James 5:7

Children can be rather impatient, as you all know.  There is really only one exception to that rule, and that is when somebody is baking Christmas goodies.  Then kids are not rather impatient; they are totally impatient.  They can’t wait until the goodies come out of the oven: they come back to check the timer every minute or so, hoping that ten minutes have gone by; they give orders to take the cookies out of the oven right now, because they are sure the cookies really are done; and when the cookies finally do come out, they ignore any warnings about how hot those cookies might be.  Stuff one in the mouth; run around like a wild man because it’s hot, hot, hot; then do the same thing with another one.  A mom looking to stock up on cookies for Christmas Day has to be careful to keep hungry hands off of the cookies, or they’ll all disappear before they’re needed.

“Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming” (James 5:7 NIV).  So writes James, the brother of Jesus, to the Christians living throughout the nations in the years following our Lord’s ascension into heaven.  Jesus Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, but it may take some time.  There are two dangers to avoid in the meantime.  The first is the overeager expectation of the child who’s waiting for Christmas cookies to bake, because that kind of overeager expectation can cause people to go off the deep end looking at the signs of the times.  The other danger is simply losing interest, getting distracted, and forgetting to wait at all, and when you forget to wait on the coming of our Lord, you walk off into a multitude of behaviors that get you into trouble.  So this waiting business calls for patience.  And patience is not a strength for most of us, whether we’re children or adults.  Thank God that he teaches us to wait.

Have you known anybody who was a little like the overeager child who wants to take the cookies out of the oven before they’re done?  When people like this wait for our Lord’s coming, they often get so wrapped up in looking at the signs of the Lord’s coming that they forget to look for the Lord who is coming.  They expend an extraordinarily great amount of energy trying to determine whether the latest war in the Middle East is a sign of the Armageddon mentioned in the Revelation to St. John.  They speculate over the number of countries that have joined the European Union, which will, of course, be the beast with ten horns that is mentioned in the Revelation.  Some of them go so far as collecting money to help the modern-day nation of Israel rebuild the temple on its ancient site, on the theory that Jesus will not return until the temple is rebuilt.  Now, I am not saying that these people do not have faith.  They most certainly do, or they would not be waiting.  They are looking forward to the redemption which Jesus Christ will bring when he comes again.  But I would suggest that they are so focused on the signs leading up to Jesus’ second coming that the message they teach and preach has more to do with scary signs than with the message of the free forgiveness of sins which our Savior has won for us.  The truth is there in their message and in their beliefs, but the overeager expectation moves the truth off to the side a little bit and puts less important matters on center stage, and they mix error with it to boot.

What is important is not when Jesus will come again, but what he will do when he comes again.  If it were important for us to know when, Jesus would have told us when.  But he didn’t.  Instead, he simply speaks through the apostle James, saying, “Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming”  Be patient as the farmer is patient.  And what kind of patience does the farmer have?  Well, farmers plant their seed in the fall, and they certainly try to read the signs in the spring, but their focus is not on the signs.  Their focus is on the valuable crop.  Instead of spending all his time reading the signs in hopes of knowing in advance at just what hour the harvest will be ready, the farmer gets ready for the harvest.  He focuses on being ready for that day, so that he is prepared when it arrives.  So it is with Jesus’ return.  Our task is not to know when, but to wait patiently for it.  Forget the signs.  Look forward to the coming itself, when Jesus Christ will exalt those who believe in him.

Of course, that waiting, that looking forward, is itself sometimes a challenge, because it feels like it might never come.  That’s the second danger in waiting, the danger of getting distracted and finally forgetting to watch and to wait.  That seems to be just the danger James is addressing.  Much of his letter is what we call admonition:  stern warnings to avoid all kinds of evil.  Here in chapter five, we find out the reason for all the admonitions.  Jesus Christ is coming.  “Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming,” James writes.  Don’t give up waiting, because when you give up waiting you lose your focus on the promises of God which are fulfilled in Christ Jesus.  And when you lose your focus on the promises of God, you get into behaviors that draw you away from God.  You lose patience in the Lord’s coming, and so you lose patience with your brother or sister in Christ, and so you begin to grumble against one another.  You lose patience in the Lord’s coming, and you lose patience in God’s promise to provide for your every need, and so you begin to worry yourself sick over money.  Once you lose sight of the fact  that “the Judge is standing at the door,” as James says (5:9 NIV), then it is easy to live as if you will never have to give an accounting of your life.  Yet you will!  Jesus will return again to judge the living and the dead, and on that day those who are found without faith in him will have their evil deeds and wicked thoughts exposed in the light of his glory for all the world to see, and they will be sent away.  On the other hand, those who are found with faith in Christ on that day will have his righteousness as a covering for their evil deeds and their wicked thoughts, and they will be declared innocent in God’s sight, although they are not, and God the Father will welcome them into his eternal and everlasting presence.  Stay focused on the Lord’s coming, because the Lord’s coming is the final and ultimate fulfillment of all God’s promises to you.  Stay focused and get ready, the way a farmer stays focused and gets ready for the harvest.

