Until the Lord Comes

James 5:7-11

September 13, 2015 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Sermon Study Guide

My second appointment in the former North Indiana Conference was at a place called Brushwood. If you have no idea where it is, don’t worry. You’re not alone. I was told it was near Rensselaer, and when we were taken to meet the Staff-Parish Committee for the first time, we went into Rensselaer, then out of Rensselaer, and we kept driving. It seemed further than it really was, but eventually we topped a hill and there sat a small country church. At one point there had been a town there; I think it’s still on the Indiana maps, called “Aix.” But today the only thing left of the little town is the church and the parsonage. Literally surrounded by cornfields one year, and bean fields the next.

Now, most of you know I grew up in a tiny town, and the biggest business in Sedalia was the grain elevator. Even so, my family did not farm for a living, and though we were surrounded by farmers, I had remained blissfully ignorant of what a farmer’s life is like. Not once I got to Brushwood. There were many farmers in that church, and I knew that if I was going to get to know them, I also had to get to know farming. So one day I arranged to meet one of the farmers at his field during planting season and he invited me into his tractor. We talked about farming, and the challenges farmers face in today’s world, and then he did something that took me by surprise. He turned the wheel over to me and taught me how to plant corn. That was probably the crookedest row he had in his field that whole year. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn't go back after I was done and replant that row, but he was gracious. “Not bad, Pastor,” he said. I’m thinking, “Yeah, and not good, either.” But in those eight years at Brushwood, I learned two things about farmers. Well, probably more than that, but two big things. One, they have a steady hand and two, they are very patient people.

Sometimes we say patience is a virtue, but that’s not exactly true. Patience, the Bible says, is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). A virtue is something we cultivate, something we work on, something we can develop on our own. Virtue has to do with our behavior. But to see how that works out in our lives, just sit by the railroad tracks out on Davis or any other road in Terre Haute and see how patient people are as the train creeps by—will it stop or go on? People can’t wait. Patience is not a virtue in that sense; patience is a fruit of the Spirit, something given to us by God, developed in us by the work of the Holy Spirit, not our own will. It’s a gift and has to do with our character, something working on a deeper level than behavior. So, as James comes to the end of his letter, he begins to focus on patience in the context of suffering. He calls us to “be patient until the Lord comes.”

Some of you may be glad we’re coming to the end of James; a few of you may wish he had written more. We’ve been milling around in this letter for the last five weeks, and most of us have had James mess with our lives in one way or another. As he comes to the end of his letter, this half-brother of Jesus, writing to Christians scattered across the world, wants to encourage and challenge them to live faithfully. He’s been doing that in practical ways all throughout the letter: challenging our speech, the ways we treat the vulnerable, calling us to have a faith that matters in the world. And now he asks us to live as examples to the world when we face suffering.

James doesn’t have to go in great detail about suffering, because the experience of suffering is a universal constant. We all experience suffering in various ways, and if we’re not suffering right now in some way, we probably know someone who is. Every week, we share prayer requests for people who are in various stages of suffering. Most every week, Pastor Rick and I visit in the hospitals with people who are suffering. Several days a week, we have members from this church, our homebound visitation team, who go to nursing homes and rehab centers and other places to visit those who are hurting, lonely and often alone. Undoubtedly, right now, we can all think of someone (maybe several someones) with whom we have regular, maybe daily, contact who are in some stage of suffering. Suffering is a universal constant.

Some suffer physically. Cancer ravages individuals and families; about 1,600 people die every day from cancer. If it hasn’t invaded your life, cancer has probably touched your life in some way. Others have physical ailments that aren’t quite as obvious, and while medical science has come a long way to be able to relieve pain, it can’t relieve suffering. Suffering goes much deeper and begins the moment the doctor says the word you’ve been dreading. It’s cancer. It’s Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. It’s something we can treat but not cure. You know what it feels like; you know what it looks like. Physical suffering is universal.

Others suffer emotionally or relationally. She comes home and finds he’s moved out; all this time he’s had a relationship on the side. The word that lingers is “divorce.” She never planned on that; it was not in her mind all those years before when they said their vows. He promised her forever; how does she tell their daughter? Words were spoken, labels were used and whether they were true or not, they stick. Someone is called a “liar” or a “cheat.” Someone who was once a friend begins spreading lies and rumors. How do you trust that person or anyone ever again? These are wounds that are never seen, but they cause suffering that is deep and real. Depression strikes ever-more frequently. In the latest statistics I could find, it’s estimated that nearly 7% of the population suffers from some sort of depression, and to me, even more staggering than that is the fact that 8% of young adults (between ages 18 and 22) report being depressed. Sixteen million people struggle to get through the dark days that depression brings, and you may never know the suffering and the darkness they face. Emotional and relational suffering is universal.

