A Word from Pastor Lisa: On Endurance
Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. 3 But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, 4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 5 This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
—Romans 5:1-5 (CEB)
A couple of weeks ago, we bought some beautiful vegetable plants through the online Bloomington Farmers’ Market, which we highly recommend. I read on the internet that May 1 is the last frost date in Bloomington, so I eagerly planted our new veggies in pots and in our little garden. A week ago, the temperatures dropped below freezing. We moved the potted plants in the garage and gently laid bedsheets over the ones in the ground. Even so, several of the cucumber plants got frostbite. We figured they were done for the season, but just in case, we gave them a little water and just let them be.
We underestimated the perseverance of those tiny plants. We got some replacements, but the original cucumbers endured. A week later, I noticed a little green shoot popping up from the soil, pushing out the damaged leaves. I have no idea if they’ll continue to grow and produce cucumbers, but I’m amazed at how hardy they were. They offer hope for all of us in this cold, dark time.
This pandemic feels like a sudden, unexpected freeze in our lives. The world as we know it came to a screeching halt. We were told to stay home, keep social distance, and not gather together. We have grieved more than 300,000 people globally who’ve died from COVID-19. Many of us (20%) have lost jobs or are furloughed, and we worry about making ends meet. We made it to the end of the semester, but what will we do all summer without parks, pools, athletics, camps, festivals, or vacations? We’re concerned about the most vulnerable among us, especially if there are additional spikes in COVID-19 cases. This is a marathon, not a sprint. How will we endure?
In this Romans passage, Paul writes to a divided early Christian community that God’s love for us does not mean the absence of suffering. Salvation in Christ isn’t a hedge against pain in this world. The difficulties we experience aren’t contrary to God’s promised hope. Rather, we survive these problems by endurance, which builds character, and character that produces hope. While we often prefer to skip to the “hope” part of this passage, I pray we’ll take some time to linger in the “endurance” section. We don’t get to hope without enduring the troubles before us and learning from them in order to grow. Let me be clear: I don’t believe God gives us troubles like a pandemic. They are part of our broken world. But our troubles, rightly lived through, lead us around again to hope, says Prof. Sarah Henrich in Working Preacher. Hope itself is founded on God’s gift of love already lavished upon us by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit.
Every day we learn more about what faithful endurance looks like in this season. It requires care for the most vulnerable among us. It asks us to sacrifice what we used to enjoy. It involves pain of missing friends and loved one. It requires physical distance and wearing masks in public. It insists on patience for when reopening can happen safely. It includes listening to science and prioritizing people over profit. It beckons us to be generous to those who lack basic resources. Endurance calls us to believe in the new life that is possible after a sudden frost and to hold each other in hope until we can sing together again:
Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
– “Now the Green Blade Riseth,” United Methodist Hymnal #311