Sunday
October 12
The Long Wait
By Marsh Chapel
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Trimmed Lamps
The dilemma of today’s parable is the dilemma of our very lives. Much of life is a long wait.
Our gospel has made use of a story known elsewhere in antiquity (Bultmann, HST, loc.cit). The power of the wedding, as you know from other parts of Holy Scripture, stood at the very pinnacle of experience and religious teaching, in antiquity. Here the gospel writer has appended a (very noble) encouragement to watchfulness, to a parable re-arranged near the end of the first century of the common era.
Our more trustworthy manuscripts include the bride, too, ‘ten maidens…went to meet the bridegroom and the bride’. In fact, nowhere in antiquity do maidens await the bridegroom. They await the bride. That is why we call them bridesmaids. They attend the bride, and especially in the great exultation of the translation from home to home, from parents to spouse, like the sun rising from the eastern heavens, daily, the bridegroom with the bride runs the course with joy.
So, why has the writer eliminated the bride? He does so to make the parable fit the church’s biggest spiritual disappointment, keenly and painfully suffered by 90ad. Christ was risen from the dead which must mean the end of time which must mean his return in power and glory which must mean the soon and very soon parousia, the coming of the Lord. But 30ad became 50ad and 50ad became 70ad and 70ad became 90ad. And the bridegroom (here shorn of bride clearly a figure of Christ) delays.
The original parable is not about awaiting the return of Christ, more about this later in the great and glorious gospel of John, but about living through a long wait. The maidens, the bridesmaids, some prepared and some not, all have to wait. And it is a long wait. And that is just the point.
You may think of a woman waiting to give birth. You may think of a population, long enslaved, waiting for justice to roll down like waters. You may think of a war torn region, the setting for endless decades of mayhem and war and violence, waiting for the dawn of peace. You may think of a doctoral student waiting for that final report, the dissertation is finished. You may think of a denomination waiting the wisdom to affirm the full humanity of gay people now recognized across nearly three dozen states. You may think of those afflicted and infected with a deadly virus awaiting a vaccine for healing. You may think of a man hoping for a job and daily awaiting a letter. You may think of a physician attending a patient suffering from a mental illness, hoping against hope for a delayed cure. You may think of a lonely woman, a tithing Christian, waiting for a pastor to leave off further libraries and degrees and come to her church, and come to her house, and make a visit, and say a prayer.
Whether or not the full range of doctrine and teaching in Christianity convinces you, surely, at least at this point, you would admit its congruence with your experience. Faith and life both are a long wait.
How shall we trim our lamps for the wait? The parable moves quickly to the importance of preparation. A little patience? A little persistence? Oil for the lamps during the long wait.
Patience and Persistence
Patience. The patience of Job. Patience is a virtue. Love, joy, peace, patience. Patient in suffering.
Persistence. Persistent prayer. Persistence as insistence. To exist is to persist. Labor omnia vincit. The persistence of Paul.
The life of faith, the spiritual life, carries us down into the caverns of experience. Our steadiness in faith, our reliance on faith, are most clear to us when everything else is murky, misty, dark and dank. Faith is only faith when it is all you have left.
Two registers of the spiritual life, the life of faith, down in the declivities and caves of time, are patience and persistence. Over the course of a week, or a year, or a lifetime, one needs both. You need both. You need both the passive receptivity of patience and the active resistance of persistence.
One is the brake pedal. That is patience. You are careening down hill. Your plan, your work, your friendship, your marriage, your profession are going south. You need a way to put a foot on the brakes, to slow the decline, to ease the demise. Patience can help you to do that. One day at a time. Sleep on it. Things will look better in the morning. Patience is your way of managing the rolling ride down hill.
The other is the accelerator, the gas peddle. That is persistence. You are looking uphill. The climb is before you and the incline daunting. Your plan, your work, your friendship, your marriage, your profession are all in the balance, nothing is for sure, nothing is taken for granted. You can rest, but later. Now you need to put the peddle to the metal and climb the hill. Slow and steady wins the day. Keep on keeping on. One step at a time. Persistence is your way of empowering the grinding ride up hill.
Both patience and persistence are underrated virtues. They shy away from the lime light. They don’t do well in the bright light. But for your faith to quicken and to continue, you will need both patience and persistence. For sustenance, energy, endurance in the long wait, you and I need both.
Some of you are more naturally patient. Make sure you practice persistence too. Some of you are more naturally persistent. Make sure you practice patience too.
The care of children requires and elicits endless patience. Patience to rock. Patience to feed. Patience to listen. Patience to play. Patience to teach. Patience to watch. Patience to repeat. Patience simply to live alongside a slowly developing person, personality, personhood. Someone let you grow up, after all. The patience you received will need to become a part of the patience you conceive and retrieve and give. A part of our fast forward work culture can use the brake peddle, the quiet pause, the important lack of doing, that is the patience of the cure of souls in general, and the care of children in particular. Honor, celebrate the hours and stamina given to breakfast cleanup, to snack and nap time, to bathing, to the settling of squabbles, the cleanup of messes, the endurance of crying, the midnight coddling—all and so much more that require the patience of parenting.
Learning any language, at any time, is a demanding enterprise. The language of faith—the grammar of trust, the syntax of belief, the spelling of practice—is no different. Children blessed in patient care to learn to speak, and then also to learn to speak in a language of faith, are given the gift of life. To know from childhood the power of love. To know from childhood the example of forgiveness. To know from childhood the posture of hope. To know from childhood the virtue of patience. If you learn the language early, taking it as your mother tongue, and imbibing it with your mother’s milk, you have it all your life. A hymn to hum. A verse to remember. A prayer to use. A psalm to recite. A story to tell.
