Third Sunday after Epiphany
Service Date:
25 January, 2009
Mark 1:14-20
This church is usually very good at timekeeping - the instructions a preacher gets when they agree to come here are all timed to the minute for what should happen behind the scenes before the service begins. I often find myself synchronising watches with the pulpit elder, to make sure I'm not five minutes behind everyone else! But St Andrew's isn't the only group to place a big importance on time. Ever since the railways came in and it was important to keep time precisely in different parts of the country, we've been slaves of the clock. Bus timetables, school timetables, time signals on the radio - sometimes it feels as though if the clocks ran down the whole country would grind to a halt.
But when Jesus says, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven is near, what sort of time is he talking about? Is he talking about a particular date and time, do you think? No. He's talking about the right time, God's right time, and that doesn't always go the same way as our watches.
Have you ever played a skipping game, or football, or golf? You need to know just the right time to jump under the rope, to pass the football to another player or to hit the golf ball when you swing your club. If you get the wrong time, it doesn't work properly.
And knowing about the right time to do something isn't just important when we're playing games. Just now lots of people are worried about their work, whether they'll be able to go on earning their living in the job they now have, or if they should try something else altogether. Other people are worried about their houses, whether they should try to move now, or hang on till houses cost a bit more again and they won't lose so much money selling one house and buying another. They need to know the right time to make their move.
There's the right time to tell someone something important, when they're listening to you properly and not thinking about something else. There's the right time to make a choice, when you've found out enough about the different things you could do to make the right decision, and it's not too late to take advantage of the opportunities ahead of you.
And something like all these there's God's right time, the time God invites us to do something new, even if we don't know everything about what God's calling us into, because now is the moment to make that change.
That's what happened to Simon and Andrew, James and John. They were hard at work when they saw Jesus walking past, and he said, ‘Come with me.' And in a moment they had to decide whether or not they'd take up his invitation. It can't have been an easy choice to make, to leave everything and everyone they'd known, but this was the right time for them to go, God's time, an opportunity that would never return in the same way.
When they followed Jesus, they may have thought that was it. They'd made their decision, end of story. But as they got to know him, the more they must have asked themselves: is he making the right choices? Is this still the right time, God's time, for him to act and for us to follow him?
Whether we've been following Jesus for seven years or seventy years, we still need to go on asking ourselves the same question: is now the right time for our lives to change, for us to follow God in a new way?
Maybe God wants us to change an old habit - to make friends with someone who's been nasty to us in the past.
Maybe God wants us to say sorry to someone because we've done something to hurt them.
Maybe God wants us to stand up for people who are hurting because other people are bullying them.
Maybe God wants us to use our money, or our time, or our possessions, to help people who haven't got as much as we have, or to look after God's earth.
And maybe God just wants us to understand in a new way how much God loves us, just how much each of us matters to God.
The more you play a game, the more you get a feeling for when it's the right time to make your move. And the more we follow Jesus, each of us on our own and all of us together, the better we'll all get at recognising God's time too, the time for us to make changes in our lives that will make all the difference.
This church is usually very good at timekeeping - the instructions a preacher gets when they agree to come here are all timed to the minute for what should happen behind the scenes before the service begins. I often find myself synchronising watches with the pulpit elder, to make sure I'm not five minutes behind everyone else! But St Andrew's isn't the only group to place a big importance on time. Ever since the railways came in and it was important to keep time precisely in different parts of the country, we've been slaves of the clock. Bus timetables, school timetables, time signals on the radio - sometimes it feels as though if the clocks ran down the whole country would grind to a halt.
But when Jesus says, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven is near, what sort of time is he talking about? Is he talking about a particular date and time, do you think? No. He's talking about the right time, God's right time, and that doesn't always go the same way as our watches.
Have you ever played a skipping game, or football, or golf? You need to know just the right time to jump under the rope, to pass the football to another player or to hit the golf ball when you swing your club. If you get the wrong time, it doesn't work properly.
And knowing about the right time to do something isn't just important when we're playing games. Just now lots of people are worried about their work, whether they'll be able to go on earning their living in the job they now have, or if they should try something else altogether. Other people are worried about their houses, whether they should try to move now, or hang on till houses cost a bit more again and they won't lose so much money selling one house and buying another. They need to know the right time to make their move.
There's the right time to tell someone something important, when they're listening to you properly and not thinking about something else. There's the right time to make a choice, when you've found out enough about the different things you could do to make the right decision, and it's not too late to take advantage of the opportunities ahead of you.
And something like all these there's God's right time, the time God invites us to do something new, even if we don't know everything about what God's calling us into, because now is the moment to make that change.
That's what happened to Simon and Andrew, James and John. They were hard at work when they saw Jesus walking past, and he said, ‘Come with me.' And in a moment they had to decide whether or not they'd take up his invitation. It can't have been an easy choice to make, to leave everything and everyone they'd known, but this was the right time for them to go, God's time, an opportunity that would never return in the same way.
When they followed Jesus, they may have thought that was it. They'd made their decision, end of story. But as they got to know him, the more they must have asked themselves: is he making the right choices? Is this still the right time, God's time, for him to act and for us to follow him?
Whether we've been following Jesus for seven years or seventy years, we still need to go on asking ourselves the same question: is now the right time for our lives to change, for us to follow God in a new way?
Maybe God wants us to change an old habit - to make friends with someone who's been nasty to us in the past.
Maybe God wants us to say sorry to someone because we've done something to hurt them.
Maybe God wants us to stand up for people who are hurting because other people are bullying them.
Maybe God wants us to use our money, or our time, or our possessions, to help people who haven't got as much as we have, or to look after God's earth.
