The Power of Patience and Kindness

[slide 1]
Alright, we’re looking at 1 Corinthians 13, the most famous words ever written about love, where Paul begins by saying — everything minus love is nothing.

[slide 2-3]
“Though I speak in the tongue of men and of angels… I could have all knowledge and faith to move mountains and give everything away, but if I have not love, I’m nothing.”

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Although the alternatives to love may be a little different in our day than they were for Corinth, I was thinking if Paul were writing to the Bay Area, it might read something like this:

If I tweet like Justin Timberlake and have more Instagram followers than Taylor Swift but do not love, I am not LinkedIn to God.

If I get a BA from Stanford and an MBA from Cal and an IPA from George Clooney but do not love, I have only pieces of paper in pretty frames.

If I drive a Tesla and save the climate.
If I create a startup valued at $1 billion.
If I’m written up in Forbes, and Warren Buffet asks my advice.
If I get my kids into Harvard without even bribing anyone.
If I outshoot Steph Curry — by the way, did anyone see Steph Curry in the Olympic games? Unbelievable!
If I out pitch Shohei Ohtani.
If I out-brand Kim Kardashian.
If I out-sing Lady Gaga but do not have love, I am as yesterday as Myspace.

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[slide 4]
The single purpose of your life is to become a thoroughly loving person rooted in the care of God through our friend Jesus.

And the purpose of our church is to be a community of love.

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We’re asking everyone to make love our number one commitment, and anytime someone is hurting — if we’re gathered to worship and there’s someone who’s in pain or who has a problem — to know it, to care, to love, to pray, and to just be human as God intended us to be from one moment to the next. That’s why we’re here.

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Since we’re often so confused about the nature of love, Paul goes on to give the greatest description ever given of what love consists of.

I want to get into this week’s aspect of love with a question about Jesus.

Of course, for Paul, the whole idea of love came from Jesus’ life and Jesus’ teaching.

If you had one word to describe Jesus, what would be that word?

That’s a real intriguing question. What would your answer be?

You might say, “Love.” Since this series is all about love you might think that’s the right answer.

Or Jesus is “Lord.” That was a big one in the New Testament.

You might say, “King, or healer, or all-knowing.”

Someone asked Dallas Willard that question one time.

There was a long pause, so the person asked Dallas again, “What word would you choose?”

Now, understand Dallas Willard was probably one of the smartest people ever asked this question; and probably the deepest student of Jesus and the Scriptures. This is the word he chose to describe Jesus.

Relaxed.

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Jesus is relaxed. Seriously, that’s not even a word that would have been on my list.

It’s not in any of the creeds. — “I believe in Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, and relaxed.”

It sounds way too undignified. It doesn’t sound religious enough.

I think that’s kind of the point, because it’s so unusual it caused me to think about Jesus’ life from a different lens.

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Jesus arrived on the earth in very special circumstances. From the age of 12, he said he must be about his Father’s business.

He had a vocational weight on his shoulders unprecedented in human history, and the situation in Israel and of humanity was dire. Yet, he just worked as a carpenter in obscurity in a little shop in Nazareth year after year.

He turned 18, 21, 25, 30, and still was just hammering nails and selling boards.

“Jesus, the clock is ticking!”

“Yep! It will happen. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

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He finally starts his ministry. John the Baptist gives him a big launch. There were big crowds.

Everyone wants to hear from him. His first step is to go off the grid for 40 days in a desert somewhere to just be alone with God in unhurried prayer.

When he finally gets around to his ministry, his first sermon in his hometown is so radically inclusive of outsiders that the listeners want to kill him. They actually gather to throw him off of a cliff. Luke 4 tells us about this.

This would have made me a little nervous.

Rarely, when I get home from church does Kathy ask, “How did the sermon go?” and I say, “Well, they wanted to kill me, but I gave them the slip, so that’s a win.”

[slide 5]
But Luke deliberately says, “Jesus passed through the midst of the crowd.”

He just saunters down the street like a guy without a care in the world. Who does that?

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He could only be one place at a time. He traveled at the speed of foot. He and his disciples were walking through Samaria.

[slide 6]
He tells them, “You go on ahead and look for food. I’m just going to hang out at the well. I’m a little tired. I just want to get a little rest.”

