Rev. Rebecca Kiser
Does
Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
(Wake Up!)
12/ 1 Advent 1A
Matthew 24 & Isaiah 2
Sometime
around my seminary years, which means the early 1980s, the word “Spirituality”
came into people’s awareness.
Protestants like Presbies and Methodists were a bit wary of the word,
which seemed to have overtones of New Age mysticism and Catholic saints. One
lone professor at Louisville Seminary had been intrigued by the re-emergence of
Christin spirituality, and was introducing things to students. I took his class, and was hooked. Ancient practices of contemplation, silence,
using the Scriptures for meditation, daily prayer, a more liturgical kind of
worship - these excited this former Baptist.
I know the term “spirituality” in these days has a rather nebulous
meaning that isn’t necessarily related to Christian faith precepts so much as
it is to wholeness and holistic living, living our inner convictions, concern
about toxins and health, the environment, personhood, honesty, good
relationships, meditation, inner wholeness - - which, actually, I think have
really great connections to faith in God and what Jesus called living in the
kingdom, or the realm of God. It came to
me some years later that I could do a Doctor of Ministry program in Christian
spirituality, so I looked around and asked our Presbyterian seminaries if they
had programs of study like that. They
didn’t, at that point - they do now. I
found out about a program being started by Matthew Fox, whose books I’d found
inspiring, that offered a D.Min. degree - wow!
Matthew Fox and a degree together!
I signed up.
The entrance to the class location
was upstairs, over some stores. As we
walked up those steps to the program center, we walked into an awareness of the
time and the place we exist in the universe, which is central to Fox’s
teachings. The wall of the ascending stairway
was painted with timeline of creation, starting at the bottom with what Fox
called The Great Flaring Forth. (Fox’s spirituality takes regard for the
science of creation, as a way of knowing what time it is, and why we are where
we are, now, here.) So, starting with “Let there be light,” taking one inch as
meaning x thousands of years, the next steps chronicle the slow birth of stars,
their deaths and throwing elements into space, the gathering of disparate
elements into groups like planets, and all the ages of life emerging. You know where humans come in? The last part of the 20th step, the top
step. The story of human life and
existence is shown as virtually miniscule, compared to the vast timeline of
creation prior to us. Its humbling. It tells what time it is.
Although it seems like a long time
to us since the historical Jesus walked on earth, that two thousand years is
really just a blip, a pinpoint. When the apostles Matthew and Paul refer to
“the last days”, it feels to us, in almost 2020, that its been an awful long
time since Jesus first told people that the realm of God is at hand, the
time to repent and turn to God is now, and to be ready for that great day when
God creates a new heaven and a new earth. People assumed so much that the realm
of God had arrived in Christ that they re-ordered the counting of the years,
naming this new era as Years of our Lord, or Anno Domine, AD. Early believers were full of the expectation of God’s will being done on
earth as it is in heaven already.
Christ followers have been doing
their best, our best, for a long time now, and we’ve kinda lost the excitement
of that first awakening to the hope that a new thing is being born, a new era
is come. Church got organized and
over-organized, all kinds of sorrow and suffering are still around us, all
kinds of evil seeming to win, all kinds of people falling short of our
ideals… It seems like nothing’s
changed. Yet in the great scope of
things, it really hasn’t been much time at all since Jesus preached that the
realm of God was at the door in his very self, that the time was now, that we
who believe him step over that threshold and into the very kingdom of God
itself.
I have an illustration that came to
me when I was learning to garden. Its
about yellow squash plants. Now squash
seeds are large and they germinate pretty quickly, so you can sow them right
into the soil - make a hill and pat a couple seeds into the darkness of
underground, and pretty soon life bursts forth in those first green sprouts,
then the first true leaves. Its doesn’t
take much patience to get to this point, not like it does with, say, tomato
seeds. I now have a squash plant -
- although its nothing like its going to
be later. As the summer goes on, the
plant grows more leaves - I have to watch for diseases and bad bugs, but
basically the impetus for growth is coming from within, nurtured by the rain,
the sun and the nutrients in the soil. All along, I am delighted by my
luxurious squash plant at every stage. And
it is already a squash plant, from the time the seed sprouts. Its here, it exists. Finally the flowers appear and the insects
pollinate it, and little yellow things show up and begin to get bigger, and
recognizable as squash. And as long as I
keep them picked, it continues to bear more squashes all summer.
Jesus’ kingdom, the realm of Christ,
the realm of God, is already here - Jesus was born, lived, died and was
raised again. The kingdom of God is
not yet all its going to be, but it is here, and we who believe are already
in it. That’s one of the things we need
to wake up about, and see, and
claim, and act on. The time is here; the
time is now. We’re in that little ½ inch at the top of that staircase at Matthew Fox’s
school. God’s new realm is here and begun, and despite the way it feels like
long years to us, the realm of God is birthed and living in us. We who are
followers of Jesus the Christ have stepped over that threshold into a new time,
a new era.
When we wake up to that, when we know what time it is, we are charged to
live in that truth. The world might look
like its going on as the same, but things are
changed - changed in us, and changed in Christ.
The seed is planted and the sprouts are up. The night is over and the light has
appeared. God’s new reality is among us
and in us. So the apostle Paul’s letter
to the church in Rome can say, “Wake
up! Lay aside the way things have
always been in the world, and walk in the light of God! Live in that realm of God, live the way God
has called people to live! Honor God as the source of all being! Live right with one another - put away
mistreating others, lying, stealing, murder, greediness, manipulations, angers,
envy, all those things that lead people down wrong paths. Honor one another and look to the needs of
one another, as you look to your own needs.
Live together in peace! Help out
with those who don’t have enough. Believe what God has said, and live like
it! Share the good news that Christ is
here and has opened the way for us to be forgiven and restored with God! Use
those abilities God has given you to help all people and all creation! Wake up!”
Jill Duffield, current editor of the
Presbyterian Outlook magazine, is among my favorite writers about Scriptures
right now. She writes about this first
week of Advent, “...we who follow Jesus
Christ know what time it is, what time it always is: It is time to walk in the
light, put on the armor of light, be the light of the world no matter if we are
in the field or eating or drinking or marrying or working. Disciples of Jesus
Christ are to be on the lookout for the holy already here and surely coming,
the light on the horizon, the inbreaking of healing, the hope of reconciliation
and the possibility of peace ---- and nurture their coming into the world.
Perhaps our worship today can be an opportunity to wipe
the sleep from our eyes, she writes.
Perhaps on this first Sunday of Advent, we can wake up to the reality
that the Divine is in our world and working, growing. Perhaps our eyes will be alert to the
presence of Christ here, in us and among us.
Perhaps its a good time to consider how this changes our living - what
do we need to set aside or take up anew as a result of our alertness to God’s
presence, and the reality of Christ’s kingdom in our midst?
As the passage from Matthew’s gospel points out, we don’t
know the date and time of things in the future, we don’t know the length of our
own lives, we don’t know the future of our country or the world. We don’t know when the realm of God will come
more into fruition. We DO know that God
is longsuffering, that God loves the creation and humanity, we DO know that our
salvation is nearer day by day. We DO
know the promises and hopes of God making all things new.
Friends, the time for us to believe God and live in God’s
realm is now, while we are here and while God’s Spirit is seeking and
calling. God is reaching for us, and
telling us what kind of life we are called to live. Open those eyes! Its time to awaken. AMEN.
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