Day 1466 - The Patient Gardener

An abridged sermon shared with First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN, December 11, 2016

Isaiah 35:1-10

James 5: (1-6),7-11

There is a “safe” way and a “dangerous,” or difficult, way to read this passage from James. It all depends on how we translate the word “patience.” Many “safe” sermons focus on the enjoyment and excitement of the season while we wait for Christmas with an upbeat message about waiting. What we get from scripture so much depends on how we translate it. The safe, upbeat message is understandable if we use the King James Version that translates verse 11  as, “…Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” Unfortunately, James was written in Greek whose words have complex meaning often lost in the KJV.

The “safe” reading does James an injustice by translating a Hebrew word as “patience.” The Greek word James uses in verse 11, is not “patience” but endurance. 
“…Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; 
that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.”

Now it is true that endurance and patience can have a similar sense of biding one’s time while something happens. But endurance carries a much richer sense of a personal withstanding, or bearing, something difficult or oppressing while achieving a goal. For example, one says a long-distance runner must have endurance to bear the discomfort of pushing the body hard enough to finish a marathon under 3 hours, or 10 kilometers under 34 minutes when all the body wants to do is stop and rest, or breakdown. James is talking about enduring substantial difficulty so that one can achieve the fruit of faith.

Another objection to the “safe” sermon is rooted in every passage we have read thus far in Advent. Whether Isaiah, Romans, or Luke, they all directly or indirectly recommend endurance that sustains hope for a positive future in the face of an atmosphere of hopelessness.  

You remember Isaiah wrote in a time when the Hebrews faced hopelessness in the imminent destruction of Israel, the Temple’s home in Jerusalem, and of Judah. Israel and Judah faced annihilation of their distinct political and theological identity. Even in Romans Paul described a sustained thread of hopeful expectation about our future after the reason for hope, the crucified Christ, is not with us.

The safe way preaches sugarplums and angels and a rosy future and ignore all the stumbling blocks. To be melodramatic, the “dangerous” side of James entreats us to let our endurance of faith to cling to the “this is what I live and believe” sustain our wait for the Lord.

When I began I asked myself, do I talk about the hard reality that faced both Christians in the time of Christ and Hebrews in the time of impending captivity, or serve up a sermon on the rosy side of waiting? 

I re-read this passage in James and a few commentaries on it, and decided I’d give you a reflection first on the safe way to read the passage and then one on the “dangerous” or “challenging” way to read it.

The safe way. The line about the patience of the farmer who waits for the early and late rain is a good way to start the safe way because we are in a drought in southern Tennessee right now, and we are all excited getting ready for Christmas. (I’m listening to Paul Simon’s Getting Ready for Christmas Day, as I write, a not-so-safe take.)  

James talk of the early and late rains reminded me that the last significant rain that amounted to anything around here, although we’ve had a couple rainy days the last week or so, the last serious rain happened in early August. 

I don’t know if you know the background about the early and late rain in Palestine. In Palestine, the climate is strongly influenced by the oceans, deserts and prevailing winds. The land is scrub highland and an interior desert except close to the shoreline where the moisture from the ocean dominates. In most of Palestine rain comes with the seasonal changes. The winter especially is much like Southern California (see Weather Controls over the Fighting in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, and near the Suez Canal, Robert De C. Ward, The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 4, Apr., 1918, pp. 298)

It seldom if ever rains between May and September in Palestine. The early rains begin around planting season in mid-to late fall (October to mid-November, and mid-December to January) well after the preceding harvest. The fierce heat of the May to September summer days scorch the ground dry and these welcome early rains soak the ground for the new crops. Then the early rains taper off, hopefully not totally, between February through March. If the wind is right in March, the second climatic round of late rain begins. The farmer is captive to the rain. He can only hope enough early rain falls through the winter growing season to sustain crop growth from the planted seed until the early spring when the late rain returns, giving the soaking boost for the final growth spurt of the crops. There is nothing the farmer can do but be patient through the dry spells and wait for the late rain to come. Worry is natural but pointless.

Driving up here from Chattanooga in October, the dry lake bottoms in Soddy-Daisy and Dayton made me think about my years living in San Diego in the years when neither the early or late rains came like the winter in Palestine.

In the years I lived in San Diego, it rained very little. Over the seven years I was there, I watched the shoreline of a large reservoir formed by a dammed river on I-15 near Escondido slowly retreat into the distance until finally by 1992 it was no longer visible from the highway. The year I moved back to Atlanta I had given up expecting to see the reservoir full again…but guess what? The rains came back and the reservoir filled up again. I guess my patience wasn’t strong enough.