They get back and he’s talking to a Samaritan Gentile woman married five times and shacked up with some guy. No rabbi would go anywhere near this woman.

[slide 7]
He’s talking to her relaxed like he’s talking to the pope or something.

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They were in a boat one time. The storms were so bad the disciples were totally freaking out.

These are fishermen and they’re afraid they were going to die. They’re used to boats. They’re used to storms.

Jesus is taking a nap! Whoever heard of a napping Messiah?

The next time your spouse gives you a hard time for taking a nap, just say, “I’m just trying to be more like Jesus.”

Who decaffeinated this man?

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At one point, his teachings are so challenging that followers start dropping out. The crowd starts slimming down.

His brothers say, “Jesus, we have to go to Jerusalem. We have to do something. We have to get the momentum back.”

He said, “No, it’s not my time yet. It’s not my time yet. It will come.”

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One time he was taking a whip to the money changers in the temple. It’s kind of a famous story.

We’re told in one of the Gospels that Jesus takes the time to braid the whip himself.

“Jesus, what are you doing?”

“Braiding the whip.”

“Couldn’t you get one pre-braided? Couldn’t you just miracle one up so the money changers don’t get away?”

“No. I’d rather just braid it myself. They’re not going anywhere.”

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We see this maybe most in his relationship with his disciples. They’re a very slow group.

They’re slow to understand what he taught.
Slow to understand who he was.
Slow to obey.
Slow to trust.
Slow to serve.

They misunderstood him, doubted him, denied him, and abandoned him.

Jesus diagnoses their condition at the very end of the gospel of Luke.

[slide 8]
How foolish you are and how slow to believe. (Luke 24:25)

Now, I’ll guarantee you if you were the leader of an urgent movement and you’re on the clock, the last quality you want on your team is slowness. Yet, Jesus picked these guys.

He was very demanding of them but never demeaning.

He never said, “I’m going to swap you out,” because he was teaching us about love, and the very first characteristic of love Paul describes is, “Love is patient…”

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[slide 9]
Relaxed is a great word to describe Jesus because it gets us out of the religious category.

Sometimes we hear the word patience and we think of teeth-gritting endurance. — “Oh, God! Give me the patience to put up with this bozo who anyone else would explode on! Help me suppress my rage.”

Jesus was not a teeth-gritter. He was not uptight, stressed out, ill-tempered, or at the end of his rope.

This was well known among his disciples and others. They never said to each other, “Watch out for Jesus today. It looks like he got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

He was the most relaxed person they had ever seen, not because he lived in pleasant, easy circumstances but quite the contrary, because love is patient, but we are not.

Patience is our Achilles heel.

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There was a survey done recently of thousands of Christians at a church. They were asked, “Which fruit of the Spirit would you most like to grow in?”

Paul said the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (nine of them).

More than 50 percent said patience.

In other words, more people felt like they needed to develop patience than all of the other eight put together.

And that was not even a church in the Bay Area.

That was a church in Georgia in the Deep South where people can’t even talk fast let alone live fast.

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My personal opinion is I think patience may be the most underrated virtue in the marketplace.

I think a lot of leaders and a lot of bosses actually don’t want to be known as patient, because they’re afraid that patience means wimp or patience means not really fully devoted to the mission, but patience in the Bible does not mean being passive, or lacking urgency, or failing to hold people accountable, or tolerating entropy.

Patience is the ability to dwell gladly in the present moment when we would prefer not to.

It embraces both the urgency of life and mission, and the reality of our condition and our bodies and the people around us.

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It’s often translated long-suffering, because it means love has the ability to suffer difficulty for a long time and not stop loving. Long-suffering.

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Here’s the deal — it has always been hard for human beings. In my opinion, It’s harder to be patient now than it was in Jesus’ day because of the nature of the world in which we live with technology and the pace of life accelerating.

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People have always had food.

But in our day we invented something called fast food.

For the first time, we would try to get food not because of how good it was or even how cheap we could get it, but just because we could get it fast.

Even then, you had to go into the fast food restaurant and order it and sit down at a table and eat it, so we invented the drive-through lane so families could eat in vans as God intended them to.

