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Nick was friendly and enthusiastic, the kind of kid who’d throw himself into a new experience. He’d recently joined our church because someone he worked with at McDonald’s had told him about Jesus and the good news seemed good enough to Nick to give it a shot. He was sincere too. Baptism? No problem. Life Group? Sign me up. Serving with others? When can I start? Nick was in. And, as with many young adults, Nick was also trying to sort out his future. Most of life stretched ahead of him, with all kinds of paths available. One day Nick and I were talking a walk and chatting about what he wanted to do next. “I think I might become a pastor”, he said, “Some of the people I work with can be jerks. They’re always swearing and telling gross jokes. I want to get out of there. And the way I see it, there isn’t any sin in the church, right? So, I should just become a pastor and things will be easier!”
It didn’t take long for Nick to discover that there was, in fact, some sin in the church, and that Christians could still be jerks. Maybe there were less dirty jokes, but Nick learned that once we choose to follow Jesus, we don’t all magically begin walking on air, dressed in white robes, without even a whiff of body odour. We’re brought together, just as we are, and we’re usually pretty scruffy. To his credit, years later Nick chuckled about his assumptions as a new Christian, remarking that he may have been a little naïve.
Nick also found his way. He married a young woman he met here at church and is today a proud dad of three. Following a career helping Langley’s houseless and poor, he now serves as a federal peace officer working in our local corrections institutions. I find it both amusing and inspiring that at first Nick’s aim was to avoid human messiness, but he ended up following a call to serve in some of the most challenging places in our society. As it turns out, Nick didn’t need to become a pastor to build a holy life. But I’ll never forget his early idealism about life in Christian community. No one will be jerks and there’ll be no pesky sin around to make things difficult. Nick learned, as we all do, that life together in Jesus is not a sterilized or entirely curatable experience. It’s real life. The good news is that Jesus promised to send his Holy Spirit very much for our real life.
Don’t Panic
Now and then you’ll hear someone say that the church needs to be more like an Acts chapter 2 church. And by this they often mean a church which is full of the Holy Spirit, bursting with signs and wonders, with hordes of people turning to Jesus, the community regularly gathering and sharing everything together. Acts 2 is an exciting vision. When the Spirit is poured out on Jesus’ first followers, the sense of abundant life leaps off the page. So it can feel that if we’re not seeing that kind of thing, we should simply figure out how to see more of it. Hence the “we need to be more of an Acts 2 church” urgency. Maybe if we all just pressed into the Holy Spirit more, if we got more charismatic (whatever that might mean), we’d see more of that stuff in our churches today. And maybe we would.
The trouble with that picture of the Acts 2 church is that it’s a somewhat stagnant and glossy snapshot. It’s important to remember that Acts has more than two chapters. There was also an Acts 3 church, and an Acts 4 church, and 5, 6, 7 and so on. And when you read through Acts it doesn’t all sound like Acts 2, yet we’re assured that the Holy Spirit was no less present and working. In fact, when we read about the early Christian movement in Acts, we learn that even though the Holy Spirit had been poured out liberally, even though the message of Jesus was spreading rapidly across ethnic and cultural boundaries, people could still be jerks. The presence of the Spirit did not make folks automatically holy beyond all error.
As thousands were responding the gospel through the preaching of the Apostles, as signs and wonders bubbled up, as contagious generosity was growing, problems were also already presenting themselves. For example, in Acts 5 people are lying about how financially generous they’ve been with the aim to advance their status in the church. In Acts 6 one group is complaining about another group on grounds of discrimination. We read that that in the first feeding program set up in the first Jesus’ community, some folks were getting less food than others because of their ethnicity. If you keep reading past Acts 2, you find a church filled with the Spirit but also with problems, because it’s filled with people.
There’s a famous saying which goes, ”The church is not museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners”. That’s a reminder which might encourage us today in our church. Are there problems? You bet. But that’s no cause to panic, or to assume that the Holy Spirit isn’t present or working. It didn’t mean that in Acts and it doesn’t mean that now.