You certainly learn to speak another language in mid-life. People do so all the time. That too requires patience, both for listener and for speaker. It may involve a difference in pronunciation, an accent.
In the summer we cared for four of our five grandchildren over several days. The older three one afternoon went with their grandmother, the fourth having been left for a nap with her grandfather. She awoke after a couple of hours, not overly pleased to find out who had been assigned as her temporary guardian, or captor. But she allowed herself to be held, to be given the chance slowly to wake up, to see the blue in sky and lake, and to let the breeze of mid summer caress face and hands, hair and skin. She could sit, and wait. She only needed a patience, a patient presence.
Sometimes though, in the life of faith, in the spiritual life, you need more gas and less brake, more persistence than patience.
We will offer one immediate example, literally present to Marsh Chapel today, and figuratively present in many, many settings.
Dr. Doug Reeves, in his blog CHANGELEADERS, has something to offer you, first for those finishing a PhD, and second, more broadly, for all. His particular advice applies, well and broadly. Patience is a virtue. But so is persistence. He offers the wisdom of persistence, in five forms:
(Top Five Tips for Finishing Your Dissertation by Doug Reeves)
1) Call your advisor. The top reason that doctoral students are stuck is neither their overwhelming literature review nor their complex research methodologies. It’s failure to communicate with their advisor. Pick up the phone, drop by the office, or as a last resort, e-mail. Make personal contact with the person who will most influence your ability to finish your doctorate…
2) Read exemplary dissertations. Although this is your first dissertation, your committee has been through this exercise many times. Ask them to give you the title and author of the best dissertation they have ever seen. It may be their own, and it’s never a bad idea to read the publications of your advisor and committee members. Exemplary dissertations give you the clearest possible idea of the substance and style that your committee expects of you.
3) Create a cohort. Boston College dramatically increased the completion rate of their doctoral program when they created small groups of four or five students who meet regularly with one another, sharing research, emotional support, and intellectual engagement. If your university does not provide such a cohort, then create your own. Find like-minded colleagues who are committed to walking across the stage on the same date as you will, commit to weekly meetings, and share a one-page summary of just one article or book that you have reviewed that week. Ideally, the group will have complementary strengths – perhaps one with expertise in quantitative methods and another with a focus on qualitative methods.
4) Forget perfection. There is a technical academic term for the perfect dissertation – it is called “unfinished.” You are doing important work, and while you should not tolerate sloppy research, you must forgive yourself for imperfections. You will think of many reasons that your research could be better. You could have a larger sample size; you could use a more contemporary analytical technique; you could add fifty more citations to your literature review. The list never ends. As my advisor told me many years ago, “this is not your last piece of research, it’s your first piece of research, so get it finished.”
5) The 45-minute rule. Don’t wait for the sabbatical, vacation, weekend, or free day. The vast majority of dissertation writers are working professionals who have many demands on their time, so the key to finishing is not waiting for the illusory gift of free time, but rather the work-a-day chore of finishing a paragraph, an article, or a quick synthesis – something that you can do in 45 minutes. One of the best ways to give yourself 45 minutes of uninterrupted time is to turn off e-mail – not forever, not even for a full day, but for just 45 minutes. You will be amazed at what just 45 minutes of focused energy will provide for you.
How remarkably, with just a little here again there again revision, these points about persistence may fit your own and very long wait!
Invitation
The dilemma of today’s parable is the dilemma of our very lives. Much of life, as in the story, is simply a long wait. It is a long wait, and that is just the point. The primitive Christian church endured such a lengthy wait through nearly seven decades , prior to the Gospel of John and the new commandment, to love, the new gift, of spirit, the new hope, of truth making free, the new gospel dimension, really, of an hour coming that, somehow, now, is.
Here is an invitation.
You may benefit, should you seek patience and persistence, from consort with a community born in patience (that is, suffering) and persistence (that is, endurance. Suffering produces endurance, and endurance character, and character hope, and hope does not disappoint us. Why? Because of the Love of God that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.
You may of course sally forth on your own. Many do. Most do, it may be. But how are you going to know the power of persistence without immersion in a persistent community of faith? How are you going to gain the capacity of patience without involvement in a patient community of faith? How are you going to go up the hills and down the hills of life without some, genuine, comraderie along the trail, some consanguinity on the hike, some compassion amid the passion of the heat of the day? Life is hard enough, the wait is long enough, without some church family to love and some church home to enjoy and some church community of faith with whom to keep faith. Especially for children as they grow. Especially for adults trying to ferret out some meaning in life. Especially for the more elderly, wise but lonely, having much to offer but not much mobility with which to offer it. It gladdens me when one or another, elsewhere or here, finds a seat in the community of patient persistence, of persistent patience.
Need we even pause to add that such a fellowship, of faith working through love, could never have given itself birth, and could never have sustained itself by merely inventive imaginative activity, and could never have conjoured for itself the sustainable energies uphill and downhill, patience and persistence? Such fellowship, sustenance, and energy come from the divine presence, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Love of God, the transcript in time of God in eternity, whose own lasting love through the long wait, marked on the cross, is, finally, all we have, and all we need.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hil, Dean of Marsh Chapel
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