FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

Ash Wednesday

February 25, 2009

CHRIST AT THE CENTER

THE GIFTS OF GOD FOR THE FAMILY OF FAITH:

PATIENCE

Scripture: I Corinthians 13

INTRODUCTION

“ Stop rushing so fast,

Stop worrying so much,

Stop doing so many things,

Stop going so many places.

Look at Jesus Christ,

Look in the church,

Look in the holy scriptures,

Look in the lives of others,

Look in your own heart,

Look in this holy communion.

Listen for God to speak,

Listen in the worship services,

Listen in your meditations,

Listen in your inner soul,

Listen in the opportunities life offers you.

Stop, Look and Listen.

Then, with new found peace,

You can serve the Lord,

Serve others, and serve yourself better.”

William Paul Barnds

I put those words on the pastor’s office desk back in May of 1990, and for the past 19 years, every morning when I come to work, this prayer has been speaking to me in a profound and powerful way.

Stop, look and listen! Which is to say, “Pay attention” to your soul, because nothing can happen through you if it isn’t first happening to you.

Stop, look and listen! Focus your heart and mind on the disciplines of prayer, study of the scriptures, discernment and meditation.

Stop, look and listen! For what the preacher and all the members of this congregation need is to center your lives on the Lord Jesus Christ and to follow wherever he leads you.

Stop, look and listen! That, my friends, is what this Lenten season is all about, as we begin our journey toward Jerusalem with Jesus and his first disciples.

The text we have chosen to show us the way to receive the Gifts of God for the Family of Faith, our theme for this year, is taken from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, concluding with the familiar words:

“Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three: but the greatest of these is love.”

Those lines are familiar because we have heard them read many times at wedding ceremonies, as the bride and groom make promises to each other with a look in their eyes that literally glows. As the preacher standing there with them, I think to myself “Surely this is what Paul meant when he wrote, “Love never ends … faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.”

The truth is, wedding services were not what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote to the Corinthian church almost 2000 years ago. In Corinth, they were struggling with conflicts which threatened to tear them apart, so the Apostle sent this letter to help heal their wounds and to encourage those Christians to open their hearts to the gifts of God’s Spirit: Patience, Kindness, Humility, Forgiveness, Joy, Endurance, Faith, Hope and Love.

Those are the Gifts of God for the Family of Faith, said Paul, and so it still is today, During the Lenten season, as we make our way toward Maundy Thursday’s Upper Room, to Good Friday’s cross and Easter’s empty tomb, we’ll be talking together about each of the gifts God wants us to receive. And on this Ash Wednesday, I believe that we need to begin the journey with the gift of Patience.

Now, that’s not easy for me, because like so many of you, instead of waiting for something to happen, I prefer to go into action and get it done. Waiting for a traffic light to change, especially when I’m running late, can drive me to distraction. Waiting in a long line for almost any reason raises my anxiety and sense of apprehension. And when it comes to waiting for a decision to be made, particularly in the Presbyterian system with so many people involved in the process who have different opinions, sometimes I wonder why, instead of the Book of Order, we can’t try to abide by the Nike advertisement: “Just do it!”

“Lord, give me patience, but hurry!” is often how we react and think and want to pray. But that is not the way God works in our lives. The word “patience” appears 40 times in the Bible, and the word “wait” is found in more than 150 verses, reminding us that God isn’t in a hurry and wants to get that message through to you and to me.

· “Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27:14)

· “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7)

· “A person of discretion is patient” (Proverbs 14:17)

· “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25)

· “Lead a life worthy of your calling, with humility, gentleness and with patience, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2)

Do you see, over and over and over again, through the Bible, in the midst of our prayers, and by the example of other people who care deeply for us, especially when we are in trouble, the message being sent to us, and the gift that God wants to give us is patience.

II

But we cannot receive it when we’re on the run, rushing here, pushing there to try to fix all of the problems by ourselves, telling everybody else as General Alexander Haig once did during a presidential crisis: “I am in change here at the White House.”

And sometimes it does take a crisis to get our attention. It happened to me in 1983, when I was in constant motion and so busy doing the Lord’s work that I wasn’t paying attention to the pain in my body and the distress deep down in my soul.

And then, coming home late one night, exhausted and still ignoring the throbbing in my lower back that would not go away, I couldn’t walk up the steps because my legs and feet were numb, so I finally had to say, “I need some help here.”

They operated on me two days later, and sent me home toward the end of the week. But the surgery wasn’t successful, and early on Sunday morning, the ambulance showed up to take me back to the hospital.

It was raining, so the medics who carried me downstairs on a stretcher covered my head with a white sheet. Going out the front door, our neighbor named Bud Thorne, came across the street, looked down at me and at the medics and said, “What’s wrong?” From underneath the sheet, I whispered “I’m dead.” And we actually laughed for a moment before they whisked me away. The next day the doctors completed the surgery, and finally, the pain began to subside.

What I remember most, lying there inside that room at St. Margaret’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, was the sense of God’s peace, presence and healing power – surrounding and sustaining me day by day as I began to learn, all over again, what it meant to be still before the Lord, to wait on Him with patience, and to pray.

Not long after, a friend of mine gave me this little booklet, written by a pastor and preacher named Warren Wiersbe, entitled “God Isn’t in a Hurry.” And these were the words which caught my attention back then, words that hopefully will speak to all of us here and now:

“Perhaps the hardest place to be patient is in the furnace of suffering…Knowing that the Lord is near us and is working out His…purpose through us ought to encourage us…But the school of patience never produces any graduates, and it doesn’t grant any honorary degrees. We are always learning, always maturing. Sometimes we fail the examination even before we know what the lesson is. No matter: our loving God is guiding us…in His way and in His time.”

This booklet was revised in 1994, and is now available in our Mustard Seed Bookstore. I bought a copy recently and read it again in preparation for this sermon, and I commend it to you during this Lenten season.

CONCLUSION

So my hope for all of us as we begin this journey toward Jerusalem is that we will pay attention to the Lord Jesus each day, and ask God for the gift of patience every step of the way. And in the morning, as I sit down to work at the desk and hear the words of this prayer, I hope that it can become your prayer too.