16th Sunday in Ordinary Time: The Patience of God
Renowned Czech theologian Tomáš Halík in his book Patience with God[1] argued that the real difference between faith and atheism is not unbelief but patience. Atheists are not wrong, he said, only impatient. They want to resolve doubt instead of enduring it. Their experience of God’s seeming absence in the midst of widespread suffering and evil in the world is shared also by believers. Faith is not a denial of all this. Rather, faith is the patient endurance of the ambiguity and messiness of the world and the experience of God’s absence. In other words, faith is patience with God. As Adel Bestavros puts it in the book’s epigraph: patience with others is love, patience with self is hope, and patience with God is faith.
In today’s gospel, Jesus talks about the patience of God. He does this through three parables: The first is the parable about the wheat and the darnel (Matthew 24 – 30, with an interpretation in 36 to 43); the second is the parable about the mustard seed (verses 31 and 32), and the third is the parable about the yeast (verse 33). Jesus himself explains the first parable, “if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.” God does not uproot every evil now because those who do evil and cause others to sin can repent.
This parable applies to all of us. We look back on the mistakes we have made and are grateful we have had time to change; been able, with God’s help, to work things out. God does not give up on us. God’s kindness makes room in God’s family even for the most notorious of sinners among us. We are all beneficiaries of the patience of God and of others. Just imagine where will we be today if our parents, siblings, friends, teachers were not patient with us. Suppose we had been judged back then, on the spot? Even more so, if God was not patient with us.
The second and the third parable also teach us about God’s patience by God’s appreciation of the small things in life that we often overlook. Jesus likened the Kingdom of God to the smallest of things—the tiny mustard seed and the microscopic yeast. The kingdom of heaven may start small and with great difficulty, but it will grow—and once it begins to grow, it is unstoppable. In God’s time, the small seed of the mustard plant will grow to take over the entire field. The smallest amount of yeast will cause the dough to rise out of the bowl. God is patient. God is willing to wait until we see the mature wheat, the mustard plant grown into a bush, and the additional yeast tripling the size of the dough. The kingdom of God is coming.
God’s way is patience. God’s way of patience does not mean patronizing evil and doing nothing. There is a popular belief that God is just watching us from a distance, allowing evil to thrive and worst apathetically doing nothing. A patient God works with the sinfulness and the messiness of our world. God utilizes the smallest of events, the small people, the weak and the humble, rather than the strong, the mighty, and the proud. God’s way of patience is not the quick-fix solution of eradicating evil or the show of force to effect change but the gradual day-to-day hard work, perseverance and collective action of everybody. Ultimately, God’s way of patience will pave the way for the decisive victory of God’s kingdom
Speaking of small things, I am reminded of a book called, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered by German born British economist E. F. Schumacher, first published in 1973. Schumacher critiques Western economics during the 1973 energy crisis and emergence of globalization and champions the small, appropriate technologies who he believes empower people more.
Indeed, Jesus parables about God’s patience in today’s gospel run counter to many of the popular demands today that brags of the power of the mighty and strong: the myth of an economic ideology of human progress and development that brought wealth to the rich will also bring prosperity for all. Jesus parables about God’s patience run counter to many of the popular demands today that brags of the quick-fix solution: the call to kill all addicts to eradicate the menace of drug addiction, the call to bomb Muslim countries to eradicate extremism, the call to exterminate the NPA’s in order to have peace in our nation. Jesus parables about God’s patience run counter to many of the popular demands today that brags of the power of the majority to reduce the other who are different: the call to rid of immigrants, the call to deride the LGBTQ, the call to ostracize the other because of different status, color, gender and ethnicity. Jesus parables about God’s patience run counter to our knack for judging other people: the call to eradicate and discard the sinners and misfits among us.
Jesus parables about God’s path of patience are stories of grace, patience and hope. As we see the weeds still present in our lives and the lives of those around us, rather than being overcome by discouragement, the parable holds out hope for us. God has sowed good seed in each one of us. It is slowly growing. We just need to nurture God’s good seeds and become patient in dealing with the weeds. In the end, the weeds will make us better persons and will enable us to increase the yield of the good seeds furthermore.
More importantly, Jesus also calls us to not lose hope and confidence in God. In a world where it seems that the devil has the upper hand, God is in charge. God is not indifferent to our struggle. God is not unaware of the sufferings and what still needs to be done. God is guiding us and the church in the process of bringing about a good harvest. We need to play this parable over and over again in our imaginations, especially when things disillusion and discourage us. We need to partake of God’s patience.
[1] Tomáš Halík, Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us (Crown Publishing Group, 2009).
I am passionate about the intersection between new media and technology. I continue to research and apply new media in theology and vice-versa. I am also a fan of Our Mother of Perpetual Help and her continuing relevance in today’s digital world.
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