This Gift of Time

Jan 1st  |  The Reverend Kevin Scott Fleming |  Matthew 9:14-17

            For some, the beginning of a new year can be a rather depressing time.  If you were making a little too merry last night, this morning may be a rather depressing time.  But, for some, the passing of time – the beginning of a new year – is only a reminder that time is fleeting – that nothing lasts – that the seasons turn and turn until that moment when it all comes to an end. 

            The Book of Ecclesiastes is really a primer in Greek philosophy.  “The Greeks marveled that time was full of pattern, recurrence, and eternal return.  The first historian, Thucydides, said that the task of the historian was to cut through the flux of time and place and the confusing, odd particularities of human events and find universally recurring patterns.  Armed with knowledge of these patterns, the historian could rise above the seeming senselessness of contemporary events and, because one had uncovered the eternally recurring patterns of history, one could get a grip on history, one [might even] change the course of history.”[i]

            That tone can be found in the book of Ecclesiastes.  We read the best part this morning – “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”  If you are of a certain generation, you were singing along in your head with “The Byrds.”

            That view says that life is a series of predictable, sequential seasons.  There is a time for this and a time for that.  As beautiful as the poetry sounds, the message of the poetry is rather dismal.  We are born and we die.  We plant and we harvest.  We weep and then we laugh.  We tear and then we sew.  We make war and then we make peace and then we make war again.  This is a view of time that sounds like a vicious and monotonous merry-go-round – if you don’t like the way things are, just wait a few moments, because it will change directly. 

             Yet, when the author of Ecclesiastes views time, the view is rather depressing.  In the opening section of the book, we read: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’?  It has already been in the ages before us.” (Ecc.1:10)  The author refers to life as “vanity” – a Hebrew word you might also translate as vaporous, unsubstantial, futile, or pointless.  “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecc. 1:9)  A real picker-upper, isn’t it? 

            And, do I need to tell you, that this view of time and life is all around us today?  We live in a time when people truly believe that there is no real point to anything – that nothing ever changes – that life is what it is and you put your head down and get through it as best as you can.  There is a hopelessness running through our nation and our world.  There is a desperation and a despondency that seems to be everywhere we turn our eye. 

            That’s the dark side of time.  It is a view of time that more or less reflects the movie “Groundhog Day.”  We’re trapped in a terrible pattern of life that never changes, never varies, never gets better.

            Fortunately, the Bible has an alternative view of time.  Instead of the endless cycling of time that the Greeks advocated, the Bible sees time as flowing toward a supreme moment – a culmination – a time when what has been is no more and God does something truly new.  The vision that is the Book of Revelation tells us in that wonderful verse: “See, I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)  The passage does not say: “See, I am recycling the past.”  Nor does it say: “See, I am polishing something you’ve already seen.”  The voice that John heard said that all things – all things – were new. 

            Jesus spoke of that same kind of newness.  Borrowing an image from the winemakers of his day, Jesus gave it to us in words that are clear and unambiguous: “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.” (Matt. 9:6-7)  If you patch an old coat with a piece of unshrunk cloth, what will happen?  On the first washing, the patch will shrink and pull away from the place where it was sewn.  If you put new wine into old wineskins, as the wine ferments and matures, the increasing and expanding pressure will press on the old, stiff wineskin until it bursts and the wine is lost. 

            What is Jesus telling us?  Jesus is telling us the same thing that the Book of Revelation is telling us – you can’t have just a little newness.  Either something is new or it isn’t.  You can’t have only the newness you want.  You can either have newness in all its powerful presence or you can’t have it at all. You can have something new, but you can’t make it fit the old molds and patterns.  You can have something brand new, but you can’t accommodate it to the monotonous cycle of things. 

            The good news of the gospel is that we can have something completely and totally new.  The ancient patterns and cycles can be broken.  The hopelessness and desperation that marks our days can be put away.  The dreariness of life can be replaced with life that is exciting, rewarding, and meaningful.  This is what Jesus was all about – showing us and offering us true life. 

            What we are being offered is a gift – the gift of time.  For too many, time is seen as a curse.  For too many, time is a burden, rather than a blessing.  For too many, time is predictable and unexciting.

            One of the most amazing things I hear on a regular basis is how “boring” something is.  Interestingly, I don’t just hear it from adolescents – I hear it from people all across the age spectrum.  Boredom is a “modern” invention.  Boredom began when the people of the modern age invented and then lived by the clock.  The clock gives the illusion that time is uniform, measurable, and moves in a linear fashion – from here to there.  The clock made time fleeting, unremitting, and, ultimately, an enemy.  It was the clock that led us to create such phrases as “wasting time,” “killing time,” and “losing time.”  We look at the clock and say, “Oh, I wish I had just a little more time,” as though time were a commodity we can buy.  We look at the clock or the calendar and say, “I don’t have time for that,” which usually means, “I choose to use my time in other ways.”  The tick-tick-ticking of time is a sound we worship and distain at exactly the same time. 

            The Bible uses a Greek word to describe that kind of time.  The word is chronos.  Chronos is the word from which we take the word chronometer – a fancy word for clock.  Chronos time is the “tick-tick-ticking” of time – a time that pretends that it can be measured and manipulated. 

            But the Bible also uses another word for time and that word is kairos.  Kairos is not about the measurability and uniformity of time.  Rather, kairos means a moment when something special – something remarkable – just happens.  Kairos cannot be anticipated or planned for.  Kairos cannot be predicted or calculated.  Kairos simply happens and usually when a kairos moment comes to light, God is doing something amazing.  In these moments, God’s power erupts, nothing is untouched and nothing remains the same.  Kairos moments are like a rock dropped in the middle of a pond and the ripples continue to expand and engulf whatever is in their way. 

            Maybe, in this New Year, we ought to spend a little more time taking stock of what God is doing – the kairos moments – rather than obsessing about the minutes that pass by.  Maybe instead of viewing the New Year through micro lenses, we could consider viewing it through macro lenses.  Rather than looking for what God might be up to in this moment, we might think about dropping back and taking a longer look at what God has been doing and may be doing now and might be doing out into the future. 

            Because God is the God of the new and you can’t manage new.  God is the God who makes all things new and God’s newness cannot be contained in the Tupperware of yesterday.  Where God is there is newness and that newness sweeps us up and transforms us into something new. 

            And that is this gift of time.  Not the tick-tick-ticking of time that is all about quantity.  The gift of time is all about kairos time – God’s time – moments of such quality that we find ourselves being swept up into those glorious moments and being dramatically and dynamically changed – for now and evermore.  Amen. 


[i] William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, vol. 40, no.1, p. 8