I had a good friend who loved old clocks. She had fifteen or twenty in her
house. All kinds of clocks: grandfather
clocks, grandmother clocks, mantel clocks, wall clocks. Most of them were
musical, chiming the hours in some distinct way. The only problem was, they could never tell the time precisely. The clocks
weren't set together, so for about five minutes every half hour, there was a
cacophony of consecutive clock chimes. I spent the night once on her living
room sofa, but it was impossible to sleep. In addition to the chime concerts
these clocks were all ticking at different speeds and volume levels. It didn't
take long to get into your head. It was nerve-wracking, like living in a bell
tower or something. And when I asked her how they ever got any sleep with all
those clocks, she answered, of course, "What clocks?" But I could
hear the clocks ticking. Can you hear the clock ticking? Do you know the time?
The scriptures we heard today are all about telling the time. Every first year
student in seminary learns the difference between two Greek words for time. Chronos refers to clock time, as in
"chronological" time. Kairos is
about timing and timeliness, about the meaning and possibilities of a given
moment, about the seasons of life and the spirit of the age. Just about any
first-grader can look at a clock and calendar to tell you the chronos:
It's an important question. It's the question I'm asking you today. It's the
question God is asking us today through the passages of scripture we have
heard. Do you know the time? Can you read the signs? Do you understand what
moment you have come to in your life?
God sends Jonah to
The Apostle Paul confronts the Christians at
In Mark, Jesus of Nazareth responds to the arrest of John the Baptist by going
public with his message, which Mark calls "the good news of God. Jesus
wanders the
"We're too busy," a friend from seminary said to me last week. And we
are. But it's hard to know what to let go of, how to step off the treadmill,
where to slow down. Everything we're doing is good (we're chronic
"do-gooders"), but sometimes the good gets in the way of the best.
Where do we find time to help each other? Where do we find time for reading and
prayer and contemplation? Where do we find time to restore? And of course, we
are not unique in this regard. Everybody I know is too busy.
We have the fanciest timekeepers in the history of the universe: atomic clocks,
day planners, palm pilots, calendars with inspirational slogans encouraging
productivity. But we still haven't learned how to manage our time. The truth is, time manages us. To make things worse, we've disconnected
ourselves from the rhythms of the sun or the days of the week. With electric
lights and net-connected computers, we can work 24/7, with just a few breaks to
collapse in fitful rest.
In Receiving the Day, Dorothy Bass says all the fourth graders in the
town where she lives are required to use datebooks,
not the little pamphlet calendars the greeting card companies hand out, but the
kind business executives use. They are being taught to
manage their time. But Bass wonders: "What are we communicating to them
about the society in which they live? Are we preparing them to enter an economy
that intends to squeeze every minute out of them, sooner or later?" Yes
we are. We are socialized to be productive, as if our usefulness to the system
were the sole meaning of our existence. But the system is dehumanizing, skewed,
out of kilter. As Bass puts it, "Grave imbalances exist for almost
everyone. Some people are vastly overworked and vastly overpaid, others work
too long and earn too little, and others work seldom, if at all." Our
worth is measured by our wealth, but we are more than what we own. Our worth is
measured by our work, but we are more than what we do. We are trained to feel
guilty for "wasting time," but who decides what time is wasted and
what is not?
Even this hour of worship may feel like "wasted time," and by the
standards of our society these days it is. We aren't producing wealth or
manufacturing product here, are we? But long ago at creation God built us to be
12/6 people, not 24/7 people. And God ordained a sabbath, built in to the way we are made and then
commanded against our greed: one day a week, time off, time out, time away from
time, time to spend with God.
In The Clock of the Long Now, Stewart Brand notes with irony "It
was the monks (of the medieval Catholic orders) who taught us to tell
time." They ordered their days by prayer - stopping whatever they were
doing to mark time with moments in eternity. This continues in monasteries to
this day. The first mechanical clocks were invented for the monasteries and
only later used in the town square. The little clock strapped to your wrist is
a direct descendant of the prayer practices of these monks. But when was the
last time any of us said, "Oh, look, it's noon.
I've got to stop and pray!"
I know, sometimes sermons can seem to last an eternity, but as Brand also
notes, "Eternity is the opposite of a long time." The eternal moment
is the timeless moment, the moment that contains all time, all at once. We are
creatures of time. The clock always catches us to drag us along again. God alone
is eternal, and only by our connection to God do we participate in the eternal
at all. So the whole point of worship is to step into the eternal presence of
God, and at least for a little while, to let go of time.
Here in worship, in this eternal moment, we jump off the treadmill of time in
order to discern the kairos of our lives. In
the midst of our busy days, we do not stop, we cannot
stop to look, to see, to behold the larger context of our existence. But here,
before God, we stop. And God shows us our lives, if we are willing to listen,
if we are willing to see. Eternity measures our time, what is worthy, what is
abiding, what is trivial, what is truly wasted. Some people aren't willing to
stop, look, and listen. It's too scary. It might ask of them, require of them,
make absolutely necessary some radical changes in how they're spending their
time, maybe even demand an entirely new direction. If they stop, they'll see
the house is on fire, the tornado is bearing down, the tanks are rolling over the hill. I guess they
figure if they don't stop to look, it won't happen, the catastrophe won't come.
But we are all mortal, and catastrophes do come to all of us in one form or the
other. In the news from a doctor, in an accident nobody foresees, in a severe economic
downturn … your moment will come, and so will mine. I don't mean to sound
so morbid today, but before the eternal God we see how brief our time is, and
therefore how precious. This is not a pitch to say, you better get busy, you
better not waste time, you better wring every drop of productivity you can out
of every frantic second. Productivity matters, but ultimately, it doesn't
matter most, and there are times when productivity is a waste of time.
What does matter most? That's an important question, too, isn't it? I know it
has something to do with our relationship to God. I know it has something to do
with reflecting God's image, embodying God's love. But are we supposed to do
something? Or are we supposed to be something? Or is it not at all about any
one of us, but all of us together? Worship is where those questions rise and we
try to let God give us answer.
I think sometimes, we are too busy in our worship. It's all good, or at least I
hope so. But we do pack this hour with praises and prayers and preaching. We
sing to God, we talk to God, we talk about God, but I'm not sure we listen to
God enough. Of course, we should be listening through all the talking and
singing for a word from God, but sometimes I think maybe we need to spend more
time in silence with God.
I can't answer for you precisely the question of what time it is in your life.
I could say more about what's happening in the world, what I think may be
coming for all of us, how things could well happen that would change life as we
know it and shatter our false security instantaneously, but you can see those
things as well as I. I can't tell you what time it is in your life, but I think
I can tell you God's answer to the question of what matters most. When Jesus
went into
May we pray?
Creator God,
You give us minutes, hours, days and years. Thank you. And by your eternal
presence, we can have the time of our lives. But in this eternal moment of
worship, help us to understand we cannot change the past so there is no use in
dwelling there, and we cannot guarantee the future so there's no use in
dwelling there. We have only this moment we can change by our action, only this
moment to reorient the past and reshape the future. God of time and eternity,
in our own lives today - for Christ's sake - help us to know what time it is.
Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa