The sermon went pretty well.  It worked as I intended. 

It would have been fun to explore a bit more the Proverbs passage I mentioned at one point in the sermon.

"Free to Be Patient" Romans 8: 18-30; Psalm 37; FPC, Troy, 6/1/14; Easter series;

Introduction: In his book Flash Boys, Michael Lewis explores some of the technological issues that helped create the most recent market crash.

He describes how important speed became in the futures market. If a trading firm could increase the speed of information traveling from the Chicago exchange to the NY exchange by just a 2.5 milliseconds (that would be about the 1/25th as long as it takes to blink your eye, then that firm could make millions of dollars (Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, 9-10).

Blink your eyes (don't close your eyes and go to sleep). Now imagine 1/25th of the time that it just took you can be the difference in millions of dollars.

Time is money. And we now live in a world where very little time can mean lots of money.

Not only does technology allow us to move quickly, but there are also huge benefits to moving faster.

In this world, it is had to preach patience; hard to be patient.

On the other hand, God may not be choosing the speed of fiber optics to be at work, so we may have to learn to be patient.

Move 1: the resurrection frees us to be patient.
     a. In an obvious way, the resurrection reminds us that waiting three days can lead to a dramatic difference in how the world looks. 

         1.  Perhaps you have heard some variation of the stories that are out there about a wise older person who share his or her philosophy of life that is grounded in the idea that one should always wait three days before passing judgment on something because if God can resurrect Christ in three days, God can do anything in three days.

        2.  When I was a kid, I lost my temper too often. My parents tried to convince me to count to 10 before I responded.

      3.  In truth, counting to ten or patiently waiting three days probably is good advice.

b. But when we look to the resurrection, we see more than the passing of three days.

    1. The resurrection is about God acting to turn death into life.

   2.  It may not be how we envisioned it – Christ's death on the cross then resurrection, but it is how God has been at work.

    3. In the resurrection, we discover that God has a life-changing, life-giving response to what has happened.

    4.  the resurrection calls us not to just wait three days, but to wait for God to be at work.

c. the resurrection frees us to patiently wait as people of hope.

1. In her book Bird by Bird, Ann Lamott mentions hearing a “preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience;” she goes on to add that as a writer she has learned that “Hope begins in the dark; the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” (Bird by Bird, xxiii)

2. We are people of hope who believe that the God who resurrects is still at work.

3. We patiently wait for God.

Move 2: Part of being patient involves recognizing the difference between God's time and our time

a. In Greek there are two words for time: thinking about kairos and chronos: 

     1.  In the New Testament chronos means the specific time or amount of time or some measurement of time like a millisecond, or an hour, or a day.

     2.  kairos means "the appointed time in the purpose of God", the time when God acts (e.g. Mark 1.15, the kairos is fulfilled). Kairos (used approximately 81 times in the NT) seems to be an indeterminate time, a "moment" or a "season," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos

    3.  to use the example of the resurrection, chronos would be the three days as the actual time between the death and resurrection of Christ.  Kairos would be the moment that God changed death into life.

b.  We tend to live our lives counting time as chronos

    1.  how many milliseconds does it take to send an stock purchase order from Chicago to NY;

    2.  or how many hours can I shave off the driving time from here to the beach in FL if I cut down on the bathroom breaks and go about 10 miles over the speed limit

    3. Or how quickly can I get that job done so I can move on to something else.

     4.  Or how long will this sermon last?

     5.  Waiting gives way to action to eliminate as much waiting as possible.

b. But God's time is measured in kairos.
    1.  How much time does it take to transform a life?

     2.  What has to happen for you to be a new creation?

     3.  When we baptize Benjamin in a little bit, you take vows to help his grow to profess Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. How to you measure growing in faith?

     4.  In the 25th chapter of Proverbs, we are told that " With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue can break bones."

     5.  that type of change cannot be measured by chronos, but by kairos.

c. Paul's letter to the Romans we read this morning.

     1.  Waiting for God to be at work.

      2.  Not that all things are good, but that the God who is at work in all things is shaping us and pointing us to new places where we can discover God's saving grace.

     3.  The resurrection frees us to patiently wait for God's time.

Move 3: In a separate but I think related point, I find it fascinating that the theme of patience in the biblical text leans toward how we deal with the presence of evil or how we handle it when the people doing bad things seem to be succeeding.

a. Psalm 37 exemplifies this.

   1.  The Psalmist looks around and wonders why evil and evil people seem to be prospering.

   2.  In fact, the Psalmist is apparently jealous of those who do evil because things seems to be working out well for them.

b. But the call from God is to be patient.

    1. to not fret about what others are doing, but to trust in God.

   2.   In time, the wicked will be no more and the ones who have put their trust in God will be vindicated.

3. Waiting patiently means giving up worrying about what others have and what others are doing and focusing on what God is doing in our own lives.

4. again, we are called back to people of hope, trusting and waiting for the God who can resurrect and not worrying about what others are doing around us.

Move 4: A final thought about being patient – it is a call to allow God time to work, not a call to do nothing.

     a. The Psalmist says, “trust in the Lord and do good” (Psalm 37: 3)
        1. Patiently waiting on God means being prayerful and seeking out what God desires you to do.

        2. Remember, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is at hand.

3. what we do matters in this moment, even as we wait for God's transforming power to be fully displayed.

4, Troy Lunch Club – we wait for a day when God's desire for no one to go hungry is met; but we still serve lunch to hungry children.

b. Patience means using our time, that is chronos to seek God out, even as wait for kairos, God's time to arrive. Amen.