Reconsidering Time
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
One Sunday morning back in May, I wrote a sermon that was deliberately poking a bit of fun at a US preacher whose end-time prediction of May 21st hadn’t come true the day before I preached. Admittedly, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, because I preached that sermon on May 22nd. I had nothing to lose, had the world indeed come to an end, I wouldn’t have to preach anyway. Of course, a careful reading of said prediction said that the faithful would be taken up on May 21st, and the world would formally come to an end on October 21st of this year. Given that we’re still here, it shows how accurate Mr. Camping’s math was. Again, he’s an easy target, and while it may be worthwhile poking a bit of fun at these predictions and their accuracy, I need to be fair about something: Early Christians genuinely believed that Christ would return in their lifetime, in very real terms. It was a source of great worry amongst at least some of that very small group of believers when fellow Christians --mothers, fathers, friends, brothers, sisters, and even children died.
They appealed to their church leaders, some were very specific in asking “when” will these things take place. Early on, Paul genuinely believed that Christ would return within his own lifetime. There’s a good argument to be made that when he wrote his first letter to the church in Thessalonica, Paul reflected that in his own writing… but we do know that as Paul continued his mission, that he came to understand this much differently than perhaps he once did. It shows that he matured in his understanding… but even in his younger eager days, he wasn’t prepared to make a declaration about knowing the mind of God. Even though he describes how he envisions Christ’s return earlier in the letter, he then cautions the Thessalonians. He writes:
“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”
He also goes on to remind them that this is not something to fear or be preoccupied with anyway. We know that Paul’s own point of view changed as he grew older, particularly after his imprisonment in Ephesus, when he wrote the letter to the Philippians. Even so, this theme of encouragement he offers to the Thessalonians remained consistent. God does not work on our timetable… in fact, even the concept of a timetable is something we need to reconsider
Jesus was once quoted by the gospel of Mark saying “The time is near, the kingdom of God is at hand!” But for Jesus, it was about recognizing the kingdom of God right in our midst. It is fair to say that the time is as near to us now as it was to the early Christians.
I suspect that if I haven’t already, I’ve just lost you. So I want you to try and bear with me. This kind of understanding time that both Paul and Jesus spoke of is a concept of time that is lost on us… especially today, when many of us wear watches or consult our smartphones every few minutes. Even in our own language, the concept of minutes, hours, days, seconds… all of that is something that we have created. Linear time as we understand it is a human invention, as a way of recording time passing. It gives us a sense of structure, a sense of order, and give at least some degree of predictability to our lives. It has value to giving that sense of order to our lives, but it something we have created.
We get into some serious trouble if we think that God regards time in the same way.
In fact, even physicists will tell you that the way in which we keep time is an illusion. It is pliable, and passes differently depending on where one is in the universe. There was a fantastic program on this past week on the US Public Broadcasting Service as part of their “Nova” science series called “The Fabric of the Cosmos: the Illusion of Time.” It went into detail on this very subject from a scientific point of view… so if even our perception of time varies from where we stand in the Universe, then again, how can we expect God to follow time in the same narrow, limited way in which we experience it here?
So let’s reconsider time, and talk about God’s time… the time is near, the kingdom of God is at hand… the word that Jesus uses for “time.” Is a concept that is almost completely lost on us in the English language. We have no true word for it. The word that Jesus uses, the word that Paul uses is “Kairos.” Sometimes we call it the “fullness of time” or “the right time.” But it is a concept of time that happens outside of or breaks into Chronological time. We get chronological time. we can wrap our heads around that because we have a watch that keeps track of it for us, and that we glance at if the sermon goes on too long! Kairos, on the other hand, doesn’t fit into Chronological time in the way that we think it might. It is a glimpse into eternity, beyond Chronological time, where past, present and future come together. Periodically we get glimpses of it… the life and work of Jesus is an obvious example… but sometimes we get a glimpse of it in our own lives, where we get a new perspective on our life and our experiences. It’s an “aha” moment, where our reality changes, because we’ve had time to reconsider and reflect and experience God working in our lives in a deeply profound way.
For the early Christians, they were in the midst of their own “aha” moment, but they hadn’t quite reached that “aha!” point. Paul was reminding them that God’s time is far different from our own, and is squarely in God’s hands… and that instead of trying to make God fit into our own timetable, we need to be about building and living out the kingdom of God in the moments that we have, right here, right now, in the “now” we experience in our corner of the universe.
While we have sung it so many times, I wonder how many of us pay attention to the last verse of Amazing Grace, that says “when we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise, then when we'd first begun.” We have no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun. The time is as near to us now as it was when Jesus proclaimed that the time is near, the kingdom of God is at hand. What he was really saying is that God’s time is realized when we live out the kingdom of God. The point Paul was making to the Thessalonians is that we should not be sitting on our hands waiting for something that is already in our midst, and be about building the kingdom of God here, now. Maybe it is time for us to do the same.