If you have children, or maybe if you think you are never too old to have a happy childhood, you know patience is rare around Christmas time. You can’t wait to get the tree up. You can’t wait to make your wish list that when asked, you give to your mother, father, wife, husband, children or special friend. Then of course, you dislike and dread shopping in this season because of having to deal with the long lines.

This is the safe way to talk about James, is spite of all these issues, waiting, long lines, Christmas will be a happy time with family and friends, so enjoy the festivities, the waiting, the long lines while you wait for Christmas, the sign of our redemption.

What about the “dangerous” way contained in James?

You probably know some among us, friends, relatives perhaps, find Christmas to be a sad, depressing time; or perhaps you feel that way yourself. For some people Christmas reminds them of the pain they feel when it seems everything important to them is seen in others but is absent in their life. Rather than joy, excitement and expectation, they feel depression and foreboding for that last shoe to fall on hope, as they have missed something joyful left behind that everyone else except them has discovered.

If you know that reality from experience with others or yourself, you know how painful it is to look and only see darkness and no hope when others laugh and see joy.

Depression is a complex problem. I do not want to minimize its seriousness. If you read this and feel that way, please seek out a listening ear. (That is what James encourages.)

Depression does not lend itself to easy, logical solution because it involves chemical and cognitive matters. Even though the root cause is complicated, I wonder sometimes that a big part of the cognitive, or thinking part of holiday depression feeds on a lack of endurance to bear all the things that weigh down one’s life, to find the endurance to exert the extreme effort it takes to act positively when you feel as if you are sliding down to the bottom of a deep hole. James and Paul know to fall into the depths of despair is a difficult, common problem and it takes great personal action to overcome it.

We don’t appreciate that James is encouraging us to endure in the face of despair, and for those who can rejoice in this season of waiting, who claim to have faith,  to come to the aid of those who suffer despair. You need to read back into verses 1-6 to find the despair he acknowledges in the circumstances of the faithful people he was addressing. First to the oppressors:

¹Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. ²Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. ³Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days.  ⁴Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, (those wages) which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. ⁵You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. ⁶You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

And then James offers those of us who are under the heel of the rich this divine assurance:

⁷Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. ⁸You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. ⁹Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged.(as the rich do to you) See, the Judge is standing at the doors! ¹⁰As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

That despair standing in the pit of the darkest hole was the reality of Job. It was the reality of that mysterious remnant among the Hebrews facing exile and the seeming loss of everything the Covenant stands who salvation was promised. It was the reality of the poor Church of the Easter people of Jerusalem as the days of the revolt in Jerusalem approached.

Paul solicited money for the poor congregation in Jerusalem throughout the Christian congregations of his Mediterranean ministry. To an extent, it is the reality of the experience of our congregation several years ago with the split. Grace seemed to lose out to grumbling and judgment.

But friends, and I do call you that, friends, never forget grace prevails to those who endure such hardship and focus on the words, “strengthen your hearts, do not grumble lest you be judged, we know the mercy and compassion of the Lord!”

 This is the more difficult way to read James in this Christmas season.

James is talking directly to those who struggle with despair of abandonment. James says cling to the endurance that allows us to engage our lives in active living the Christian life with the knowledge not only that the Lord shall come, either in the Lord’s time or in the end of our own days. Know that we are walking towards that Grace living the Christian life. (It is the sure-fire prescription for depression – action!)

Those who do not love us but judge us and therefore invite judgment on themselves need our love ever the more so. The act of living the Christian life in the face of despair is the sign, no not the sign, but the victory of faith over our own death. James talks to, and draws our attention to those who struggle under a heavy, even shared burden.

In my short time here at First Presbyterian Church, I can say, as a congregation, you show your endurance, you have held onto joy when it would be easier to fall into despair. No matter what has happened, as James said, “you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.” Is there anything more satisfying in the Advent season than to know you have the endurance to live the faith awaiting his coming?

James offers a message of hope for those of us who are assailed for our faith in grace to endure to the end. For the strong, he offers a demand of those of us who have the luxury to laugh and enjoy the wonder of the season. That demand is to use the season of waiting to reach out and be a supporting presence to those long for justice and those who mourn. Jesus Christ will not allow his Church that remains faithful to that demand to die but will stand with grace beside those who endure.