It's About Time
Text: Isaiah 64:1-9
Following the congregational survey we did earlier this year, we did a follow-up Focus Group day. The purpose was to dig deeper into the results of the survey, and to specifically ask some questions that emerged out of it. It was clear from the survey that Spirituality, and our enthusiasm about it was and is clearly the most pressing issue standing in the way of us being a healthier congregation. So the focus group was held to ask the simple question: why? Anyone who wanted to come, could, and offer their thoughts and feelings to help identify those barriers that prevent us from growing Spiritually, and by extension, growing as a congregation.
Out of this, we identified a number of barriers, and we are trying some things out to see what we can do to realistically meet those needs. Instead of doing an academic-style Bible Study this fall, I led a series of workshops on prayer… trying to expand people’s experiences and understanding of what prayer is. We have been more deliberate about giving you time to prepare for worship through a quiet time at the beginning of the service. Our Anniversary service had a guest preacher who broke most Presbyterian stereotypes about spirituality. We have secured more resources for people to learn about prayer, something that Laura Burns reminded us of in her announcement last week. The Elders on our Session have now held two workshops to help them be better elders… and there are more on the way. These are just a few of the things that we have been trying to do to remove those barriers that stand between us and a deeper relationship with God. Some of them seem to be working… others… well, maybe not so much… but that’s okay, we can’t expect to get it right the first time every time. That’s the beauty of this, because we can always try something else.
Even so, the one barrier that we clearly identified that so far, we have not really addressed well is the question of time. When it comes to praying, when it comes to reading scripture, when it comes to those things that help deepen our relationship with God, a major barrier for people today is time. I don’t have time… my life is so busy, with work, with taking care of aging parents or someone disabled, with raising children, with being hands-on grandparents, with you-name-it-we’re-busy-with it… So much fills up our lives, some of it trivial, much of it important, that we don’t seem to have time to work on our relationship with God. Like Martha from a few weeks ago, we are driven to distraction, and actually get a bit miffed when we see someone else pausing from the daily routine, and we might grumble about how they are not pulling their weight.
Time is a precious commodity, and we seem to worship it more than we do God… because even our relationship with God seems to be governed by time. Worse yet, we want God to work to our schedule. We have forgotten what it means to wait on God.
But curiously enough, this is not something that is limited to our time… wanting God to conform to our schedule is not unique to the 21st Century. This morning’s first reading from Isaiah begins with this proclamation:
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil
—to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!”
There’s a very subtle shift in this that we don’t often hear. Most of the time the prophet is speaking on behalf of God, offering words of both judgment or comfort… but this is something else. These are the words of the prophet speaking on his own behalf, and betraying a bit of his own frustration with God… or better yet, his impatience with God.
In other words, for us, it’s nothing new. We have always struggled with time. Making time. Managing time… and the last thing we want to do is wait. So we fill up our time with all sorts of things. Some of which are important, but many things that aren’t. We get so distracted that when God does show up, we’re often too distracted to notice. For us, it’s about time…
I would also venture to say that we have become so entrenched in a time-starved lifestyle that we really don’t know how to get ourselves out of it. Even if we had the time, I’m not sure we’d know what to do with it. Most of the time, when we are doing something, chances are we’re watching the clock thinking about what we need to do next.
So it comes back to this time for prayer. One of the biggest barriers that we have as a congregation is that we’re not able and not sure how to make time for prayer, and to reflect on where God is in our lives.
That’s why at the children’s time we handed out these prayer coins and key tags.
We are so used to putting something in the offering plate as it goes by, that taking something out of it seems kind of strange to us. Often people say to me that they want something to take home with them, in terms of the service. Today, I’m taking it literally. This time around it’s something you can physically hold and take with you.
The key tags, of course, you put on your keychain. The coin you either put in your pocket or your change-purse, wherever you happen to keep loose change on your person. The idea is that it’s something tangible, something we always carrying with us, to serve as a reminder that God is with us all the time.
On the key tags, it’s says, “Advent - Come Lord Jesus!" on one side, and "Within my heart a place prepare, O Lord, to meet and greet you there."
On the coin, on one side it has two verses from Isaiah 40, “Comfort, O Comfort my people,” says your God. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” and on the other side, a picture of the Christ child in the manger. Isaiah 40 is almost always read at Advent, expressing hope for God in our midst.
