Spiritually Waiting

Good evening again. Grace and peace to all of you tonight from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ. You know, waiting for a God's plans to unfold as difficult. Fortunately, in our Gospel reading from Mark 4 tonight, what we often call the parable of the growing seed, Jesus promises that our willingness to wait for God's purposes can be a very fruitful thing. Jesus' lesson here, as we'll see, is encouraging. When it comes to the kingdom of God, there are few skills as important as the art of waiting. This shouldn't surprise us. Success in a lot of things actually requires a significant amount of waiting. I learned something of the art of waiting some years ago, when I took up weight training as a way to I strengthen my arms and my back after a nagging injury. I know, I don't look much like a weightlifter, but you should have seen me before I started. Anyway, some of you know, to be successful in weight training, you've got to begin a regular and sustained program with relatively small weights that you can handle and lift. As the weeks go by, you can move up to heavier weights. Trainers say it's also important to train no more than three or maybe four times a week. The muscles need to rebuild between each session. If you work those muscles too lightly, you don't make any progress, but if you work them too hard and too often, they break down and they never rebuild. Taking your time, being disciplined, allowing the physical processes that build that muscle to take hold is what makes the program work. Success in other things often requires this kind of art of waiting too. If you're a parent or a grandparent, you know that as much as you might guide them, which you need to, helping children to grow involves encouraging and working with their own built-in maturation process. Sometimes you just have to let them grow. Financial investments - another example - involve the art of waiting. Investments grow, or they failed to grow, according to certain economic and mathematical rules. Take the rule of compound interest. It's only as you wait and you place your trust in that rule, that your investments increase in any satisfactory way.

Now, as you've noticed, in talking about this subject, I've been using the term "art of waiting" instead of the word "patience." And that's because while waiting and patience are related, there's an important difference between the two. Patience describes our ability to wait for things. But what I mean by the art of waiting involves something more. The art of waiting reading isn't just the ability to wait. It's the willingness to allow things to take their natural course. It involves not only patience, but a certain level of trust. It involves the intentional attitude of trusting the promises inherent in the process. Letting things progress at their own time and by their own ways of working. That's the art of waiting.

Nowhere, as we said, is this art of waiting more important than in the kingdom of God. In fact, is this type of art of waiting on a spiritual level that Jesus is talking about in our passage from Mark 4 tonight. In a reading from Mark 4, Jesus gives us two short parables. And in both Jesus compares, the kingdom of God in some way to planting a seed, but it's in the first parable, the one we call the parable of the growing seed, where Jesus gets at - what I want to call - the art of waiting.

What is the kingdom of God like, Jesus asks. Well, He goes on to explain in verse 26 how the kingdom of God is like someone who plants a seed and then sleeps, and he rises each day allowing the seed to grow. The sower doesn't know how it happens, but through an almost miraculous process, the Earth, by itself, produces a rich harvest. Night and day, Jesus says, whether he sleeps or he gets up, the seed produces grain. First the stalk, then the head, and then the full harvest. As soon as the grain is ripe, Jesus continues, the farmer puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come. And we might assume that this sower or farmer here in Jesus' Parable, if he knows what he's doing, must be doing more than this. He must be fertilizing his field, he must be protecting his plans from predators, making sure there's enough water in the soil. But you'll notice that Jesus doesn't mention any of these things. Instead, He focuses on the activity of the growing process itself. Sure, the sower is involved in both the planting and the harvest, but in between, he mostly waits. His main task is to let the earth's growing process take its course, his job now that he's done the planting, is to trust that those processes will be productive. What is Jesus telling us here? Well, He's telling us that the seed being sown in this story is the word of God. The word of God that is bringing in God's kingdom of salvation. Now, how or in what way, exactly, does this Kingdom of Salvation happen? Well, as Jesus explains, it doesn't happen all at once. It happens gradually over time, it grows and even in a way that we can't fully understand or even participate in. In fact, we have little control over it at all. And that's why we have to trust the process of the Kingdom. Our job is to plant the seed, that is witness the Gospel and do God's work wherever we're called and then wait. That's the art of spiritual waiting.

