All the Churches in the Camberley Group are spending Lent this year following a study course called “Building Better Relationships” which is based on Paul’s famous chapter in praise of Christian Love – 1 Corinthians 13. This week is the 6th in the series and we look together at the opening phrase of verse 4: “Love is patient.”
To put it in context I want to read the paragraph in my favourite translation, which is that of the New English Bible. How many hundreds of times have I read this a wedding services – and with very good reason!
“Love is patient; love is kind and envies no-one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.”
The study course has notes for each of the seven sermons, and (to my surprise) the notes accompanying this particular study – instead of concentrating on the positive phrase ‘Love is patient’ – choose to concentrate on the negative characteristic of anger and how to avoid it.
Now, of course, it’s true that if you are angry, your patience will fly out of the window. So let’s get this aspect of the study out of the way first. It’s true that we live in a society that is impatient, demanding, and wanting everything yesterday. It’s also true that part of this is because we have somehow become an angry society – although that is only part of the problem of impatience.
We need to be clear that anger can be positive as well as negative. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is indignant because his disciples try to keep children away from him. In the temple, he seethes with anger because the great building that God had intended to be a place of worship and prayer had turned – at least in part – into a den of thieves.
I sometimes feel that we are not angry enough about many of the things that happen in our world, and in our own society. We could often do with more indignation, especially when we see men, women and children – made in the image of God – being abused, neglected and without the basic necessities of life – usually through greed and the ruthless pursuit of power and wealth.
But Jesus also taught us that a violent response is not the answer. When it is truly a righteous indignation, our anger needs to be somehow turned into a constructive, assertive response that is channelled towards positive change. Easier said than done, and we can’t pursue that this morning, but when you feel angry over some injustice, it’s always worth sitting down and trying to work out how to make a constructive response.
But, having said all that, anger is usually wrong because it arises out of a selfish regard for our own pride, status, and love of self. The notes suggest five things we can work on, in order to become more controlled, and hence more patient.
1. Break the pattern of anger. We can fall into a pattern of anger at the world in general, which makes us react with instinctive impatience when something appears to cross us or irritate us – often actually quite trivial in itself. Our epistle from Ephesians 4 has wise words to say about this. Verses 26/27: “In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” In other words, never let anger lead you to do something wrong, and – if you are in dispute with someone, try your very best to sort it out and reach reconciliation absolutely as soon as possible, and before it has any chance to fester. Proverbs 19:11 says: “People with good sense restrain their anger; they earn esteem by overlooking wrongs.”
2. Guard you relationships. Proverbs again tells us (22: 24/25) “Keep away from angry, short-tempered people, or you will learn to be like them and endanger your soul.”
3. Release your worries to God. Anger and impatience often erupt out of an existing inner turmoil. When we are already upset, one more thing that annoys us is often the last straw that makes us explode. But in Philippians 4: 6/7 Paul tells us: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” If you release your inner turmoil into God’s hands, He is able to give you that inner peace which will enable you to act and react with measure and control.
4. Get some rest. Put another way – sleep on it – probably more than once – before reacting with anger. We live in a world that is irritable because people are tired, and when you’re tired, your patience snaps. The message of the notes is to get enough rest and eat properly, and then you will be better equipped to deal with all that life throws at you.
5.The 5th recipe for avoiding anger, and hence exercising patience, is called ‘Changing your Expectations’. If your attitude to the world and other people is that essentially they exist to serve your interests, it will be little wonder that you snap when this fails to happen. But Philippians 4: 8 calls us to a different attitude of mind entirely. “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, what is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” Set your mind, your attitude, on what is good, and the rest (so to speak) will fall into place.
That is, in summary, the theme set for today. But I really don’t want to finish without homing in rather more directly on the title ‘Love is Patient’. We need to develop a positive patience, as well as a negative resistance to anger.
Another translation for ‘patience’ is ‘longsuffering’, which originally meant to ‘suffer along-side’ someone. If you put it like that, it takes on a more positive meaning and becomes a positive action in itself, and not just a restraint on your natural irritability.
Love needs to be patient – to suffer alongside. To take simple examples, as we get older, our hearing begins to fail. Love is patient! We take longer to accomplish what seem to be simple tasks. Love is patient! Sadly our health fails – our physical health, our memory, indeed more and more often now than ever, our mental capacity. We need a love that is patient. If it’s our spouse, we need to remember that we promised honour and faithfulness ‘for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.’ That needs patience/long-suffering – you’re in it for the long haul, and you need people to be very patient with you, as well as the other way round! Dare I say that we also need to be patient with God, who will accomplish his purposes in his own way and his own time, and we are in it with Him together for a lifetime’s journey.
As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, the love that is patient will be kind, it will not be boastful, conceited or rude. Not quick to take offence, it keeps no score of wrongs – in humility hoping that other people will not keep a score of the number of times we wrong them.
Overarching it all, the most important thing to remember is just how patient God is with us. If we begin to consider how often we repeat the same failures and sins, how consistently we let God down and fall short of the example he has set us in Jesus, how thankful should we be that God’s love for us is patient. And his patient love is new and fresh every morning. If we keep that in mind, our love for others will become more patient, more humble and much less quick to take offence. With God’s love for us as our constant example, we will affirm (with Paul) in our own lives, attitudes and actions that “There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.”
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