I used to have a brick of a phone, some might call it a burner phone or even a drug dealer phone. I wasn’t very good at using the phone. That phone that could barely text or call. Half the time it didn’t ring – or at least I couldn’t detect it. When I traveled, there was no googlemaps on that phone, I had to ask for directions. I was dependent on other people.

Sometimes my travel companions, family and others, got impatient with me. They wondered why I had to be so backward, so old fashioned. In trying to explain it to them, I found myself talking about slowing down, about developing dependence on, and connection with, other people. I said that the phone gave me a different experience of travel, of being in the world, different from what they were experiencing at lightning speed.

I know what you are thinking – and you are right. I justified being tech adverse by saying it was all part of a spiritual practice of slowing down, waiting, being patient, being interdependent. It is all true. I am tech adverse, not an early adopter by any means. And that old phone did make me slow down, depend on others, learn patience, help me have boundaries.

Then along came the pandemic with its own set of spiritual practices to teach us. I finally bowed to peer pressure, family pressure and got a smart phone. Now all the things I worried about have come true: I check the news and my email and my texts and social media way too often. Now it is even easier to get overwhelmed and impatient.

The writer of James uses the small parable of a farmer waiting for seeds to grow, underground, in the dark. The farmer does their part, planting. Then the farmer waits for the winter and spring rains to do their part. And the farmer waits for the seeds to grow. Who is developing patience? The seeds, the rains, the farmer?

Who was developing patience when I had an old phone? my family, my colleagues, me?

Some translations of the James text say You, too, must be patient. Steady your hearts, because the coming of Christ is at hand. Other translations say Strengthen your resolve, the coming of the Lord is near. Are we strengthened by waiting, by waiting patiently? Is our faith strengthened by waiting patiently? Are our relationships strengthened by waiting patiently? Does patience make us more steady?

Waiting is part of advent. In the northern hemisphere, we wait in a season of darkness. We wait for signs of Christ coming into the world. We wait for Christmas. We wait, alert to where God is breaking in. Waiting with patience – is harder. We can wait idly, without any direction, just doing one more game on our phones, reading one more post on Insta. Can that be called patience if, while I am waiting, I fill the minutes and hours with more distractions or even more duties? What if part of patience is taking a break, resting and praying, breathing deep and centering?

This season we are using breath prayers, inhaling and exhaling as we pray. In the prayer today, each phrase is an inhale and an exhale. I will speak the phrase and you breathe.

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I am

Be still and know that I

Be still and know that

Be still and know

Be still and

Be still

Be

Praying this way feels like it helps to develop patience. It steadies and strengthens the heart.

Unfortunately it doesn’t take long for that steadiness to leave me. I am soon remembering another, competing, biblical text where waiting patiently seems to be in direct contradiction with the description of patience in James.

You might remember this parable that Jesus told his disciples about the necessity of praying always and not losing heart. It is recounted only in Luke’s gospel. (18:1-8)

Once there was a judge in a certain city (which means it could be any city) a judge who feared no one – not even God.  A woman in that city who had been widowed kept coming to the judge and saying, “Give me legal protection from my opponent.”

For a time the judge refused, but finally the judge thought,

“I care little for God –

or people – but this woman won’t leave me alone.

I’d better give her the protection she seeks or she’ll keep coming and wear me out.”

Jesus said, “Listen to what this corrupt judge is saying. Won’t God then do justice to the chosen who call out day and night?  Will God delay long over them? I tell you, God will give them swift justice.  But when the Promised One comes, will faith be found anywhere on earth?”

Is there patience here? The woman is relentless in her requests, in her badgering of the judge. She needs justice and she is not idly patient about receiving it. She does not say, “I have planted the seeds of information that the judge needs, I will just wait to see how they grow.” She refuses to take no for an answer, refuses to stop until she gets what she needs. The judge has no patience – or mercy. The judge just gives in to the woman’s persistence. (The text says even God has no patience. God gives swift justice.)