Of course, this isn’t to say we should be apathetic about addressing problems in churches, far from it. When there are issues between us, we need to bring those to the Lord with humility and integrity, and various levels of accountability are important depending on the issue at hand. But it is to say, as the book of Acts reminds us, that when the going gets tough, the Holy Spirit gets going. The Spirit doesn’t have a cut and run attitude when things get messy. Over every Christian community a sign could be posted which reads, “The Holy Spirit at work”. In other words, the Spirit is a renovator, and it’s helpful to admit there’s plenty of work to be done. One of my favourite sayings about being Christian is not that we’re a bunch of people who’ve got it all right, but that we’re a group of people simply willing to readily admit we’ve got things wrong. Which is why we’ve entrusted ourselves, or admitted ourselves (to use that image of a hospital), to Jesus’ good and capable care via his Holy Spirit.
An Orchard not a Tree
So through Jesus we have all been admitted, and Jesus’ Spirit is working now to make us healthy. This is not an easy or short process, nor is it something we experience in isolation. We’ve spent the last few weeks in Galatians 5 focusing on the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace), but we should remember that before Paul gives us list of characteristics which mark a life walking in the Spirit, he lays down a pointed list of the marks of walking in the flesh. Read Paul’s letters and they are full of joy and thanksgiving and encouragement, but also of kind and clear correction. Often the correction is about how people are treating one another, because becoming healthy and walking in the Spirit, is not something we do alone. We’ve all been admitted together. To be a follower of Jesus is to be a sister or brother in a global network of followers, grounded together in Jesus, united by his Spirit, practicing in our local context. As a Christians we are not so much like a tree standing alone in a field, but we make up an orchard. In John’s gospel, Jesus say we’re connected to him as branches to a vine, along with other branches. There is an implicit togetherness in following Jesus which we will never escape and can learn to enjoy.
Jesus said he would draw all people to himself, and in Acts the Spirit is poured out liberally on all kinds of people. This was the incredible reality breaking out through that book. Never before had people from all races and places been brought together under one name, Jesus, with equality and unity. And that togetherness, that “love one another as I have loved you” command from Jesus, needed power in order to work. It needed the abundant life of the Spirit poured into a community so that love and service would become the harvest. Returning to that hospital image, it won’t help if the patients were all injuring one another further once they’ve been admitted to heal. They would need to be taught to help each another as Jesus had helped them. This does not come easy to us today. Soaked in our society’s value of hyper-individualism, we might be the first generation of Christians who are surprised to discover that we have not only been given Jesus and his Spirit, but one another too. And we can’t love our fellow sisters and brothers without a healthy diet of the Holy Spirit to help us. The harvest of the Spirit is deeply communal.
Today our discussion on the Spirit turns from the broader themes of love, joy and peace, toward some of the particular “one to the others”. As we’ve said already in this series, the Holy Spirit produces in us holy character. Which brings us to the dimension of the fruit of the Spirit described by Paul in Galatians as forbearance.
What is forbearance / patience?
Take a look and watch this first:
Taking the Stairs | Mr. Bean Official
In describing Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson who gave us the character, has said, “I’ve always through of him as a 10-year-old-boy trapped in a man’s body.”[i] And if you watch every episode with this in mind, the motivations and choices of the character make sense. When developing a scene, the writers asked themselves, what, in any given scenario, would a particularly self-absorbed child do? In this scene, Mr. Bean has no patience. He is entirely self-absorbed, focused only on where he needs to go. He’s immediately annoyed by the presence of someone simply trying to get along. And you get the feeling it wouldn’t take much for him to act out on some of his nastier impulses. Even when Mr. Bean does finally solve the problem of the one person in the world getting in his way, he encounters yet another person. This scene is something of a metaphor. Mr. Bean will never escape from the reality of a world filled with people. But the even more inescapable reality Mr. Bean will face is that of is an immature character, and in this case one which must learn to develop patience. Convinced that the problem is always out there, one day Mr. Bean will need to admit, for both his benefit and that of others, that the problem lies mostly within. The person he will certainly never escape is himself.
Forbearance is an old word we don’t use any more, but generally it means patience. It’s the kind of patience which is extended over time. In the original language here it means something close to “long anger”. Maybe we could say forbearance is the opposite of having a short fuse, but rather having a long fuse.
The New Testament writers are quick to remind is that God has had plenty of patience, a long fuse, with humanity. Time and again in the Scriptures, God shows great patience with humanity, holding off on judgement well beyond what seems reasonable. And this kind of long patience with humanity is what comes together at the pinnacle of the Scriptures in Jesus. It’s also clear in Jesus’ teachings that what is given us freely from God is meant to be shared with others. This reality is found in the heart of the Jesus’ most famous prayer, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. Long patience has been the Lord’s way with us, and as his children, as sisters and brothers, we’re to impart to one another what we’ve received directly from him.