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We invented not just dating but speed dating, self-checkout, overnight shipping, and instant messaging.

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We text, but it takes too long to spell the darn words on the phone, so we abbreviate the words on everything to make it go ASAP.

We look at screens until we’re exhausted.

I’m not making this up. When asked about competition from Amazon Prime and other streaming services, the CEO of Netflix shrugged his shoulders and said that their biggest competition was sleep.

That’s what they’re after. Make people stop wasting so much time sleeping so they can look at more streaming things on screens.

In 1879, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Now, it doesn’t have to get dark, so we don’t have to go to bed when it gets dark anymore.

Before Edison, Americans slept on average 11 hours a night.

You might read about John Wesley or Teresa of Ávila getting up at 4:00 in the morning to pray.

In our day, we read about people like that and think, “What spiritual giants they must have been,” but we forget they went to bed at 7:00. They had nothing else to do!

Jesus slept 11 hours a night. No wonder he was so nice to people.

Think how much nicer you would be if you slept 11 hours a night. You’d be a great person!

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Dallas Willard said:

[slide 10]
One of the things you do when you become a disciple of Jesus is you begin to do those things you always have known you should be doing.

You no longer feel the pressure to be conformed to the world.

Impatience looks like such an absurdly trivial little thing, but it will kill my prayer life.

Impatience will mess up my relationship with my kids.

[slide 11]
Impatience will make me live a shallow life.

I don’t want to finish this assignment.
I don’t want to stick with this diet.
I don’t want to stay in this marriage.
I don’t want to honor my commitment.
I don’t want to stay on this budget.
I don’t want to obey God in my sexual behavior because I want what I want when I want it.

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Love is patient and long-suffering.

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I came across a wonderful prayer from a priest named Teilhard de Chardin. It’s a little long, but that’s okay, because we’re in no hurry at all.

Right?

Right?

Never mind. I’ll read the whole thing anyway.

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Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown, something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
—that is to say, grace—
and circumstances
—acting on your own good will—
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser. Amen.

What great words!

God wants to grow patience in you.

Now, if God wants to grow patience in you, how quickly do you think he will do it?

It will probably take a little while.

If God wants to grow patience in you, how will he do it?

Probably, he’ll give you something to be patient about.

There’s an oyster called the silver-lipped pearl oyster. One produced a single pearl that sold for $1.5 million.

To make a pearl, an oyster needs two things and only two things — an irritant and time.

The oyster has to find a way to cope with the irritant and yet remain flourishing — so it’s like a little parable.

The oyster gives a tiny, little bit of itself to the irritant. It secretes a substance called nacre (what it makes its shell with).

It makes one layer and then another and then scores and then hundreds and, eventually, thousands of incredibly thin layers of nacre that are shinny and iridescent.

A great pearl can take 20 years to produce.

An oyster might live as long as 40 years and might produce two in its whole life.

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To produce patience, you need two things (an irritant and time).

And God will give you time, and God will give you an irritant. You may be sitting next to your irritant right now.

In fact, if you don’t have an irritant, call the church, because we keep a list and we’ll assign one to you.

You can grow patience.

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[slide 12]
“Love is patient, love is kind.”

These are the two positive aspects of love that Paul begins with. He goes on to talk about eight negatives.

“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”

We’ll look at some of that next week, but these are the two positive ones.

“Love is patient…” That’s the passive side of long-suffering. It waits.

[slide13]
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Kindness is the action side of love.

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One of my favorite examples in the Bible is King David who had to be so patient and who had to learn patience when he suffered at the hands of King Saul.

As a young boy, David was anointed king, but he had to wait year after year to become king.

The old king was insanely jealous and wanted to kill him.

Many, many years later after Saul was dead and Saul’s son, David’s friend Jonathan, was dead, David, who learned patience from his irritant (Saul), asked, “Is there anyone else in the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

There was a young, lame, frightened boy named Mephibosheth.

David befriended him and protected him and honored him and fed him even though Mephibosheth would have been recognized as a rival to David’s throne.

It was his life in the kingdom of God now.

Love is long-suffering. Love is kind.

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The question loving people ask is — Is there anyone I can show kindness to?

