A Restless Sort of Patience--March 16, 2022

A Restless Sort of Patience--March 16, 2022

"As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord." [James 5:10]

Okay, here's the thing: if you aren't going to ignore this verse, you can either use it to encourage others (and yourself) to keep on getting into holy trouble when it seems hopeless to keep trying... or you can misuse James' words to scold people into passive acquiescence to evil and silent acceptance of abuse.  And that, my dear ones, would be a terrible case of theological malpractice.

Let's back up for a second.  It's true that over the course of Israel's history, God raised up numerous prophets who were called to speak truth to power, to shock complacent people into a new state of wakefulness, and to envision new hope when all seemed lost.  The faithful prophets were tasked, as the old line puts it, with afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.  And they filled that vocation, not only when it was easy (which was rare) but also when it was difficult.  Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and Ezekiel all persisted in speaking up even when it was costly--whether they were upsetting the political powers of the day, exposing the religious hypocrisy of the religious establishment, overturning tables in the marketplace, or calling on their neighbors to practice mercy and justice, they endured.  And yes, that involved a great deal of suffering--holy troublemaking usually does.

So that much is fair to say, and James is absolutely holding up the example of these prophets as examples from whom we can learn endurance and persistence. 

But let's also remember that these prophets were constantly shouting their frustrations at God, too, when the people didn't listen.  As much as we may remember the quaint, "Here am I, send me!" of Isaiah's call story, we often leave out the immediately following verses when God tells Isaiah that he's going to preach to ears that won't listen and eyes that will turn away from the truth.  As much as we may love the hopeful image put on Jeremiah's lips of a "new covenant" with God's word written on our hearts, this is the same Jeremiah who complains to God that the people aren't listening, and who accuses God of tricking him and luring him into being a prophet with an offer he couldn't refuse.   The prophets were willing to endure suffering, that's true, but they sure didn't go quietly into that good night.  They raged--against the powers of the day, against the religious and economic institutions of their day, and even against God when they felt like they had been abandoned by God and rejected by the people.  When things were not fair, not right, or not just, the prophets saw it--and they made noise about it... to everyone.

So whatever the word "patience" means here as James calls his readers to be patient, it absolutely cannot mean silent consent to wrongs being done, or a stoic stiff-upper-lip when they or others were mistreated.  The prophets didn't resort to violence when the king threatened, or the priests banned them from temples, or an angry lynch mob came to terrorize them.  But they sure as heaven didn't pretend they were happy about the mistreatment.  They just refused to sink to the level of their enemies. The prophets were committed not to answer evil with evil, but they sure did call out that evil for what it was when they saw it.  So whatever it means that they were "patient," they also used their voices, their actions, and their pens to protest what was wrong in their society.  The prophets' patience was in their persistence to keep on agitating, to keep on speaking, to keep on challenging, and to keep on questioning what everybody else took as the God's-honest-truth.  As long as that's what we mean when we use the word "patience," then, yes, by all means, let us be patient like the prophets were.

All too often, Respectable Religious People have used the language of the virtue of patience to squash that kind of urgency, and to tell the people of God to be quiet, look away from injustices, and to fake a smile while we wait for our tickets to heaven to be punched.  All too often, Respectable Religion has said, "Being patient means to grin and bear the terrible things that happen to others as well as to yourself until it either goes away on its own or we die and get to the afterlife and don't have to worry about it anymore."  But that's not at all what the prophets did--their kind of patience was the persistence to call out what was wrong, to bear hatred and hardship for speaking up when they did, and to go at it again the next day and the next and the next, for as long as it took.  The prophets never sat back and said, "Maybe things will get better on their own without my saying anything, doing anything, or changing anything."  Rather, they insisted on provoking their fellow citizens, their rulers, their religious leaders, and even other nations, to wake up in the immediate present.

I can't help, when I think of James connecting "the prophets" with "patience," of Dr. King's witness in his powerful (and gut-punching) "Letter from Birmingham City Jail."  For one, King reminds his readers, including a bunch of moderate white pastors who had criticized him, that all too often the word "Wait!" has meant "Never," and that the language of patience has been used by kings and high priests and CEOs from time immemorial to wear out those calling for change.  But then, in a masterful stroke, King reminds us that the work of changing things here and now was not reserved only for a select few ancient prophets but was the calling of the whole church in its beginnings.  King writes:

"There was a time when the church was very powerful.  It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were 'a colony of heaven,' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment.... Things are different now. The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are."

Of course, as King wrote those words, calling for change to racist structures in Jim Crow America, he was also sitting in a jail cell, enduring suffering for speaking up.  That was his kind of patience--a willingness to suffer if need be, but more than that, a willingness to keep on speaking and calling for God's in-breaking newness.  That was not only Dr. King's kind of patience, but that's what James has to have in mind when he calls for us to follow the example of "the prophets" as a model of patience, too.  

So please, let us not weaponize the word "patience" to silence or intimidate people God may well be raising up to speak truth that makes us squirm.  That is not the kind of patience the prophets, ancient or modern, embody.  Rather, our calling, like theirs, is to be persistent, resilient, and relentless in our commitment to speak love in the face of hatred, to practice justice in the face of crookedness, and to value truth in the face of pleasant lies.

May we be as restlessly, fiercely patient in our holy troublemaking as our God-given examples, the prophets.

Lord God, give us the fire you gave to prophets before us, to shed light into shadowy corners, to bring warmth to cold hearts, and to bring down with our witness whatever condemned oppressive structures need to be cleared away to make room for your new creation.