Time and Time Again

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas on Sunday June 5, 2011, the 7th and final Sunday of Easter.

Podcast of "Time and Time Again" (MP3)

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Acts 1:6-14

Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35

1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11

John 17:1-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

Time, we lose it, we bide it, we spend it, we run out of it. We can’t buy it, not even one second, though time management experts work to make us more efficient so that we can find more of it. Somehow they tend to find it so the company store can have it, that doesn’t seem right. At that, you’re not finding time, you’re finding work. Someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes with that one.

There’s central time and daylight savings time. There’s Greenwich Mean Time and Zulu time. There’s time for school and right now there’s summertime. We have all kinds of clocks and watches so we can measure it too. We measure time with sand that falls and with crystals that discharge electricity. But there are some who can’t leave well enough alone.

Since 1999 some internet fans and the Swiss watchmaker Swatch have tried to get the “beat” to replace the second when measuring the time of day around the globe. Popular Science magazine reported the new timekeeping standard called Internet Time is winning converts, even if it has not yet been formally proposed to the Bureau International des Poids et Measures (BIPM) which coordinates time standards globally.

Here’s the way beats correspond to time of day. With 86,400 seconds in every 24 hour day, Internet Time divides days into 1,000 beats of 86.4 seconds each. Cybertime would use Biel, Switzerland—Swatch's home base—as the meridian reference point. Now here’s the kicker, the new day begins at @000 beats, or midnight Central Europe Time. So if your internet time watch says the time is @500 beats, that would make it Noon in Biel.

Internet types find the appeal of Internet Time is that it is absolute. When the time is @500 in Biel it’s also @500 here in Marshall. Even though it would be high Noon in Biel and 4:00 am here in Marshall, it’s still @500 all over the world.

The proponents of Internet time say eliminating time zones simplifies scheduling online meetings, though whoever schedules the meeting must consider whether everyone is likely to be awake at any given time. Also, because it uses base-10 rather than the current base-12 system, Internet Time may be easier to calculate, even if it does take some getting used to.[1]

So for a local example, in internet time our worship service began at @791.66 and the sermon began at around @812.50. On a creepier note, our 10:00 Sunday School time begins at @666.66 beats Internet Time. Since 10:00 Central is also 11:00 Eastern, churchs on the East Coast that begin at 11:00 AM would also begin at @666.66 beats Internet time. Yeah, I can see that going over well.

Because that’s what we need, a new not uncomplicated way to measure time that would make us get new clocks, redo cookbooks, and start Sunday School at the time which bears the number of the beast. It would take work, but I’d convert to military Zulu time before Internet time.

Time is complicated enough, and John’s gospel gives us one more example of how complicated time can be. Jesus begins by saying “the time has come.” His time is upon us. One of the problems with our lectionary[2] is that we can lose our place in the grand narrative of the scripture, the Gospel in particular.

The time has truly come for Jesus. Our reading is from the beginning of the high Priestly Prayer which ends the Lord’s Supper. What we began reading on Maundy Thursday is coming to a close on this seventh Sunday of Easter, so it’s been a while getting here and the time truly has come.

Other translations of this verse have Jesus saying that “the hour has come.” As much as this is more technically correct, the New International Version’s rendering of “the time” captures the spirit of what Jesus is trying to say much better. Jesus is not trying to say that “the 60 minutes” has come, or worse “the @41.66 beats” has come. Jesus is telling his disciples that the most important turning point of history since his birth is upon them. It’s time. Judas is coming with the guard and the Passion is about to begin.

The time is now, but as Augustine asks, what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain the nature of time? Who can comprehend time in thought, much less in a word? Surely, we understand it when we talk about it, and also understand it when we hear others talk about it. What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who asks me, I do not know.”[3]

While St. Augustine and I have difficulty explaining the nature of time, scripture gives us a clue. An answer to the question of time comes from the disciples and the lips of our Lord from our reading in Acts. This reading mentions time in two very different ways.

The disciples ask the risen Lord if this is the time when he will restore the kingdom to Israel. The disciples are asking if this is the specific moment in the history of the world when he will vanquish Rome and all others who have conquered or would want to conquer the Holy Land and establish the Kingdom of God in the kingdom of Israel. They are asking literally if the hour has come, if the time is now.

Jesus’ answer is not so cut and dry. He tells them that it is not for them to know “the times or the dates” the father has set.

To gauge how slippery Jesus’ answer is; the history of translation renders it several different ways. In the New Revised Standard Version Jesus says it is not for them to know “the times or periods.” The King James says “the times or the seasons.” The New American Standard says “the times or epochs.” The New Living Translation uses the phrase “those dates and times.” The history of biblical interpretation is varied because the words used are very specific and very special. I imagine Augustine saying, “Now you get my point.”