And then, sometimes, the struggle is spiritual. Spiritual suffering sounds like an oxymoron, but sometimes when bad things happen, people just get angry at God. They question their faith. Some give up on their faith altogether. How could God allow genocide and holocaust and divorce and earthquakes and fires and so on? Why doesn’t God just step in and stop it? When you pray and it seems like your prayers don’t go past the ceiling. When you feel like God has abandoned you. When the things you used to do to draw near to God don’t seem to work anymore. That’s what I mean by spiritual suffering. It comes when a person knows something is true but how they practiced their faith seems to not work anymore. And there are a whole lot of issues around that idea, but suffice it to say that none of these instances of suffering are isolated. They’re all intertwined, and usually someone suffering in one area is suffering in many areas. We experience suffering universally and we long for healing.

Even creation suffers; did you know that? Romans says, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (8:22). The literal translation would say something more like, “Creation has been groaning and suffering pain together with you.” Creation itself longs for healing. The world is broken, creation suffers, and healing is needed. Is there any way we can find healing from this brokenness? Is there any hope in the midst of this suffering?

That’s where James steps in and counsels patience. There is hope and healing coming, and it will arrive when Jesus returns as he promised to. So hold on, James says. Be patient until the Lord comes. Now, we have to acknowledge that you don’t read very far into the New Testament to know the authors expected Jesus to return any day. Paul, James and the rest had this eager anticipation that Jesus would return in their lifetimes and set up his eternal kingdom. Paul even has to deal with people who are asking questions about why their friends, fellow believers, have died before Jesus returned. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul say that those who have “fallen asleep” (a metaphor for death) are not without hope. When the Lord comes, he will gather them up as well. “Therefore,” he says, “encourage one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

Now, the New Testament has all sorts of images for Jesus’ return, and there are three primary words the authors use to describe it. Here is your Greek lesson for the day; you can use these words to impress your friends at parties. Or maybe not. Anyway, the first of these words, the most popular, is parousia. It can mean presence or arrival, but it came to refer to a king’s visit and also to an invasion of a country by an army. So when Jesus says, in Matthew 24, “For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming [parousia] of the Son of Man” (24:27). Jesus sees his own coming as an invasion, the final invasion when the King comes to receive his kingdom. A second word, used by Paul, is epiphaneia, which means “appearing.” In the first century, that word described the appearance of a god to the people, and later they used it describe when an emperor took his throne in Rome (it became the practice to worship the emperors as gods, so that makes sense). So Jesus’ return, as Paul describes it, is his appearance to everyone, whether they are expecting him or not. And you know the difference—when you’re expecting company, you’re waiting for them, anticipating their arrival, excited to see them. And then there are times when you’re not expecting company and—well, maybe you’re less than thrilled that someone has “just stopped by.” Your house is a mess and your life doesn’t have room for one more thing. Jesus’ appearance, of course, will be bigger than that, with bigger concerns, but the point is still the same: are you waiting for him, expecting him, anticipating him—or not? He will appear to both and the results will be different for both.

Then, the third word, used by Peter, is apokalupsis, which you can hear becomes our English word “apocalypse.” The word means “unveiling” or “laying bare.” Jesus’ return will “lay bare” or expose the falsehoods that exist in our world. Jesus’ return will allow truth to be seen. His coming will be the dividing line of history (Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter, pg. 122). If you put all those images together, this we can say for sure about Jesus’ return: the King of all Kings will be revealed and known and he will reign over his kingdom once and for all. Everything will be made right, remade, the way God intended from the beginning. That’s why creation groans, and that’s why James calls us to patience. Jesus is coming, but until he comes, we have to learn the art of waiting.

