away in a big truck.  When she returned, one of the bikers said, “He’s not very tough, is he?” She said, “I don’t know much about that, but I know he’s not much of a truck driver because he just ran over three motorcycles in the parking lot.”

Now, I’m not suggesting that we run over motorcycles or anything of that sort.  Not in the least.  But I am suggesting that even though we practice patience; even though we are slow to anger, there is also a time where we must realize that there are things that are wrong.  We must realize that there are things that must be confronted.  We must realize that we cannot stand idly by and allow things like poverty, abuse, hunger, bullying, harassment, and such things to go unchecked.  Our anger, like God’s anger must be kindled against such things. 

But here is the kicker–this is why makrothymía is a gift: our anger is directed toward the actions, not the people.  With people, we have patience–we are slow to anger.  Our first response toward people is to share with them the love of God in Christ Jesus.  Our first response is to help them understand how they have been forgiven.  Our first response is to introduce them to the God who loved them enough to die for them when they were unlovable.  For this, and this alone truly changes a heart and helps them stop doing the things they once did that were contrary to God’s word. 

Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran Church once said, and I am paraphrasing here: If I truly want people to change their behavior, I do not preach the law; on the contrary, I preach the gospel over and over and over again.  You see, it is very easy for us to see things that are wrong, and yell out, “Thou shalt not!!!”  But it is much more difficult to say, “Look to the cross at the God who died for you.”  To do so requires something special within us.  It requires an ability to be slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  It requires makrothymía–patience.  May we all be blessed with this fruit.  Amen.

Re-Forming

    There was a potter who after years of dedication and hard work decided to create his most wonderful work.  He woke that morning and began working the clay.  He added just the right amount of water to make it just the perfect consistency.  He molded it with his hands to check and make sure.  When he was completely, absolutely satisfied, he threw it on the potter’s wheel.

    Sitting down, the potter began to spin the wheel.  Years of doing this very thing had honed his muscle movements perfectly.  The wheel spun as he worked his feet building up to just the perfect speed.  The potter’s hands then flashed toward the clay.  The hands worked it, embraced it, and molded it.  The lump of clay began to change shape.  Guided by skillful fingers it rose into a perfect mound.  Studying the mound for just a second, the potter thrust his fingers toward it and shaped it further.  A piece of pottery so masterful, so creative began to take shape.  The master’s hands continued to work and mold and create until after what seemed like eternity, the piece was finished.  The artist stood back and admired his work.  It seemed perfect.  He could detect no flaws.  Removing it from the wheel, he set it apart to dry. Eventually, he would paint and fire the piece so that all could see this marvelous artwork.

    Going to bed that night, the potter dreamed of seeing the faces of others light up as they viewed the exquisite piece he had thrown this day.  The dreams were abnormally sweet.

    The next morning, the potter awoke and checked on his masterpiece.  When he entered the room, he cried out in dismay.  The piece had slumped and fallen into disarray!  This could not be.  He had mixed everything perfectly!  He had taken all precautions!  This should not have happened!  He rushed to check on his piece.  Looking it over, he thought it could be more than salvaged.  As he inspected it, he was quite sure he could actually restore it to its original perfection.

    His skillful fingers once again worked over this masterful piece of art.  Molding the clay, he reformed it into its original beauty.  After painstaking moments, he stared once more at the intricate beauty he had created.  He then departed to continue his other work.

    But alas! When the artist came back to check on the piece, he noticed it becoming deformed once again!  What was wrong with this piece?  He had never had such a thing happen before.  Should he start over?  Should he scrap his work?  Should he just try to recreate it?

    No.  The piece was too beautiful.  It was too precious.  It was indeed a masterpiece, and so the potter reformed it once more.

    Perhaps it was fate.  Perhaps it was something else, but the potter found that each time he reformed the piece of pottery, it somehow managed to get out of whack.  No matter what he tried; no matter how he added water or extra clay, it would fall out of perfection and into disrepair.  People marveled at how the potter could be so stubborn.  “Why don’t you just scrap that thing and try and create it again?”  “Wouldn’t it be worth your time just to move on?”  “Why don’t you just give up on that thing and just let it go.  Let it do its own thing and you create some other piece of artwork.”

