What Do You Do Until The Messiah Arrives?Dr.
James Mayfield
December 21, 2003 Text: James 5:7-11 Christmas is a time of joy. We celebrate God's gift to the world. For many it is a happy time when families gather. But it is not a happy time for everyone. The chairs that are empty around the Christmas table will awaken old sorrow. Crises, problems and pains seem especially difficult to bear in the season of joy. For some Christmas is less a celebration of the of God's grace coming among us, and more of a deep longing to be aware of God's presence and a longing to experience the healing activity of God's grace. Some are experiencing the bleakness of midwinter and all they are able to hear is the howling of the wind. Sometimes this bleak midwinter happens when we, or someone we love, is struggling with a life threatening disease; or it is when we or someone we love is caught up in some type of self-destructive behavior; or maybe it is when the marriage we are in shows signs of falling apart; or maybe it is when the success that was giving us a sense of pride crumbles into failure. There are countless types of painful experiences that cause us to yearn for God to heal what needs healing and give us peace. And in the midst of our ordeal, we look for evidence of God's grace, but we can no more see it than than Job could in the midst of his suffering. We remember Jesus told us that if we ask it will be given, if we seek we will find, if we knock it will be opened, and yet in the toughest times when we have banged on the doors of heaven seeking God and God's grace, the only response of which we are aware is that of silence. The people to whom the book of James was addressed were dealing with a similar problem. For years they had been looking for the second coming of Christ. They were not just hoping to witness some sort of super miracle. They were longing for the coming of the New Age, a time when wrongs they were enduring would be set right, when both justice and mercy would be employed to make life be the way God intends life to be. Day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade they endured what they had to endure longing for the promised Day of The Lord, but it had not come. As followers of Christ, they were struggling with an ancient Jewish question: "What shall we do until the Messiah comes?" This is our question too, when regardless of our longing we are unable to be aware of God's grace at work in our lives, and we feel as lonely as if we were isolated on a barren hill in the midst of a dark cold winter. What shall we do until the Messiah comes? There are some clues and insights in the passage we read today. "Be patient," we are told. I do not know of anything that makes us humans more impatient than being told we ought to be patient. Sometimes in our impatience, we give up on God and try to "fix it ourselves." We try to run the universe, or at least the part of the universe we occupy. We start giving everyone marching orders and telling everyone how to "shape up" and issuing instructions about how to "fix it" so that life - at least our life - will be the way we want it to be. Unable to be patient, we become pushy substitute messiahs. Inevitably, this leads us into feeling overburdened and frustrated as we hassle others trying to make things right, and it is not unusual for our frustration to shift into self-righteous anger because not only are our efforts not appreciated, they are resisted and we are resented. When this happens, it is very common for us to begin to grumble about others -- about their stubbornness, their ignorance of not recognizing our wisdom, their lack of gratitude and appreciation for how hard we are working to set things right. And we blame them and their refusal to do what we so clearly see they ought to do for why things are not getting better. But all our efforts to be substitute messiahs, all our grumbling and complaining and blaming seldom cause improvement of the situation and frequently contribute to making it worse. So, in addition to telling us to be patient, the writer of the Book of James also tells us not to grumble. As I have thought about this bit of advice in the context of all of the New Testament, I am convinced the writer is not telling us merely "to suffer in silence." I think he is telling us to live in such a way that grumbling is not the way we handle problems or deal with people. As I see it, the New Testament wisdom is that faith and love are the antidote to a life of grumbling and the key to patience. When we trust God and love others, grumbling is simply not the way we respond when life does not turn out the way we want. When we love others, our focus is not on manipulating them to do what we want them to do, but rather we are involved with them; and together we struggle to find the way through the dark times in life. We do not try to shove them one way or another; we hold hands and walk together, each drawing wisdom and strength from the other. And even when the other refuses to hold our hand, when the other refuses to walk or talk with us, we do not fall into the illusion that because we love that person we have the right to act like a dictator. Sometimes all we can do is what the waiting father did when the prodigal son was in the far country making a mess of his life. Sometimes all we can do is keep the door of possibility open. But this is hard to do unless we have significant faith in God and in the redeeming grace of God. This faith is not only the antidote to grumbling, it is the key to the kind of patience mentioned in the Book of James. To have patience when we wait for evidence of God's grace requires faith. But during the painful, bleak "midwinters," it is not always easy to have faith. There are a couple of clues in the passage we read that can be helpful to us as we struggle to have faith in the midst of bad times. One of those clues is in the illustration about the farmer being patient, waiting for the spring rain that will come and cause the crop to grow. The other clue is the advice to look to the prophets and their experiences with suffering. The farmer, looking at his fields, on cold days when there is no rain in sight trusts the rain will come, and that trust is rooted in his knowledge and experience of the past. Because of his experience in the past, he trusts the rain will come. He does not know when, but he lives with confident hope that the rains will come. The prophets not only endured their bad times, they trusted God would make good use of what they were going through, and because of that, they and their bad times were blessed. We need to remember them so that our faith can be strengthened by our knowledge of their experience. To deal with bad times when we feel all alone it is helpful to remember how God's grace has been at work in the past in our lives and in the lives of others. When we are going through bad times it is wise to remember the crucifixion. In the crucifixion, God was able to take the worst we humans can do and transform it into the saving event for all the world. If God can do that, then God is certainly able to take whatever we are going through and use it for good. Such remembering strengthens faith, and we need our faith strengthened because all too often we find ourselves living in the in-between-time, the time after the crucifixion but before the resurrection. When it seems that all our days are like the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter, it is only faith in God and God's grace that sees us through. The more we are aware of God having used bad times for good in the past, the more we are strengthened in our ability to have faith in God in the midst of our present troubles. And faith is essential for living with both patience and love. There are times when life is like the worst of a bleak midwinter. In those times it is tempting to make matters worse by trying to be substitute messiahs struggling to get others to do what we want, and when they refuse, grumbling in the darkness. So, how shall we deal with these hard times? What shall we do until the Messiah comes? The writer of James tells us we need patience, but it is obviously not the kind of patience that is merely the exercise of human will power. It is the kind of patience that is rooted in faith and love. And what encourages and strengthens our ability to live lives of faith and love is our knowledge and memory of other experiences of bad times when in our lives or in the lives of others, God took the worst that could happen and somehow, someway used it for good. God, in the tough times when we feel all alone and are unable to recognize your grace at work in our lives, help us remember past experiences of grace that will strengthen our faith and give us hope. Amen. Pastoral
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