Pentecost 19

Let me tell you a story: A story of reckless patience

 

Patience is a virtue, but can too much patience be a vice? 

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If you are too patient waiting to see if that pain in your stomach goes away with time you might make a problem worse. If you are too patient with an incompetent employee, you will lose productivity before the inevitable—his firing—occurs anyway. Too much patience might seem not to be a virtue but reckless behavior. 

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Yet that is exactly what God demonstrates to a rebellious human race—reckless patience. Through a story Jesus teaches exactly what God’s patience means for us.

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In our thinking, that word "reckless" can carry with it negative connotations. We might associate it with being negligent, thoughtless, careless, lacking prudence. But God is none of these things. God is intentional, bold, resolute, valiant in his reckless behavior. He is patient with the godless and unbelieving. He is patient with believers when we stumble and fall again and again.

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In Jesus' story of the vineyard he tells of the Father's reckless patience--patience that is bold, intentional, and overwhelmingly loving in calling sinners to repentance.