Holy Patience, Holy Impatience
A sermon for Advent 3
Today’s Gospel reading is the second appearance of John the Baptist in
two weeks. Last week, John appeared in
the wilderness of Judea. He preached and
baptised, and got angry with the Pharisees and Sadducees. But above all, he
spoke of one who was to come, more powerful that John himself, who would
baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
It is clear that John expects that Jesus will be a figure of power and
action, who will take John’s criticism of the establishment further into
action. The last verse of last week’s
Gospel reading was this: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear
his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff
he will burn with unquenchable fire”.
We meet John again this week. By
now he is in prison, and keeping track of Jesus through the reports he
gets. It’s fair to say that John is at
the very least confused by what he hears of Jesus’ activities. At worst, John is beginning to wonder whether
all the hardship that he has been through is worth it when all that comes is
Jesus wandering around Galilee, teaching, associating with the wrong types and
healing people. It’s not that John
disapproves of the sorts of things that Jesus is doing – teaching, meeting
people and healing are all good things – it’s just that John was expecting
something more. More dramatic, more
exciting, more powerful. And the stories
he hears about Jesus causes him to question.
So he sends his disciples to find Jesus and to ask him ‘Are you the one
who is to come or should we wait for another?’
Jesus’ answer is to ask him to look at what is happening. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news
brought to them. Perhaps Jesus is urging
John to have patience. Whatever John
expected, Jesus has not finished yet.
And if bringing sight, healing, cleanliness, hearing, resurrection and
good news are not enough, there is more that Jesus can and will do. John should be patient.
But perhaps as well, Jesus is urging John to see that the kingdom of God
comes not just in grand assaults on power, but in seemingly insignificant
places. The kingdom of God comes in the
lives of people who may never go on to do anything recorded in history, but by
bringing healing and wholeness, God’s will is made present. The kingdom of God comes as people are
enabled to shed their identity as ‘lepers’ and take up a new identity as
members of the community. The kingdom of
God comes as the ignored, the poorest and most vulnerable, the least powerful
and the victimised become the recipients of the Gospel, the good news.
Jesus’ reply to John urges patience – patience as we see the kingdom of
God come in unexpected places. We, like John the Baptist, need to learn to see
the kingdom of God arriving in unexpected places. In the lives of the people we know and meet
and even in our lives. God’s plans for
us are not finished; there are surprises around the corner, of only we will
turn and see them.
This requires a patient nurturing of whatever is good. As Isaiah puts it, ‘Strengthen the weak hands
and make firm the feeble knees, speak to those who are of a fearful
heart’. The danger is that, like John,
we are always looking for something more dramatic or more exciting. The kingdom of God comes through wandering
through the country, teaching people about God, associating with the wrong
types and healing folk. All good, but
never enough to satisfy our longings for the Kingdom, for the vision of Isaiah
to become real.
And perhaps we are waiting for someone else to do what needs to be
done. Mahatma Gandhi told his disciples
to ‘be the change you want to see in the world’, and the deep truth beneath
what Gandhi said is that God’s work starts with the small and interior things
in our lives. If we want a just world,
then we should start by being just people.
If we want a peaceful world, then we start by being people who are
peaceable. Jesus and Gandhi both knew
that to tackle the problems of our world, rather than simply tackling the symptoms,
we need to look into our own hearts. In
the week or so that remains of Advent, let us try and find time to look inside
and to turn our hearts towards God and towards his kingdom.
Alongside this patience in nurturing whatever is good, and patience with
ourselves as we seek to align ourselves with the coming Kingdom, there is an
impatience that is equally vital and truly holy. We see this in John the Baptist. John’s impatience comes through a longing for
the coming of God’s kingdom. All too
often our patience comes from our comfort in a world that is far from the
kingdom of God. Isaiah’s
vision, that we heard more of this morning, is a vision of life coming where
there is barrenness; of joy where there is despair; of healing where there is
infirmity. We need to attend to this
vision, so that we long for it to be so.
That will make us impatient, in the same way that children are impatient
for Christmas morning. When we learn to
pray ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done’ we will become impatient people. And this is an important lesson. The great Advent visions that we have been
hearing of and singing of throughout this season, give us a hope to long for, a
vision to aim for and a future to be impatient for. We need to share John the Baptist’s impatience
before we can, with John, learn the patience of nurturing the good and aligning
ourselves.
This patience,
which comes from impatience, is born of suffering and longing. John was in prison. Many of the prophets were also imprisoned,
tortured and even killed for speaking God’s word. Their patience was not a comfortable
acquiescence in the status quo, but a trust in God that He will be faithful and
will establish the kingdom that he has promised. And it does so as we too hear Jesus’ answer
to John’s impatient question. The things
that Jesus tells John are happening can be seen in that vision from Isaiah that
we have read this morning, as well as in many of the other visions of the
kingdom in the prophets. Jesus answer to
John, as well as pointing to the unexpected and insignificant, points to the
coming of God’s kingdom there. And the
drive to look within ourselves, that Advent urges on us, makes us aware of the
ways in which we are part of the problem as well as part of the solution. God’s patience with us is part of his saving
love to us.
Given at Derby Cathedral 15.12.13
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