The difference is that Jesus is using two different words to mean time. One is chronos and the other is kairos; and as usual, nuance is the first thing lost in the translation.  Chronos is where we get the words chronological and chronometer (which is a five dollar word for watch or clock). Chronos is the time that marches on; ever forward, never back. Chronos time is also found in the answer to the questions “what time is lunch?” and “how long is the pastor going to talk before we can get to lunch?” Kairos is not.

Kairos has the connotation of a very special very specific moment of time.  One author says kairos time is the “appropriate or decisive moment or period of time.”[4] Another calls kairos time “God-moments.”[5] The hint here is that kairos is a decisive moment when something happens. It’s a moment when God enters into our world like a lightning bolt and changes everything. The inbreaking of a kairos moment is in its way more of an event within time than it is a specific time.

In telling the disciples that it is not for them to know the times or dates, the chronos or the kairos, he tells them that they won’t know when on the calendar nor will they be able to figure out when by events.

Jesus said that his hour has come. This is the time, his moment. It is the time when the events will occur. You could then say that the Passion is a kairos moment, it’s the event of God being made known once and for all in the person of Jesus Christ.

Each event within the Passion, from Judas’ decision to betray the Lord to the guard saying “surely this was a righteous man” is a kairos moment of its own. Dozens of little decisions are made and events happen which lead toward the ultimate kairos moment, the Resurrection.

In chronos time, you can say it all happened in a weekend.

So the hour has come and we will not know the times or the dates. I would say that the words of Jesus are confusing, but this is surely because I do not see the whole picture. This is surely because there is no humanly way I could see the whole picture. Our reading from acts says that by the power of the Holy Spirit we will be able to know, but then again Harold Camping of “We Can Know” ministries proves that this is also easy to get wrong.

It also says that Jesus has come, and the victory over death and sin has been won. It also says that there is still suffering, there is still work for us to do in the name and by the power of Jesus Christ.

A man was seated on a park bench when a small lad about 5 years old sat down and started winding what appeared to be a prized possession-a Mickey Mouse watch. “What a neat watch! Does it tell you the time?” The stranger asked. “No,” the boy answered, “you gotta look at it,”[6]

It’s time to check our watches. We won’t know what time it is unless we look at our watches. But to measure kairos time, we need different tools. We need humility. Our reading from 1Peter says “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.” Another way to say this is “So that he may exalt you in kairos.”

Our reading from acts tells us how to seek kairos moments. We need to pray for these moments to come and that we may recognize them. The reading from Acts ends reports “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers.” There is still work for us to and that work must begin with prayer.

Above all, we need to pray hopefully. There is no room for despair in prayer. Lament yes, despair no. The difference between lament and despair, at least in my eyes, is that lament carries hope in the faithfulness of God. God is faithful. His faithfulness is our only source of hope.

So when we pray in humility seeking God’s work in our lives, our friends’ lives, and our congregational life; we pray to be a part of those kairos moments. We pray to be a part of God’s work in the world.

In these things we know that now is the time. Now is the time for hope in the church. Now is time for hope in the name and by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The hour is here. The hour, the chronos, the kairos; the time is here. Time and time again, the time of the inbreaking of Christ is now.

---

[1] Gail Dutton, “Clocking the Web,” Popular Science, March 1999, 47. Found at Homiletics Online, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=936, retrieved June 2, 2011.

[2] We use the Revised Common Lectionary for scripture in worship. For more information see http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/.

[3] Paraphrase of Augustine, Confessions, Book xi, Chapter 14.Ibid Homiletics Online

[4] Morisada Rietz, Henry W, “New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.” Vol. 5.Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2009, page 598.

[5] Ibid Homiletics Online

[6] Ibid Homiletics Online

Call to Life Eternal

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Chruch in Berryville, Arkansas on the Seventh Sunday in Easter, May 4, 2008.

Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

When I was in college, some friends of mine liked to play what we called “The Busy Game.” The game was played whenever we tried to get together to do something. In a day before Palm Pilots, cell phones, and email, my friends would actually take time to discuss who was busiest. “I can’t get together on Thursday because…” and then “Well we can’t do lunch this week because…” and the notorious, “Nope, sorry, got a meeting…” One of my college friends even developed an ulcer, at the age of 20, because she was so busy. I never really liked the game, mainly because I could never win. I was never quite as busy as my friends; most of the time I would rather read, study, or throw darts than be so busy.

The American longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer shrewdly observed that “the feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is, on the contrary, born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else—we are the busiest people in the world.”[1]

In the end, we all suffered the tyranny of the busy. We did everything we could to fill every free moment of time with an activity to fill our resumes so we could get better jobs, make better contacts to broaden our networks, or whatever we thought would fill our lives with something worthwhile. We did this so well that we had no time for anything of real and lasting importance.

A common thread in our New Testament readings is time. In Acts, we are told that it is not for us to know the time the Father has set. Peter instructs the church to humble themselves before the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt it in due time. In the Gospel Jesus says the hour has come. Time is a part of each of these readings.

In Acts, the disciples ask if this is the time when Jesus will restore the kingdom to Israel. They ask if this is the day, the hour, the moment in time when Jesus will restore the kingdom to Israel. They knew he would restore the kingdom, and he has risen. He has risen indeed. They wanted to know when.

Jesus answers, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the father has set.” Instead of “times or periods,” the New International Version translates this as “times or dates.” The New American Standard says “times or epochs.” All translation has an element of interpretation, and this is a glaring example of just that. In the Greek, the words used here for “time” and “period" can both be translated as “time,” but they are different kinds of time.

Using the Greek words from the text, Patricia Fortini Brown, distinguishes between these two kinds of time. Kairos is opportunity or an opportune moment and chronos is eternal or ongoing time.[2]

So kairos can mean ages, or eons, or epochs; or an opportune moment. It can also mean “appointed time,” particularly “God’s ordained time.” Chronos is time we find on clocks. Again in Brown’s words, “While [kairos] ... offers hope, [chronos] extends a warning.”[3]

Eternity also has its place in our readings. John’s gospel tells us that Jesus has been given the authority to give eternal life to all whom the Father has given him. Often when people think of eternal life, they think of the life that follows after the end of this one. When our time ends on earth, our eternal time begins with God in heaven. But John’s gospel teaches us that this is not true, not at all.

Jesus says, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life exists without regard to the tyranny of chronological time. Eternal life has nothing to do with our death, on the contrary, it has everything to do with life and how we live it.

It has been said that for Catholics there are “only two things that survive to eternity: our relationship with God and our relationships with each other. Therefore, the things we do with our relationship with God and our relationships with each other are of mutual significance.”[4]
I believe the wisdom of this saying. I believe that eternal life begins here on earth with how we relate to the triune God while we live. I also believe that the quality of our relationships with one another is a reflection of our relationship with the triune God.

The disciples showed this in their response to Jesus’ ascension. It says in Acts that after the ascension “they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying…All [of them] were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”

The disciples stayed together, they returned to the upper room. They dedicated themselves to worship and prayer awaiting the power of the Holy Spirit. And after receiving the Spirit, they would become witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

When some say that they seek eternal life, what they mean is that they can’t wait to live with Jesus in the next life. I say that with the glory of this promise there is eternal life long before death. The glory of life eternal begins with the relationship between the Holy Father and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. It extends to Christ’s relationship with us and our relationship with him. It then is reflected by our relationship with one another and all of creation.

I say “reflected by our relationship with one another and all of creation” because of what Jesus says in our gospel reading. He says, “I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.” Jesus prays first for the disciples, those who follow him. He prays for them that they may be one as he and his Father are one.

Jesus prays for the church so that during the time of trial that is to come they may be one. In John He prays that the disciples will respond to his death, resurrection, and ascension just as they did in Acts. He prays that they will live the life eternal on earth as it is in heaven because this is what he calls them to do.

The Greek word “ecclesia” is often translated as church or congregation. The roots of the word mean “the ones who are called out.” Friends, the church, the entire body of Christ and especially this part of the body of Christ are called out from the world to be Christ in the world. We are called to be one with one another in Jesus just as he is one with his father.

We are called to live this life together in the warmth of prayer and worship just like the disciples. We are called to go out and meet Jesus in the world just as he called his disciples. We are called to share the Good News of eternal life so that the world may know the only true God and Jesus Christ who himself was sent.

Since Easter Sunday, I have focused on the church and what it means to be the church. We have seen John’s Pentecost and the scars Jesus received in order to save us. We have heard The Message and how we are its witnesses; how we are called to take it into the world. We have heard Peter’s call to the people to repent and be baptized. We have seen Jesus as the Good Shepherd who knows us and calls us all by name.

We learned that we are called to pray for one another because we all need prayer. We have seen and heard the word of Jesus who is the one who is the elect, the one predestined for salvation on our behalf. Above all, we know that we have been called to be the church as the church was called into being two thousand years ago.

Today, we begin to take all of these things with the understanding that we are called to life eternal, lived in the joy and the wonder that we may know the only true God and Jesus Christ who himself was sent. We are the ecclesia, the ones called out from the world to live the eternal life. We are also the ones called out of the church and into the world to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. But that’s for next week.

[1] Bob Buford, Halftime. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994, 80
[2] Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now. New York: Basic Books, 1999, 9.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Father Luke Dysinger of Saint Andrew's Abbey in an interview with Bruce Langford, Pathways, 6, March-April 1997, 10.