That’s our question for this week — who can I show kindness to? You can do that.

It doesn’t take an education.
It doesn’t take a resume.
It doesn’t take money.

Who can I show kindness to?

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In the moments that are left, I want to give you some practices to grow your patience this week for the purpose of love. “Love is patient…”

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[slide 14]
The first practice is what might be called Slowing.

In this practice, I deliberately put myself in positions where I will have to wait or move more slowly than I otherwise would in order to cultivate my capacity for patience to joyfully endure this moment.

Just this week, drive the speed limit joyfully. If the sign says 35 miles per hour, drive 35 miles per hour.

Some of you are a little uncertain about this. Do it with a smile kind of enjoying with God and recognizing the silliness of my preoccupation with hurry.

We get so goofy around this.

The week I wrote this message, I was driving on a really curvy road in Orlando when it was pouring down rain.

There were several accidents on the road.

Quite honestly, my first thought was, “Thank God I wasn’t in an accident, because I don’t have time to be in an accident. I have to hurry back to the hotel because I have a lot of stuff to do.”

Not, “God, thank you that you’ve kept me alive. Thank you for all of the people who are still alive. Help those…” No. “I don’t have time for an accident,” until I do.

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It’s amazing the things you have time for when you find out you’re never running your life.

Just this week, when you come to a stop sign, stop. Like, all the way stop. Let the tires quit rolling altogether and ask God to give you patience.

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It’s amazing the power of impatience.

I read recently a man felt he had been cut off, so he followed the car home, took out a gun, shot the driver, and his 10-year-old daughter.

You might be thinking, “I haven’t shot anyone from the car this week, so I’m doing pretty good,” but, of course, our aim is not to avoid shooting people. It’s love!

This week, when you’re driving, instead of treating other drivers as enemies, ask, “Is there anyone on the road I can show kindness to?” You could drive that way.

When you’re at a stop light and there’s a car in front of you and the light turns green and there’s no movement, quote Jesus’ words. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

Just this week, deliberately drive in the slow lane. You’ll get to wherever you were going three minutes later. That won’t kill you.

Today, when you leave this room after this service, walk slowly. Don’t start planning your escape route right now like one of Pavlov’s dogs salivating when the bell goes off.

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I was thinking about this — what if, whenever someone visited our church, and afterward someone asked them, “What’s that place like?”

The first thing they said and the first thing they noticed was, “People were just so relaxed.

“There was this peaceful feeling. They weren’t all rushed. They had time to look you right in the eye and talk to you. It just felt human.”

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What if, anytime someone came to one of our services, we never let them get away without showing them an act of kindness?

Because love is patient and love is kind.

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What if that just overflowed not only here but everywhere in our lives?

You could do that.

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[slide 15]
Another practice is Noticing people.

Love is patient, because only patient people really notice other people.

You can’t love people if you don’t really notice them.

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I wrestle with this all of the time. I was at a grocery store checking out. The little machine there asked if I wanted cash back. I thought, “Sure! That will save me a trip to the bank.”

I always have stuff to do, so I want to save time.

I was so preoccupied and in such a hurry that, after my groceries got scanned and put in the bag, I forgot I had asked for cash back, and I started walking away without getting my money.

The cashier had to say, “Hang on just a second, sir!”

Again, I didn’t remember, so I turned with just a tiny little sigh of exasperation and a tiny little eye roll barely noticeable just to communicate, “I can’t believe a busy person like me on a mission for God is going to have to be delayed because apparently some cashier just can’t get their work done promptly.”

Then, the cashier said to me, “You asked for cash back, and you don’t have it yet. You were going to walk away without your money. Here’s your money. Have a good day!”

I said, “Oh, yes! So I did. So I did. By the way, God bless you. You’re doing a wonderful job!”

Hurry is a really close relative to ego.

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Jesus just noticed a tax collector up in a tree named Zacchaeus, a man born blind from birth who other people didn’t even recognize, a woman who touched the hem of his garment in a big crowd full of people, and little children who, of course, his disciples knew Jesus would not have time for… except he did.

Jesus was the great noticer of humanity.

Why?

Well, relaxed people look. Hurried people overlook.

