Mark 13:33-37
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It has to do with time. Last week we concluded the last Sunday of the liturgical year with the feast of Christ the King. Now we look forward to welcoming Christ when he comes to us as a small child in a crib in Bethlehem.
In today’s gospel Jesus warns us to be alert, because we don’t know what time it is. When Yogi Berra was asked what time it was, he said: “You mean now?”
The problem is that we look at the same time in different ways. In scripture, the Greek has two different words for time: chronos, from which we get chronology, and kairos, from which we get nothing that I know of, says Fr. James Smith. Our language does not even have a word to distinguish the different kinds of time that are crucial to biblical thinking and gospel living.
Chronos is clock time. It is not real in itself, it just measures the change in real things. In half an hour your hair dries, the grass grows a millimeter, 3,000 people die, 4,000 people are born, a mountain erodes a fraction, a government collapses -- all in the time it takes your hair to dry. And chronos couldn’t care less. Tick tock, ho hum.
But kairos cares. Kairos is the Lord’s time; and God cares about borning and dying and governments and mountains – and each one of your drying hairs. God’s time is measured not in seconds but in the eternal value of things. Which means that God’s time is not our time.
…In itself, time has little value. As Kierkegaard wrote: “to be born, to die is nothing special – animals do that. The human task is to unify the different times simultaneously.” And the Christian task is to live the eternal grace of the temporal moment. We are not patient victims of passing time waiting for something to happen – we are actors in divine providence, helping to make something happen in God’s due time.
So next time you’re waiting for time to pass: waiting for the light to change, waiting for lunch, waiting to retire, waiting for me to stop talking – don’t waste your time. You just grow old. Make the time work for you: Focus the whole world, your entire day, your whole life on that fleeting moment. All of creation and time, all of heaven and earth, all of God’s work and ours was made precisely for that split second. If we so will it, every chronos can be kairos. [i]
So to go back to Yogi Berra’s answer to the question “What time is it?” You mean now?” Yes, Yogi, now. Now that it is first Sunday of Advent. What time is it?
Well, we might tell Yogi, it’s time, to shape up. It’s time to wait. We’re waiting for the coming of our savior, Jesus Christ; and that means it’s time to repent, time to confess our sins. We’ll see a lot about John the Baptist in the coming three weeks, and repentance is one of the main themes in John the Baptist’s preaching.
Some people find it depressing that repentance means shaping up, getting your act straight. But fear doesn’t have to be the emotion as we contemplate how we are in need of the coming savior’s forgiveness. Joy is a much more happy emotion and, interestingly, that should be our emotion in this Advent season as we prepare to meet our maker, Jesus.
At one point in Antoine de Saint Exupery’s classic tale, The Little Prince [ii] the young protagonist happens upon and befriends a fox. After the two agree to meet for a little while every day, the following conversation ensues:
- “It would be good to come back each day at the same hour,” said the fox.
“If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the
hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be anxious and jumping
about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I
shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you. … One
must observe the proper rites. …”
“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.
“Those are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what makes on day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite for example among my hunters. Every Thursday, they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me. I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”
Now I am going to address the children in the audience. Of course, you adults can listen if you want to.
This is the First Sunday of Advent. Advent is a time of preparation to celebrate the coming of Christ into the world. During this time we will be preparing to celebrate Christmas. I’ll bet you’re getting ready for Christmas, aren’t you? What an exciting time. Children all over the world will be looking forward to a visitor from the North Pole. Who would that be?
That’s right. It’s Santa Claus.
Did you know that if you lived at the North Pole you would not see the sun for 186 days of the year? That’s right. Over one-half of the year would be in darkness. That is a long time. Suppose every day from now until school is nearly out, you looked out your window and it was totally dark. That would get pretty boring, wouldn’t it? Can you imagine how happy and excited you would be when you finally did see the first ray of light when the sun finally did shine? You would be overjoyed, wouldn’t you You would probably have parties and call all your friends and plan all kind of celebrations.
The prophet Isaiah wrote of a people who walked in darkness. He wasn’t talking about people at the North Pole. He was talking about people who lived before Jesus. He was talking about people who did not know about God’s love. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”(Isaiah 9:2). That is why we light a candle at Advent. The candle represents Jesus, who is the light of the world. You and I live in a world of light not only because we live in this part of the world, but also because our parents and many of our friends love Jesus. They have surrounded us with the light of his love. [iv]
Okay, now you adults can wake up. This is for you.
- A visitor to the shop of a local potter was puzzled by one operation which
seemed to have little purpose. The workman was beating a lump of clay with a
large mallet. It looked as if nothing was happening, so the tourist finally
asked, ‘Sir, why are you doing that?’”
