“The Twelve Blessings of Christmas: Patience”
Luke 1:5-25

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
First Sunday in Advent—November 30, 2014

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

During the Advent and Christmas seasons this year we are having a sermon series on “The Twelve Blessings of Christmas.”  The first nine of these blessings are from Paul’s list in Galatians of the fruits of the Spirit:  “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” 

For our sermon series, we have added to this list the blessing of song, which we will celebrate with a Festival of Readings and Carols in our morning worship on Sunday, December 21st.  Also, the blessing of salvation, as the angel said to Joseph, “You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”  And, finally, the blessing of goodwill, as the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” 

We begin this morning with the blessing of patience.  It may seem ironic to say that patience is one of the blessings of Christmas.  Doesn’t it instead seem that of all the times of the year Christmas is the most impatient?  The year it was few days before Halloween when I first saw a house completely decorated for Christmas.  We impatiently count down the weeks with the Advent wreath, and the days with Advent calendars.  And children, most of all, anxious and impatient, can hardly wait for their presents.

The whole world waited thousands of years for the God’s first Christmas present to us. For, the world’s long wait for the first Christmas actually began “in the beginning,” just after humanity’s fall into sin.  Paul says in Romans, “The result of one trespass was condemnation for all men.”  The whole world was plunged into sin, death and damnation because of humanity’s rebellion against God.  But, God immediately promised to one day send us the first and best Christmas present: Our Savior, who would crush and defeat for us sin, death and the devil.  “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” he said to Satan, “and between your descendants and her Descendant; he will crush your head.”

Eve understood and believed the full meaning and implications of this promise, that her Descendant would be God come into the world in the flesh, who would crush and defeat Satan.  For, when her first child was born, Eve thought the promise had already been fulfilled, and she cried out in faith, “I have gotten a man, the Lord.”

But, as Paul says in Galatians, “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.”  Eve’s hope that her firstborn son was already the Messiah, the Lord come in the flesh, was premature, like Christmas decorations before Halloween.  Peter says, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.”  It would be a long wait, thousands of years, spanning the Old Testament from Genesis thru Malachi, before the ancient promise would finally be fulfilled.

Peter says, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets spoke of the grace that was to come to you.”  Throughout that long wait, across the pages of the Old Testament, the prophets gave more and more promises, and more and more details, of the promised Messiah’s coming. 

Jeremiah tells us in today’s Old Testament Reading that he will be a descendant of David, a righteous Branch of David’s family tree: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.  In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line . . .  This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.’”

Isaiah reveals that he will be miraculously born of a Virgin, of male lineage only: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

Immanuel means, “God with Us,” and a few chapters later Isaiah proclaims, “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulders; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

At the very end of the Old Testament, Malachi says that just before the Messiah’s comes a final prophet will be sent: “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come.”

Elizabeth and Zechariah, in today’s Gospel Reading, had been waiting patiently for many years for the birth of a child.  But, they were waiting not only for the birth of their own child.  As faithful Hebrews, who trusted the promise of old, they were also waiting patiently for the birth of THE Child, the Descendant of Eve, the Branch of David, Immanuel, God with Us, the Prince of Peace. 

“An angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John.  . . . He will go on before the Lord . . .  to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’”

The promises were finally coming to fulfillment.  Elizabeth and Zechariah’s son John would be the final prophet, to prepare the way for the Messiah’s birth and the culmination of God’s plan of salvation for the world.  As Paul says in Colossians, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things . . . by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.  Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.  But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” 

You can remember the true meaning of this holiday season simply by remembering the origin and meaning of the world “holiday.” “Holiday” really means “holy day.”  Christmas is a “holy day” because through the birth of God’s Son you are “holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” 

In today’s Epistle Reading, James says, “Brothers, as an example of patience . . . take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”  If you had been a Roman schoolboy 2,000 years ago, one of your assignments would have been to memorize, in Latin, a list of some three dozen classical virtues.  You’ll recognize some of these, which have come directly into the English language: Frugalitas, frugality; Honestas, honesty; Industria, industriousness; and Patientia, patience.  But, even though the word is the same, there is a big difference between the secular concept of patience, and the Biblical concept of godly patience.

To the secular world, patience means being like Mr. Spock on Star Trek: showing no emotion, detached, aloof.  The ancients called this Stoicism, which is based on fatalism.  You can’t change things away, the fates are predetermined and fickle, so when things go wrong you just have to buck up and take it, unemotional, detached, aloof, stoic.

That’s not what we mean when we talk about Christian patience.  The Christian virtue of godly patience comes from an entirely different worldview. Christian patience is not just a dreary Stoicism or fatalism, not just bucking up and taking it.  Christian patience is based on what Peter calls “a lively hope.”  Paul expresses in Romans the attitude underlying Christian hope and patience this way: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

You are patient because you know that in your struggles God is not against you, he is for you, on your side.  You are patient because you know that in any suffering and difficulties you face, God is never punishing you, because all your punishment has already been endured, for you, by his own Son.  You are patient because you trust that “God is working all things together for the good of those who love him.”  You are patient because, as Paul says in Romans, “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

You are probably familiar with the famous “Love Chapter” in 1st Corinthians 13, which is often recited at weddings.  You may recall it begins this way: “Love is patient.”  Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you,” and showing patience is the first way that we show his love toward others.  “Love is patient.”  As Paul says in Ephesians, “Be patient, bearing with one another in love.”  James puts it this way in today’s Epistle Reading: “You also must be patient. . . .  Beloved, do not grumble against one another.”

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience.”  Patience is not a fruit which naturally grows among us.  Godly patience is a “fruit of the Spirit,” produced in you only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In order for a tree to produce fruit it needs water and nutrients and the light.  The Holy Spirit produces fruit in you through the water of Holy Baptism, through the nourishing food of Holy Communion, and through the light of God’s Word.  Godly patience and the other fruits of the Spirit will flourish in your life when you are rooted in and fed by the Word and Sacraments.  As Paul says in Colossians, “Live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience.”