Amen.
One Sunday morning back in May, I wrote a sermon that was deliberately poking a bit of fun at a US preacher whose end-time prediction of May 21st hadn’t come true the day before I preached. Admittedly, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, because I preached that sermon on May 22nd. I had nothing to lose, had the world indeed come to an end, I wouldn’t have to preach anyway. Of course, a careful reading of said prediction said that the faithful would be taken up on May 21st, and the world would formally come to an end on October 21st of this year. Given that we’re still here, it shows how accurate Mr. Camping’s math was. Again, he’s an easy target, and while it may be worthwhile poking a bit of fun at these predictions and their accuracy, I need to be fair about something: Early Christians genuinely believed that Christ would return in their lifetime, in very real terms. It was a source of great worry amongst at least some of that very small group of believers when fellow Christians --mothers, fathers, friends, brothers, sisters, and even children died.
They appealed to their church leaders, some were very specific in asking “when” will these things take place. Early on, Paul genuinely believed that Christ would return within his own lifetime. There’s a good argument to be made that when he wrote his first letter to the church in Thessalonica, Paul reflected that in his own writing… but we do know that as Paul continued his mission, that he came to understand this much differently than perhaps he once did. It shows that he matured in his understanding… but even in his younger eager days, he wasn’t prepared to make a declaration about knowing the mind of God. Even though he describes how he envisions Christ’s return earlier in the letter, he then cautions the Thessalonians. He writes:
“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”
He also goes on to remind them that this is not something to fear or be preoccupied with anyway. We know that Paul’s own point of view changed as he grew older, particularly after his imprisonment in Ephesus, when he wrote the letter to the Philippians. Even so, this theme of encouragement he offers to the Thessalonians remained consistent. God does not work on our timetable… in fact, even the concept of a timetable is something we need to reconsider
Jesus was once quoted by the gospel of Mark saying “The time is near, the kingdom of God is at hand!” But for Jesus, it was about recognizing the kingdom of God right in our midst. It is fair to say that the time is as near to us now as it was to the early Christians.
I suspect that if I haven’t already, I’ve just lost you. So I want you to try and bear with me. This kind of understanding time that both Paul and Jesus spoke of is a concept of time that is lost on us… especially today, when many of us wear watches or consult our smartphones every few minutes. Even in our own language, the concept of minutes, hours, days, seconds… all of that is something that we have created. Linear time as we understand it is a human invention, as a way of recording time passing. It gives us a sense of structure, a sense of order, and give at least some degree of predictability to our lives. It has value to giving that sense of order to our lives, but it something we have created.
We get into some serious trouble if we think that God regards time in the same way.
In fact, even physicists will tell you that the way in which we keep time is an illusion. It is pliable, and passes differently depending on where one is in the universe. There was a fantastic program on this past week on the US Public Broadcasting Service as part of their “Nova” science series called “The Fabric of the Cosmos: the Illusion of Time.” It went into detail on this very subject from a scientific point of view… so if even our perception of time varies from where we stand in the Universe, then again, how can we expect God to follow time in the same narrow, limited way in which we experience it here?
So let’s reconsider time, and talk about God’s time… the time is near, the kingdom of God is at hand… the word that Jesus uses for “time.” Is a concept that is almost completely lost on us in the English language. We have no true word for it. The word that Jesus uses, the word that Paul uses is “Kairos.” Sometimes we call it the “fullness of time” or “the right time.” But it is a concept of time that happens outside of or breaks into Chronological time. We get chronological time. we can wrap our heads around that because we have a watch that keeps track of it for us, and that we glance at if the sermon goes on too long! Kairos, on the other hand, doesn’t fit into Chronological time in the way that we think it might. It is a glimpse into eternity, beyond Chronological time, where past, present and future come together. Periodically we get glimpses of it… the life and work of Jesus is an obvious example… but sometimes we get a glimpse of it in our own lives, where we get a new perspective on our life and our experiences. It’s an “aha” moment, where our reality changes, because we’ve had time to reconsider and reflect and experience God working in our lives in a deeply profound way.
For the early Christians, they were in the midst of their own “aha” moment, but they hadn’t quite reached that “aha!” point. Paul was reminding them that God’s time is far different from our own, and is squarely in God’s hands… and that instead of trying to make God fit into our own timetable, we need to be about building and living out the kingdom of God in the moments that we have, right here, right now, in the “now” we experience in our corner of the universe.
While we have sung it so many times, I wonder how many of us pay attention to the last verse of Amazing Grace, that says “when we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise, then when we'd first begun.” We have no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun. The time is as near to us now as it was when Jesus proclaimed that the time is near, the kingdom of God is at hand. What he was really saying is that God’s time is realized when we live out the kingdom of God. The point Paul was making to the Thessalonians is that we should not be sitting on our hands waiting for something that is already in our midst, and be about building the kingdom of God here, now. Maybe it is time for us to do the same.
Amen.
Comments