December 7--God's Generous Patience

"This point must not be overlooked, dear friends: in the eyes of the most High, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. God does not delay in keeping the promise, as some mean "delay." Rather, God shows you generous patience, desiring that no one perish but that all come to repentance. . . . Consider our God's patience as your opportunity for salvation" (2 Peter 3:8-9, 15).

A wise woman mentor of mine once warned me never to pray for patience. "You will be given far too many opportunities to practice it," she said. "Best to just make it clear to the Almighty that this is one lesson you have no need of learning." I believed her, and I still do. I have never, ever, prayed for patience.

Unfortunately, it does not seem to matter whether or not we actually adopt patience as a posture of prayer. We still have far too many opportunities to practice it!

Whether we are waiting for a new job or a new baby . . . whether we are waiting for a renewed sense of purpose or a renewed financial stability . . . whether we are waiting for a reversal of discrimination or an end to an abusive relationship . . . whether we are waiting for an organ transplant or the lifting of an ever deepening depression . . . whether we are waiting for an estranged child to call or a lingering grief to thaw . . . we wait, and we wait, and we wait.

And we pray.

But we do not pray for patience in any of these situations! We pray for justice! We pray for healing! We pray for protection! We pray for purpose! We pray for the present unbearability to pass from our path. We pray for "new heavens and a new earth where, according to the promise, God's justice will reside" (2 Peter 3:13). We pray for peace. We pray for hope. We pray for strength. We are tired of waiting. We are tired of waiting. Every day is like a thousand years.


The first century Christians receiving Peter's second letter were tired of waiting, too. They had joined the Jesus movement expecting the Savior's immediate return, thank you very much! They had been preparing for that new heaven and new earth right away, not years or decades, or generations away. They had taken great personal risks to join this cause of justice and righteousness, but they were getting antsy as they waited and waited and waited. Now false teachers exploited their frustrations, taunting them to give up hope in a message that seemed so clearly wrong . . . or at least outdated.

Taunting them into despair.

Jesus is never going to come back, the false prophets say. Justice is never going to reign. Good news will never win over evil. Healing is never going to come. A purpose-driven life will always evade us. A dead-end relationship is all we deserve. Only the ruthlessly ambitious can garner wealth or power. Violence is just the way of the world.

The false teachers are around us still--are they not?--nagging at our hopes for God's peaceable kingdom. From within and from without they taunt us with feelings of incompetence, inadequacy, powerlessness. Why bother preparing ourselves for God's eternal reign, if they are right? Why bother living holy lives in service to God and others, if Jesus has yet to return? Why bother dedicating our talents to the kingdom, if the kingdom is just an illusion? We have had such grand visions. The reality seems so very far away.

"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends," Peter says to them and to us, as well. "To God one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day. God is not slow in doing what God promised--the way some people understand slowness. But God is being patient with you. God does not want anyone to be lost but wants all people to change their hearts and lives."


Wait a second. God is being patient with us? God is waiting for us? God is taking forever (quite literally) in order to help us? It sure doesn't feel that way most of the time!


But I guess that's the point, isn't it? God is the one praying for patience, not us. God knows how much better we can do with what we have been given. God wants us to change our hearts and minds, to commit once again to the peaceable kingdom. God wants to give us a chance to get it right this time.

God wants us to open our eyes and celebrate the abundance we have been given, rather than languish in despair over what we think we have lost. God wants us to claim the best parts of our lives for our work and our companions, rather than succumbing to the worst that is in us. God wants us to offer a healing touch or a gentle word to someone in need, rather than leave them to wallow in their own sadness. God wants us to stand in active resistance to injustice and violence and greed and despair, rather than passively accept the status quo. God wants us to "look for the coming of the Day of God, and try to hasten it along" (2 Peter 3:12)!

The patience God prays for--the patience God asks of us--is not about sitting around on our rears praying for someone else to usher in the kingdom. The patience God asks of us is about active waiting, determined preparation, steadfast hope in the face of every reason to despair. God made a promise to us. And God does not break promises.

Our Advent discipline is the practice of trusting this promise, of changing the parts of our hearts and our lives that depart from this promise, of praying for the courage to hasten this promise, and of opening our eyes to recognize it when it comes. Of opening our eyes to recognize when it is already here.

"Do not be carried away by the errors of unprincipled people and thus forfeit the security you enjoy," Peter concludes. "Instead, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Sovereign and Savior Jesus Christ, who is glorified now and for all eternity."

May it be so for each of us, as we prepare once again for the birth of Christ. Amen.


