Sexagesima: Luke 8.4-15

In childhood, my mother often chided me by saying, “Patience is a virtue.” Sinner that I am, I prefer Ambrose Bierce’s definition better. Ambrose Bierce was a 19th century American author who wrote wickedly sarcastic columns which were later collected into a book called The Devil’s Dictionary. There he defined PATIENCE as “A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.” Patience has become a condition we have to tolerate when we cannot have our way immediately. Technology has made daily life move so quickly, only accelerating the experience of life passing us by like a river flowing too swiftly. Both in culture and in the church, patience has become a vice, not a virtue. If we don’t have the fastest connections, if emails and phone calls are not responded to immediately, if our food is not available in an instant, then we are ready to excommunicate the heretic who is guilty of the mortal sin of failing to gratify us instantly.

In the church, mission starts are put on a very short timetable: grow your church in a hurry, because we’re soon cutting off the funding. This inevitably leads to compromise. We’ve begun training our pastors this way. One-third of pastors in the Missouri Synod are now being trained through “alternate routes” that bypass seminary education; in some cases, a mere eight courses taken over the internet suffices for ordination. Is it any wonder there are doctrinal controversies?  If patience is a virtue, it is an increasingly rare one.

Today’s Gospel, however, stresses patience as intrinsic to being a Christian: “The [seeds] that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.” What is this patience that our Lord Jesus says is so important? 

Patience is not a quality that we can cultivate, an attitude we can adopt, or a method we can employ.  To be patient is nothing other than to have faith.  Not a generic faith—an optimistic attitude, hoping that “everything will work out”—but an absolute contentment in God’s Word. Patience is Trinitarian: being certain of our status as children of God the Father, through Holy Baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which we receive the Holy Spirit.  Patience, then, is not thinking that “good things come to those who wait,” but a confidence in the One upon whom we wait.

Patience is eschatological.  Eschatology means the doctrine of the “last things” or “end times.”  When I say that patience is eschatological, I am saying that the patient person knows what the last things are, what the end times will bring. He or she knows that the Jesus who died and rose again and ascended into heaven is indeed coming back, and our bodies will be raised on the last day, and believers in Christ will live in His kingdom in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. Such eschatological patience knows that there will be a judgment for sin on the last day, and at the same time believes in the forgiveness of sins that Jesus won on the cross. Confident of the end, trusting in Christ Jesus who is the beginning and the end, our difficulties and tribulations are seen for what they are: temporary burdens that we bear, as Scripture says, “for a little while,” as “light afflictions,” all of which teach us that God’s power is made perfect in weakness, that His grace is sufficient for us. If we believed that and kept it in mind all the time, we would never be impatient.  Everything would be viewed in light of eternity, in light of the kingdom, as well as in light of the callings that we have now, the places and people God has put us in and with in order to be His love there.

So our patience comes not from ourselves, from some inner strength, but from an exterior strength. Patience comes from knowing what God says, what he promises, what His mind is towards us.  We know who the LORD is—He’s the One who came down from heaven and became incarnate for us men and for our salvation.  And so we know what His mind is towards us—He loves us.  And if He loves us, then we have everything, though we lose everything there is to lose in this world.

What else can we say about His mind towards us?  The LORD has been patient toward us.  Consider the Parable of the Fig Tree:

And [Jesus] told this parable:  “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none.  And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none.  Cut it down.  Why should it use up the ground?’  And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put manure.  Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down’” [vv.6-9, esv].  

Thus is our Lord patient with us.  We have not born fruit, but the Lord gives us again and again an opportunity – “Let it alone this year also.”  We have a short season, a little time.  Eventually, His patience runs out, and we are given over to the wicked lusts of our own hearts, hearts that do not want to hallow God’s name or let His kingdom come.  We would rather make a name for ourselves, and build our own little kingdom.  He is patient with us, but eventually the tree is cut down; eventually the grass is thrown into the oven; eventually the branch that won’t abide in the Vine is lifted off; eventually the man without the wedding garment is thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth; eventually the laborer in the vineyard who had an evil eye and grumbled against the landowner is dismissed from His service.

In the book of Exodus, seven times we are told that Pharaoh hardened his heart against the LORD and His prophet Moses; afterwards the Scripture says that the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  This is not some wicked malice on the part of God; Pharaoh was simply given over to his own evil inclinations.

The words written in the book of Hebrews also apply to us:  “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” [3.15 esv].  The LORD still has patience with us – but the time is coming when the tree will be uprooted.  The LORD had patience with the people in Noah’s day – but the time came when the floodgates were opened and the deluge washed away the filth of a world that would not listen to God’s Word.  The LORD had patience with Sodom and Gomorrah – but the time came when sulfur was unleashed from the heavens.  The LORD had patience with Rome – but the time came when the Barbarian hordes from the north were no longer restrained, and Rome burned, and the Pax Romana was no more, for the Pax Christi—the peace of Christ—was not the source of the people’s joy.  They found their pleasure in the things of this world.  And desiring the world, they lost it.

The LORD has had patience with America.  How much longer will He tolerate her embracing those things which are abominable to speak?

And the LORD has had patience with you.  How much longer will He tolerate your gossiping, your greed, your gluttony?  How much longer will He tolerate your illicit sexual sins, your inattention to the Word, your impious utterances?  Repent, and do not allow the devil to snatch the Word from your ears and heart.  Repent, and be not led into temptation.  Repent, and be not choked with the cares and riches and pleasures of this life.

“A sower went out to sow his seed.”  Is this not the Lord’s patience with you?  Again and again He sows the seed of His Word in your rocky hearts and your souls so choked by the thistles of worry and the thorns of desire.  But He comes for you.  Every Sunday is Christmas.  The Sower is Jesus, who went out from heaven and comes down to us in His incarnation.  This is why He came:  to give life to the world, to restore growth where there is decay, to restore bright color to a world of gray, to restore life to those in their graves.  In other words, Christ comes in love.  The Sower does everything necessary for His vineyard.  “O My people, answer Me!  What more could I have done for My vineyard than I have done?  O My people!”

If there is no fruit borne, is the fault His?  By no means!  We see in this parable that if some are damned, they are damned not because God predestined them for condemnation; it is because they rejected His Word.

Do you hear His Word carelessly, and thus give opportunity to the devil to snatch it from your heart?  Are you soft and weak, and thus give opportunity to temptation?  Or are you a slave of your appetites and of the things of this world, and so fall from goodness?  What marks the good ground is patience – a patient dependence on the Jesus who has already died for your sins, who has already risen from the dead, who has already given you His Spirit in Holy Baptism, who has already promised you His kingdom.

The LORD has been patient with you.  Today, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the LORD equips you with everything You need to be the good ground.  It is His work, and His gift.  You know your sins, how you are choked by the cares of this life, and how you have been impatient.  But hearing the Word today, by the same Word He gives you strength to keep it, and you will bring forth the fruit of faith active in love, and you will do so with patience.  Patience with your neighbor when he annoys you.  Patience with the world when it does not give you what you want, because you are realizing that what the world offers you don’t really want anyway – what you want is the life of the world to come.  And patience in waiting upon Jesus, who is faithful to keep His promises.  He will do it, just as surely as He gives us the fruit of His patient suffering in this wonderful Sacrament. 

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