This kind of commitment to “praying always” reminds me again of the Apache Stronghold who were here in September, praying in our building. And the next day praying in front of the Supreme Court. The Apache Stronghold continues to invite our prayers that the Supreme Court Judges will hear their case. Last week they again received a delay from the court which they hope means that the court is considering seriously talking the case. We pray with Apache Stronghold that the holy and sacred lands of Oak Flat will be preserved for worship – rather than be turned into a copper mine that destroys the earth along with the Apache holy site of worship.

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Patience and prayer cause us to slow down. A slower pace allows us to see the

humanity in other people,

the humanity in ourselves,

the divinity in other people,

the divinity in ourselves.

Patience allows us to see the beauty around us – and that we do not need to move at the speed of light, only at the speed of who we are in this moment. Perhaps this is the strength that grows in our hearts, that steadies our hearts.

I invite you to join me in the breath prayer once again.

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I am

Be still and know that I

Be still and know that

Be still and know

Be still and

Be still

Be

So whose wisdom do we listen to? Are we to be patient like it says in the passage from James? Or are we to pray without ceasing like Jesus says in Luke. It seems like either practice might strengthen the heart, could steady the heart, deepen faith.

I want to introduce one more voice into this conversation about patience: Tricia Hersey. Tricia Hersey is an African American womanist, theologian, performance artist, author, activist, and daydreamer. With a description like that you might be surprised to hear that Tricia Hersey calls her work Nap Ministry. Her ministry invites people to rest. Her work sort of combines waiting patiently, like seeds in the dark, like farmers in the rain, with praying non-stop for justice to be done.

To this pastor, in this season, Nap Ministry sounds like a true gift, a relief. Take a nap and call it ministry. Close your eyes in the dark, or in the light, take a break, be patient and hope that whatever needs to be done will happen. (much of the following info comes from this podcast with Tricia Hersey.) But Nap Ministry goes beyond a 10 minute nap. Hersey’s book titled Rest is Resistance is an indication that Nap Ministry invites us to dig deeper.

Hersey’s Nap Ministry is rooted in the fact that in the early days of this country black people and some indigenous people were thought of as machines that could work day and night on plantations, work without stopping, without resting. Hersey’s Nap Ministry is a critique of “grind culture,” a critique of white supremacy and capitalism. Hersey invites people, black, indigenous, immigrants and white, to resist the grind by resting.

Rest as non-violent resistance takes a kind of faith and patience that do not develop quickly. Like the seeds in the earth that wait for the rains of winter and spring, this kind of patient rest takes time, takes time to learn, takes time to practice.

How can it be that hard to rest? Hersey says that rest as resistance means pausing to be conscious of the ways that we are bound up in grind culture, pausing to see the ways that we are captive to capitalism and white supremacy. We rest so that we can begin to deprogram. We rest to give our brains and bodies space to deprogram from white supremacy and capitalism. We rest so that we can stop thinking that we have to always be achieving and buying and accumulating and succeeding and perfecting.

Rest, patient rest, will strengthen and steady our hearts. Patient rest is a way to pray. Patient rest helps us see what we truly need to pray for. Patient rest helps us begin to develop our imaginations so that we know what justice truly looks like and maybe even how we can participate in it.

Choosing rest over work, or perfection, choosing rest over getting our image or post or product just right sounds like a relief. And it sounds really hard. I confess that as a life long perfectionist, I am always trying to unwind myself from the perfectionism strand of white supremacy. Rest is a way to recover from perfectionism, as a way to say, enough – I am enough, you are enough, we are enough. That sounds like a practice I want to try. Rest as resistance.

And Hersey says, rest is not a solitary practice. We choose rest not just for self-care but for community care, so that we can show up for each other. We choose rest so that we can say to each other, I am enough and you are enough and we are enough. As we rest, as we work, as we laugh, and sing and learn and rest. We are enough.

We can choose to become like seeds in the dark, waiting for the rains, winter and spring. We can choose, in that dark time of rest, to practice imagining what might be next, what might be possible even in the dark when we can’t see a way. We will emerge into the light when it is time. But for now we wait patiently, resting while we pray.

Let’s breathe the breath prayer one more time.

Be

Be still

Be still and know

Be still and know that

Be still and know that I

Be still and know that I am

Be still and know that I am God