    The advice was often tempting.  It seemed like it would be more rational to give upon the whole process, scrap the thing, and start over.  Surely there was another masterpiece within those hands and fingers.  Each time those thoughts crept in, the potter would look at that piece he had sculpted.  He saw the beauty of his creation.  He saw how marvelous it looked when it was brought to perfection.  He saw that in a real way, it was a part of him–almost as if it were created in his own image.  Destruction was out of the question.  He loved this piece of work.  He knew what it could be, and he would not stop reforming it–even if he had to keep working on it until the day he died.

    Most of us, if we were in the shoes of that potter would probably quit.  We would probably start all over and give up.  We would probably say our time, effort and energy was not worth it.  Many of us would perhaps say the potter was crazy in his endeavor to fix a masterpiece that obviously could not be fixed.  Indeed, the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again while expecting different results.  However, I would like to offer a different caveat to that definition this morning: what if you know you are doing the right things?  What if you know you have indeed chosen the correct approach in dealing with a particular situation?  What if you know that the other options of doing things are ill advised or detrimental to that which you are working with?  If indeed you are doing the right thing, then is doing it insanity or determination?   Is it craziness or hopefulness?

    Some may look at God’s decision to deal with humankind through the concept of grace as insanity or craziness.  After all, in many ways it doesn’t make much sense.  We are corrupted.  Don’t get me wrong here–I am not saying we are completely and totally deprived.  I am not saying we are completely and totally evil.  I am not saying we cannot do good things or accomplish things which are acceptable in God’s sight.  This is most certainly not true.  Indeed, when you look around the world and in our communities, you see that we do some really marvelous things: acts of compassion and mercy not only toward other human beings but toward other species–cats, dogs, cattle, horses, and the like.  You see that humans are generous in their response to those who have suffered tragedy and despair.  There is good which runs through us.

    But we are not wholly good.  There is a streak of selfishness which runs through the best of us.  That streak emerges time and again in obvious and subtle ways.  It leads us to division, strife, anger, and animosity.  Instead of loving our neighbor as ourselves, we love ourselves and care for our neighbor as long as it doesn’t inconvenience us.  Our brokenness shows when we blame others for problems and do not realize that we too suffer from the same selfishness and anger which drives thieves, murderers, adulterers, and manipulators of the system to do the things they do.  We are cracked, broken, slumping pieces of pottery–even though we were created to be a masterpiece.

    And God cherishes the beauty He sees in us.  God cherishes the kindness He put into us.  He cherishes His creation that He created in His own image and likeness.  He could destroy us and start anew, but He is attached.  And so, He constantly reaches His hands out to us to mold us and reform us into that which He intended us to be.  He knows He is doing the right thing.  He knows He is handling us with all the skill He can muster.  He knows He must give us freedom to stand on our own–even though He knows we will probably slump down once more into imperfection.  But He will never give up.  He will never quit.  He will always seek to reform us and bring us back to His original intent.

    Today, we celebrate Reformation Sunday.  It is one of my favorite Sundays of the Church year.  We commemorate the day when Martin Luther, the namesake of the Lutheran Church, nailed 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg Germany calling the Church of the day to debate the nature of God and the salvation He provided through Jesus Christ.  Unfortunately, the intended reform brought about division because of the hard headedness and hard heartedness of humanity, but it also brought about a re-emphasis on the nature of God–the God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love; the God who from the cross spoke the words, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”; the God who sent His only begotten Son into the world so that those who believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world, but to save it.

    Today, we remember God’s desire to keep reforming, not only the Church, but us as well.  When it might be easier to scrap the whole project and start over, instead God tenaciously and hopefully molds us over and over into the people we were intended to be.  We don’t deserve it, but God does it anyway.  It’s called Grace, and it’s the reason we seek to Live God’s Word Daily.  Amen.