When the samples of these came across my desk for the first time back in late September, I decided to use myself as a guinea pig to see how they worked. As I always carry my change in my pocket, it was just mixed in with loonies, toonies, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies… whatever was there. Yet unlike any of the other coins, it’s not something that I could spend… yet every time I reached into my pocket, there it was, reminding me if only for a moment of God’s presence. I was pleasantly surprised of how often it would come out each day, and each time it reminded me to say a very short prayer. Even if just a brief “thank you” or an unspoken reminder from God, saying “I am here with you.” Because it is made of pewter, it even sounds different than my other coins, and so the audible clink reminded me of it and what it is a symbol of.
The coin and the key tag are intended to simply be reminders, that even right in the midst of the hustle and bustle, coming across it can be for us a brief reminder of what God calls us to in Advent… Maybe through these brief reminders, even in the midst our crazybusy routines, we will eventually find ourselves increasingly aware of God in our midst… Maybe through this awareness, even for an instant we remember that the eternal God is with us even in our busiest moments. Maybe we will even experience something truly transformative, and have an insight into the wonder of Advent… and then… somewhere along the line… we might realize that we indeed are spending more time with God than we ever have before.
I think that’s what really struck me about the video that we played at the opening of the service. Advent Conspiracy is not a charity. It doesn’t try to raise funds for yet another cause. It’s a movement to try and reclaim the wonder and hope of Advent, and to realize that God’s gift at Christmas was something to change the world. They ask, “what if we could change the world again?” It helps us to ask, what do we really want from Advent? Those four basic principles that appeared on the screen at the end of it are easy to remember: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. Even though they draw attention to the real need for clean water around the world... that simply serves as an example. Those four easy-to-remember principles of it applies regardless of how or where we choose to give. When it says “Spend Less” and “Give more” it means that perhaps we stop worrying about spending time finding the perfect gift, and realize that we already have it. It’s about time that we shared it.
Maybe by having something in our pocket or something attached to our keys… those things that we always have with us… maybe this little gift can help remind us of God’s great gift in the midst of our frenetic pace of life.
This is Advent. We are somewhere between realizing that God is always with us, no matter what our circumstance might be, and the hope of a world that waits to be transformed in the love of God.
Amen.
Links: Advent Conspiracy
Video - "Enter the Story" from Advent Conspiracy:
Following the congregational survey we did earlier this year, we did a follow-up Focus Group day. The purpose was to dig deeper into the results of the survey, and to specifically ask some questions that emerged out of it. It was clear from the survey that Spirituality, and our enthusiasm about it was and is clearly the most pressing issue standing in the way of us being a healthier congregation. So the focus group was held to ask the simple question: why? Anyone who wanted to come, could, and offer their thoughts and feelings to help identify those barriers that prevent us from growing Spiritually, and by extension, growing as a congregation.
Out of this, we identified a number of barriers, and we are trying some things out to see what we can do to realistically meet those needs. Instead of doing an academic-style Bible Study this fall, I led a series of workshops on prayer… trying to expand people’s experiences and understanding of what prayer is. We have been more deliberate about giving you time to prepare for worship through a quiet time at the beginning of the service. Our Anniversary service had a guest preacher who broke most Presbyterian stereotypes about spirituality. We have secured more resources for people to learn about prayer, something that Laura Burns reminded us of in her announcement last week. The Elders on our Session have now held two workshops to help them be better elders… and there are more on the way. These are just a few of the things that we have been trying to do to remove those barriers that stand between us and a deeper relationship with God. Some of them seem to be working… others… well, maybe not so much… but that’s okay, we can’t expect to get it right the first time every time. That’s the beauty of this, because we can always try something else.
Even so, the one barrier that we clearly identified that so far, we have not really addressed well is the question of time. When it comes to praying, when it comes to reading scripture, when it comes to those things that help deepen our relationship with God, a major barrier for people today is time. I don’t have time… my life is so busy, with work, with taking care of aging parents or someone disabled, with raising children, with being hands-on grandparents, with you-name-it-we’re-busy-with it… So much fills up our lives, some of it trivial, much of it important, that we don’t seem to have time to work on our relationship with God. Like Martha from a few weeks ago, we are driven to distraction, and actually get a bit miffed when we see someone else pausing from the daily routine, and we might grumble about how they are not pulling their weight.
Time is a precious commodity, and we seem to worship it more than we do God… because even our relationship with God seems to be governed by time. Worse yet, we want God to work to our schedule. We have forgotten what it means to wait on God.
