November 28, 2010
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When I was a kid, we had this saying when someone asked if we had the time, “It’s half passed skin!” We didn’t wear watches as little kids and for some childish reason we thought it was quite funny.
Today, we can tell time in many different ways—all our cell phones tell us what time it is, our computers have a time feature, the atomic clock in our sanctuary is supposed to be giving us the most accurate time as possible because it is regulated by the vibrations of a molecular system. Whatever that means!
On Black Friday, some of you set your alarm clocks to get up before sunrise to shop for the best deals this year. Did your wake up on time?
Wake Up!
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he is telling them to “Wake up! Do you know what time it is?” Most scholars believe that it has been about 40 years since Christ was crucified and had been raised from the dead when Paul wrote this letter.
The days right after the resurrection must have been exciting with the risen Christ appearing here and there, miraculously intruding in their everyday life. But with the passage of time, the excitement may have cooled somewhat. They have been sleeping in. Many Christians thought that when Jesus said, “I’m coming again for you,” that he meant he was coming in just a few days. But now many years had passed. Jesus had not returned yet.
Paul writes to the church reminding them that God doesn’t do time the way we do time. “Wake up! Your salvation is now nearer to you than when you first believed.”
When you become a Christian, you realize that the church doesn’t keep time as the world keeps time. We live much of our lives under the world’s calendar—today is the 28th day of November. There are only 26 more days left to shop before Christmas not counting today.
The church invites us to live under another calendar—this is the 1st Sunday of Advent. Last Sunday was the Reign of Christ Sunday and two Sundays ago, it was the 25th Sunday after Pentecost. The church changes our worldview, our sense of what’s going on in the world, by changing our sense of time.
Have you ever noticed how the Gospel stories locate themselves in a particular geography, constantly mentioning places, names and specific geographical locations that no one has ever heard of or is likely to hear again? When Jesus was born, we hear about Judea, Bethlehem, and Galilee as typical of a God who locates what he is doing in the world.
But on this Sunday, I want you to notice how the Gospels also take time to state that Jesus occurred not only in a specific place but also in time. Think about how often Gospel writers will say things like, “The next day…”; “It was about the third hour…”; “Immediately…”. How about, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” I believe this is the Bible’s way of saying that in Jesus Christ, God takes over time, our time.
God’s Time
There are Eastern religions that encourage their followers to escape time all together believing that they are above time. In Christ, we do not seek to rise above time or to escape time, but rather to hear the command of God in time, like how the Incarnation intrudes into our time. When Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem, the house and family of David, “the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
God intruded into our world and took over chronological time that we know so well and the time that we live by for his own divine work.
Christians believe that time begins and ends in God’s good time. We believe that God became flesh first as little bitty baby, entered time, and died. Then God raised Jesus from the dead and thereby broke time’s sovereignty—worldly time. That victory is known as the resurrection. In the resurrection, our normal expectations of what humans believed about the grave have been exposed and time ceased to be what we humans make of it. Now time is what God makes of it. In the resurrection, God gave us something that we could never have through our own efforts—a beyond time. A time beyond the grave!
And yet, what was the first act of the apostles after they witnessed the aftermath of the resurrection? They went back home! (John 20:10) They wanted to get back to normal time, the world’s time. They wanted to keep time like it was before they met Jesus. Uneventful time or predictable time tends to be the goal of most human undertaking, including the church. We want things to be predictable, planned out, tied down, and fixed in one place.
While Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection all happened in the world’s time, death was disarmed and time was taken back by God. It’s like God turned off the alarm clock on the finality of death. God didn’t just push the snooze button; God turned off the clock and has taken time for his kingdom.
We think we control time—that we manage time, take time for our own ends, that with a fancy wrist watch or an atomic clock, we can decide what we can do with the time that we think we have. But then, time got commandeered by God. God is taking our time and making it God’s time.
In exile, with no future in sight, Israel had her end times become her new beginnings: “Remember not the former things…Behold, I am doing a new thing” (Isaiah 43:18-19). God is taking back time. It is so tempting to believe that the present social order is more real, more normal, and more eternal than the reign of God.
Advent
In Advent, we focus upon, prepare for, and explore the significance of a God who not only loves us, but who also showed up among us, as one of us, as Jesus the Christ. In other words, Advent is a time when God disrupted our time and took it over as God’s time.
When Jesus Christ was born among us in Bethlehem, we realized that we were not left on our own, not as alone as much as we have been led to believe. God with us, God is in our time, is Emmanuel.
So perhaps Advent is a yearly reminder that at any moment, your time could become God’s time. The time that you thought was your own, to live as you please, is in reality God’s. Perhaps that’s the reason why we come to church on Sunday. Here, in worship, our sense of God’s presence often becomes particularly vivid and undeniable. Perhaps worship on Sunday is preparation for God’s presence to become particularly real and vivid for you on Monday.
Can you think of ways that when the alarm clock wakes you up tomorrow that God’s presence can be as vivid and real to you in the people you will see, the places and times when you will carry out your daily life, and the quiet times when you are in God’s holy presence as you are sensing God right now?
You may think that tomorrow is just another humdrum, dull day and then Jesus shows up. Our day is transformed in God’s time.
A man in a church had dangerous open-heart surgery. There are some of you who can identify with this. He was told by the doctor he had no more than a 50-50 chance of survival during the surgery. But he did survive.
When his pastor visited him afterwards, he said, “You did survive after all! Isn’t that wonderful!”
The man said, “No preacher, I didn’t just survive. I did more than survive; I was born again. I’m not the same person I have been for the past 50 years. It’s like God reached into my life and, through this illness, made me somebody better than ever I was before. I’ve been given a second chance and I’m going to be different, better than before.”
Once again, God in Christ made an advent into this man’s life, just by showing up, just by intruding into this man’s 50 years of life and transformed time for a new life beginning.
What time is it in your life? In Advent, we sing hymns like, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” And what would you do when your prayers are answered and God comes, God shows up, and God makes your time into God’s time?
So here is my Advent word for you: God has a way of taking time, taking time from you, taking time for you. In your life, it’s not just the same darn thing again and again, because all that happens in time is not left up to you.
Paul said, “Wake up! Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”
The time of your life in this Advent time, be it good or bad, painful or comfortable, is not completely in your hands. Christians believe that our time can begin and end, can be disrupted, and can be transformed because time is not left up to us.
Hey, friend, “Do you got the time?” What time is it? God is taking over time. It’s always God’s time. Emmanuel!
Let us pray.
Dear God, teach us to tell what time it really is today. Show us that in the Incarnation when Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago that you have taken back all of time for your divine purpose. Wake us up if we are still asleep to believe that our salvation is here and is still coming when our Savior Jesus Christ returns. Bless this time of worship in the name of Christ who comes into the world, we pray. Amen.