26 February 2012

“Pay attention to the TIME”
Mark 1:9-15
1st Sunday in Lent / year B
26 February 2012


ATTENTION!
Attention, all you calendar-flipping, time-line-drawing, date-marking and note-taking Nativity people!
I have an announcement that is going to turn your world upside down!
TIME … is not linear.
TIME … does not pass like this … (straight line)
TIME … continues … like this … (circle)

Well … all right … certainly, the modern Western civilization human understanding of time, the way we people who live in this place and time mark things … that’s linear. Things have a beginning, a middle, and an end … and every point along that line of time that we draw can, and will be measured, marked, and noted.
But you need to leave that sense of time outside the door this morning. Check your baggage of linear time … get a claim ticket and you can pick it up on the way out after worship.
Now I say this … not because I’m wanting to diss modern Western civilization and uphold a model held by other equally fascinating cultures in the history of the world … cultures who saw, who see time not as linear, but as circular … cultures such as Native American, African, or Ancient Near Eastern … (well, maybe I do, a little) …
… I say this, not because the church has traditionally seen time as circular rather than linear (the church or liturgical year being the primarily example) …
… no, I’m here this morning telling you that TIME IS NOT LINEAR, TIME IS CIRCULAR …
BECAUSE JESUS SAYS SO.
That’s right. Jesus says so.
It’s right there in our Gospel reading.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent , and believe in the Good News.

The time is fulfilled.
If I was teaching you a Greek lesson, I’d go into how the Greek word Jesus uses here isn’t  or linear time (from which we get the word chronological), but here Jesus uses the word  … which means God time … time which doesn’t have a beginning, middle or end … circular time.
But I’m not here to teach you a Greek lesson.
I’m here to proclaim to you the Word of Salvation.
And this morning, that word is ROUND.
The time is fulfilled.
It’s time.
But more, it was time … it is time … and it will be time again, soon enough.

A word about what this round time is not.
It isn’t “Groundhog Day,” that old Bill Murray movie where he keeps waking up and it’s the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over and over again, circumstances repeating and repeating and repeating.
It isn’t reincarnation either, people dying and coming back as cats or dogs or banana slugs. I don’t wanna be a banana slug.
Enough about that! That’s not what we’re, not what Jesus is talking about here.
It’s round time … circular time … Jesus time … God time …

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.

IF … and this is purely a hypothetical question, because remember, here and now, today, this first Sunday in Lent, time is ROUND … but IF time was linear …
THEN … you’d only have … one chance … one opportunity.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.
WHOOPS! Missed it, Jesus.
I was out having a donut. Arguing with my brother. Watching “Survivor.”
OR …
Or … well, I repented, and believed … but then … I slugged my brother. Cussed at the TV. Had another donut.
WELL, TOO BAD FOR YOU!
But thankfully, that’s not the case.
The Kingdom of God is not about “one and done.”
Because time is circular.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.
And in a little while:
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.
And in a little while:
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.

Thanks be to God for God’s Round Time.
Because Round Time, circular time, gives us continued opportunities … “time for amendment of life” as the old hymnal’s confession and forgiveness service used to say … time to repent and believe the Good News … then, when we “seize the moment” and fall back into thinking it’s all straight-line time, all about us, selfish, self-centered, sinful us … then, once again, the time is fulfilled … time to repent and believe in the Good News.
Again and again and again. As many times as we sin and fall short of God’s good time … God gives us more time … time and time and time again.

I gotta tell ya, I LOVE THIS TEXT.
Not just because it gets in the faces and under the skin of everyone who loves to live in straight line time … because hey, I do too. You’ve seen me enough times fiddling with my Blackberry, checking my calendar, to know that.
No, I love this text because it’s SO INCREDIBLY FREEING.
Straight line time is a prison.
Straight line time tells us, if we’re going to be successful, if our lives are going to matter, then we’ve got to make PROGRESS. We’ve got to move along, become more and better, greater and keep improving, ever increasing, whether that’s in our number of Facebook friends or in our bank accounts or on those reports I turn in every year to the Bishop.
But “every day in every way, we’re getting better and better” is no way to live.
Because it’s a lie. “Every day in every way, we’re getting better and better” leaves no room for discussion … questioning … changing course … waiting for a season. It’s all about “improvement,” and anything other than “improvement” is seen as “failure.”
And that’s a lie. Because it’s not, we can’t always be “every day in every way, we’re getting better and better.” Every day in every way, we’re getting … older … balder … fatter … you name it … the best friend and closest companion of linear time is decay, destruction … death.
Little, daily deaths, coming in separation from others … because for one to have more and better, someone else has to have less and worse, and that leads to jealousy and envy and greed and cutoffs between people and between nations.
And then the big death. The looming cloud at the end of our lives which is the ultimate separation … the separation from everything … emptiness … nothingness … the final God-forsaken vacuum.
No wonder Jesus, seeing that final blackness from the cross, cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The end of his linear time was a dark, cold, empty Dead End … as death is for all of creation.
Linear time ends … in separation from everything.
BECAUSE NOTHING LASTS FOREVER.
Every note, every calendar page or mark, every work, everything behind us on our own individual timelines … once linear time runs out for us … they run out as well … and soon enough, we’re just a memory, and then, forgotten.
That’s all folks!
LINEAR TIME IS NO WAY TO LIVE. It’s a way to DIE.
Jesus does not want death for us. Jesus wants life for us. God the Father wants life for us. So much so that he yanked Jesus out of the emptiness, the abyss of nothingness and separation that is the end of linear time, so that he would be with him, alive and free, in his, the Father’s good and gracious time, which is also FOR YOU.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.

The time is fulfilled, child of God, wandering in the desert of straight-line time; come, be drowned daily in the Word of hope and promise, the Word of your Baptism … beloved child of God, you are mine forever, and nothing can separate you from me.
The time is fulfilled, child of God, wandering and wasting in the desert of straight-line time; come, eat and drink in my Word of hope and promise, the Word of my meal, for you … beloved child of God, be filled with faith, hope, forgiveness and life … strengthened for the journey … and sent out to serve and share with my world.
The time is fulfilled. So pay attention as you walk your daily walk in straight line time, pay attention for the in-breaking of circular time, of Jesus-time … the time is fulfilled … pay attention to those kairos moments in the midst of a chronos world … pay attention, because they come, they come … Jesus says they come, and he brings them …
Pay attention for the moments of repentance. Repentance which isn’t always on- your- knees- I’m- sorry. But repentance, which in circular time simply means … Stop. Observe.
Observe your own life, and where it intersects with others.
Reflect. Does your life show forth Jesus?
Discuss. Discuss, because relationship can only be renewed in relationship.
Then, believe. Believe, which is all about being rescued from our life-deserts, being drowned in our Baptism, again and again, being fed at Jesus’ table, again and again. Listen to his voice in your life. How does Jesus call me to be, here and now? Plan, account, and act … receive Jesus’ gracious forgiveness, and then live it out, bringing circular time into the linear, bringing Jesus time into, to and for, the world stuck in linear time … into the world on its way into hopeless separation and death … YOU, bring hope … and love … and life.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.

It’s TIME.
So what are YOU going to do now?