A TIME FOR EVERYTHING John M. Buchanan
Ecclesiastes 3:1-L1 Broad Street Presbyterian Church

December 31, 1978 Columbus, Ohio

* One of the prerequisites for a successful professional football quarterback is
the ability to do something everybody wishes he or she could do; namely, make time
stand still, It's called using the clock; it has evolved into something of an art
form; if you have enough patience you can probably see it performed sometime this
afternoon, For the uninitiated, this is what it means, Football is played within
a time frame, a very specific perimeter of four fifteen minute quarters. The clock
runs continuously except when a player takes the ball out of bounds, or drops a
forward pass, or gets injured, or when either team calls a "time-out", which it may
do three times during each half, The art form appears when the losing team has the
ball eighty yards away from the goal line with less than two minutes to play. The
successful quarterback, under those circumstances becomes a veritable magician,
orchestrating the options I have listed - sending the ball out of bounds, alternating
precisely timed passes with intentional incompletions, and using his allotted time-
outs with such efficiency that the two minutes go on for what seems like a nerve
jangling eternity, In fact, in our household, the kitchen has learned that, "Aw, Mom,
there's only a minute left", really means that dinner may be served safely in about
a half an hour,

"Wouldn't it be lovely if I could live my life like that?" I think every time
I see it happening, No wasted time: every second used deliberately: every minute
packed with significant activity and when things slow down, the clock actually stops
and time stands still, Even those who don't care for football will admit that it is
an altogether lovely thought to contemplate,

We worry a lot about time; about the fact that the clock doesn't stop; about
the fact that time has a way of getting away from us, The first thing we do every
morning is look at a clock - the mechanism which determines every waking moment, In
fact, it is the clock that has wakened us in the first place and it will pace us
through each hour of activity. My watch stopped last week and I spent one day of
anxiety and misery not knowing what time it was, which means not knowing what I was
supposed to be doing next,

We worry, most of all, about that time called "future"; whether we will have the
resources to meet the demands we see on the horizon; whether our health will sustain
itself, our heart hold out, our sight and hearing remain acute, Certainly the people
of Columbus, Ohio have reason to worry about the fiscal stability of their public
institutions, particularly the schools, And beyond that, every thoughtful American
worries about the depletion of natural resources, the pollution of the environment
and the price of beef which the future promises.

Particularly on that curious holiday called New Years each of us is made aware
that the clock is moving, New Years, as far as I can tell, really serves no useful
purpose except that: to remind us that a certain portion of time is gone, that a new
portion is in front of us, And while it is a peculiarly American custom to pull out
all the stops on New Years Eve, I've never been certain whether the most exuberant
New Years celebrants were laughing or crying. One thing is certain; the longer one
lives, the faster the process moves, Children spend much of their time wishing the
future would come: middle age people wish they could slow it down: older people
wonder where it went,

Ernest Campbell, former minister of New York's Riverside Church, called it, in
a colorful phrase, "The Ponce de Leon" anxiety, Ponce, you will recall, discovered

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Florida, but made a name for himself because what he was really looking for was the
proverbial “fountain of youth", Campbell suggests wryly that those of us who have
known the heat of forty or more summers can identify with that, (The Protestant Hour,
Radio Sermon, p.25)

There is no way to celebrate Christmas without spending at least some time
remembering how it used to be and wondering where the years have gone, Charles
Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Past returns to haunt everyone of us. And beneath it
all is the basic human knowledge that the game of life, for each of us, is played
within specific perimeters: there is a time of beginning and there will be a time
of ending.

Carl Sandburg recorded that one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite poems was on
the subject -

‘Por we are the same as our fathers have been

We see the same sights that our fathers have seen;

We drink the same stream we feel the same sun,

And ron the same race that our fathers have run,

The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think,

From the death we are shirking, our fathers would shirk,

To the life we are clinging, they would also cling ~-

But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing."

