The Grace of God's Persistence--June 3, 2021

The Grace of God's Persistence--June 3, 2021

"About this we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become dull in understanding. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God.  You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness...." [Hebrews 5:11-13]

Sometimes I forget what a gift of grace it is that God bears with me when I am slow... or when I am stubborn... or when my heart is hardened.  A less patient God would have given up on me--on all of us--and moved on to more faithful disciples to belong on the spiritual dean's list.  But the God who has met us in Jesus, the God who prompted the writer of these verses, too, is graceful enough to meet us where we are, and to stay with us where we are, rather than to leave us to our own devices where we are.

I don't always have this kind of patience with other human beings.  Not even my own kids.  Sometimes, they'll be struggling with some new concept in their homework, and I think they should get it already, and then I get frustrated when they can't figure out the answer to the net problem.  And from there, we end up in a meltdown of upset kids and upset dad.  Not a good combo.  Or sometimes the grown-ups will forget that little bodies get tired faster, and the Sunday afternoon nature hike to the waterfall or trek along the trail becomes a flashpoint for another stand-off, where my kids will insist that they are too tired to keep walking and then drag their feet slower and slower... and I have to remember then that when you love people, you need to be able to walk at their pace, even if you also need to move them along so they can grow, too.

It's that tension that I hear in these words from Hebrews today.  The writer is clearly feeling a little frustration that his readers don't "get" what seems so clear and obvious to him.  He feels like he has to keep going back to The Basics of God 101, when he wants to be able to lead them to grow and learn and mature in lots of good ways.  He wants them to be able to teach others, and to deepen their understanding of God and explore the beauty and richness and nuance of all the mysteries of Christ... but they're stuck back at the starting line saying their feet are already too tired.

And to be fair to the writer of Hebrews, I get that frustration.  I understand that sometimes I am the one who is slower than molasses when it comes to understanding something, or I'm the one who is ornery and resistant to the sway of God's love.  And in those times, God--and the good teachers and mentors God has put in my path--surely must be shaking the divine head at me, thinking, "When will this guy get it?"  At other times, I'm the one feeling the frustration myself, wishing that others would see what seems so obvious to me.  I know a lot of pastors who, in the last year and a half, have really wished they could have spent time expanding new ministries, or leading classes on deep and profound questions about God and life and meaning, or forming leaders in their congregations who could build up their communities, or any of a hundred other "advanced-level" things... but they've ended up having to start back at Square One with conversations over why we love our neighbors... and why, yes, it has been important as Christians to wear masks or get vaccinated... or why their decisions to suspend or change in-person worship wasn't a betrayal of their faith but an expression of it.  It's hard to want to delve into the deeper things, like the nature of the Trinity, or the way human choice and God's sovereignty relate, or contemplation of God's nature in creation... when you have to stop every five minutes to answer for the millionth time why loving our neighbors is not optional.  I get the feeling that the writer of Hebrews is in the same place with his congregation--he wishes he didn't have to keep going back to the first page of Chapter One so they could finally move on to new material.

Really that's the beauty to discover in this bit of biblical frustration.  The writer is weary by the dense minds (or hard hearts) of his listeners, but he keeps at it with them anyway.  He is tired at having to go back to the basics when they should have moved further on in learning the faith, but he is willing to start over with them, rather than leave them behind.  That is a wonder.  Or honestly, that is grace.

For all the times I get frustrated--or downright heartbroken--at our collectively hardened hearts and narrow minds, I have to remember that God feels that infinitely more than I do, and yet keeps on working with us to bring us along and help us get up to speed.  God is helping me to get up to speed, too.  And ooooh, that stings my pride.  That deflates my puffed up preacherly ego that imagines I have all the answers right myself.  That doesn't mean I have permission to let us all off the hook and never grow in our faith, our love, and our discipleship.  But it does mean that when someone is lagging behind--or, to use the image here from Hebrews, when someone who should be onto solid food still can only handle milk--we don't get to leave them behind because they aren't where we are yet.

There are a lot of ways I am certain I have grown in my own faith, beyond the immature vaguely pious wishful thinking that was an earlier version of my Christianity, and as I look back, I cannot help but see good and kind people who were patient with me, who loved me into new understandings, rather than giving up on me.  When I was dead certain that I knew who God was allowed to love and who God had to throw into hell (exactly in line with my own list, of course!), there were grace-filled people who didn't give up on me, but helped me to see the truth, shouting from the Scriptures all along, that God's love was audaciously reckless in its embrace of everybody, even the stuck-up stinkers like me.  When I was certain I knew all that the Bible had to say on any given subject, there were patient teachers who humbly pointed me toward deeper depths that also humbled me in turn.  When I was sure I had all the answers in a neat and tidy theology, there were good and faithful saints whom God sent in my path like blessed gadflies who helped me to rethink and poke deeper and live with questions and tensions rather than easy answers and deception.  When I have been tempted to let my faith be co-opted, even unwittingly, by political agendas, power structures, and prejudices, God has patiently kept putting people in my path who helped me to grow and to ask questions I would have otherwise been content not to bother raising.

One day in glory the writer of Hebrews himself may come up to me, put an arm around my shoulder, and say with a heavy sigh, "You know, sometimes we wondered if you would ever really get it... but we didn't give up on you.  God wouldn't let us."  And if I can be ok with the idea that God's persistent love remains patient with me in all of my slowness of spiritual pace, then I need to decide, too, if I can extend that same grace to the people who seem to be frustratingly slow in their faith's progress, too.  They are in God's field of vision, too.  God is not too busy with helping me to grow that God cannot send someone to speak the right word--patient but provocative, too--to help spur their faith along, too.  Maybe God is sending me.  Maybe God is sending you.

In any case, let's be ready.

Lord God, thank you for your patience with us.  Grant us the same persistence you have shown to us as we commit to meeting people where they are and loving them into the growth you will bring.