So Be Ye Patient

Scripture — James 5:7-10 (NRSV)

Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Brothers and sisters, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! As an example of suffering and patience, brothers and sisters, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

Devotion

If I felt spiritually unqualified to write about peace last week, I feel even less qualified to write about joy this week. Yet—as someone who believes the Holy Spirit works through institutional structures, church tradition, and written liturgies—I also believe that the Holy Spirit works through being told to write something on a theme I would not have chosen.

Though our Scripture passage from James, commending patience as we wait for the coming of the Lord, corresponds beautifully to our overall Advent theme of longing, the joy it carries is more hidden. To get there, I have to tell you a story.

As I’ve talked about before, I am a musician. Both in high school and in college, I was in ensembles that performed Brahms’s German Requiem (Ein Deutsches Requiem), a remarkable piece of music. The word “requiem” was—and often still is—the name used in the Roman Catholic church for the Mass for the Dead, which is the version of the Mass performed at funerals. Over the years, many composers have written requiems; most of them did so using the (Latin) texts that for centuries formed part of the funeral Mass, and some of those requiems have even been performed in the context of actual funerals.

Brahms (who grew up Lutheran but, as far as we know, was an agnostic later in life) did not do this. He wrote this choral piece in German; he did not intend it to be performed at anyone’s funeral in particular, though he did begin it a few months after the death of his mother; he chose texts from the Bible which no one had ever used for a requiem before, and though as a whole the piece moves (as Wikipedia puts it) “from anxiety to comfort,” he deliberately did not include Christian reasons for hope—he once called the piece a “human” requiem.

And one of the Bible verses he picked was this one.

As you might expect from something called a “German” requiem, this piece is usually performed in German, but there is an approved English translation, and when I sang it in high school in a community choir that was the version I first encountered, and so when I read these words the music comes washing over me. The passage occurs as part of a larger movement of the Requiem; it begins with a sad and somber march setting the words “Behold, all flesh is as the grass, and all the goodliness of man is as the flower of grass.” Then comes this plea for patience; then the somber march again. And then, out of nowhere, the piece erupts with absolutely overwhelming joy, drawn from 1 Peter 1 and Isaiah 35:

But yet the Lord’s word endureth, endureth for evermore.
The redeemed of the Lord shall return again, and come rejoicing unto Zion;
Joy everlasting upon their heads shall be.
Joy and gladness, these shall be their portion,
and tears and sighing shall flee from them.

James, in fact, has signaled us that this joy is coming—very briefly, in 5:8: “Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

When I sang this piece in high school, in that community choir, my dad, who was also a musician, was also in the community choir. It was the first time I’d ever performed a classical work that massive as part of something he was also a part of. It comforted me to know he was over there in the bass section. You could always hear him, grounding and deepening the sound of the entire section.

He went to be with Jesus in January 2019, just as I came to work for De Pree; I was simultaneously trying to sign employment paperwork long-distance and plan a funeral. And now, when I hear this performed, I can’t hear him any longer. But I still hear Brahms, who may have intended only human comfort with these words, but has, all these years, given me Christian hope; that the Lord will come and we will all enjoy the joy everlasting that my Dad is getting a foretaste of now.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Waiting for the Harvest (James 5:7–20).