For us, though, this sort of spiritual waiting for God's kingdom can be a pretty difficult thing. It goes against the grain of our sinful nature. We like to be controlled in what we're involved in. And we're taught that we shouldn't have to wait for things. Results should happen now. Think of how impatient our culture is. We use drive-throughs to get our food or to do our banking. We feel deprived, if we can't get the information that we're looking for on the internet in just a few seconds of searching. We think that we are greatly inconvenienced if we have to wait in line at a store. We don't like to wait. Results, we think, should come fast. We also think that as good Christians, we should be spiritual doers, not waiters. When it comes to God's word in our lives, we want to be in the driver's seat. We think our spiritual life should yield fast results. You know, as a pastor, it's easy for me to get caught up into thinking that God's work is up to me. And when things don't happen right away, I get pretty discouraged. I know that happens to you, too. Maybe you've been hoping for things to get back to normal here at Immanuel. A little bit more normal so your church can make progress again. You've been waiting through COVID for a long time. Things seem to be taking forever. Maybe you're praying for the situation of a loved one. Seems to be taking a long time for that situation to be resolved. Why is God taking so long, you wonder. Maybe you're looking for some real spiritual direction in your life, but it doesn't seem like God is giving you any clear answers. So you think that he's not listening. Maybe you're looking for God to remove a temptation that just keeps nagging at you and keeping you down. Your faith is stalled and you feel like giving up about it. Well, Jesus's message here, is that the salvation of the kingdom of God doesn't always work on our schedule. It works on God's schedule. But be assured that His kingdom of Salvation, even if you can't see it right now, is at work. Your job is to trust that God's plan will unfold. You see, as Jesus tells us, a key part of our discipleship is cultivating through the Holy Spirit, an attitude of spiritual waiting in God's word.

How? By staying in His word, by keeping in prayer, by sticking with regular worship of the almighty God who loves you, by having confidence that God knows what He's doing, by trusting that the time and the methods that God has chosen are good. Just like the farmer in Jesus' parable trusted that that seed would produce grain. As you do, you can expect results to follow. You can trust that the harvest will happen, because that's what Jesus promises. As soon as the grain is ripe, Jesus says in verse 28, the farmer puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come. Listen to Jesus' promise here. As you wait, the harvest will come. You see, a God who sent His son to die for your sins so that you could live forever isn't a God who wants to abandon you in His plans. A God who has sent His Holy Spirit to guide you in all things isn't going to leave you out of the fruits of His kingdom. Like the sower who plants a seed, the harvest is a sure thing. Yes, we plant for the harvest, but between the two, we wait and we trust and we expect There's great peace in the art of spiritual waiting. And there's great encouragement too.

Let me finish with a true story about a woman named Monica, who learned the art of spiritual waiting. Monica grew up as a devout Christian. As a young woman, she ended up marrying a man who wasn't a believer. Their relationship was satisfactory in some ways, but Monica felt driven to devote herself to her husband's conversion. She prayed for him everyday, tried to set the best example of a Christian woman that she could, and she was rewarded by seeing him baptized a year before his death. Monica's only son, though, was a much more difficult case. She loved him dearly, and yet as smart and successful, capable as he was, he stubbornly held on to his father's pagan beliefs. He was also prone to a wild, irresponsible lifestyle. Monica's witness, and her prayers, and her tears for her son went on for years, and the young man never changed. Most women would have given up, but Monica didn't. Monica's deep concern for her son even led her to seek out a biship of the church. She pleaded with him to speak to her son, bring him to at least a better mind about the Christian faith. But the biship declined, because he knew the young man was just too stubborn to listen. He did tell Monica to keep praying and waiting and asking God for courage. Well, at one point, the young man went to Italy for a new job as a prominent teacher, and to get away from his nagging mother. But he couldn't escape her witness and her prayers, because it was there in Italy that he finally converted to Christianity. Monica followed him, was overjoyed with the news of her son's, new found salvation in Christ. Caught up in that joy, but sick from a terrible fever that was never properly diagnosed, she died shortly afterward.

Some of us who know our church history know, this woman as Saint Monica. And we know her son as Saint Augustine. Maybe the greatest Christian theologian of the first 1500 years of the church.

Our lives as Christians to be active and filled with purpose. They should also be patient and hopeful in the full knowledge that God has His plans. Being a disciple of Christ, as Monica knew, takes time. God's time. But as it takes time, it brings real and fruitful results for the kingdom of God.

So, whatever God is calling you to do, wherever His salvation is at work in your life, take the time to wait for Him. Let His kingdom work the way it works, and He will not let you down. Amen. Matt And may the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Savior and Lord. Amen.