Sermons

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The Slow Way of God
July 28, 2002
Last in a sermon series on Peter and his letters
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
2 Peter 3:1-13

During the month of August, we’re going to look at four different people from the Old Testament and how God uses them in building character: OUR character. The person we look at first, next week, is Esther…and I want to invite you this week to read through the book of Esther with me. But first this morning, we are finishing 2 Peter, and it’s a wonderful passage. We have talked about this letter of 2 Peter as dealing with threats to the young church from inside the church, particularly relating to bad teaching, and particularly teaching which denies the second coming of Christ. In this last chapter, Peter really takes this issue head on.

You know, it was just a little over a year and a half ago we were all worried about Y2K…the clicking of the calendar out of the 1900s and into a new millennium. It was a big deal. Some people were quite sure that the year 2000 would be the end of the world, that it would signal the beginning of a worldwide apocalypse like that described in the book of Revelation. Others of us were a little worried that the computer systems and accompanying power grids around the globe might malfunction and create their own set of nightmares. I remember counting down the seconds until midnight, gathered with some of you watching the elevator go up the Space Needle, and the fireworks going off…just like they had every year. And I remember going to bed that night thinking: “Well, nothing happened.” It was so uneventful, I didn’t even write anything about it in my journal. January 1, 2000, dawned, and nothing was different.

That is the way that some people apparently felt in the church in Peter’s day. They had been told that Jesus was coming back, that the day wasn’t far off. They had waited and waited. And now they were disappointed. “It’s not going to happen, is it?” And eventually the disappointment turned into cynicism or bitterness: “I thought He was going to come…but things are the exact same way they have always been.” People lived their lives, people died, the generation began to turn over, and things in the world just continued on. “Where is this so-called promise? It’s not going to happen.”

And so Peter speaks into this atmosphere of skepticism...the voice of faith. In the first chapters of this book of 2 Peter, Peter’s voice was strident, maybe defensive, the voice of warning and testimony. But here at the end of the book, it takes on a pastoral tone. Three times in this chapter, Peter calls his readers “Beloved,” which appears nowhere else in this letter. It’s like he’s wrapping things up, and these are friends that he cares about, a family, a flock.

Peter says, “I’m writing to REMIND you.” Nothing new…just a reminder. The words of the Prophets…the words of Jesus…the words of the apostles…all agree. Old Testament, Gospels, New Testament…He IS coming again. It will happen. The Word of God goes forth. The Word of God spoke the world itself into existence. The Word of God sustains the world in this time and keeps it going. That Word of God, made visible in Jesus Christ who said, “I’m going to heaven to prepare a place for you…but I will come again…” It IS going to happen, Peter reminds us.

So WHY hasn’t it happened? What is God waiting for? It was a fair question. It’s still a fair question today in the year 2002.

Haven’t you ever thought to yourself: “Maybe it would be a good time now.”? When life is really tough, when the confusion and chaos seems utterly out of control…that seems to be the time our heart whispers “How about now, Lord?” It’s not something that consumes my thoughts each day. But I confess, sometimes when I sit and read the paper, and some days when it feels that around the whole world there is nothing but hunger, war and violence and greed…I wonder. Or in my own life, when I encounter friends and family who stagger under the load of things that are difficult and seem plain unfair…bad health, the loss of a job, a difficult relationship. As I look around and see that so many times, evil seems to be prospering, until I cry out with the Psalmist, “How long?! How long will the evil win?” Those are the times where I dare think, “Lord, maybe this would be a good time to end it. Enough is enough.”

Peter says, “It IS going to happen.” God’s word does not change. The world is not just spinning randomly, no matter how much it appears that way sometimes. History is moving in a direction, time has purpose…but we human beings don’t have the timing down very well, it seems. Because every time we think, “Surely God will end it now…this latest war, this serial killer, this famine, this holocaust…surely now the time is up,” the time isn’t quite up. Time has a purpose.

2 Peter has two important things to say about this:

a) We don’t keep time like God does. To God, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. God keeps time differently. God sees movements come and go, nations rise and fall, generations pass to other generations. We are in such a hurry. We’re obsessed with time, with efficiency, with making every moment count. We go through the drive through to bank, to get coffee, to get food…even to shop.
We take intensive sessions to learn languages in a matter of a couple weeks. Though it’s taken us 20 years to get out of shape, we’ll firm up out-of-shape bodies over the weekend.

Or we go on crash diets. When we watch television, fast-flying sound bites are training our attention span to lose interest at anything over 30 seconds (which does not bode well for 20-minute sermons!)

Eugene Peterson says we have an “assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently.” And this carries over to faith as well. On the spiritual plain, Peterson would say, we’re acting like tourists. Our family is getting ready for a big trip in August to England and France. I am the epitome of the tourist. We don’t have long to be in either place, so I’m scouring the Rick Steves books to decide which highlights to hit in the shortest amount of time, and skimming historical surveys to pick up a little of the background of the places we’ll be. Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

We tend to treat faith the same way. Hit the high points, make an occasional and efficient jaunt to one religious experience or another, check out the latest and greatest in spirituality. Read books like “2-Minutes a Day to Greater Spiritual Depth.”

What a different sound that has than following after a God to whom “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day!” Peterson’s alternative to being a spiritual TOURIST…is to be a PILGRIM. Someone walking in a direction, someone who is in it for the long haul, who is committed to a long walk with God…in fact, a walk that lasts an entire lifetime.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. When I was younger, and people came to me for advice, my mind would be racing with “steps towards resolution of the problem,” even as I listened to their situation. But as I talk with folks now about different situations that come up in life, I find myself saying things like this: “Don’t be in a hurry. Let things unfold. Look for God. It will look differently a bit further down the road. You can’t control everything. Try and see what God is doing, and where you sense his presence.” God operates on an entirely different timeframe, and one that calls us to be pilgrims instead of tourists. It’s the “slow way of God,” that the Frenchman de Chardin describes.

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages, we are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new, and yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -- and that it may take a very long time…only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be…”

We don’t keep time like God does.

b) The second thing 2 Peter says is this: If God’s timing feels incredibly SLOW to us…it is because he has a purpose. It may seem that God is taking an awfully long time to set things right. “But the Lord is not slow about his promise as some think of slowness.” That is, God is not just being slow because he’s lazy or incompetent or uncaring. He is purposeful. And that purpose is tied up with the heart of longing and compassion that God has: “He is patient with you, not wanting ANY to perish, but ALL to come to repentance.”

I love this thought. And as I have meditated on it this week, I’ve received several different, “Oh, my…I never thought of that” experiences. God’s heart…is that each person come to him. Each person. Every person know God. That is God’s heart. For you…and for the person in the pew next to you. God has come near to us in Christ, who the Bible says is The Way to God, has become knowable through the cross of Christ, has become accessible in the resurrection of Christ. It is possible to know God…and that is His desire. It was his desire from the very moment of the creation of human beings, and he has spared nothing in order to bring people to him. And it is that incredible heart…which waits.

No matter how sure we may be that it is surely time for God to move the world towards an end, that people have endured too much, STILL God says…not yet. His hand is stayed, his coming is delayed. Why? Because there are a few more to come in. God doesn’t want to lose ANY. We may choose to move away from God or ignore him, yet still He waits.

When I read these words, I kept thinking of the story of the prodigal son…in Luke. Or maybe better put, the story of the Waiting Father. I have had a mental picture of that Father whose son took his inheritance and unwisely went off to a far country and squandered it. I’ve imagined that father, every evening at sunset, going out to the top of the hill, climbing on the highest rock, and looking, eyes straining, to see if maybe, just maybe…His son would be coming home that night. And every night, trudging back to the house. He must surely have been tempted to write off the son, to get on with life, to quit revisiting the pain of it. Yet the next night, there he is again, going back to the top of the hill to look…until finally, one day, he sees the young man, and his heart was filled with compassion, and he ran and embraced him and welcomed him. That is what God is like. He waits for the one.

And so if we get impatient, thinking He must surely come back now…then perhaps we need to remember who that one more might be. Maybe if he waited just another day, another year…more would come to know him. Maybe he delays for the sake of someone you know. Maybe for the sake of my dad…that my dad would come to know Christ. Would it be worth waiting for?

Or maybe it is for the sake of your colleague at work, the one who absolutely bugs you and who you cannot ever imagine being open to the things of God…maybe it is for her sake. If that was the case, if she was THAT precious to God that he might stay His hand from bringing our world to a close…then perhaps your attitude towards that person will be different. Perhaps you will look for how it might be that God is drawing her in. Perhaps it is for the sake of your child, even your grandchild…that God delays. Even though it allows pain and confusion in our world to continue to be present…if it was for the purpose of bringing one more person into the influence of that heart of compassion that never dries up.

Remember the story of Abraham in Genesis? God is so disgusted at what is going on in the city of Sodom, that he tells Abraham he is going to destroy the city. Abraham pleads with him, and says: What if I can find just 50 good people? Will you stay your hand? And God says, “Yes, for the sake of the 50 I will forgive the city.” But Abraham is persistent: What about 45? Yes. How about 30? Yes, I’ll wait. What if there were just 20? For the sake of 20, I will not destroy it, I will forgive them all. Abraham knows he’s pushing God’s buttons. He takes a deep breath. What about 10…if I find 10 good people, will you save the city? And God says, “Yes.” At this point, I think Abraham’s courage fails. He doesn’t ask any more. But my suspicion is that if Abraham had asked for 7, for 5, all the way down to 1, God still would have waited to save that person. “Not wanting ANY to perish, but ALL to come to repentance.”

Now, we have to be careful of one thing. Our inclination is to hear God’s heart of compassion, and think it is for “those people out there, my dad, your colleague, our children.” Or only those who are not Christians. This passage says nothing of the kind. God’s desire is simply that ALL may come to repentance. That ALL may be right with God. WE might just be in the all. Maybe we’ve known God, but are distant right now. Maybe we’ve never really come to a place of repentance, of turning from things God doesn’t want for us, and turning towards Him. Then God’s waiting…is for US. WE’RE the ones…he’s been waiting for.

Will there be an end? Peter, like the prophets, like Jesus, like the apostles, says, Yes…but we don’t know when. God has been saying, “Not yet.” Not yet…let’s just see if there area few more. They used to say about the businessman J.C. Penney…that when it was time for the store to close, he would walk out and look up and down the sidewalk and see if anyone was there who might, who just might…be coming to the store. And if anyone was in sight, he would wait to lock up until that person had either walked on by, or come in the store. For just that one more customer. That seems to be God’s mode of operation right now too, and so Peter reminds us of God’s heart of compassion.

Friends, if God is so patient, then let us not be impatient. Let us live as thankful people, thankful that the way of God is the slow way. Thankful that the heart of God is the compassion shown in Christ. Thankful that God’s desire…is that the household of God…might be full. Amen.