It’s About Time!
It’s About Time!
Time is a wild concept unless you keep it just on the surface. We are accustomed to phrases like, “What time is it?” or How much time do I have to complete the project?” This is all about the time we see reflected on the clock. The sequence of units of time…it is a human cognitive concept to order the events of our lives. It’s simple: sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, “24 – 7”, and all of that.
A religious sister walks in to talk with her mother superior. She is worried about having gotten behind in her work and study. She says, “Mother, I don’t know what to do. I just don’t seem to have time for all my tasks!” The Mother Superior replies, “My child, you have all the time there is.” Perhaps she was postulating everyone has just the moment they are in—perhaps saying that fitting all you wish to do in your life is a project of managing the events of your life. It is not a time problem but an event management opportunity. To the ageless question, “What is time, exactly?” one clever responder said, “Time is what allows every dang thing that happens from happening all at once.”
When in high school, everybody had their favorite band; mine was Chicago. A rock band to be sure, but like some others, serious musicians with variety in their work. There were lead and bass guitars, drums, and keyboard, of course, Additionally, they added the rich and full accompaniment of brass, woodwinds, and flute, and augmenting percussion. Their lead guitarist, Terry Kath sang a song by their keyboard guy, Robert Lamm about time. It had a lively enough sound to it, but the lyrics offered a very pensive, almost philosophical, and wistful lament. Here is how it started:
As I was walking down the street one day - A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, And I said - Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? If so I can't imagine why we've all got time enough to cry.
The question about the time of day was practical, and the philosophical response was close to an existential inquiry about meaning. It comes off to me in the tone of a meager hope that the seeming absurdity of life is not the final assessment.
The concept of time gets wilder and more complicated when we go deeper. Einstein reflected ponderings in physics about the slowing down and speeding up of time with the speed of travel. In literature, fantasy, and science fiction, authors speak to imaginings of time travel or the flexibility of time in different realms. Think of The Time Machine, by the father of Sci-Fi, H. G Wells. Think of Madeleine L’Engle’s. A Wrinkle in Time, and C.S. Lewis’ series, The Chronicles of Narnia. In those dramas, there is a fantastic fluidity to time and space.
In theology we run into reflections on time in two modes, Greek words are Kronos and kairos. Kronos (or Chronos), is the chronological time following the ways we most practically think about it: a measurable outlay of units: past, present, and future. Kairos is time laid out entirely in the present as we imagine it must be for God. In God’s timing and in God’s picture of time, NOW is the time of all things that have been, are, and ever shall be. In a sense, the Sacraments borrow the notion of God’s time, kairos, the eternal-now. We hear the stories of salvation history from the Bible, and we celebrate the Christ event that secures our salvation, and all is called into the worshippers’ experience in the hour of worship. Sometimes, grab your Hymnal 1982, and look in the “first lines” index in the very back, for the hymn “Now the silence”. Here is a sample, but you can find it and read through the whole thing, (Hymn 333):
Now the silence Now, the peace, Now the empty hands uplifted
Now the kneeling, Now the plea, Now the Father’s arms in welcome
Now the hearing, Now the power, Now the vessel brimmed for pouring
Now the Body, Now the Blood, Now the joyful celebration, Now - Now - Now — Jaroslav J. Vajda
My point is. all of the time is in God’s hands. We find again in the Gospel for our Sunday coming, Jesus was challenged by the Pharisees. This time they asked him about the greatest commandment. I know you know how he responded. (Hint: love God. Love your neighbor.) Next he challenged them right back. He plants the seed that he is actually the timeless Messiah, the Son of God, who is from all time, who preceded King David, in whose line the Messiah comes. This Messiah, he declares, is the Lord from eternity: there never was a time when the Logos, Jesus was not. Take a look:
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. —Matthew 22:41-46
From our ordinary perspective, time is linear, there is a sequence, history unfolding in past, present, and future. In the Spirit, and in the divine perspective, the one who comes to us in the line of David, was before and always is. He is the Son, eternally begotten of the Father. It reminds us of the word of Jesus from the Gospel of John:
Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” —John 8:58
Listen friends, we get melancholy about our times, and the grave challenges of the present. Is it any comfort to you, any at all, when the Holy Scriptures lift us to consider that everything we experience is happening within an incomprehensibly huge context? The days of our lives are within the eternal embrace of our infinitely loving Deliverer. We don’t have it together, but God has us! God has us from the beginning, now, and in whatever shall be, world without end. Amen.