Easier said than done. Can God really expect us to be that patient with one another? Has he even met these people? I’m guessing we can think of a moment, even this past week, when our patience was tested. And we can probably forecast that our patience will be tested again this coming week. During Arts Camp last week I saw a small problem I thought I could help solve, so I jumped in to “help”. And it turned out I wasn’t helping. One of our more than capable and gracious Arts Camp leaders had to show some patience with me. We need patience with one another even when we mean well, let alone when we don’t.
“Grow up in every way”
One of the ways the Scriptures speak of a life in the Spirit is of maturity. Think again of Mr. Bean on that staircase. The scene appeals to our baser instincts. Mr. Bean does what of course we shouldn’t, his selfish impatience running unbridled. Paul gives us a different vision. In Ephesians Paul writes that in Jesus “we will grow up in every way to become the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4.15). Part of knowing Jesus, part of being filled with and walking in his Spirit, is growing up in every way. A maturing Christian, a growing up in every way Christian, then, is not someone who has lessening patience for others, but increasingly more. Why? Because God is full of patience, and being full of God’s Spirit will translate to a kind of long patience with others. Long patience is a deep breath in, not a hastily spat word out.
It’s important here to note what this long patience is not. It’s not ignoring poor or harmful behaviour. Nor is it being a doormat for abuse, or living without healthy boundaries, especially in challenging interpersonal scenarios. Long patience is simply things like giving each other the benefit of the doubt. Long patience is sticking it out with one another, even when our toes are stepped on. Long patience is being willing give someone time, or to extend charity to someone who’s bothering you. Long patience asking what’s good for the other person, not just what’s easy for me. Long patience is having a full tank of love in the Holy Spirit, so that we live from abundance shared with one another, not scarcity. Long patience is expressed in the book of James this way:
1:19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
The book of James is categorized in Scripture as wisdom literature, along with books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Wisdom, in Scripture, is defined as “right action”. Wisdom isn’t about what you know or feel or have an opinion about. Wisdom is literally doing the right thing; foolishness is doing the wrong thing. That puts a fine point on our discussion today. What will impatient, short-fused anger accomplish, really? It won’t produce healthy communities, and it won’t produce maturity. It is, in fact, a very mark of immaturity. A short fuse betrays a lack of wisdom. If we were to combine Paul and James’ sentiments we might say, “Be truly wise, grow up in every way under the power of the Spirit, which will translate to long patience with one another.”
Sometimes we imagine the activity of the Holy Spirit as the spectacular, some of what’s reported in Acts chapter 2. But the Spirit is also equally at work, perhaps even more regularly at work, in what feels decidedly unspectacular. Sure, a sign or wonder or word of prophesy might grab our attention, and be much needed. But maybe what we need, just as much or more so, is a deep patience with one another, made possible only by our deep reliance on the Holy Spirit. Remember again Paul’s words about a life in the Spirit in 1 Corinthians:
If I speak in the tonguesof men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13.1-3)
We walk in the Spirit together in a variety of ways. There are no better or lesser gifts, no better or lesser expressions of the work of the Spirit. So one question, in reflection today, what do I consider evidence of the Holy Spirit’s power in my life? Patience is as good an evidence as any.
You can’t give someone else what you’ve not been shown yourself. So we close today with a reminder that the Lord has been and continues to be deeply patient with us. He’s even patient with our impatience. As we squabble and bicker amongst one another as siblings, his long patience is extended still. He doesn’t miss a skirmish, but his response is always timed generously, so that we might come to our senses. And his aim is that “we will grow up in every way to become the body of Christ” through the power of the Spirit. Did you catch that from Paul’s words earlier in Ephesians? We both are the body of Christ, and we are becoming it. In other words, it’s okay that we have some growing up to do. Life together in the Spirit is not about perfection, but growth, maturity, together.
Brothers and sisters, be patient as you grow together, be hungry for the help of the Holy Spirit, and be on the lookout for the harvest of the Spirit among us. It might even be helpful to routinely name it when you see it: “Thank you for being patient with me just as Jesus is patient, because I can see that you’re walking in his Spirit!”
[i] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mr-bean
Luke Knight 