Job 21:1-16
Matthew 5:38-48
If you’ve been here on recent Sundays, you know that I’m exploring some virtues for our time in these late summer, early fall weeks. So far we’ve considered resilience and empathy as two virtues that might help us in our individual lives and in our life together at a time when basic human decency often seems to be lacking.
This morning I want to explore the virtue of patience, what one person calls the ability to deal with things that still insist on going wrong—like traffic, government,…other people—and it’s always other people, isn’t it? It’s been suggested that we lose patience—and we lose our temper—because we believe things should be perfect and that patience grows as we become more realistic about how things actually tend to go.
Certainly we can be impatient—and sometimes we should be.
Early last week—and, once again, how long ago “early last week” now seems—early last week Ayana Pressley won an overwhelming victory in the Massachusetts primary for a seat in the United States House of Representatives, defeating a popular twenty-year incumbent. Her slogan? “Change Can’t Wait.” Impatience as a virtue.
Calling for vigorous and positive action toward civil rights that had long been delayed, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the “fierce urgency of now”—speaking the judgment that “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today,” and telling us: “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there ‘is’ such a thing as being too late.” Impatience as a virtue.
When it came to civil rights, White America felt change could wait. Many were all too ready to be patient, obviously ignoring the distinction made by Thomas Aquinas when he said: “To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.”
Actual sin. Yes. There are times when patience is only a sign of sin.
And isn’t that some of the concern over that anonymous Op-ed in the Times this past week? The author told us: “There were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.”
We’ll just wait it out.
What was it Stephen Colbert said about this? One way or another—“That's not that comforting. It’s like going on a road trip and your mom saying, ‘Dad’s either driving us to Six Flags or careening us off a cliff into the sea.”
Should we just be patient and see what happens?
Patience is like other virtues. When we push virtues to their limits, we will always see their downside.
So we listened this morning as Job, poor Job in all his affliction, asked: “Should I not be impatient?” The word translated “impatient” actually means something like “my spirit is short.” You know what that’s like, don’t you? It’s not just his own suffering that is so upsetting. It is that the wicked prosper. “They say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We do not desire to know your ways.’” And that seems to work out just fine for them—even if many others are suffering.
Job is impatient, not just for himself, but for all who suffer unjustly while others prosper for no apparent reason. He looks directly at what’s happening in the world; without sentiment, he realistically acknowledges that things do go wrong.
But that does not result in patience. Rather, Job is left struggling with all his might to find any moral order remaining in the universe.
Reflecting on this, the Old Testament scholar Carol Newsome says that it is clear to Job, as it is clear to us today, that God is not a “heavenly ‘enforcer’ who guarantees that everyone acts properly, meting out rewards and punishments to make certain they do.” But Newsome still affirms that there is a moral order grounded in creation and on God’s judgment that all creation and each created being is “good.” That order can be ignored or even destroyed, but we do this out of our own folly and to our own peril.
The impatience that results when we see such destruction is a virtue.
Can we, then, in these days find any virtue in patience by setting aside our desire for perfection and accepting things as they are?
Well, maybe. But first we’re going have to deal with Jesus.
If you weren’t squirming at least a little bit during that reading from the Gospel of Matthew, then you probably weren’t listening very closely.
Turn the other cheek.
Go the extra mile.
Love your enemies.
Be perfect.
Are we simply being called to the kind of passive patience that acquiesces to evil?
How should we listen when Jesus talks like this?
There are those who would explain these statements away into insignificance. You know—scholars tell us that it was considered extremely offensive in the ancient world to be slapped by the back of the right hand, which is most likely what happens if someone strikes you on the right cheek. By turning the other cheek, you make it almost impossible to be slapped in that way again. So, really, you’re just protecting yourself. The words of Jesus become a bit of historical trivia. It’s safe to listen to Jesus, but don’t expect his words to have much significance for our lives today.
In a similar manner, others suggest that we not take Jesus too seriously. They tell us that these are ancient words spoken to ancient people that have little to do with our modern situation. In a terrorist haunted world, we can’t be turning the other cheek all the time. In a dog-eat-dog world, we can’t be expected to love our enemies. And we know the psychological damage that the relentless pursuit of perfection can cause. While we might admire the spiritual teachings of Jesus, we have to take his words with a grain of salt. You know how Jesus resorts to hyperbole and exaggeration for effect. An easy literalism will only lead to misunderstanding.
There are those who would counter and say that a literal approach is just what we need. Turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. Love your enemies. Such tactics would never work unless....well, unless you are willing follow, say, two of the towering leaders of the 20th century—Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. King was greatly influenced by Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of non-violence. And both men looked to the non-violent Jesus for inspiration. Following the words of Jesus can lead us into a deeper and more productive resistance to evil than we might think possible.
This is not advice for the powerful to give to the powerless. History has shown us that this non-violent action is a strategy for the powerless that grows out of powerlessness. Within twenty years after the occupying Roman government had destroyed Jerusalem, the followers of Jesus still remembered his life and his words of love, his way of genuine resistance that overcomes evil with good.
So we might listen and hear in the words of Jesus a challenge and a call to a new way of life. We confess that we don’t live as he calls us to live—but what if we did? What might happen if even occasionally we did love our enemies or were honest in our speech or gave without the expectation of something in return? We might not become perfect—but we’d certainly be better people than we are. And who knows—the world might be a better place as well.
Or we can listen and hear Jesus setting the bar so impossibly high that we recognize that we can never make the mark, never follow in his way. Some would say that’s just the point of the Sermon on the Mount. As we listen, we realize that we are simply unable to live as Jesus calls us to live. Consequently we are thrown onto the mercy of the God who is our only hope. With the awareness that we are not perfect as God is perfect, we welcome with gladness the grace of God into our lives. Only by seeing the impossible can we also see the new possibility that comes into the world and into our lives in Jesus.
When you listen to Jesus, what do you hear? Insignificance? A figurative, spiritual suggestion? A literal command? A challenge? An impossibility? Perhaps we need to listen in many different ways because when Jesus speaks he often means many different things at once.
So, let me suggest one more way to listen.
Let us listen in order to hear that God is doing something new.
Let us listen so that we can hear that God continues to work in our lives and in our world.
The translation in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible that we read this morning—and usually read in worship—misses the implication of the Greek with its flat command: “Be perfect.” We all know there’s not much chance of that.
And that’s why the virtue of patience causes so much trouble for us. We don’t like the imperfection we see—especially in other people. And as Aquinas suggests, we’re usually more impatient about the wrong done to ourselves than the wrong done to others.
But Jesus calls us, calls this congregation, calls the whole church into the future: you will be perfect. That is, as we live in love we will share in God’s nature. The New Testament scholar, Douglas Hare, says that with these words Jesus gives a strong invitation to participate in God’s perfection by imitating God’s behavior. We who are made in the image of God are open to imitate God’s love. Jesus invites us to the on-going, and yes, difficult, task of being all-embracing in our lives in imitation of God, whose love embraces all.
Jesus invites us into a new way—a process that moves toward being perfect even as we recognize that we are not perfect and the world is not perfect. So we are called to the patience of the imperfect who live in an imperfect world. We are called to be a little more accepting of ourselves and of one another, even as we work to correct the injustice in the world, even as we seek to be a part of making this world a little more like the realm of God for which we pray.
In each new day, God is doing something new in your life, in this congregation, and in our world. The old ways are changing—the old ways are always changing—and as followers of Christ we are called to keep up, to announce to the world the newness of God, and to let our light shine.