“Just wait and watch the results; then you’ll understand,” was the reply. The sightseer heeded the advice and soon noted that the top of the lump of clay began to quiver and swell as soon as little bumps formed on its surface.
“Now you can see the need for the pounding. I could never shape the clay into a worthwhile vessel if these bubbles remained in it, so I must gradually work them out.”[v]
When you were a kid, did you ever find yourself walking home and your buddy was walking quite a distance up ahead of you. And we’d shout, “Hey Johnny, wait up… wait up.” I never gave it much thought, but why did we say “wait up” instead of just “wait.” I think it’s because “wait up” was short for “wait till I can catch up with you and then we can walk together.” Of course, that ‘s the long version, and to our boyish ears it mind sound a little sissified; so we just shortened it to “Hey, wait up.”
There’s active waiting and passive waiting. A girl who stands on a street corner waiting for the bus to arrive will experience one kind of waiting, a passive waiting. That same girl on the same corner hearing the sound of a parade that is just out of sight will also wait, but it will be a different kind of waiting, full of expectation, a waiting on tiptoe, an active waiting.
… We can choose to wait passively for the gift of belief. We can live our lives as if the world were a waiting room, not merely flipping through magazines, to be sure, but generally filling the time with whatever is at hand, occupying ourselves with the tasks of the day. We may assume that an all-knowing God knows where to find us if God ever wants us. Such passive waiting does not require much in the way of our attention or energy. It leaves us completely free to concentrate on the concerns of the moment. Or we can activate our waiting for the gift of belief. We can wait as the psalmist waits: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning” (Ps. 2130:5-6). It is a waiting that is filled with eager expectation. It is through this kind of active waiting, through what the psalmist called “waiting for the Lord,” that we can be prepared to receive the gift of belief.
Those who actively wait for belief will put themselves in a place where God is apt to draw near. To be sure, God can confront us at the checkout line in the supermarket or on the eighth hole of the golf course. It is also true that God can seem distant and elusive within a church. Nevertheless, it is when we take on Christian practices as a kind of working hypothesis that we are more likely to discover the truth in them. [vi]
Fr. William Bausch gives us a final story on staying awake.[vii] When the plants and trees were first created, the Great Mystery gave a gift to each species, but set up a contest to determine which gift would be most useful to whom. “I want you stay awake and keep watch over the earth for seven nights,” said the Great Mystery. The young trees and plants were so excited to be entrusted with such an important job that they did not find it difficult at all to stay awake the first night. However, the second night was not so easy and a little while before dawn, a few fell asleep. On the third night, the trees and plants whispered among themselves in the wind to try to keep from nodding off, but the challenge was too much for some of them. On the fourth night, even more fell asleep. By the time the seventh night came, only the cedar, the pine, the spruce, the fir, the laurel and the holly were still awake. “What wonderful endurance you have,” exclaimed the Great Mystery. “You shall be given the gift of remaining green forever. You will be the guardians of the forest. Even in the seeming dead of winter, your brother and sister creatures will find life and shelter in the protection of your branches.” Ever since that time, all the other trees and plants lose their leaves and sleep all winter while the evergreens stay awake. As Bausch has noted, this tale departs from the usual and customary Advent symbols of light and darkness to speak of greenness in the midst of barrenness and associates this greenness with the ability to remain watchful, alert and awake. Remaining green means remaining aware of our life-giving connection to divine realities, even when forces that are far from divine militate against it. Just as the light in the darkness reminds us of this truth, so also does the everg ¯·> tree in the winter’s leafless forest. Waiting, watching and remaining “green” with a contagious joy and hope-filled heart that can speak to the suffering and sorrowful of this world and remind them that their Redeemer lives and loves and will return—this is the challenge of Advent. [viii] As Kermit the frog would say: “It ain’t easy being green.”
- Fr. James Smith, “God’s time,” Celebration 31 (12): 547-8, (Celebration, 115 East Armour Boulevard, Kansas City, MO 64111-1203) December 2002.
- The Little Prince (Reynal and Hitchcock, Inc., New York: 1943).
- Patricia Datchuk Sanchez, Celebration pg. 545.
- “Hungry for God,” Dynamic Preaching 17 (4) 66 (Seven Worlds Corporation, 310 Simmons Road, Knoxville TN 37922) October, November, December 2002.
- Emphasis Jan-Feb, 1992, pg. 13
- “Relating the text,” Pulpit Resources30 (4): (Logos Productions Inc., 6160 Carmen Ave. East, Inver Grove Heights MN 55076-4422) October, November., December 2002.
- A World of Stories, Twenty-Third Publications, Mystic, CT: 1998.
- Patricia Datchuk Sanchez, Celebration pg. 545.
(Comments to Jerry at padre@tri-lakes.net. Jerry's book, Stories For All Seasons, is available at a discount through the Homiletic Resource Center.)