Scripture: Mark 13:24-33 Series: 2020
Second sermon in an Advent series on four questions, addressing ‘when is he coming?’ The sermon contrasts Greek chronos (linear clock time, born of factories and worry) with kairos (event-time, where memory and birthdays live), arguing that God’s kairos doesn’t displace us but includes us. Through worship, the church year, the already/not-yet of Christ’s two comings, and sabbath rest taken for God rather than productivity, believers move from suffocating chronos toward serenity and prepare their hearts for Christ’s coming.
Illustrations: gandalf-never-late, lake-time-work-time, synchronizing-watches, factory-synchronization-buzzword, ancient-sun-hours, sons-birthdays-memory, cyril-jerusalem-two-comings, archimedes-eureka, augustine-little-easters
December 6
When will he come?
- Mark 13:24-33
What is the best time to come to a party? (Party Intro)
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien is a story of wizards and elves and dwarves and begins with a chapter called the Long-Expected Party, which is a call-back to the beginning of the Hobbit, which is an Unexpected Party.
And it takes place a while after the Hobbit and has this moment where Frodo Baggins, the hobbit and hero of the story, says, “Gandolf, you’re late.” And Gandolf says, “A wizard is never late, he always arrives precisely when he means to.”
Wizard time is different from hobbit time. Work time is different from lake time. Time moves differently when you are on a boat. Lake time is different from mountain time. Where you are effects how you think about time. As well, ideas about time and the importance of punctuality are different across cultures.
But what is the difference between our time and God’s time? My friends, we are continuing our series on the four questions. On these four basic questions of advent about why this season is different. Last week, we talked about who is coming. About who Jesus is and what it means that he is coming. We talked about how John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus and how we don’t need to be the ones preparing the way. We are, instead, asked to get ready. This week, the question is when is he coming? If there is a guest who is coming to your house, you want to know when they are going to arrive.
But the concept of time is important for us to think about as we speak of when Jesus is coming. Most of us have time set by our phones or computers or smart watches. Everything is set for us. Daylight savings time is taken care of for us. We don’t have to synchronize our watches as they used to do in movies (3…2….1…go). But even 100 years ago, unless you were wealthy or worked in a factory, most time was set with the sun in a way comparable to the ancient world. You were able to work in the fields in the daylight and then stay up by candlelight but not too late, and then back at it the next day. The rise of factories and cities and trains led to the rise of clocks and watches. Synchronozation was the buzzword of business leaders in the 19th century, like synergy or core competency or ROI.
But for people of the land the sun still guided their sense of time as it did with the ancients. This is why, in much of the ancient world, the first hour was dawn, the 6th hour was noon, and so on. Everyday wasn’t twelve hours, but it was seen relative to the sun and the seasons.
This is what the ancient Greeks would call chronos, the root of chronological. Chronos is time that is next to each other like the ticking of the clock. Chronos is linear time, like a planning calendar. Every second moves forward. You cannot repeat time. There is no looking back.
For most of us today, chronos time has taken over all of living reality. All we have is chronos time. We have our schedules. We have our alerts. We have our days. Holidays don’t exist outside of chronos time. Holidays only exist to give people a day off from work or to give school kids a day off and teachers a chance to catch up with work and let them go to the bathroom whenever they want!
Chronos time can be suffocating. But it is also not God’s time. God’s time is kairos, another word in Greek that is often translated as time. But kairos is more like, “what a time as this!” Kairos is an event. One of the few kairos events in a broad culture is a birthday. Think now of your birthday or the birthday of someone you love. A child, perhaps, beyond the party or celebration. On Dominic or Ephraim’s birthday, I think back to when they were born (and I always try to give Alina a present on the boys’ birthdays because she is the one who did the work that day). I think back to when they were born and other parties and how they have grown and it all blends together. That is how memory functions in kairos times. Memory doesn’t function in chronos time. Memory doesn’t function as this discreet history of events. Memory functions like kairos: a smell, a touch, leads to a memory, leads to another memory. Memory jumps along our past in a way that is still informed by our present. Kairos time is the memory.
Advent, historically, has been a season when we look back to the time when Jesus came as a child but also forward to when Jesus will come again. As St Cyril of Jerusalem preached many years ago, “We do not preach only one coming of Christ, but a second as well, much more glorious than the first. The first coming was marked by patience; the second will bring the crown of a divine kingdom.”
We look to the past and look to the future in the same time. That is what we are celebrating this season. But we can’t look to the past or the future in chronos time. In chronos time, there is only the eternally present. So how do we move from chronos time to kairos time? How can we do that in our lives?
How do we move our time to God’s time? How do we make our time God’s time? It is important to remember that God does not displace us. Like Archimedes in the bathtub screaming Eureka! God’s time is not like water that molds around us. God is the source in whom we live and move and have our being. We are included in God’s future and in God’s time.
This is what Jesus gets to over and over again when he says that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. The kingdom of God is here. God is with us. We can live God’s time here in the present.
Part of that may look like the contrast between worry and serenity. Worry is a response to the overwhelming reality of chronos time. Worry is a response to all of the things out of our control. So much out of our control. So much that we cannot wrap our hands around. I think that there is a correlation between the rise of chronos time and the rise of worry. I include myself in this. But let us contrast worry with serenity, the peace that passes understanding. The peace that realizes that even in the midst of this chronos time, even in the midst of these obligations and struggles, we are living a part of God’s kingdom here. This is why we celebrate worship on Sunday. Sunday transforms our time. St. Augustine called Sundays “little easters.” So we can remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ every week. And not just remember it in a distant past, but for us to enter into it again and again. This is why we have the seasons of the church year, so that we do not succumb so fully to chronos time. That we admit that there is a different time for the church. There is a different time for us. That the church is not just living in the present. That the church is not just planning for the future. We occupy the already and the not yet. The already, which is the promise of God fulfilled in the Christ-child. And the not yet, in the redemption and the new creation of all things. The already in that death has already been defeated on the cross, and the not yet, in that we still see suffering in this world. We still see brokenness and hurt in this world. Holding these together, we come together to worship the God of the past, present, and future, the Alpha and Omega.
Advent, as well, gives us a season to prepare our hearts for kairos time. To look inward. To talk among family: how are we living our lives? Have we succumbed to the flatness of chronos or can we restore those moments of kairos, moments of joy? How do we set aside time in our life not to be productive. This is the heart of sabbath. The idea of Genesis and the Ten Commandments is to set aside time not-to-produce. That you don’t have to constantly produce to be a good person. And that you rest not just to produce more, though that is how time off is usually promoted. There are a lot of clergy initiatives about taking time off to avoid burn out, but the Bible tells us to take time off not for ourselves but for God. Not to produce more later but to worship God now. The bottom line is not the bottom line. The bottom line is that you are loved. And just by existing you offer something amazing in this world.
Take the time this advent to look at yourself, look at how you are spending your time, look at how you are planning your future, and take the time to see where the spaces for God to enter into your life are, for an event of God to take place. God is here. Jesus is coming. We know when he is coming. He is coming soon. Let us get ready.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.