Of course, it is one thing to tell people to wait patiently without losing focus, and it is another thing for people actually to do it.  So God gives us reminders along the way.  Christ teaches us to wait.  Sometimes those reminders are little spells of trouble.  Sometimes they are weightier and longer bouts of physical infirmity.  They can take any number of forms—loss of a job, disease, unexpected expenses, or any number of other troubles that you yourselves have experienced and know about.  In the midst of such trouble, Jesus teaches us to wait patiently.

Your job was taken from under your feet, and now you’re not quite sure what to do.  Yet you have Jesus’ promise, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33 NIV).  Christ is not about to let you starve, for he has purchased you with his own holy, precious blood.  “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord,” says the Psalmist (27:14 NIV), and in such circumstances you learn to wait for him.  You learn patience as you cast your burdens upon Jesus in prayer, and as you find encouragement and hope in his word.

Your doctor informs you that the test results have come back, and the news is not good.  At first you and your family are in shock, and then the news begins to sink in, and you feel even worse.  Yet you have Jesus’ promise, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24 NIV).  Christ bore in his own flesh the penalty for your sin, and in rising from the dead he became the firstfruits of the new creation.  Those who believe in him will receive new, glorified bodies on the last day.  “Death no longer has mastery over him,” Paul writes (Romans 6:9), and the same is true for you.  Freed from the fear of death, you who believe in Christ live your lives as testimonies to the goodness of God.  You spend time with family and friends.  In the face of terminal illness, even with its pain and sadness, you learn patience as you commend your body and soul into Christ’s hands and as you look forward to the resurrection of the dead.

It doesn’t even take major events like losing a job or being diagnosed with a terminal illness for Christ to teach you to wait.  Each one of us faces our own sin on a daily basis.  Some of you may struggle with a besetting sin, with a pattern of sinful behavior that has become ingrained in your very thoughts and emotions.  Others may struggle with different sins each day, but we all struggle with sin.  You struggle to escape it, but no matter what you do, it always manages to rear its ugly head at the very moment when you are at your weakest—when you are under stress or tired.  A little bit like the smoker who tries quitting but gets the urge every time he has a bad day, you just can’t escape the thoughts and emotions that go with your sin.  “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” you want to cry out with Paul (Romans 7:24 NIV).  And with him you can answer, “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25 NIV).  Jesus Christ has carried that sin to the cross, where its power over you was broken.  It still rears its ugly head, but as you go to the Lord in sorrow over you sin and receive his forgiveness, you can rest assured that God the Father does not hold that sin against you.  You can go on with your life knowing that the Holy Spirit is working in your heart to weaken the grip which that sin has on you.  As long as you remain in this life, you learn to distance yourself from the sin, and you take it to the cross daily, but you “wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23 NIV), when Jesus Christ will totally remove the desire for sin from your life.  You learn to wait patiently for the coming of the Lord.

Waiting patiently for the Lord’s coming is ultimately a gift of God.  This Advent season offers a special time to learn it, as we wait to open Christmas gifts until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and as we wait to sing Christmas hymns here in church, opting instead for the hymns of Advent.  We learn to wait patiently in little things during Advent, a waiting that reflects our waiting in the larger, weightier matters of life.  And that waiting reflects the hardest waiting of all, as we wait patiently for our Lord’s coming, when we will finally receive our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  Yet all this waiting is a gift from God.  As we wait for our Lord’s advent, God teaches us to wait patiently.David Loy is the Pastor at Zion Lutheran Church in Bolivar, Missouri.