A couple of other things, real quick, we know about Jesus’ coming from the New Testament. First of all, no one knows when it’s going to happen. Jesus himself said this: “About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). Theologians and scholars debate how the Father can know something the Son does not know, but that is, it seems, just the way it is. He did not say, “No one knows except a few guys down in the twentieth century who will write books and let people know when it’s going to happen.” That’s not what he said. He said—who knows? No one, not even Jesus himself. And every single person who has tried to match up current events with Biblical images has been wrong—every single time. I remember browsing in a used book store in Oklahoma once and came across several copies of a book entitled “88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1988.” This was some years past 1988, and I had to chuckle when I also spotted copies of the sequel: “89 Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1989.” I always wondered if the 89th reason was, “He didn’t return in 1988.” When we spend our energy and time trying to figure out something Jesus himself said he didn’t know, we’re not spending that time the way he wants us to: reaching others. In fact, as William Barclay once wrote, “Human speculation about the time of the Second Coming is not only useless, it is blasphemous” (123). It is claiming to know something Jesus does not know himself and does not intend for us to know.

Which leads us to the second thought: the Bible says his coming will be sudden and unexpected. It is compared to lightning and a thief in the night. So why, then, do we waste our time on speculation? Jesus is coming; that much we know. It will be unexpected; that we know as well. We can’t figure out it; that’s the part we often forget. Our calling is not to pin down dates and times but to wait with patience and perseverance in the face of suffering. Patience, James says, like a farmer, who puts the seed in the ground and then can’t do a whole lot to make it grow. Now, certainly, technology has enabled farmers to fertilize and water more effectively; in fact, it was from a farmer that I first learned about GPS. And so there are things they can do to try to influence the growth, but there’s nothing they can do to make sure the crop grows correctly. There is no way to control the weather; when I was at Brushwood, I would often get prayer requests for more rain or less rain or something like that, and I started reminding them that I was in sales, not production. A farmer has to have patience. In Israel, James says, they had to wait on the autumn rains (which usually came in late October) and the spring rains (which came in April or May). If those didn’t come, the crops were in danger (Barclay 121). I was there one summer when we passed field after field of burnt up crops because the rains hadn’t come. In the face of great uncertainty, the farmer has patience, and so must the Christian, James says, in the midst of uncertainty, waiting and suffering.

Then he uses two examples from the Old Testament. He talks about the prophets who were often ridiculed and rejected and how they maintained their faith in the face of all of that. They knew they were speaking and doing what God had told them, even though sometimes it didn’t make sense. Hosea married a prostitute, and when she left him, he had to go buy her back. Jeremiah was beaten, imprisoned, placed in stocks and thrown in a well (cf. Cedar, Communicator’s Commentary: James, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, pg. 96). Ezekiel was told to cook his food over human waste, lay on his left side for 390 days and on his right for another 40 days. And he was not allowed to mourn when his wife died. These things were all images and messages to Israel, but Israel largely rejected them. The prophets suffered and yet continued to demonstrate faith and trust in God.

The other example James uses is Job. Now, you may have heard the phrase “the patience of Job,” or maybe you’ve even described someone as having “the patience of Job.” Go read the book that bears his name and see just how patient Job was. He basically complains to God for 41 chapters. Now, we know, as the readers of his story, that he suffered unjustly. His suffering seems to be some sort of contest between God and Satan; Job is caught in the middle. And he knows he’s been righteous; he knows he’s done nothing wrong. So he complains. And he complains. And he justifies himself. He is anything but patient—but he does persevere, and that’s what James wants us to see in him. In fact, that’s the word James uses—perseverance. Walking through a storm and holding tightly to your faith. Making it through times of suffering and still trusting God even when you don’t understand. At the very beginning of his story, when Job first loses everything and begins to suffer from a terrible disease, his wife urges him, “Just curse God and die.” And Job, after probably making a mistake by calling his wife a “foolish woman,” says, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10). The patience of a farmer, and the perseverance of Job—that’s what James is calling us to when we face suffering and wonder where God is in all of it. Have patience and persevere until the Lord comes.

Several years ago, it was my privilege to know a woman who had, in the past, served Jesus in many ways through the church, particularly through her gifts in music. She had been very active at one point, but when I arrived at the church, she was not. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I saw her at church in worship. Over time, I learned why. Julie was having health problems and no one could seem to diagnose what was going on. All she knew is that it was hard for her to get moving in the morning and she also was experiencing some social anxiety. Worship, which she had once loved, was a hard place for her to come.

