The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for July 6, 2008

Texts: Psalm 145:8-14/Mark 1:14-20

Title: “It’s About Time”

              Is there anything as preoccupying as the passage of time? Case in point: the battery in my watch expired the other day.  In the span of the afternoon I caught myself looking at my watch at least a half dozen times, an action I only became aware of because the battery had gone dead.

              Oh yes, I’m aware of time, and perhaps you are too.  We are so aware that beside the wristwatch we wear virtually every room in the house has a timepiece of some sort. The automobile has a clock.  The rooms we occupy at school or at work have clocks.  The business places we frequent have clocks.  The time is digitally displayed on billboards along the highway. Though we may not be obsessed with time, we definitely like to mark its passage.  

              The passage of time is preoccupying.  All of the activities in which we participate in a given day are conducted within a matrix of time. We get up and go to work, do our errands, go home, go to bed, all of this done within a time grid of which we may or may not be conscious, though we are certainly roused to consciousness if something interrupts the typical order of our day.

              Another case in point: as I was leaving a parking lot the other day another motorist backed into me. A frustrating event in its own right, my mind almost immediately began to calculate the time I would lose in rearranging my day to accommodate filing claims, and the other business that the accident forced me to deal with.

              I’m very proprietary when it comes to my time.  It’s mine, after all, to do with as I please.    

              There is a whole industry that caters to me, folks making watches and time pieces of ever description.  They make day planners, BlackBerries, and a host of other tools to help you and I best organize and utilize our time.

              There is a separate industry that has introduced a host of new products to our time and efficiency conscious lives. We have cell phones and a wide variety of other hand-held devices that allow us to multi-task, a concept basically unheard of less than a decade ago.  We can drive and hold a conversation.  We can drive and send a text message, but don’t let the law see you. We can write reports over lunch, and log into our computer while watching our grandson’s soccer game. A whole industry is committed to making each minute we live a productive minute.

              Technology has without a doubt reinforced our proprietary claims on time.  Our claims to ownership of our time have become more and more pronounced as we have found new and creative ways to pack stuff into it.  But who can blame us, it’s ours after all.

              The last hundred and fifty years or so have seen a radical revaluation of time.  Over the course of the past century and a half we have acquired mastery of time in ways those living in the mid-eighteen hundreds could not begin to conceive of.  It wasn’t until after the middle of the nineteenth century that the world was introduced to gas lamps, and later electricity, permitting people to sustain daily activity into the night time hours, where before that activity was pretty much governed by the rhythm of the sun’s rising and setting.           

              For virtually all of history, save the last century and one half, human activity was pretty much governed by the rhythm of the sun. While our forebears discovered ways to mark the passage of time with sundials and calendars, the mastery of time in the sense we enjoy it today was several hundreds of years in the future.

              The rhythm of the hours of the day and the changing seasons provoked in the ancient people a profound respect for the life force that established and maintained those rhythms. Eventually people sought ways and means to honor the forces in nature, the various gods of sun, moon, and sea they deemed responsible for their good fortune. It was born out of this context that one group of people shaped their particular understanding of time and its author.            

              Their particular understanding of time and its author had its origins in a revelation experienced by the founder of their people, a man named Abraham. The history of the Israelites was shaped by the conviction that one God had created all that is, and that that God had chosen their race for a specific role in announcing his reign on earth. The Israelites forged a loyalty to their God through the various interventions of their God in their history. 

                Over the course of their relationship with their God there arose a conviction among the Israelites that their God was the Lord of history, and that all events were disclosed to his all seeing eye. The Israelites established and maintained relationship with their God through a series of covenants, in which they and their God sealed a relationship that has endured from the time of Abraham to this very day.

               The relationship, often frayed because of the Israelites’ unwillingness to honor the covenants, nevertheless convinced the Israelites that all of history, and time itself, was ordered according to their God’s decree. They could point to Mt. Sinai where God, through his prophet Moses, handed down the law around which they were to order their lives. They could point to the Passover, the event through which, under Moses’ leadership, they were liberated from the tyranny of Egypt. They could point to the gift of Canaan, the “land flowing with milk and honey,” where they would at last establish a homeland.

              The times were in God’s hands, so the Israelites concluded.  History itself was in God’s hands. Yet, like us, the nation Israel became very proprietary regarding time.  Her leaders wanted to control time themselves, they pandered to other gods and established practices from which God was excluded.  They never completely denied God, they just sought the freedom to live obediently, or not, according to their own schedule.

God, though, rejected the notion that their schedule superseded his, through his prophets declaring that how they scheduled their lives must accord with his will. Israel was taught to live by a discipline that honored God as the Lord of history.  But where was history leading?  The history of Israel was intertwined with the history of her greatest king, King David. 

              Israel enjoyed her best years under David.  The enemies of Israel were defeated. The twelve tribes of Israel coalesced under his leadership.  Under his reign Jerusalem was established as the nation’s capital, and religious center. Through the various twists and turns of her history, the triumphs and the setbacks, Israel revered David’s reign as her Camelot, the best of times she was eager to relive.

              The times were in God’s hands, but Israel was eager to see David’s reign re-established, her leaders taking time into their own hands.  They plotted, schemed, and connived to establish their version of Camelot by their own means, their efforts always falling short. Through misadventure after misadventure they were compelled to understand that THEIR timetable really didn’t count, so long as it was out of synch with God’s. 

            Israel’s aspirations came to be focused on the re-establishment of the Camelot, a vision whose luster had been burnished as each generation had passed it to the next. Scholars continue to debate how it was that Israel’s a particular figure, a Messiah, became the one upon whom Israel’s Camelot hopes would come to rest. But the fact is they did.  Messiah would insure that Israel achieved her God given destiny.

