Patience

Consider the story of Jesus' healing of Bartimaeus, a blind beggar who called out from the roadside.  You can find it in Mark 10.  In the story the disciples are impatient and dismiss the man.  But Jesus calls him over and utters one of his signature healing pronouncements, "Your faith has made you well."

If we were in the crowd of disciples, trying to follow Jesus that day, we would either have been the ones who tried to shut Bartimaeus up or the ones who didn't say anything while that exclusion was happening.

In our own lives, who are we impatient with?  We are impatient with people:

· for being tiresome

· for not being logical

· for trying to sneak in the side instead of waiting in line

· for asking yet again for what they've asked for before

· for not changing their tune after all these years

· for not waiting quietly

· for being indiscreet

· for having a problem that can't be solved

· for refusing to be overlooked

· for not doing "what any normal person would do"

· for not showing up on time

· for not dressing correctly

· for not filling out the right forms

· for having done something in the past that means they can't get a job now

· for having done or said something in the past that was offensive to us

· for forgetting something

· for not hearing us the first time

· for it being their own fault       

What would you add to the list?  Go ahead.  It is easy to come up with reasons to be impatient with someone who is driving in front of you, driving up behind you, or sitting on the seat next to you.  It is easy to make the list, right?

Okay, so we know that we are impatient sometimes, but surely that's not a great big deal.  I mean, we attend to those in need as we can, right?  And those annoying people are annoying, right?  We are, many of us, busy and tightly scheduled, right?  It's not really got anything to do with religion, with Jesus, or with spirituality, right?

I find it significant that Jesus in this part of the Gospel of Mark, is on his last journey.  The next chapter begins the great drama of Jesus' final week with what we call Palm Sunday.  Because the end is near, it should sharpen our attention to what is important enough to still be included in the story and how this is God still speaking to us. 

I suggest that there is a lesson Jesus' behavior imparts in this story that matters to your life this very day.  Jesus demonstrates patience instead of impatience.  This alternative has two important purposes to offer you. 

The first is that the practice of showing others, however annoying, the face of kindness and attention makes the world more like the kingdom that Jesus is always teaching us to live in.  This story calls you to follow Jesus' lead in being kind and focused on those who we and the world tend to push aside.  How will that change your next encounter with your neighbors?

The second purpose is that the practice of turning toward those who are irritating and problematic is frequently the path to spiritual growth, to unexpected experience, and to emotional maturity.   What Jesus chooses to do is to drive home the message that there is something deep, something profound in our interactions with each other.  Jesus chose to demonstrate and repeat how our salvation, the path to your salvation in this world, leads straight to those people with whom you are most impatient.  That is the place where your growth is stunted now and your growth will flourish if you stop sending them to the back of the line.

It's tough medicine for you to take, I know.  Jesus invites you to give it a chance anyway.  Try to notice the next time you are impatient.  In that moment, practice finding a way to move to patience.  Draw your focus more directly to the object of your impatience and try to see him or her as deserving of your attention.  Breathe.  This is an opportunity for you to bring the kingdom of God a little more into being, today, this very day.  Keep trying too, because you'll get better at it.  I promise.

Seeds and Blessings Scattered

A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell …

- Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8

The sidewalks around my neighborhood are covered with small seeds from some kind of maple tree.  You know the ones I mean.  The ones that spin as they fall through October skies.  In this part of the world, they are all over the place.  Much harder to see are the seeds from the grasses and wildflowers.  They too are all over the place.  Some land in a good place and others don't.  They are scattered extravagantly.

I hope you are familiar with the parable of the sower, the beginning of which is quoted above and which appears in three gospels.  We often use the parable to illustrate how words of truth and good news may land in good places within us and also in places they will not live and grow.  We hope that we are fertile ground or may become fertile ground!

You may also reflect upon how the seeds in the parable are, like the seeds in our neighborhoods, scattered wildly.  It is as if the sower, the maple trees and grasses, and the one from whom all blessings flow have an inexhaustible supply.  It's okay that some seeds fall on the path and get trampled.  It's okay that some seeds fall on the street and get pulverized.  It is okay that God's blessings fall on ears that cannot hear them.  There are plenty more where those came from.

The extravagance with which God dispenses grace and blessing tells us what God is like. God's grace is an expression of the nature of God.  There is no divine calculation about the percentage of blessings that will be thankfully received.  God is not choosing to love us because it is worth the effort.  God just can't help it.

That is a characteristic of the kind of divine love that we are cultivating in our shared journey of faith.  We are trying to grow and transform ourselves into people who love extravagantly.  We practice by loving those we fall in love with, those who are part of our families, those who we count as neighbors.  We continue to practice by loving those who are not immediately lovable, those who we don't know, and those who we see as our enemy.  I use the word "practice" because I know that you struggle toward this elusive goal just like I do.  It is so much wiser to control our love and kindness.  It is a savvy calculation to avoid wasting our time forgiving those who are not repentant, to "let go" of relationships that are not reciprocal, and to dismiss "them" – all those who any fool can see are not "us."  When we are being farmers at Stearns Farm, we are careful to plant each bulb of garlic in good soil.  We don't waste the garlic by scattering it in the woods.

Beloved, when it comes to giving of ourselves, we are not farmers.  Leave that analogy behind.  We aspire not to farm but to do something for which we must seek another kind of analogy or another story.  We tell the story of Jesus.  The way we tell the story, we tell of a man who at some point stopped making the calculations about how much to give, about how much his love and even his life was worth.  He emptied himself of all such understandable expectations and said to his God what you practice saying to your God, "thy will be done."  

When you say what Jesus said, you move toward the true, extravagantly generous, persistently kind, foolishly loving you that you are meant to be!

Pray with me now?  O Holy One, thy will be done.  Amen!