Friday of the Second Week of Easter
Last year, we visited the Cox Arboretum, which has a butterfly house open from late June to early September. My three-year-old Lucia and I were so mesmerized by the sight of so many different butterflies that we returned three or four times before the end of "butterfly season." In fact, it made such an impact on us that this year we decided to try planting our own butterfly garden with native Ohio plants. Now, to put this scenario in the appropriate context, you should know that up till now, my experience with growing plants has been limited to indoor plants, and I must admit that do not have much of a green thumb. So it is with a sense of improbability, perhaps even futility, that Lucia and I went to the prepared garden plot clutching packages of seeds and putting those seeds into the ground. Isn't it rather strange, when you think about it, that we should presume that the dried up remnants of last year's fruit would start growing again in a pile of mud?
And now we wait, for a week or more. Will the seeds sprout or will Lucia and I have to plan some other way to cultivate a butterfly garden? Will the butterflies eventually come to our garden? We are learning to have patience. We are learning that we do not always see the results of our work immediately.
Patience is one of the themes in today's readings. Acts 5:34-42 shows Gamaliel, a Pharisee, giving good advice to his colleagues. "If this is a false movement," he says, "just wait it out. It will fizzle on its own. But if it is true, we will not be acting against God's will." How true this is. There were people in Jesus' day who claimed to be the Messiah, but all of those eventually died out when their founders died. Jesus would have seemed like one among many others. So, just as with the seeds, it would have seemed improbable, and indeed futile, to expect that Jesus would be any different from the others, especially that there would be any new faith spring from his death. Yet from this horrific death, we see new life. Gamaliel's patience is also the practice of faith and hope in God; even if something hasn't happened with the other supposed messiahs and even if it seems like nothing will happen, being patient and waiting to see what this new messiah brings is still the best thing to do.
The story of the five loaves and fishes (John 6:1-15) deepen our sense of what patience requires. Here, a crowd has followed Jesus because they have heard he performs miracles, but they haven't actually seen a miracle. They listen to him, waiting all day, wanting him to be their messiah. They finally see something of a result: some bread and fish. But this crowd is hoping that this is the messiah they have hoped for - the one who will lead an army and defeat the Romans and other oppressors. Jesus sees that they desire to make him a king and so he retreats. In this scripture, we learn that patience isn't only about waiting to see what God will do, it is also about not expecting God to act in the ways and times that we suppose God should act.
In our culture, it is easy to think the resurrection is too improbable to have happened, or that faith in a God we cannot see is futile. Today's scriptures ask us to be patient, and to see God on God's own terms. We will see new life but it will probably not happen in quite the ways we have been expecting.
- Jana M. Bennett