Therefore Be Patient

In 1887 Bishop Henry Codman Potter of the Episcopal Diocese of New York called for the building of a cathedral that would rival St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Roman Catholic cathedral in mid-town Manhattan. Land was found in upper Manhattan, architects created plans for a magnificent Byzantine-Romanesque building, and ground was broken on December 27, 1892, St. John’s day. Little by little the great cathdral of St. John the Divine rose up: first the massive foundation, then the crypt in 1899, then the great central dome in 1909. Excavations for the nave began in 1925, and the building was first opened end to end on November 30, 1941, a week before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Work on the cathedral stopped almost immediately and didn’t begin again until 1979, when Bishop Paul Moore decided that construction should be resumed, in part to help neighborhood youths by training them in the crafts of stonemasonry. Construction halted again in 1997, and in 2001 fire destroyed part of the organ and the as yet unfinished north transept. Following a massive restoration begun in January 2005, the cathedral was finally rededicated on Sunday, November 30, 2008. Construction and restoration of the cathedral continue, and many affectionately call it “St. John the Unfinished.”

What, a cathedral still unfinished after more than one hundred years? Of course, some of the great European cathedrals took as much or even more time to build, and builders, patrons, monarchs, and all those watching their construction knew that foresight, vision, and patience were all needed to fully realize such magnificent buildings. Perhaps those cathedral builders, perhaps even the builders of St. John the Divine in New York, took to heart the command to “be patient,” that we heard in today’s reading from the Letter of James. Were you startled to hear that command? We Americans are not patient people. We want everything fast and faster. We grumble when the supermarket line has more than three people in it. And now all around us the world has raced to the manger and is celebrating Christmas. Of course, the stores have been celebrating Christmas since before Halloween! But now everywhere the Christmas trees are up, and houses are decorated. In our neighboring churches, choirs are singing Christmas cantatas and hosting Christmas parties. Unlike the world around us, we Episcopalians stubbornly cling to an ancient liturgical calendar and keep Advent – at least on this side of the red doors! Why are we being so deliberately counter-cultural? Why haven’t we raced to the manger along with everyone else? Do we want to ensure the sure and certain demise of our church?

I believe there is a deeper reason why we stubbornly keep Advent, and part of that deeper reason is to be found in James’ counsel. Advent is a time of waiting. What are waiting for? Certainly, we wait – as eagerly as small children sometimes – for the celebration of God’s first coming among us in Jesus. I still like Advent calendars, those loyal companions in the countdown to Christmas Eve. But in Advent the church also asks us to look further ahead, to look beyond ourselves, to have the patience of a cathedral builder who knew that the great building would not be finished in one lifetime. The church asks us to look ahead to the full realization of God’s promises, the completion of the renewal of creation begun in Jesus. And the church also counsels us to cultivate that most important of Christian virtues, patience. The church asks us to live in both uncertainty and hope, waiting patiently for God to bring God’s plans to fulfillment in God’s good time.

In his plea for patience “until the coming of the Lord,” James uses agricultural imagery. He reminds us that we are like farmers who must wait until both the early and late rains have arrived, that the fulfillment of God’s promises is not under our control, but that the green shoots of God’s promises will indeed in God’s good time be fully mature. God’s time is not our time, James implies, and God’s “soon” does not mean “tomorrow,” or even “next week.” Indeed, if you think of the age of the earth, of time from God’s perspective, the time between Jesus’ birth and today is a mere blip! Patiently waiting for God’s fulfillment of God’s plans is not easy, and so James also counsels strength of heart. Now just as our physical hearts need exercise in order to stay strong, so do our spiritual hearts. Certainly, we cultivate spiritual strength through regular prayer and worship. But, James tells us, what is more important, is that we cultivate strength of heart through patient acceptance of each other. “Do not grumble against each other,” he commands. In being patient with one another, we also show forth Christ, who accepted all. Finally, if we would know what patient waiting looked like, James suggests that we take the prophets as our models. We have been hearing their voices this Advent, haven’t we, especially those of Isaiah and John the Baptist. We have been hearing their call to hope, and we have seen their visions of a return to Jerusalem of the “ransomed of the Lord” and of a renewed creation. We know that they patiently endured the wrath and imprisonment of those in power who didn’t want to hear their preaching, and we are asked to follow their example.

Now it is unlikely that any of us will be imprisoned or beheaded for speaking about our faith. However, as disciples of Jesus we are commanded to remain as faithful to God’s promises as the exemplary folks of Scripture, or even of our own families, who courageously spoke in God’s name. One writer tells of her grandfather, who worked for justice and once risked his life for a black friend in the segregated South. When the civil rights laws were finally passed, he had been long gone, but during his lifetime he did his best to nurture those green shoots of the hope for racial justice that had poked up through the soil around him.

And so it is for us. As faithful disciples of the one who died and rose again, we too commit ourselves to patient, faithful waiting, to speaking God’s truth, and to envisioning a renewed world truly realized. Especially in this busy, noisy season, when most of those around us have forgotten the need for patience, we take to heart James’ counsel: “be patient until the coming of the Lord.” Shutting your ears for the moment to the clamor of premature Christmas carols, I invite you to hear again James’ words to us, as Brahms set them in his great German Requiem (played for congregation on ipod):

So seid nun geduldig, liebe Brüder, Be patient therefore, brethren,
bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn. unto the coming of the Lord.
Siehe, ein Ackermann wartet Behold, the husbandman waiteth
auf die köstliche Frucht der Erde for the precious fruit of the earth,
und ist geduldig darüber, and has long patience for it,
bis er empfahe den Morgenregen und until he receive the morning and evening Abendregen. rain.
So seid geduldig. Jakobus 5:7 Be patient therefore. James 5:7

So seid nun geduldig. So therefore be patient. And by God’s grace, we are indeed patient, as we live in love until the coming of the Lord.