Becoming a Community of Patience
A Reflection by Trevor Bechtel on February 9th 2025
Something that I think about myself, and that other people often tell me they think about me, is that I am a patient person. I like this about myself and I’m glad that it is a part of who I am in the world. Like Jo last week though, I’m not here to give a sermon on patience because I am an especially patient person.
In fact I think that a large amount of my patience actually stems from the reality that I have a huge temper. As a child I would readily lose control and throw a temper tantrum pounding on the living room carpet. I did not fully gain control of these outbursts as a teenager which led to some awkward situations and still in my twenties would find myself triggered by situations and lose control.
Every part of my identity and social circumstance told me that this was not the right way to behave. I still have more moral indignation than I know what to do with, and driving can still sometimes be a tricky space, but most people now don’t think of me a person with a temper. Most people think I’m very patient. I do remember a moment driving a group of students around Pittsburgh where I was badly cut off by the driver in front of me and said out loud in a super calm voice, “oh honey is that how you want to drive”, eliciting amazement from the student in the passenger seat. I can’t believe how patient you are Trevor.
The point of sharing this story is to make the point which you all already know, and which Jo made last week but which nonetheless bears repeating. Virtues are something that we can learn. We can practice getting better at something, and overtime we probably will.
In the listing of the fruits of the spirit in Galatians the word Paul uses to describe this virtue is makrothumia with literally means long to anger, and many translations use long-suffering to translate this word.
There is an important first clarification then about patience as a community virtue. It is not simply not reacting in the face of injustice.
There are a set of virtues could also be describe as good manners including being polite, being kind, and being patient. These virtues are sometimes attacked, with good reason, when they protect those who have done wrong or calm our willingness to name injustice. One space where this has happened again and again is when abuse shows up in church contexts. Some people have incorrectly suggested a need to be patient with processes that protect abusers, and patience, kindness, and politeness lose their proper meaning when they cover for abuse in this way. The most recent example of this comes to our attention with a settlement between Mennonite Central Committee and former MCC workers Anicka Fast and John Clarke. Fast and Clarke have challenged MCC with claims of workplace abuse after they were fired following a diagnosis of PTSD stemming from their work in Burkina Faso. MCC responded that the claims were unfounded and that there was no systematic abuse. But a independent agency did find that MCC did not sufficiently investigate claims of harassment or communicate effectively. One lesson for me here is that we might expect institutions to exercise more patience then individuals. Rather than settle or oppose challenging claims perhaps institutions should increase their ability to listen and respond. However too often individuals are expected to exercise more patience than institutions.
We don’t have a word for too much patience in the way we can use bravado for too much courage. But that space does exist, and institutions and communities sometimes expect it. Conflict avoidance might be one version but that doesn’t quite capture this because in order to avoid conflict one approach can be to impatiently get out of the way. And one of the things that I’ve learned over the last year is that patience can be a way to lean into conflict. Sometimes we need to stay in a space where people disagree with us in order to look for the best resolution to conflict. Poverty Solutions, the group that I work for at the university has made the decision to pull back from working with Washtenaw County because the County has been a bad partner on the projects we’ve been engaging with them. But in many ways patience would be an approach to this relationship which would prioritize the community.
Patience thought of as the right kind of engagement is something that we want to be able to practice in a context like the United States in February 2025. Ideally, patience allows us to recognize that much that we see coming out of the federal government right now is bluster, an attempt to flood the zone, and keep us distracted from the things which are really happening. Many of my friends in Canada got really worked up when the US was about to impose 25% tariffs. I knew enough to wait until tariffs were actually being applied before getting super angry about this. And sure enough the tariffs were delayed. And now a new set of patience is necessary as we think about whether tariffs will ultimately happen. The problem of course is that there have been twelve new audacious policies announced since the tariffs were paused. And tariffs are being imposed on China.
Patience can’t on its own give us the wisdom to know what is actually happening in the world. Patience is only the virtue of measuring your response and your action and finding the right space in which to focus your efforts.
