A Reflection for the 2nd
Sunday of Advent St. George's Episcopal Church, Engelhard, N.C.
December 9, 2018 Thomas E. Wilson, Guest Celebrant and Preacher
It's About Time.
Celebrating
Advent means learning how to wait..… Not all can wait – certainly
not those who are satisfied, contented, and feel that they live in
the best of all possible worlds! Those who learn to wait are uneasy
about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in
the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment.
The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled
in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look
forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait
in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in
the child in the manager.
In
the Greek of the New Testament, there are two words for time, Chronos
and
Kairos.
Chronos, out
of which we get the word Chronometer, a keeper of time,
is
the time we spend
like
minutes, hours, days, weeks and years. It is human time, the time
when our schedules own us and it so limited that we only can lose
time, never gain it. Therefore, we have to be hold tightly to our
time and not let it be taken away from us. Before I retired, when I
was a Social Worker working in a bureaucracy with people trying to
climb out of the holes they found themselves, or later when I was a
therapist I had 50 minute billable hours, with 10 minutes before the
next session, or when I was a college professor I had 50 minute
lecture times, even after I got ordained I had a tendency to be a
workaholic. Every moment on my jobs had to be used and paid for
because I was a Human Doing not a Human Being pushing my own or the
agency's agenda. Pushing like the ancient Greek legend of Sisyphus,
an arrogant ruler who missed the point of life and was condemned to
roll a heavy boulder up a steep hill only to have it slip at the last
moment and it rolls down to the bottom, where. Sisyphus is condemned
to repeat the whole process for all eternity. I found perverse
comfort in a passage from an essay, The
Myth of Sisyphus
by Albert Camus:
Then
Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that
lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the
summit. He goes back down to the plain. It is during that return,
that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to
stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a
heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never
know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as
surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each
of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks
toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is
stronger than his rock.
The
longer I worked the workaholic route, the more face and soul were
turning into stone. Except, unlike Sisyphus, there were moments in
the middle of my Chronos time when it all made sense, when the blame
game no longer made sense, when meetings didn't need to go on
forever, when bureaucratic procedure dissipated, the politicians
stopped playing games with people's lives, when the therapy sessions
started to open up to a moment of light shining through as the
patient caught the hope of getting better, or when a lecture was
opening minds, when work was a gift rather than a task, when the
people I was working with were full human beings, when I became a
full human being. These are the moments when Chronos
time becomes transfigured into Kairos
Time. Kairos time is when “the time has fully come”; it is God's time. It is time which we cannot control. It is the time we do not pay attention to the amount, the quantity, of time but to the quality of the time. We do not spend that time but rather live fully into that time. Think of all times we cannot control; like the birth of a child, or the end of our lives, or the time when are talking with a special friend, or the time we hold our lover in our arms, or the time we hold a child, or spouse, coming home from a trip, or a time when we are with a mourning friend. Think of the time when you are walking on the beach and you see a rainbow or get so interested in the beauty of the clouds, or the birds flying, or the dolphins jumping in the waves, or standing in front of a breath taking work of art, or listening to a heart breaking piece of music. These are the Kairos moments when the world stops rushing and it makes sense.
Luke begins his Gospel lesson for today using Chronos time with the information of the people who were in power at the time; Caesar, Pilate,Herod and the rest. This is the kind of time we are used to. But then Luke switches to the Kairos time of John the Baptizer who is calling us to repent. Now repent does not mean to be sorry or guilty but it means to stop doing what gets in the way of Kairos time. Kairos time is when we are fully aware of the presence of God right here and now is the space between us and our neighbor or creation.
The word “sin” does not mean doing bad things but it is an archery term for “missing the mark”. A life of sin is where we miss the deeper reason or point of living. Last week we lit the first of the four Advent Candles in the Advent Wreath and each candle is meant to shine a light on four of the points of living; Hope, Peace, Joy, “and the greatest of these is Love”. The first candle in the Advent wreath lit last week was for Hope. These four weeks are not a rush to Christmas but a time to learn and live into moving out of Chronos time into a Kairos time of holy waiting for that hope when our valleys will be filled and our high mountains brought low, the crooked roads made straight and the rough paths made smooth by a power greater than ourselves. John is pointing to the coming of Jesus in his life time as his hope and we see the coming of Christ in our lives as our hope.
Today we light a candle for Peace. Now Peace is not an cessation of any armed conflict. The core of sin is that we miss the point and there is a war inside ourselves when we live only in Chronos time and ignore the Kairos time of the constant presence of God. Peace is when we give up the habit of slapping labels on others. Peace is when we are awre of our sin but have the hope for forgiveness and new life. We are called to take each moment and treat it as waiting time, being still so that God may remind us that we are not the center of the universe, nor our agendas which we pathetically hold onto even as we are saying “Thy will be done.”
One of the joys Pat and I have in coming down here is the drive. Most of it is a two lane road offering plenty of time for peaceful reflection. There are the trees coming to life and reclaiming the forest that was devastated years ago in the fires. The fire destroyed the old trees but the seeds survived to grow. It reminds me that even after I die and all of the things that I have done return to the soil, the seeds of love which I have clumsily and haphazardly planted in spite of all my work will continue to grow even if I am not here to tend it. I used to be more of a workaholic, never at peace with myself having to prove my worth with what I do.
The peace is that I will give what I can and God will take the gift and use it however God wills. I see the marsh land and I marvel at the full life that is there. I look at the vultures and how they are part of a more complex plan than I can understand. I look at the hawks soaring overhead. I look for the bears with peace in my heart. As I drive down here on Sunday morning; I have already written the sermon and placed it on my blog earlier in the week, so I don't worry about it and am free to listen to God preach to me in the silence. It is then that I can follow St. Francis' advice to preach the Gospel and if necessary use words.
On my way back home a couple weeks ago I was given a gift of several Persimmons, that I had to wait to ripen. I thought that sometimes people are like persimmons. You cannot force them to come to a place where they aren't hard and bitter but you have to give them time, time we cannot control, Kairos time, when they can offer themselves up to be the fruit of God's love. It is all about time.
Next week after we have been reminded of the Hope we have given to us, and after we embrace the Peace which passes all understanding, we will light the Joy Candle because living as if I or you are the center of the universe is an exhausting task, but if we move our center to Christ, we are freed from that burden. Finding that Joy frees us to Love which is the last candle of Advent to enter into the light of Christmas, the coming of Christ in our lives not just in Bethlehem two thousand years ago but in Hyde County right here and right now. Because it is about time ending our view of time and entering into God's time.
It's
About Time.
Paraphrasing
the great prophet, Mae West,
“It's
not the the time in my life but the life
in
my time that's important.”, leaving strife,
going
into a silence to where we're blessed.
It
is here where we are able to cast aside
all
the agendas, plans and all that clutter
leaving
all that stuff to rest in the gutter,
now
thereby unburdened with our pride.
Now
practicing being still enough to wait
for
time, which I cannot control, to listen
to
the music of the stars as they christen
each
breath of getting Divine time straight.
Help
us Lord we pray today in Your time be,
so
that we take the time to dwell with Thee.
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