River Road Church Baptist

January 1, 2006
Dr. Michael J. Clingenpeel

“An Understanding of Time”

Yesterday morning, as I keyed into my computer the words and the thoughts for this sermon, I was surrounded by reminders of time. The lower right hand corner of the monitor of my computer has a clock which enables me to monitor the time. A battery-powered clock rests on the back of the desk in my study at home. It is a noisy clock. I can hear it from 15 or 20 feet away. The second hand is not like a Rolex that sweeps smoothly and silently around the dial; it is more like a metronome – its hands stiffly lurching -second by second, click-click-click-click. Within reach is a calendar. Every page of the calendar has a cartoon from The New Yorker Magazine. Each page measures time by the day instead of by the second or minute or hour.

Last evening at precisely 6:59 and 59 seconds, a second was added to the official clock of the United States. It was called a “leap second”. It is added in order to keep all of our clocks in sync with the rotation of the Earth. Some of you may have noticed this extra second. It may have enabled you to get to that New Year’s Eve party precisely on time instead of being late. Or perhaps it gave you an extra second’s sleep this morning.

Time is important for us all. We live in an invisible, thin skin of air which we call our atmosphere. It is essential to life and yet we don’t even seem to notice this atmosphere around us. But we also live in an invisible thin skin of time and we place an inordinate amount of emphasis upon time. Time governs our lives.

The verbs you and I use to describe how we act toward time are the same verbs we use to describe how we act toward our money. We count time, save time, invest time, savor time, enjoy time, waste time. In other words, time has value. It is a commodity. It is a thing in and of itself. It is a precious friend and it can be a brutal enemy.

This morning, the lesson from the Hebrew bible was read from Book of Ecclesiastes. We do not know the writer of that book. He goes simply by the name Koheleth. Koheleth gives us in Chapter 3 his philosophy of time. Many Christians across the centuries have found his understanding of time to be troubling. They accuse him of having a pessimistic, even cynical, view of time. I would suggest that, rather than cynical, Koheleth has a realistic view of time. He suggests that for everything there is a season, a time for absolutely every matter under heaven. And then he suggests that time is bordered by two events - birth on the one side and death on the other.

Birth and death are the defining moments of our lives What follows these two events is a series of contrasts, fourteen contrasts in all. Some of what happens to us between birth and death is good; in other instances, it is bad. There is an inevitability about all of these experiences of life. They are all part of the human condition. Over many of them we exercise little even no control. “Nothing is permanent,” he suggests, “It is all part of this cycle of human living”. Koheleth shrugs his shoulders and counsels us to accept whatever comes our way between birth and death. We cannot change it all nor can we even understand it all. It is fixed. There is little hope that we can understand the timing or the purposes of God in the events that take place in our lives.

Some have suggested that Ecclesiastes should not be in the Bible. Yet I believe that the writings of Koheleth speak to the generation in which we live. Not because his philosophy is the philosophy that we should adopt for ourselves, but because I think there is a realism in his words. He suggests to us that there is a futility to building one’s life around success, wealth, power, and intellect. Ecclesiastes points out, perhaps better than in any other places in the Scriptures, just how profoundly we need to experience eternity breaking into the midst of time. Koheleth argues for necessity of a Christian perspective about life. He is right in much of what he says about life. Birth and death are for you and me the two essential, defining moments of our existence. Between these moments are a whole range of human experiences, many of which we cannot control. Life is an uneven thing. In our ups and downs, there are moments of great joy and ecstasy. There are also moments of deep discouragement, despair - even tragedy. Nothing is permanent in life.

In many of the events in life the purposes of God are hidden. As hard as we may seek to understand them, we cannot. But there is, I believe, a Christian perspective to time and to the events of our lives. And that is, as faithful people, we are to deal with the events of our lives with a question. The question is a very simple one: What does God expect of me in this particular season of my life? There is a rhythm, an ebb and a flow, to the experiences of life. And the challenge for you and me is to discover, in the midst of the ebb and flow, the right time, the appropriate way to respond to the particular season through which we are passing, the faithful way to respond.

Let me illustrate with two biblical figures. The first comes from the Hebrew bible – Joseph, one of the great patriarchs. You recall that, as a young man, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. Through his enormous intellect and skill, and through events which we would understand to be the providence of God, Joseph rose in influence in the Pharaoh’s administration in Egypt. During years of great plenty, seasons when the harvest was abundant, Joseph, as the administrator, set aside enormous amounts of grain. When there were seasons of famine, Joseph was able to take the storehouses of grain and share that with the people of Egypt and eventually with his own brothers, enabling their lives to be spared.

Joseph understood that God expected different responses depending upon what season one finds oneself in. What is right in one season - hoarding - is not right in another season, when there is famine and food needed to be distributed. There is a time for every purpose under heaven. The faithful person is the one who can discern the ebb and the flow of the Spirit, to be able to respond appropriately to the right season.

The second illustration I offer this morning is our Lord, Jesus. A great festival was about to happen early in his ministry. It was the Feast of Tabernacles. It was a feast that would cause people from all over the Mediterranean world to come in pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Jesus was in Galilee. His brothers, seeing some of the things that he was doing and seeing the signs, suggested that he might want to reveal himself to more people. And so they urged Jesus to travel from Galilee down to Jerusalem in order to unveil himself as a person to all of the great hosts of people coming to the pilgrimage. Jesus responded to his brothers, “My time has not yet come”.

Later in Jesus’ ministry he is with his disciples. He is at Jerusalem. Again it is a time of a great festival, it is Passover, and this time Jesus says to his followers, “My time is at hand”. Jesus understood that there was a rhythm in the movement of the Spirit of God. There were places where the Kingdom breaks through the thin veneer of time itself. And he understood that a different response is necessary for a different moment in time. And so at one point he says, “My time is not here”; another time he says, “My time is at hand”.

All of us have seasons in our lives. There are movements of the Spirit of God that we attempt to understand so we get in sync with the movement of those times. There are moments when we need to be about training, preparation and discipleship. There are other moments when we need to be giving ourselves in energy and accomplishment to the work of God’s kingdom. There are times of engagement and times when we let our lives lie fallow. That is true not only for us as individuals; it is true for our church as well.

Time is important. And so, on this beginning day of 2006, it is important that we consider that for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. You and I do not have the capacity to control everything that will happen to us in the coming year. But we, as faithful people, attempt to discern the work of the Spirit in our midst. We lift up that thin skin of time in which all of us live and see if we can discover cracks through which God’s eternity is breaking through. And then when we discover those moments of eternity that transcend time itself, where God’s spirit is working in us and among us then we welcome it. And we get into its flow and we let it carry us along.

May we pray together: Thank you for these moments that we spend together. Lord, we ask that they may be moments in which we see evidence of

Your kingdom breaking through that thin veneer of time that consumes us all. Help us to look for eternity in the midst of time and help us, above all, when we see the work of our Lord, Jesus Christ, to know that He is the living Word made flesh, the Eternal One in our midst. Through Christ we pray. Amen.


MC; lmk, mt