As time went on, Julie visited doctor after doctor until she finally found one who could tell her what she had. It’s a rare disease called Pompe; there is no cure. And because it’s so rare, it doesn’t get a lot of attention, so there’s not a lot of work being done on a cure for it, either. Julie was told she only had, probably, a short time to live. But she didn’t want to give up. Though by this time she was bed-ridden, Julie formed a support group on Facebook for others who suffered from the same disease. She would encourage others and pray for them; I know she never quit praying. One day, I received an email from her, something which probably took her a long time to write, and attached to it was a video. It was of Julie, in her bedroom, singing a worship song. She wanted me to know she hadn’t quit praising God. She came to the church one day, wanting to be anointed with oil for healing, and as we prayed, I managed to drop the bottle of oil and got it all over her and her wheelchair. She said she wanted to be anointed, not bathed in oil! I visited with her a couple of times after that and she talked about what she wanted to have for her memorial service, and even in that, Julie never gave up. I never heard her get angry at God or blame God for the disease. There were difficult days, no doubt, and maybe days when she and God had some serious discussions. But Julie, to me, was a picture of patience and perseverance. She didn’t want to go through what she did, but she had absolute confidence that, on the other side, Jesus had perfect healing waiting for her. Julie is someone who “got” the message of this passage: in the midst of suffering, we live in patience and perseverance until the Lord comes.

In some ways, James has come full circle in this letter, because in the very beginning, in a passage we didn’t read on Sunday morning, he calls us to joy in the midst of trials. He writes this: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything”  (1:2-4). In other words, patience and perseverance are evidence of growing up in faith. When you feel like your faith is being tested, it just may be that God is granting you a grace to help you grow in your faith. Not always. Sometimes the suffering and trials we face are because of dumb luck or the choices of other people. But sometimes God allows these things to help us grow, to help us learn patience and perseverance. Someone once said, “I know God won’t give me more than I can handle; I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.” Could he stop the times of struggle? Yes, he could. But redemption, healing and hope happen when we go through those times rather than around them. Salvation comes when we go through the desert, not around it.

And the promise is this: “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy” (5:11). What I love about that verse is the word “compassion.” Do you know what it means? It doesn’t mean “warm feelings,” like we usually think. It’s a compound word that means “to suffer with.” When we suffer, God is compassionate. God suffers with us. He is not a god who is unmoved by our pain and our suffering. He is a God who is with us; Jesus’ name “Emmanuel” means “God with us.” He is with us in the good times and in the difficult times. He walks with us through suffering and he feels our pain. And he has promised, in the end, to make it all right, to redeem creation, to restore and renew. And no one I know of holds onto that hope better than Pastor Ed Dobson from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ed and another pastor, who both face debilitating diseases, exude the spirit James longs for us all to have.

VIDEO: Ed’s Story

We believe in healing in this church. We believe that ultimately, healing will take place in the end, as God restores and redeems the world when Jesus returns. But we also believe God brings healing in the midst of suffering here and now. Not always the way we want, but as God chooses. We don’t always understand why some are healed and some are not. In my own life, I’ve had times when I’ve been healed miraculously and other times when I’ve not been. The calling to us is to trust God, no matter what the outcome and to have hope and faith until the Lord comes. But we’re also told, later on in this chapter, that there is something we can do in the meantime. James says this: “Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (5:13-16). Now, just two quick things about this passage. First of all, the word for “healing” here is much broader than just physical healing. It’s an offer of all sorts of healing; notice the connection to confession and forgiveness. So healing prayers are not just for physical healing. And second, healing is God’s business, not ours. God is the source of healing, not our prayers, not this oil (it’s not magic) and not some waving of the hands or money sent to a TV preacher. Healing is God’s offer and God’s doing.

So, with that said, next Sunday evening, at 6:30 p.m., here in our worship center, we’re going to have a time of prayer for healing. You have hurts and needs; they may be physical, emotional, relational or spiritual or, more likely, some combination thereof. All we’re going to do next Sunday evening is what James says: sing and pray and anoint those who would like to be anointed with oil and ask God to bring healing. No magic, just prayer. I invite you to come, bring your hurts and ask God to heal them. It might happen that night, or the process of healing might take a long time. But I believe that, when we are obedient to the Scripture, God will respond in the way he has promised. After all, the Lord is compassionate and merciful. So, next Sunday, 6:30 p.m., healing prayer. And let’s go to God in prayer right now, shall we?