“Marking Time”
Isaiah 2:1-5
Matthew 24:36-44
Sometimes when I feel like living on
the edge, I do something rather radical that may shock some of you – I don’t
wear my watch. I know, it sounds crazy
doesn’t it? There is no doubt that the
time we have is a gift from God, and we are to make the most of the time we
have and use our time for God’s glory.
But sometimes I wish our lives were not so governed by the ticking of
the clock. The problem is not with time
itself, but with the scarcity of it. It
seems as the older I get the quicker time seems to tick away. There is just not enough hours in the day to
get done what I need to get done, let alone what I should get done and want to
get done.
As a
husband, a father of three children, and a pastor, I am acutely aware of how my
time is not always my own. It’s a shared
commodity that is given out as needs and wants and desires of family and church
present themselves.
Everything we do is governed by time.
We have a time to get up in the morning, and a time to go to bed, which
is always later than I want it to be. We
have a time for getting children to school, and a time for them to come
home. We have a time for eating, a time
for chores, a time for activities, and time for pickups and drop offs. We have a time for meetings, for haircuts,
for golf, for work and for play. We even
have a time for when worship should start and when worship should end, and Lord forbid if we should break those times. Everything we do has a component of time
wrapped up in it.
Maybe I don’t wear my watch because I
what I really want to do is break the seemingly endless cycle of the daily
routines of time. Maybe I think that if
I don’t wear my watch, then I, in some sense, will be freed from the shackles
of time. But of course, it is only
wishful thinking, because even on the days when I don’t wear my watch I still have places to go and people to see. Plus, it’s not like I don’t have another
clock in the house that I steal a glance at from time to time. I even have a clock that plays a different
Christmas carol for each hour, so if I’m not even looking at the clock I know
what time it is.
Maybe I just wish we were not so
constrained by the ticking of the clock.
Maybe I just wish we were not so ruled by the god on our wrists, rather
than by the God who sits upon the throne of grace. But that is not always how things are for us
in this busy, hectic culture we live in, where efficiency and productivity is
the name of the game. Everything for us
has to be done right now, right away, because there is no time to lose. In fact time is so precious that preparation
for two different holidays can be wrapped up in a two-day period. Take Thanksgiving and Christmas for
example. What is Thanksgiving Day
really? It’s the day to get out the
Christmas decorations. And what is the
day after Thanksgiving really? It’s the
day to shop for Christmas.
On Thanksgiving Day we are sitting at
the table eating our wonderful Thanksgiving feast that my wife had
prepared. As we are eating and drinking
and enjoying the time together, I made the mistake and asked Jill what she
wanted to do today. She starts humming
the tune to “O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree.” After twelve years of marriage, I should have
known better, and all I could do was just shake my head. Within the period of a matter of two hours,
we had our Thanksgiving meal and completely decorated the house for Christmas. It was as if two different times had suddenly
converged into one moment in time.
On this
first Sunday in Advent, we, the church, find ourselves in this same
convergence, as two different times suddenly come together in one moment of
time. This unusual time is not always
easy for us to live in, because we are a people still constrained by they marking of time the old fashioned way. We think of Advent as a time to prepare for
Christmas, as a counting tool to help us count down the weeks to Christmas
Day. We know that Christmas is four
weeks away. It’s a time that is
measurable, concrete, real, and certain.
We know how much time we have left before it happens. We know what we have to do to get ready for
it. We may even know where we will be,
and what we will be doing when it does happen.
This is why
it is strange to our Christmas-tuned ears to hear a text such as the one we
read from the Gospel of Matthew about the coming of the Son of Man. In this time before Christmas we probably
assumed that we would hear more Christmasy texts,
than a text that is so …apocalyptic.
But, this text is a great reminder to us about what the Season of Advent
is all about.
Advent is more than just a time to
prepare for Christmas, it is a time for us to prepare
ourselves for the coming of the Messiah, not his first coming, but his second
coming. This is a time for us to prepare
ourselves not for the Christmas holiday, but for the coming of the Messiah at
the end of the age. Advent is our time
to reconsider the way in which we are governed in our lives of faith, and to
prepare ourselves for the coming of the
In our text, Jesus reminds us that the
way in which we use our time now has eternal significance and consequence. We can either use it to prepare ourselves for
coming of the Son of Man or use it to carry on our business as usual. We can either use it to make sure that we are
ready for day of salvation or we can remain subservient to the taskmaster of
the ticking clock, and go on with life as if nothing is going to happen any
time soon. We can either be like Noah,
who could hardly perceive the future anymore than the people around, but acted
on God’s word and prepared for God’s promise, or we can be like the people who
continued in their daily routines assuming that life would go on as it always
had.
The problem with marking time the old
fashioned way is that it lulls us into a false sense of security by keeping us
focused on the present.
We get so
bogged down in our daily routines with our time-tables and schedules and the
hustle and bustle of life, that we cannot see the forest through the
trees. Everyday becomes more about
today, than about tomorrow. Everyday
becomes more about getting done all there is to get done in our time, than
about taking time to keep ourselves prepared and in-tune with God’s time.
The season of Advent is the great
reminder that our preparation for the birth of Jesus is to be about our
preparation for Jesus’ return. The baby
born in
For just a mere four hours out of the
next four weeks; for just a mere 240 minutes out of the next 40,320 minutes, we
will gather together in church to consider time itself in a different way. For these four Sundays of Advent, we will be
asked to look beyond the time that we are used to and consider a new time that
is not our own. This is what Advent is
all about. Advent is about the One, who
is the God of our time now and the coming Redeemer, who will usher in a new
time at the end of the age. This new
time will not be governed by the ticking of a clock or by schedules, calendars,
or appointments, but by the One who is now and forever, the One who is the
alpha and omega, the One who is our ever-present Lord and coming Savior. During this season of Advent, let us be more
about God’s time than our time, and let us begin to mark this time we have in a
new way that makes us ready for the great day of hope that is to come. Amen.