O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen.
What
time is it? A rather seemingly simple question, but as today’s readings suggest,
perhaps there is more to that question than meets the eye. What time is it? Advent
is the beginning of the new church year, so it is a time for beginnings. Advent
is a season in the Church in which we prepare ourselves to celebrate the coming
of God in the flesh. But we do this every year. Advent time is strange time.
Jesus was born over 2,000 years ago, but it seems that in Advent we’re supposed
to forget that and be filled with expectation as we await his birth on Christmas.
Some have used the phrase “already, but not yet” to describe Advent. Jesus has already
been born, but not yet in Advent.
Answering
“what time is it” is a difficult question for us Christians. We are called to
spend Advent waiting and hoping, all while Christmas songs fill the radio waves
and stores urge you to not wait for anything, go ahead and buy that item today.
Even our readings in Advent can’t figure out what time it is. Today we read
Matthew 24, but the next three weeks we’ll read Matthew 3, then Matthew 11, and
finally Matthew 1. It’s awfully hard to figure out what time it is when even
our readings can’t seem to get things in order. Is it Christmas? Is it Advent?
Has Jesus already come? Or do we wait for his coming? Is it okay to sing
Christmas songs? What time is it?
And
why in the world do we start this new year in the Church with a reading containing
an apocalyptic vision? It seems like our readings today should focus on the
angel coming to Mary to tell her that she is pregnant instead of having a
30-something year old Jesus telling the frightening tale of the Final Judgment.
I thought Advent was a season about preparing for Jesus to be born, not a
season to worry about being raptured away. What time is it?
This
is a very strange picture of Jesus. We tend to think of Jesus as the compassionate
healer, the powerful miracle worker, the suffering servant, but the bringer of
judgment? It’s a jarring passage. CS Lewis famously said of Jesus that he “either
deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or he was himself deluded and
self-deceived, or he was Divine.” Or in other words, either Jesus is liar,
lunatic, or Lord.
Just two verses
before our reading today begins, Jesus says “Truly I tell you, this generation
will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” Hate to tell you,
Jesus, but there have been at least 50 generations since you said this and the
sun hasn’t been darkened, time has not ended, and the thief is yet to come in the
middle of the night. After reading this passage, one has to wonder if there is
perhaps some possibility of it being lunatic. So does this mean that Jesus was
wrong? Perhaps it has something to do
with the way we tell time. What time is it?
Jesus says that
no one knows when that day or hour will be, not even him. No one must have told
St. Paul about that though, because he rather certainly proclaims “You know
what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For
salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.” Jesus might not
know when that day will be, but Paul seems to know that it’s happening right
now. I’m so confused. Jesus seems to say that that fateful hour is somewhere
off in the future, and we’ll never know when it will be. But Paul is saying
that it’s happening now, that now is the moment to awake from sleep because now
is the time that the thief is near. What time is it?
Methodist
Bishop Will Willimon tells the story of attending a funeral in rural Georgia.
The preacher began his sermon with his voice raised and his arms flailing. He
shouted “It’s too late for Joe. He might have had plans for his life, but it’s
too late. He’s dead. Maybe he wanted to make things right, but he can’t now.”
And he continued “but it’s not too late for you. Why wait? Give your life to
Jesus today.” After the service, Willimon talked to the family and said that he
was sorry that they had to sit through that, that it was manipulative, callous,
and inappropriate. The widow said, “yes, it was all of those things. But the
worst part of what that preacher said is that it was all true.” Therefore you must
be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. As St. Paul says,
it’s time to wake up.
There’s no
avoiding the topic of eschatology with these readings. Eschaton is a Greek word
that means “final things.” And the problem is that we often mishandle
conversations about the eschaton, or the Final Judgment. Either we interpret
the words of Jesus and Paul too literally, and end up with a picture that looks
similar to the Left Behind series, or
we do what most liberal churches do, we simply ignore these readings. We say, “oh,
Jesus was talking about something else.” And both approaches are wrong. There
is no rapture, but there is a Second Coming. What time is it?
Advent really
is a season of two advents. Advent is a word that has as its root meaning “coming.”
In Advent, we celebrate that God came to us in the flesh and blood of Jesus,
but we also await his next and final coming. I would guess that most of us
would err on the side of ignoring the Second Coming. After all, that’s just
such a backward and antiquated belief, isn’t it?
The thing is,
we need there to be a Second Coming, and if we ignore the Second Coming, we
also have to ignore today’s readings. We have to ignore a lot of what Jesus
said. And we have to ignore the idea of hope. Our world is broken, there’s just
no getting around that. The prophet Isaiah gives us a beautiful vision in the
reading this morning, saying “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the
highest of the mountains...they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and
their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”
But that vision
is no closer to being a reality than it was the day Isaiah prophesied it.
Drones and nuclear weapons have only made us better at killing each other. Since
President Obama was elected, latent racial tensions have become even more
intense. Atheism is on the rise. In thirteen days, our nation will mourn again
as we remember the one year anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook. Even
after such a tragedy, we could not beat our swords into ploughshares; lobbyists
prevented us from beating our guns into school supplies. The Kingdom, it seems,
is not coming on earth as it is in heaven.
If you’ve been
paying any attention to my preaching over the past several years, you’ve
probably noticed that I often preach about the Kingdom of God, and our task of
furthering it. But the important thing to remember is that we do not build the Kingdom.