Gusti Linnea Newquist


(additional lectionary texts: Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; Mark 1:1-8)

October 25--Loving at the Edge of the Promise

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”


Lectionary focus: Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Matthew 22:34-46


When I read this Sunday’s lectionary text from Deuteronomy about the final days of Moses I think immediately of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech the night before he was assassinated in 1968. He had proclaimed the story of the Exodus and the vision of the Promised Land as a liberating hope for African Americans struggling to integrate after centuries of slavery and segregation. Martin Luther King felt a personal identification with Moses on the mountaintop after decades of marching and speaking and submitting to jail on behalf of justice. He had prayed and preached and inspired a community through a long wilderness, and he could see that land flowing with milk and honey just a few steps away. But he was not there yet, and he knew he might not get there in his lifetime. So he called upon others to take up the struggle in the months and decades ahead. And he died the next day without seeing his dream become reality. He died, like Moses, at the edge of the promise.

Forty years later, this biblical vision embraced by Martin Luther King, Jr. continues to propel many of us forward toward racial justice and reconciliation. And as a white woman who has lived almost her entire life in the American South, I know we still live at the edge of the promise Martin Luther King envisioned, even though we have come so much farther than ever before. Because racism and economic oppression are still all too real, I want hold up this promise of hope for all who continue to struggle for liberation and life abundant. I want to proclaim with Martin Luther King that this vision is what it means to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength . . . and your neighbor as yourself.”


But there’s a pretty big catch. The “promise” for some can be a nightmare for others.


I have learned in the past several years that it is a radically different experience to read this text from Deuteronomy in my current New England congregation: a community that includes Palestinian Christians. Their very presence in our midst requires us to consider again the biblical community on the other edge of the promise Moses hears repeated on that mountain in the desert. Because if you are the neighbor already living in Jericho or Gilead or Judah, you hear this “promise” as a mandate from a tribal god to drive you from your land and destroy your way of life forever. If you are a Canaanite living at the edge of the promise, your neighbor is not anything like your friend. Your neighbor is really your enemy.


If this is the case, then, what does it really mean to love the LORD our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength? What does it really mean to love our neighbor as ourselves? What in the world was Jesus talking about when he gave us the two great commandments?

He was not talking about Valentine’s Day and touchy-feely Hallmark cards! What we learn from Martin Luther King and what we learn from the Palestinian members of my congregation is that anyone who has lived on either edge of the promise—the one seeking liberation from oppression and the promise of new life and the one suffering invasion and occupation and conquest—knows that loving God and loving neighbor is the spiritual discipline of a lifetime. And it is really, really hard.

Yet when the lawyer asks Jesus which commandment is the greatest, Jesus tells the entire crowd to love their God and to love their neighbor. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

He is quoting his own Scriptures (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18). He is saying that we should interpret everything in them through these two commandments: love God; love neighbor.

The 4th Century theologian St. Augustine, says the same thing. If you read a biblical text and it does not lead you to love God and to love your neighbor, then read it again. You didn’t get it right the first time.


So let’s go back to Moses in Deuteronomy, at the edge of the promise he never entered himself, and see if we can hear a life-giving message for everyone. Even though we know what happens next—especially because we know what happens next—let’s hear that story again as the final word of the five books of the Law, which hangs on the commandment to love God and to love neighbor. And if we read it again, with this commandment in mind, we see that the final word of the Law is not about conquest and destruction. Neither is it about slavery and persecution. It is about hope.

And I think Jesus would say that we all live at the edge of God’s promise when we claim a vision of justice and peace that is right in front of us and yet so very difficult to achieve. We all live at the edge of God's promise when we trust in the living God who is beyond definition, geographic location, and tribal identification. We all live at the edge of God's promise when we follow a God who has chosen to persevere with all the nations through the particular history of the people of biblical Israel, a persecuted minority through most of its existence. God’s promise to that people is the same promise to all, Jesus would say. It is not a claim; it is a gift.

In return, God insists on healing and reconciliation among those with historic tensions. God calls for personal transformation in the midst of social transformation. As we live and love on the edge of that promise, we are owned by the vision, rather than owning it ourselves. We work for its partial implementation, even as we trust in its coming fulfillment. This is what it means to love God, to love neighbor, and to love self.

May God grant us the grace and the courage to follow these two great commands in this week and in the weeks to come. It is really hard. But with God, all things are possible. Amen.


Gusti Linnea Newquist



(additional lectionary texts for this week: Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8)