The epistle for next Sunday is from the
little-used Letter of James. Martin
Luther famously called it an epistle of straw.
It is nothing of the kind:
Be 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. You also
must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.
Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged.
See, the Judge is standing at the doors! [James 5: 7-9]
It’s all very well to talk about being
patient, when advancing decrepitude means you don’t have much option. You can’t run any more anyway, and you are
retired and there’s not much reason to rush around as there once was. Multi-tasking turns out to be not only
difficult but dangerous. It’s smart to
learn the virtues of patience. You are
amazed at the people who get on the escalator at Countdown and still actually
walk or even run up or down it. They
can’t simply stand still and wait.
But all this is to misunderstand what the word
means. Patience is from the Latin word,
to suffer. Being patient is a mature
quality, knowing how to take the rough with the smooth, how to postpone or do
without satisfaction. Patient is not passive. A patient person not only is able to bear
pain, but has learned that pain and injustice are everywhere. It is an unjust world. James reminds Jesus’s followers that they are
not living in some safe cocoon of faith where all is well.
That is why he also says, Beloved, do not grumble against one another. And here I may be walking over
eggshells... but James is saying that the kind of patience which marks
Christian discipleship and Christian fellowship is accepting or at least
understanding of human perversity and silliness. It bears with other people – in which
enterprise, I may say, a lively sense of the ridiculous helps quite a lot. St Benedict knew that in any monastery there will
be monks with smelly feet, nuns with blocked sinuses, people teetering towards
lunacy accompanied by halitosis – and so, in his Rule he repeatedly warns
against grumbling (sine murmuratione). Grumbling badly damages the community. It is a matter of discipline in a Christian
fellowship that we do not grumble. Put
positively, it matters that we have learned patience, that our expectations are
sensible and realistic, that we make room for human difference. We come to gain pleasure from difference and
eccentricity.
Moreover, this is Advent teaching. James writes about waiting in patience. He says the Judge is standing at the
doors. He wrote in the early Jerusalem
church where they were always threatened by real oppression and
persecution. Patience and endurance is necessary
equipment, and a sense of what matters and what doesn’t. Our contemplative stillness and silence can
equip us with a large and generous spirit.
Sometimes, even at my great age I confess, I am considerably tested in
this regard. But we get there. At any rate, all our impatience and grumbling
gets folded into the stillness of prayer, where Christ’s Spirit is making us
into better disciples.
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