November 3, 2024
Clothe Yourself with Forbearance
Ephesians 3:14-18, 4:1-6
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,[k]15 from whom every family[l] in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
(4:1) I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: 4 there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.[a]
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
This morning we are in a sermon series on our metaphorical spiritual clothing – the Christ-like virtues – that characterize a life of discipleship. These are the virtues that followers of Jesus put on to walk out into the world, like we put on socks and shoes, shirts, and coats. Today: clothe yourselves with forbearance.
That is an old-fashioned word that today is most often used referring to a bank loan. Yet, when it is applied to human life and relationships, it means to bear with a person or situation. In fact, it’s not exactly a virtue as much as it is a practice that involves several virtues. Forbearance – the act of bearing with – involves patience, humility, and gentleness.
For example, “Please bear with me, as I walk around in a Hurricane Helene induced brain fog and emotional malaise.” Bear with me as I try to remember what day it is, what month it is and what normal activities I need to be doing! Sound familiar? Forbearance is the practice of extending patience, humility, and gentleness to one another and to ourselves.
The New York Yankees pitcher Garrett Cole demonstrated remarkable forbearance as he reflected on Game 5 this past week, the game in which the Yankees collapsed in epic fashion to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the fifth inning and lost any hope of winning the World Series. If you missed this year’s World Series, it was tremendous, and the fifth inning of Game 5 was epic.
The Yankees were up 5-0 in the fifth inning, the Dodgers were on the ropes. Then the Yankees outfielders committed two errors. Now, runners were on base. Then, confusion and a missed assignment at first base loaded the bases. By the time the inning was over, the Dodgers had scored improbable five runs, the game was tied, the momentum had shifted, and the Yankees went on to lose.
To his credit, the pitcher, Garrett Cole, was gracious and forbearing after the game.
He said, “As a player, if there’s a mistake on the field, you try to look at it as an opportunity to pick somebody else up. You’re never really going to play perfect baseball all year. You’re going to have to overcome mistakes. And certainly, everybody makes mistakes. So if you buy into taking care of your teammates and trying to pick them up in those situations, you just always keep giving yourself a chance.”
That is remarkable forbearance.
When Paul writes to the Ephesians, it is no accident that this phrase “bear with one another in love…” is the linguistic ligament that join the virtues of humility, patience, and gentleness to the work of maintaining unity of the Spirit.
In this letter, which we call Ephesians, the characteristics of the churches in this region are clear. They have come from Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds. They bring different cultural heritages, different political views, different worldviews, different life-experiences, different socio-economic levels, different citizenship statuses.
They are called by God’s invitation to this strange new gathering, and Paul is trying to help them live together as one body of Christ. So, he commends to them this way of living marked by the practice of bearing with one another in love.
Bearing with one another in love is the practice of maintaining unity in the face of differences, divisions, and disagreements. Biblical forbearance does not mean that we yield to the other’s viewpoint, or compromise our own values. Forbearance means we ground ourselves in a deeper unity. We insist on maintaining community even with those we perceive to be wrong.
In the Wall Street Journal last week, I was surprised (and not surprised) to read a profile of a Lutheran pastor with whom I went to seminary. Thomas Rusert is the pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the county seat of Bucks County, one of the most politically divided and polarized counties in America. St. Paul’s Lutheran is – against all odds – made up of lots of Republicans and Democrats, making the congregation an endangered species.
But rather than give into their divisions, they are trying to model forbearance. Rusert asks them to think about the implications of the gospel for politics, but he strives to not be partisan or tell them what to believe. His congregation, too, is working hard to listen to each other, to acknowledge openly and humbly where they do not agree. One of their adult classes is taught by a husband-and-wife – Judy and Rich – she, a Democrat, and he, a Republican. Each week they model as a couple and as a class how to bear with one another. They are maintaining community in the face of disagreement.
The Apostle Paul would approve. While there are many good reasons to bear with one another, Paul argues that forbearance must, for theological reasons, be part of who the church is. We must bear with one another because God has born with us.