             Messiah did come, though in appearance and manner he was not one to inspire confidence that Israel’s best days had arrived.  Rather this man of no special pedigree came into Galilee, not Judea, the province where Jerusalem was located, came proclaiming to whoever would listen, “the good news of God.”  As the Gospel of Mark further reports, he made the quite extraordinary declaration that “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”

                 Note, would you, the words Jesus uses to introduce himself, “The time is fulfilled.”  In this context the Greek word, “kairos,” “time” means “God appointed time.”  Mark, but also the other three gospels, acknowledges Jesus’ arrival on the scene as a “kairos” God initiated event.

                The time was fulfilled, but we know that this time of fulfillment passed with the Jews still waiting for the Messiah, and can you blame them? He bore so little resemblance to the Messiah for whom they waited.

                The time was fulfilled.  Jesus came declaring it.  But many such times passed in the course of Israel’s history, times God chose to introduce new possibilities to the nation only to be rejected in return.  You see the Jews were very proprietary concerning their time. They chose to fill it as they wished, filling it many times with deeds and ambitions that drew them away from God rather than nearer.

                 We are very proprietary with our time.  Time pressures frequently mount, and we find ourselves responding, often in an exasperated manner, “I don’t have time.”  It is an interesting expression when you think about it. “I don’t have time.”  How true that is.  WE don’t have time. Time is God’s hand, not ours.  We are privileged to use it, yes, but that’s as far as it goes.

                Jesus came proclaiming the good news, the gospel, that the “time is fulfilled,” so the Gospel of Mark informs us.  Jesus remained on message the entire time he shared this world with us.  With each parable, with each healing, as he exorcised each demon, or forgave each sin, he was demonstrated that the “time is fulfilled.” 

                Fact of the matter is, friends, we live in fulfilled time, God waiting for us to acknowledge that reality. Christ came proclaiming the definitive “kairos,” moment for the world, but those present to hear the declaration, people no different then us, chose to live by their own clock.  They simply refused to believe that God’s time was fulfilled.  They refused to believe that the long awaited Messiah had come. They made a mistake by putting the Messiah to death. Yet while God grieved the death of his son, he chose the most remarkable way to remind the world that the times were still in his hands. In raising his son from the dead, God dramatically and decisively informed the world that we are living in his world on his time.

               We live on God’s time. But can each of us bring ourselves to accept that fact?  It is not easily done so long as items like wristwatches, clocks, day planners, BlackBerries reinforce our proprietary claims to time. The schedules we maintain make relentless claims upon both us and our time?                         

              Can we bring ourselves to accept the fact that we live on God’s time. Four fishermen came face to face with the fact that they were living on God’s time.  How implausible the encounter was.  Jesus approached them, “follow me,” and away they went, marching off into God’s time, just like that.        

               The question is often asked, and it’s a good one, “Does God expect me to sever all pre-existing ties with the world I have known, as Peter and the others did?” No, that is not what God expects, but what God does expect from each of his followers is that we acknowledge in a reoccurring and disciplined way that time is his gift to us.  And practically speaking what that means is that we are not to encumber the time we are allotted so thoroughly that we forget to acknowledge that reality.   

              No, I don’t have time, and you don’t have time.  Any claims we can make to time are claims on the time God has given us. 

            “The time is fulfilled,” so declared Jesus.  God was, in Christ, doing a new thing to reshape human history. We stand in that history, not merely as observers, but as participants who are called to actively shape history by using our time in ways that God glory. To that end may each of us live. AMEN.

             PRAYER

             Even as we acknowledge with gratitude the sacrifices made by our forefathers in winning our independence on this Fourth of July weekend, and acknowledge the sacrifices of succeeding generations to maintain it, we gather in this place of worship to celebrate an independence no effort of men can secure.  We gather to celebrate the independence won for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Not by our works, but by grace, we live free of all the constraints sin would impose. To a world suffering the ills of war, poverty, hunger and indifference such news is greeted with disbelief.  Yet you bid us, Lord, to trust that good news Jesus brought bore no timestamp but remains valid unto eternity. We know that no earthly power can thwart your power, Almighty God.

              Lord, we lift into your presence the members of our Armed Forces who serve in harm’s way, and all those preparing to be deployed into the field.  In your mercy protect and preserve our nation’s sons and daughters.  Sustain those who live traumatized by the horror they have witnessed, even as duty requires them to remain at their post. We pray for the day when the last shot is fired, and the wars in which our nation is engaged are over.

              In praying for our countrymen, O God, we do not forget that the citizens in the countries where they serve have no means of escaping the violence that war has thrust upon them.  Have mercy on those who must live with the uncertainty of random and deadly violence, particularly children in whose lives the trauma is most severe.

                O Christ, Lord of the church, you have entrusted the church with the gospel, the good news.  May that good news resound through the church and into the world in prayer, praise, preaching and sacrament. Sustain those who preach, teach, and counsel, O Christ, that they may be for the world the ambassadors you have called them to be.

                 We call upon you, O God, amid these uncertain times, when so many are challenged to compete economically.  Brace those who live in fear, whose thoughts are consumed by a job that is in jeopardy, a house note they cannot pay, credit card balances that grow ever higher, even as money becomes more and more scarce. We pray that the world economy may gain strength, that all people east and west and north and south, may find their hopes renewed.

              O God we pray for those who have special needs today.  We pray for the sick, the tempted, lonely, and the grieving.  Abide with those who struggle with addiction. Help enemies to reconcile, and may those who plot revenge surrender their plans. Grant courage to those who face new challenges, and renew the confidence of those who have suffered defeat.

             Lord of all, we pray in the confidence your Word and Spirit inspire, grateful for yet another opportunity to gather as the church, the fellowship of saints who pray with and for each other. In the confidence that you are ever present, O God, we present special petitions for those whose welfare most concerns us… We pray for