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Make this kind of a game. “Jesus, help me look at people in my life today. And not just look past them, but look deep in their eyes.”

Are they sad?
Are they scared?

Look at their shoulders. Are they kind of slumped in discouragement?
Are they celebrating something good?

Is there anyone I can show kindness to?

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[slide 16]
Because love is long-suffering, love is Forgiving.

You can practice forgiving this week.

You’ll have lots of chances to do little relational repairs.

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Last week we talked about this idea that Jesus is our model of how to love.

[slide 17]
Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you. (1 John 2:8)

“Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him.”

That’s what’s new about it. We’ve seen love modeled now.

God said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus comes along and shows us how to do it.

That’s what’s new about the command. It’s been modeled for us now; we’ve been able to see how God truly loves.

He said, “The truth is seen in him.”

Then he says, “Its truth is also seen in you now, because you are in him and he is in you.”

“You love people the way you saw Jesus love people, that’s what’s new. It’s shown in the way you love others the way Jesus loved others.”

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And of course the ultimate example of love in all of human history is Jesus going to the cross.

For what purpose?

To forgive.

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[slide 18]
So we’re to follow his example in forgiving.

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I think of a church where at the core of this church were two very powerful women who did not get along with each other. They didn’t like each other. They wanted to hurt each other and did.

Without blinking they would repeat bad things about each other and distort them to make it worse.

This went on week after week, month after month, year after year.

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They taught the two main Bible studies in that church.

And anytime a new woman came to the church, they would be quite friendly. But they were really trying to recruit that woman to get into their little group… because women had to choose.

If you were a woman at that church, you had to choose which group you’d belong to, which group you would be loyal to… to study this book that teaches us to love our enemies and to forgive those who hurt us.

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And what’s striking is not just that they didn’t forgive each other. No one in that church expected them to. People would have been surprised if they had. They just got used to unforgiveness.

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And I want every one of us in this room today, from this day forward, to be very clear about what the writers of Scripture teach about this.

Paul wrote:

[slide 19]
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

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We all need to consider this when it comes to forgiveness — how did God forgive you?

Why did he need to forgive you?

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Every time you were less than honest.
Every time you fudged an expense account or a tax return.
Every time you were unloving with a toddler.
Every time you should not have made a cutting remark, but you did.
Every time you should have spoken in love, but you didn’t.
Every time God gave you a gift and you weren’t grateful.
Every time you gossiped.
Every selfish act.
Every racist joke.
Every sexually impure thought or action.
Every judgmental attitude.

Everyday we add to our need for forgiveness.

And every human being is in the same boat… every one.

[slide 20]
I’m a pastor. I’ve devoted my whole life to spiritual growth. It took me about 30 seconds to come up with that list.

You know why?

Because Joe Hartley has done every one of those things.

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No… I’ll be real clear. That list is me.

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There was a time recently when I needed to use my wife’s iPad and I couldn’t find it.

She was using it to watch dog training videos.

I said something like, “Hey, I need to take the iPad from you, and I’m kind of in a hurry.”

She said, “Okay, but you could ask nicely.”

We said a couple other things and then eventually… I kid you not… I said this phrase to my wife: “It’s ludicrous that you want me to ask nicely.” It was not my best moment. “It’s ludicrous that you want me to ask nicely.” What a jerk!

I’m amazed she doesn’t take me to the husband store for an exchange sometimes, except I’m not amazed because she loves me, and love is patient. Love is long-suffering.

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To not love is the opposite.

To not love is short-tempered, hot-tempered, and to lose my temper. Love is long-suffering. It can suffer and not quit loving.

In every moment, love is patient, and in every moment, love is kind, and when I surrender myself to God and allow that to be what I receive from him and to give to other people, I am living in the unseen reality of the kingdom of God.

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You know, we only get one life, just one life, and no one earns it.

It can be filled with nobility and goodness and wonder, or it can just be thrown away stupidly and darkly.

No one knows how long the one I have and the one you have will last.

Every moment is like a gift.

Why do we rush past them? Why do we throw them away?

This is the pearl of great price, this life in the kingdom together with God — this life of love and joy and gratitude and pain and hope all mingled together.

So I charge you today — don’t miss it. Notice and care. Love is patient. Love is kind.