When Paul prays that we will comprehend the love of Christ and be filled with the fullness of God, he is praying that we will know – in all its width and depth and length and height – the love that has born with us in our sin, that bears with us in our shortcomings. He prays we will know the divine love that carried us when we could not walk and reconciled us to God when we had no hope.
The fullness of God’s grace is the fullness with which Paul prays we are filled. Put very simply, he prays that we will be filled with God’s forbearing love and pay it forward by forbearing with one another.
On this All Saints’ Sunday, I am reminded of the extraordinary ordinary saint Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote eloquently about what he called the “ministry of bearing with.” Bonhoeffer was a stellar Lutheran theologian, who showed remarkable courage during World War II by returning from America to his native Germany during the war, to teach and support resistance pastors. He died just before the war ended.
When Bonhoeffer wrote of burden bearing, he described two ways in which we do it. The first is simply “putting up with each other.” We all have quirks and oddities in our personality. Some of us talk too much; some are always running late; some chronically overcommit. You know what your quirks are, and we all have them: they’re not necessarily faults, but quirks. Being in Christian community together as the body of Christ, means – for a start – we put up with each other.
But it goes deeper than that. The second way Bonhoeffer means bearing with is that we bear each other’s concerns. We bear with one another’s struggles. With our sins. With our failures. With our true weaknesses. When most people would walk away because we are too much to take on, a sibling in Christ walks alongside. When many would unfriend, we befriend. When others would say, that’s a personal problem, the sibling in Christ says I’ll share the problem with you. We bear with one another in love.
As the Apostle Paul reasoned, so Bonhoeffer reasons that this ministry of bearing with is essential for the church because it is rooted in God’s love for us in Christ.
In Life Together, he wrote:
God [truly] bore the burden of [humanity] in the body of Jesus Christ. But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found. God took [humanity] upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God. In bearing with [humanity] God maintained fellowship with them. It was the law of Christ that was fulfilled in the Cross.”
The law of Christ, the way of Christ, is a way of bearing with one another in love. It’s easy to see in our personal lives how much we depend on this. It’s easy to see in the life of a church how important this is: like those early Christians, we too have different theological views, backgrounds, political beliefs, and life experience. On the broader landscape of our life together as a nation, while we do not share a common faith, we can also see in vivid living color our need to bear with one another.
When forbearance shows up in public, it looks like civility. We treat one another with basic dignity, no matter the sign in the yard or the bumper sticker on the car. We extend kindness, even in the face of vigorous disagreement. We hang in there, even if the other side wins, and even if we believe the other side is utterly wrong. We refuse to demonize our fellow citizens, even when we deeply disagree over the most important issues.
None of us knows how the election that concludes on Tuesday will turn out. We do know that some will be elated; some will be stricken; many, especially in swing states like ours, will be relieved it’s over.
My prayer, though it seems a lot to ask, is that on Tuesday and in the weeks that follow, we will be civil to one another, that we will forbear with one another as a nation.
It is sometimes hard to imagine how the church could possibly contribute positively to the brokenness of our national discourse, given our own brokenness, and how the divisions that run through society also run through the church. We cannot pretend that all disagreements are set aside at the opening hymn. We can’t pretend that there are not serious moral disagreements within society that are reflected in the church. And we can’t hide from the fact that followers of Christ are very often complicit in the demonizing discourse that sets neighbor against neighbor.
We can, however, take Paul’s advice to heart and try once more to bear with one another in love. We can strive to maintain a unity of the Spirit that does not paper over differences but reaches for a deeper friendship that is God’s gift of grace. We can receive once more, by faith, today, the gift of God in Jesus Christ.
If we can comprehend the love of God in Christ, we will see the dividing walls are broken down and humanity is already reconciled. Even despite ourselves. Even in the face of all appearances. All the sinners have become all the saints. We are one in Christ.
May we know it to be true. May we live it as the truth that is saving the world. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina