Redeem the Time

I am often puzzled by the passage of time. There is a certain unreality about the idea of yesterday, today, and then tomorrow. Intellectually I understand the record of history, all the past and how it forms and shapes who and what we are today. I know how we anticipate and imagine a future shaped by what we do today and what may happen to us. But the passage of time still mystifies me.

It seems like only yesterday that we moved to Silver Spring and began ministry here with you at SSPC. Its seems like only yesterday that our youngest daughter stood with her beloved to be married, only yesterday we took her to college and drove away weeping at the separation of our baby. It seems like only yesterday that I held that same newborn in my arms, only yesterday that I did the same with her older sister, only yesterday that I stood with Marsha to join our lives together, just 29 years ago today.

Time passes so fast, and yet I feel like it never passes at all. If I ignore the grey beard and bald pate I see in the mirror and deny the aching muscles and creaking bones of a middle aged man, I feel just like the same person I was when I was twenty. There is a timelessness about right now; it includes all I have ever been and all that’s gone before me, and reaches out to everything that is out there in the future as well. It’s all here.

The Greek language of the New Testament uses two words to express the idea of time. The first is “chronos.” It has to do with the every day passing of time, the marking of time by seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. The English word “chronological” is built on the root, chronos. It is the ordinary time of watches, clocks, and calendars. The other word in Greek is “kairos.” Kairos has to do with the fullness of time. It is the special moments of time that are marked by special meaning and purpose. Kairos is time with opportunity. Kairos is divine time or holy time, the time marked by the presence and the power of God—a kind of luminescent time where there are no markers of beginning and ending, no past or future, but only right now.

In the Ephesians passage today, Paul counsels the church to “Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” (Eph 5: 15, 16) The phrase that is translated as “making the most of every opportunity” is actually more literally translated “buying back the time” where the word for time is “kairos.” We could translate Paul’s counsel to us as a call to live life in such a way as “to redeem holy time.” We are called to move away from chronos time, the ordinary marking of days and hours, to begin living in the fullness of God’s time.

Of course most of us do not live this way. We live by the clock, by the calendar, by beginnings and endings. We live by just getting through each day, without thought of the specialness of every moment that we live. We live without wisdom, Paul says. But it is not the wisdom of the smart or savy thing to do. It is not the wisdom of the crafty or the bold. It is the wisdom of God. Paul calls us to be wise as God is wise, to live with God’s wisdom in our hearts and minds. True wisdom is to be guided by the will of God in all that we say and do, to let our lives be shaped by God’s wisdom, to let our time be shaped by God’s time. Do not waste time, says Paul, with such things as drunkenness and debauchery, rather let your time be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Yet Paul is clear that we do not have forever. The days in which we live are limited. The “days are evil” says Paul, which is a way of saying that death is real, suffering is real. Days are passing away. No one is promised a long life. We are not promised even the next day or the next hour. All we have is right now, this moment, this time, today; and must not waste it away. Live now in the fullness of the moment that God gives and that God shapes right now.

How then are we to live? Be thoughtful. Do not cast about and be controlled by every whim and indulgence. Be wise, not as the world is wise, but as the wisdom of God guides what you do and how you live. Be faithful. Be full of the Spirit. Be thankful, always. Then Paul says, be joyful. Sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. The way to be fully alive, fully present in the fullness of this moment, in the divine holiness of this present moment in which we live is to sing — is to sing with all our heart, mind and voice (no matter the kind or quality of voice you have). We are called to sing with voice of the heart.

The Westminster Catechism begins with the first question: “What is the chief end of humankind?” That is another way of asking what is it we are to do with our lives, what is our purpose, how are we to fill our days? The answer: that our purpose, our duty, reason for being is to glorify God and enjoy God forever. That means timelessly, that means forever and ever, without beginning or end, that means kairos time, the fullness of time.

All that we are to do and say – in the everyday beginning and endings of our lives, in the ups and downs, in the joy and sorrows, in the achievements and the disappointments, in the births, the anniversaries and the deaths – all that we do is to be shaped by praise and thanksgiving. In our getting up in the morning we praise God. In our laying down at night we give thanks. In our work and in our play we praise and give thanks. The wisdom of God is life in praise and thanksgiving.

Therefore, now is the time to live, not in the cherished memories of the past, not in the dreamed of wishes for the future, but right now in all its fullness and holiness.

• Now is the time to redeem the time.

• Now is the time to live wisely and thoughtfully.

• Now is the time to live as God lives.

• Now is the time to love as God loves.

• Now is the time to serve as God serves.

• Now is the time to hope as God hopes.

• Now is the time to work as God works.

• Now is the time to seek peace and reconciliation as God seeks peace and the healing of community.

• Now is the time to work for justice as God works for justice.

• Now is the time to welcome the stranger, the outcast, the poor, the rejected, even as God welcomes all into God’s life.

• Now is the time to share the love of God with everyone in your life, to tell the story of Jesus Christ, to open the door of grace, of new life, new hope, new peace, even as God’s love is overflowing to all the earth.

• Now is the time to sing praises and give thanks with every breath, every, word, every deed, every waking hour, every sleeping minute.

• Now is the time to live in God, forever.

Praise from whom all blessings flow. Amen and Amen.