The scripture passage that Max read of Jesus temptation in the desert is a great example of this. Jesus would be totally justified in reacting at every point as the tempter tempts him. But Jesus waits and listens for the challenge which is not just about his comfort but about others and then rebukes Satan.
Patience is about more than finding our way relative to other institutions or governments. And our other text for this morning lifts up that sense of patience. Ferdinand exercises a kind of patience with everyone who wants him to be a raging bull. But my favorite part of the story is that Ferdinand is at the end of the story allowed to return home and be who he wants to be. Ultimately, and not without complaining, the world is patient with Ferdinand. This patient persistence in the face of violence and toxic masculinity lead to the book being banned in Hitler’s Germany, and other fascist regimes after its publication in 1936. The publisher Viking Press averred the same faulty patience thinking that with war about to break out in Spain between Franco’s fascists and the government that Ferdinand’s pacifism wasn’t the best message. The author Munro Leaf insisted that Ferdinand be published and it quietly became a best seller. Ferdinand didn’t just have to deal with the fascists though. The gender non-conforming bull attracted significant criticism here in the United States for encouraging boys to be sissies, or mollycoddles in the language of the day. Hemingway in 1951 felt compelled to write a story about a bull who does fight and was admired, especially by the man who killed him.
Patience and the perspective that it offers is also good at allowing us to put things together. I had an interesting conversation with the regional director of MCC Great Lakes a couple of months ago after a meeting with a former student who now works in church relations for MCC. In the meeting I communicated that I was not particularly surprised that MCC was being accused of workplace abuse because MCC has allowed itself the cruelty of a lifestyle policy that bans practicing homosexuality for the last few decades. This kinds of connections make me wonder about the wisdom of holding conservative ideas. It seems like anti-gay, anti-women, anti-pacifist, anti-immigrant, anti-poor ideas and stances so easily flow into each other and trend towards fascism and authoritarianism.
My favorite book about the fruits of the spirit is written by Phil Kenneson. In the chapter on patience, Phil opposes patience to productivity. He notes that productivity and capitalism want to measure and control our time. He is highly critical of clocks and the way the move us from one thing to the next in a regimented way that takes away from our ability to be in moment, to give things the attention they deserve rather than the attention we’ve measured time for. If the book were written now it would probably have more of a focus on naps, and rest, and doing nothing as a mode of resistance to capitalism. He notes that patience can be very challenging in the consumer culture of 25 years ago, and this is certainly no less true for us today. We have the challenges I’ve enumerated so far, and the extra challenges to patience that the internet and the ubiquity of cellphones creates. Kenneson gives us a set of resources for cultivating patience in community.
One it gives us a chance to tell stories. Phil has in mind the Christian story that we tell ourselves every week. I was reminded last night of the importance of many different kinds of stories for any community. Mary and Bryan and Susan and I when to a new documentary about Ann Arbor called A Letter to the West Side about the history of the thriving Black community located on the North and West Side of Ann Arbor. As they left the south some Black people settled here. They were forced to settle in that area where there were junkyards and stockyards, but also where they could actually buy houses with yards. They created a vibrant community which was then taken apart by redlining and racially restrictive housing covenants. Part of the timing of the final exodus of Black people from my neighborhood includes a renaming of the neighborhood as Water Hill, and the creation of a neighborhood music festival which drew thousands of people to the neighborhood each May. People who had lived in the neighborhood their whole lives had the police called on them by new rich white residents who were tearing down small homes and building McMansions. Gentrification is always a complex story but knowing more fully the history of our communities allows us to see what we have and what we are missing. Part of this for Kenneson is remembering time differently. As Christians we have a different relationship to the past, and to the future. We look at historical winners and loser with a different perspective. With the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism this year we have many opportunities to do that. Kenneson says we also have a different perspective on the future, “The future is no longer that arena in which we strive to work out our own agendas. The future – like the past and the present – remains the area of God’s sovereign activity, and as such the future always remains an open future.
Patience is about including everyone, learning who they are in all their wonderful weirdness.
Patience is about giving up control but not giving up our ability to call for justice.
Patience is about finding the right kind of engagement and giving that engagement over to God’s future.
May it be so.
Amen.
