Quick Summary:

Four years ago this week Seattle was hit by the hurricane-force winds and heavy rains of the Hanukkah Eve storm. The storm ripped large sections of shingles off the roof above us, knocked down trees, sent mudslides careening down hillsides, and shut down the power grid—in some places for the better part of a week. Remember?

This weekend’s Pineapple Express will no doubt leave it’s mark, too; not so much from damaging winds, but because of heavy rain, high freezing levels, and the inevitable flooding that comes with it.

There are different qualities of patience we come to know through life experiences like these. In the reading from James today we receive his counsel of patience:
BE PATIENT, THEREFORE, BELOVED, UNTIL THE COMING OF THE LORD.

James gives two examples of what he's talking about. The farmer, and the prophets. Now I've known lots of farmers, but I don't know too many who sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for things to happen. The farmer's brand of patience does not involve sitting and waiting. Patience is not passive for the farmer.

James second example is the prophets. Patient prophets?! Isaiah? Jeremiah? Amos? Hosea? Now I don't know about you, but I've never associated patience with the prophets!

So either James means something different than the conventional, passive meaning of patience, OR there's been a mistake in the translation! Patience, for we who follow Jesus, has nothing to do with passivity. It has everything to do with a passionate embrace of hope. It has everything to do with eager longing for the incarnation of God's promises. This is why we can speak, as Walter Brueggemann does in the prayer I prayed to begin this sermon, of a kind of holy impatience, from “the bottoms of our toes to the edges of our fingertips.”