God does. Now we might lend a hand, but it is God’s work. And left to our own
devices, things aren’t going to get any better. Without a Second Coming, we are condemned to only the possibilities that are already present in the
human experience. But the hope of Advent is that Jesus will come again. The
hope of Advent is that things will change. The hope of Advent is that there can
indeed be something new. The Second Coming is where we will find our redemption.
But you might
ask, what does this mean? I’ve never really believed in a Second Coming, how do
I make sense of it. After all, Jesus said that we can’t know when it will be.
So shouldn’t I just live my life as normal and hope for the best? Well, that
depends. What time is it?
There are two
ways to understand time; two different types of time. Both come from Greek
thought and are known as chronos and kairos. Chronos is related to
chronological time. If I ask you what time is it, meaning chronos, you might
say- it’s Sunday, December 1st. Chronos time is quantitative.
Chronos time can answer questions such as “what does the clock say” or “when
does train arrive.” Chronos time can also try, incorrectly, to pinpoint the
exact moment when Jesus will return.
But kairos time
is different, it is qualitative. Kairos time is about it being the right
moment. Questions that kairos time answers are “when should I tell her that I
love her,” “when does a boy or girl become a man or woman,” or “when will God
answer my prayer.” Kairos time can’t be pinned down or measured by the clock.
Chronos time
tells us that there isn’t enough time. Chronos says that we’re running out of
time to achieve liberty and justice for all. We want poverty to end, but we’re
running out of time before Jesus comes again. We want to be found worthy when
Jesus comes, but we’re running out of time. Or so, chronos would have us
belief. But kairos has something different to say. Kairos says that it’s not
justice that’s running out of time, but it is injustice that’s on the clock.
Kairos says that redemption is still possible. It’s not that life is running
out of time, but rather death. Chronos time is about schedules, anxiety, and
isolation from one moment to the next. Kairos is the time of grace, of hope, of
new possibilities.
We’ve all been
trained to live in chronos time, and we don’t really know how to make sense of
kairos time. But these types of time are important to understand, because the
Second Coming is about kairos time, not chronos time. If the Second Coming is
to be a historical event that only takes place at one moment in time, then Jesus
was wrong. Many generations have passed since he spoke these words. If the
Second Coming will happen in chronos time, then we can be like Macaulay Culkin
in Home Alone. If we see the crooks
coming, then we can worry about getting ready. But if the coast is clear, then
it’s back to life as normal. If the Second Coming is about chronos time, as long
as it doesn’t happen during our lifetime, then the words of Macbeth will ring
true, that “Life is a tale told by the idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.” Jesus’ words mean absolutely nothing to us if the thief doesn’t
come during our lifetime. No need to watch or wait. No need to worry about what
time it is.
But what if the
Second Coming happens in kairos time? That would mean that the Second Coming
can’t be measured by the calendar or stopwatch. It means that, perhaps, the
Second Coming is already happening, but isn’t quite consummated. Perhaps, the
Second Coming is just like Advent, is a time of the already, but not yet. What
time is it?
There is a
reason why we prefer the parable of the Prodigal Son that tells us that there
is always time for repentance, to the parable of the thief in the night that
suggests that indeed, sometimes it is too late. Jesus tells us to watch, not
necessarily for the chronos moment where the thief busts down the door, but for
those kairos moments when the thief is already in the house. What if the Final Judgment
isn’t something that will happen in the future, but is already happening? What
if when you get to the gates of Heaven, St. Peter doesn’t give you an overall
grade on your life, but instead takes a few random samples? What if that day
you were running late and had a bit of road rage was the moment that your soul
will be judged upon? How about that time you thought no one was looking? Because
if the Second Coming is happening in kairos time, then the judgment is already underway,
now is the moment. But it’s not finished. What time is it?
That’s why it’s
so important to watch. And as St. Paul exhorts us to do, it is vital that we “lay
aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live
honorably as in the day.” Watch for those kairos moments where you see the
Kingdom coming, and give voice to them, help them along. There are some moments
where I can watch my daughter, Ellie, and see her growing up before my very
eyes. That is a kairos moment. And if we can pay attention, we can see those
same sorts of moments in our world when the Kingdom is indeed coming.
But if we only
pay attention to chronos time, redemption will never come. Isaiah’s vision isn’t
going to come to pass. The saying is that a watched pot never boils, and it’s
true that simply watching the clock for the Second Coming will not lead to
there being more love, justice, peace, or reconciliation. But the Second Coming
doesn’t happen in the sort of time that we live in. It happens, and is
happening, in God’s time. What time is it?
So this Advent,
as St. Paul says “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” In Paul’s time, clothing was
what identified you. Peasants dressed one way, soldiers another, and dignitaries
still another. You could look at someone and know who they were just by the clothing
they wear. That’s not quite true for us today. So Paul is saying, make it
obvious to everyone that you are following Jesus. Wear Jesus on your sleeve.
Make it obvious that you’re watching for those kairos moments of the Second
Coming.
What
time is it? It’s Advent. That time of the year when time gets turned on its
head. What time is it? It’s the Second Coming. What time is it? It’s time to
put on our Lord Jesus Christ and watch for those kairos moments where the
Kingdom is coming. This season of Advent, may we prepare ourselves to receive
anew God in the flesh into our hearts and world. May we prepare ourselves for
the Second Coming and Final Judgment. May we awake from our sleep and live for
God. May we worry less about what time the clock tells us that it is, and give
more attention to the time that the Kingdom’s coming tells us that it is. What
time is it?
