Advent Sunday 2009

 
TIME
Have you ever noticed what a peculiar thing, time is ?
Common sense tells us that time is just time: a second is always a second, a minute always a minute ?
Or is it ?
In one sense it is always what it is – did you know that a second is now defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom ?
I didn’t until this week. And it is measured by a series of atomic clocks around the world. So we all know the right time, even if I am still always late…
But I have a sneaking suspicion that time is much more flexible. This has two aspects. The first is the argument that time as such doesn’t exist, it is just a human way of measuring something. It is what we project out on to the universe. Or time is just this present moment. Yesterday is gone. All that is left is memory and debris. And tomorrow hasn’t happened yet and may never happen…

The second is that, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, time itself can change, or to use the technical term, it can be ‘dilated’ both by movement and by gravity. I am simplifying a little – I do hope that you are keeping up !!

Actually I lost myself a page or two ago…

But even if we think of time in our experience rather than in a scientific way, it is not fixed. Think of how time drags when you are waiting for a bus when it is late and you are cold, or you are sitting listening to another strange sermon…

Or the opposite, think how time rushes by when you are waiting at an airport to say goodbye to someone you love, or you are trying to finish that exam paper. Time just rushes by.

Our subjective experience of time is that it is very fluid.

But what is all this about ? Why I am wittering on about time ? Because, as we began to think about last Sunday evening, time is one of those things we think is just given, that we have to accept how it is presented to us by our society, rather than being able to think about it and make choices, Christian choices.

I think all this talk about the meaning of time has got two big connections to our everyday lives.

The first is about the overall shape and meaning of time. If we are just random collections of atoms, alive and conscious for something over 70 years, then there is no big picture. We are here and then we are gone. Puff ! In the great sweep of time, we don’t matter a jot. We can fight to give meaning to our lives, but they are essentially random and meaningless. I wish some of the secularists would be a bit more honest about all this. (Interestingly, except when life is very grim, we don’t feel meaningless – are we just deceiving ourselves ?)
But one of the deep attractions of Christian Faith is that it says that our lives are not meaningless or random, that we are part of a great purposeful drama.
We talked a little last Sunday evening about what we mean when we call Christ ‘the King’. For St John, Christ, as the Word and Son of God, was present at the beginning of time and will be present at the end of time. He is the one through whom the universe was made and will be re-made. That is how we would put it. St Luke, as we heard this morning, described this using the vivid language of the 1st Century, of earthquakes and wars, and the judgment which is the rounding up of all things.

In other words, whose calendar are we following ? The secular one which either believes, hoping against hope, in continuous human progress or more realistically now, in a collapse due to climate change. In either event we are pointless. 

Or do you believe in the Christian calendar, which gives a shape and meaning to the life of the universe and of humankind within it ? Even more, the Christian calendar gives you and I a starring place in that drama as we are part of Christ’s great task of healing the world. Which is true – the daily grind to survive in a meaningless universe or the daily work alongside Christ to heal the world ?

I ask you that slightly melodramatic question because it affects everything else we do. If life is just about survival, then the daily grind makes some sense. If life is really the adventure of salvation, then from time to time God may ask us to join in, to take risks, to live as if the adventure is really true.
Why do we give time and money to the Church if this faith is not true ? Silly. Better to spend it on ourselves. But if it is true, then there may be no limit on what we will give as part of God’s great adventure.

I don’t know about you but I feel trapped by time. There is NEVER NEVER enough time to get everything done that needs to get done, especially getting to see people. It is the thing I am most short of. I feel like a slave to the diary and the watch. But, and this is the second big point of connection: Whose time is it anyway ?

We talk a lot in our society about time, have you noticed ? There was a phrase used to describe very busy people a couple of years ago: “Money rich, time poor”. People have stopped saying that since the recession ! But it is still true. We may indeed have lots of money, or even just enough, but we are so busy making it and surviving that we don’t have time to enjoy it, and especially to enjoy it with our families and friends.

We have been sold some terrible lies in our society. Who would have thought that a major consequence of the battles to emancipate women so that they had equality in the workplace – which they still don’t have – would have been that house prices have gone up so that both members of a couple have to work if we are to be able pay the mortgage or the rent ? Now, I am NOT NOT suggesting that women ought to stay at home, but just noticing how easy it is for a good thing – rights for women – to be corrupted into another instrument of slavery: so our society agonizes about who is actually caring for the next generation.

Whose time is it anyway ? If time is fundamentally Christ’s, then why am I rushing around trying to fit too much in and losing that precious life-work balance ? Well that is for me to sort out, but I don’t think I am alone. Vicars are not the only really busy people !!!

And all this does not include the millions of people for whom time hangs heavily on their hands at the moment.

I think our society has got its time management really badly wrong and as Christians, we need to go back to first principles and ask: Whose time is it anyway ?

I know we are all geared up to getting for Christmas, and this may be easier to do in the New Year, but I want sit down with myself and my diary and ask: Why am I doing this ? Why am I doing this now ? How does it fit in with the big picture ? Whose time is it anyway ?

One the most poignant things I do is listen to my wife talk about her work with people at the hospice. When people are given a life-limiting diagnosis, it is the most profound challenge. What are you going to do with the months, weeks, days, hours of your life left to you hear on earth ? Interestingly there is often a lot of fun; there is even more time spent with loved ones. There is not much daily busy grind. 

Advent is a time for us to take stock. Or perhaps to get ready to take stock. What values are really shaping our lives ? Why are we living the way we do ? Whose time is it anyway ?

There is a beautiful prayer that we often pray at a funeral, and if you will bear with me, I want to finish this sermon by praying part of it with you now:

Heavenly Father,
You are tender towards you children
and your mercy is over all your works.
Give us the wisdom and the grace to use aright
the time that is left to us here on earth,
to turn to Christ and follow in his steps,
in the way that leads to everlasting life.
Amen.