And maybe God just wants us to understand in a new way how much God loves us, just how much each of us matters to God.
The more you play a game, the more you get a feeling for when it's the right time to make your move. And the more we follow Jesus, each of us on our own and all of us together, the better we'll all get at recognising God's time too, the time for us to make changes in our lives that will make all the difference.
Hymns:
R&S 530: Living God, your joyful SpiritFollow me, follow me, leave your home and family
R&S 515: We praise and bless thee, gracious Lord
R&S 521: Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go
Sermon:
Jonah 3:1-10; Psalm 62; Mark 1:14-20; 1 Corinthians 7:21-31It'd be a lot easier for people like us, trying to follow Jesus in twenty-first century Sheffield, if each moment of our lives came neatly labelled either: ‘God's time to move on' or ‘Time to stay put and get on with your life the way it is right now'. People reading Paul's first letter to Corinth when it was written may have had their choices simplified like that. For Paul was convinced that the end of the world was coming very soon. And Jesus' return would change everything, so the details of your life right now really weren't very important.
If you were in an unsatisfying job, or permanently one-down, the way a slave was in Corinthian society, why worry about it? Paul demands of his readers. Soon there will be no more slaves or owners, only brothers and sisters with Christ as their Lord, so equality on earth isn't really important.
If you're single and wondering about getting a partner - don't bother! Paul advises. The world's going to end soon, and in the meantime you'd do much better giving your energies to God's work than stressing about wedding lists. If you're already married, don't panic! he concedes. You've done nothing wrong; though from his bachelor perspective being married is much harder work than being single, and he doesn't see why people should bother; but either way, compared to living a Christian life in the face of eternity, marriage or singleness just isn't significant. Any of the things that seem really important in your life, whether you're on top of the world or in deep mourning; whether you're rich or poor, count for nothing, Paul says, compared with God's kingdom, on its way any minute now. Get ready for that, Paul implores his hearers, and don't get distracted by all the other stuff in your life, important though it may seem.
Advice like that would have simplified life for Christians in Corinth, if they took Paul seriously; but isn't it a bit of a problem for us, twenty-one centuries later? Doesn't the very fact that we, the nth generation after those first Christians, are here indicates that in spite of Paul's words people have gone right on getting married, producing the next generation and getting on with their lives? Well, Paul certainly got his dates wrong.
But hold on a moment: wouldn't an insistence on dates and chronological time be returning us to the world of clocks, watches and timetables that we've already established isn't what Jesus was talking about when he said, The time is fulfilled? The Greeks had a word for chronological time: chronos. But we're considering a very different sort of time this morning: the right time, God's time - and the Greeks have a completely different word for that: kairos. And kairos, God's right time for change, cannot be rushed: not by Paul writing letters to Corinth, not by our impatience; not by anything or anyone.
Our psalm this morning leaves the initiative for change firmly in God's court: For God alone my soul waits in patience, it begins. It is in God's time, kairos, that things will change. Not that the writer is indifferent about human time, chronos, as he addresses his enemies: ‘How long will you batter your victim?' He wants things to change: yet he knows that the right time for change is in God's control, not his own. In fact, as the psalmist knows, the right time for change cannot be controlled by anyone, however rich or powerful.
Shakespeare makes Brutus, Julius Caesar's general, say: ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.' Such words could speak to modern ears of our genetic makeup, of childhood experience, of economic forces or of many other powers beyond human control acting upon our lives. Yet kairos is different from all these: for when we see it has come, we can always choose whether or not to accept God's power to change. And there are, certainly, snags with taking up the offer of God's kairos moment to change our lives. Firstly, when it is issued, we never know what it is we may change into. Peter and Andrew, James and John started off as respectable artisans with thriving businesses. They ended up in trouble with the Romans, in dispute with the synagogues, travellers who would never go back to their previously peaceful life in Galilee. Along the way they gained new friends, transformed lives, a new relationship with God and life eternal, but not everyone would consider these worth the upheaval.
The second snag, as Jonah discovered, is the other people who have also taken up God's offer. Jonah, as you'll remember, was sent by God to warn the people of Nineveh: now is the time to change your ways, if you don't want a very unhappy ending indeed. He took the scenic route, via fish, but eventually arriving in Nineveh he delivered God's message. And blow me, but the people of Nineveh listened to Jonah's warning! Even the king of Nineveh saw sense and issued a decree that the whole city, animals included, should seize its kairos moment - or whatever word they use in Assyrian - and change its ways. God saw. God approved. God did not punish Nineveh. But what was Jonah's reaction? Far from being glad that his words had borne fruit, Jonah complained bitterly to God that Nineveh was being let off far too lightly.
If we have seized our kairos moment and followed Jesus, if we have struggled through temptation and difficulty to do so, it may be quite hard to see others who have done much worse things with less justification forgiven and welcomed by God. But we would be mistaken to think like that. For just as God's time is not about human watches and timetables, but is the right time for us to change, to live and grow and become more like Jesus, so God's love is not about earning a justified reward, but about accepting the unearned appreciation and support that God offers to us all, without exception.
God's love, indeed, is what enables both first-century fishermen and twenty-first-century Sheffielders sometimes to take the risk of physically moving on and sometimes to take the risk of staying put where we are and surmounting the challenges we already face. And either way, choosing to travel with God through our lives will change us. For though Paul was wrong and the end of the world didn't come, he did have a point. If we live our watch-bound chronos lives, full of human responsibilities, relationships, highs and lows, by looking out for God's kairos opportunity hidden in every moment, our world will start to be transformed into God's kingdom, as by God's lifegiving power we start to let go of old, destructive attitudes and habits and become more like the people God always knew we could be. It's time, ladies and gentlemen, please!