But curiously enough, this is not something that is limited to our time… wanting God to conform to our schedule is not unique to the 21st Century. This morning’s first reading from Isaiah begins with this proclamation:
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil
—to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!”
There’s a very subtle shift in this that we don’t often hear. Most of the time the prophet is speaking on behalf of God, offering words of both judgment or comfort… but this is something else. These are the words of the prophet speaking on his own behalf, and betraying a bit of his own frustration with God… or better yet, his impatience with God.
In other words, for us, it’s nothing new. We have always struggled with time. Making time. Managing time… and the last thing we want to do is wait. So we fill up our time with all sorts of things. Some of which are important, but many things that aren’t. We get so distracted that when God does show up, we’re often too distracted to notice. For us, it’s about time…
I would also venture to say that we have become so entrenched in a time-starved lifestyle that we really don’t know how to get ourselves out of it. Even if we had the time, I’m not sure we’d know what to do with it. Most of the time, when we are doing something, chances are we’re watching the clock thinking about what we need to do next.
So it comes back to this time for prayer. One of the biggest barriers that we have as a congregation is that we’re not able and not sure how to make time for prayer, and to reflect on where God is in our lives.
That’s why at the children’s time we handed out these prayer coins and key tags.
We are so used to putting something in the offering plate as it goes by, that taking something out of it seems kind of strange to us. Often people say to me that they want something to take home with them, in terms of the service. Today, I’m taking it literally. This time around it’s something you can physically hold and take with you.
The key tags, of course, you put on your keychain. The coin you either put in your pocket or your change-purse, wherever you happen to keep loose change on your person. The idea is that it’s something tangible, something we always carrying with us, to serve as a reminder that God is with us all the time.
On the key tags, it’s says, “Advent - Come Lord Jesus!" on one side, and "Within my heart a place prepare, O Lord, to meet and greet you there."
On the coin, on one side it has two verses from Isaiah 40, “Comfort, O Comfort my people,” says your God. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” and on the other side, a picture of the Christ child in the manger. Isaiah 40 is almost always read at Advent, expressing hope for God in our midst.
When the samples of these came across my desk for the first time back in late September, I decided to use myself as a guinea pig to see how they worked. As I always carry my change in my pocket, it was just mixed in with loonies, toonies, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies… whatever was there. Yet unlike any of the other coins, it’s not something that I could spend… yet every time I reached into my pocket, there it was, reminding me if only for a moment of God’s presence. I was pleasantly surprised of how often it would come out each day, and each time it reminded me to say a very short prayer. Even if just a brief “thank you” or an unspoken reminder from God, saying “I am here with you.” Because it is made of pewter, it even sounds different than my other coins, and so the audible clink reminded me of it and what it is a symbol of.
The coin and the key tag are intended to simply be reminders, that even right in the midst of the hustle and bustle, coming across it can be for us a brief reminder of what God calls us to in Advent… Maybe through these brief reminders, even in the midst our crazybusy routines, we will eventually find ourselves increasingly aware of God in our midst… Maybe through this awareness, even for an instant we remember that the eternal God is with us even in our busiest moments. Maybe we will even experience something truly transformative, and have an insight into the wonder of Advent… and then… somewhere along the line… we might realize that we indeed are spending more time with God than we ever have before.
I think that’s what really struck me about the video that we played at the opening of the service. Advent Conspiracy is not a charity. It doesn’t try to raise funds for yet another cause. It’s a movement to try and reclaim the wonder and hope of Advent, and to realize that God’s gift at Christmas was something to change the world. They ask, “what if we could change the world again?” It helps us to ask, what do we really want from Advent? Those four basic principles that appeared on the screen at the end of it are easy to remember: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. Even though they draw attention to the real need for clean water around the world... that simply serves as an example. Those four easy-to-remember principles of it applies regardless of how or where we choose to give. When it says “Spend Less” and “Give more” it means that perhaps we stop worrying about spending time finding the perfect gift, and realize that we already have it. It’s about time that we shared it.
Maybe by having something in our pocket or something attached to our keys… those things that we always have with us… maybe this little gift can help remind us of God’s great gift in the midst of our frenetic pace of life.
This is Advent. We are somewhere between realizing that God is always with us, no matter what our circumstance might be, and the hope of a world that waits to be transformed in the love of God.
Amen.
Links: Advent Conspiracy
Video - "Enter the Story" from Advent Conspiracy:
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