(The Prairie Years, p,309, Anon,)

And Psalm 90, which the scholars call a "communal lament" speaks for us ali -

"The years of our life are threescore
and ten

or even by reason of strength
fourscore:

yet their span is but toil and
trouble

they aré soon gone, and we fly
away,"

7 Over against our persistent time anxieties, our slavery to the clock, our worry
about the future, the Biblical witness makes a startling proposal; namely, that time
is not capricious, that the Creator God uses the clock in a way that would put Terry
Bradshaw or Bob Griese to shame, that there is, in fact, a time for everything. The
writer of the Book of Eeclesiastes is generally a rather gloomy fellow, but he was
‘saying something very important when he wrote ~

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter
under heavent

a time to be born, and a time to die,

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up

what is planted;

a time to weep, and a time to Laugh,,.

He has made everything beautiful in its own time,"

Now there are some troublesome theological questions which that passage presents,
If God has assigned a purpose for each moment in Life, why in the world doesn't He
make it a little more clear? Does it mean, for instance, that Divine intent may be

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read in everythins that happens; that there is a time for tragedy and sickness and
accidents in God's economy? Freedom - the freedom for things to go terribly awry

is part of the picture too, we believe, And yet our theologians have never been

able to let go of the idea of Providence; that God has a plan, a will, an intent, and
that He is present and at work creatively and redemptively in everything that happens ~
even those things He didn't plan or want to happen,’ University of Chicago theologian
Langdon Gilkey, in a major and difficult work is helpful when he calls Providence the
"divine creativity" in every moment of time, We know more about that in our own life
experience than we shall ever learn in books of theology. Who hasn't Looked back and
known the "divine creativity" in personal experience? Who can't look back through
time from the perspective of years and see those events which were shaped and
influenced by something more than the resources and motives we brought to them? I am
a minister, frankly, because a very unlikely and improbable door was closed on me

one time, and while I am not much of a mystic I look back on that closing with the
profoundest of gratitude, and recall vividly the despair of those days, but with
thankfulness now, each time I sing that glorious hymn, "Praise ye the Lord, the
Almighty, the King of Creation,"

"Has thou not seen, How thy desires e'er have been
Granted in what he ordaineth,"

You have a: story like that too, probably more dramatic than mine, And what
this ancient text invites you to do is to trust your story, embrace it, and see in it
the gentle hand of your God, the ‘divine Creativity'"’ at work in your life,

The Bible suggests that people who expect God to act in the future will be the
ones who see Him and join Him in the work He has to do, St, Paul wrote to the
Galatians that in the "fullness of time'’ God came in Jesus Christ, That's a fascinat-
ing thought, In fact, New Testament scholars and historians have long played with it
and have concluded that Paul was right, - It was the best time for Jesus to be born ~
an unusually conducive time for the spread of a new idea throughout the world,\Con-
sider, for instance: Pax Romana, Roman peace - a highly unusual time in the violent
history of western humanity; the elaborate system of Roman highways which made travel
easier than it had been before or would be again for a thousand years; the dispersal
of the Jews throughout the cities of Asia Minor which meant there was a synagogue in
most communities; and the common Greek language, used everywhere throughout the
Roman Empire, In a few short centuries after the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem of
Judea, a remote outpost of the Empire, Rome would fall and the entire system would
be dismantled. But in its place, by that time, another structure stood - the Church
of Jesus Christ, which for better or worse grew as rapidly as it did because of the
exquisite timeliness of the Bethlehem birth,

That is a tantalising thought, but not an unusual one in the context of Biblical
faith, People in the Bible are always watching for God to do something at the right
time, In our first lesson this morning old Simeon who recognized the infant Jesus
immediately as the Messiah is described as one “looking for the consolation of
Israel", And the very next story in Luke's gospel is about the ancient prophetess,
Anna, another person of faith who expected something great to happen,

| In the Bible people of faith are open to the future, expectant, waiting for
something to happen, /Halford Luccock called it "Living on Tip Toe" and suggested
that "nothing great ever happened without a great many lives lived in expectation."
Luccock who was a professor at Yale Divinity School, suggested further that "only
as we live in expectation do we live at all." (A Sprig of Holly, p.47).

- & =

Certainly the movers and shakers of human history have been those who expected
great things to happen even in the most dismal of circumstances: Tom Paine, before
the battle of Trenton, for instance - "These are times that try men's souls, The
summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink fvom the service of
his country, But he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and
woman."

My favorite is the speech Winston Churchill delivered to the boys of Harrow
School in 1941, "These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days
our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed,
each of us, according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable
in the history of our race,"

Part of the moral and spiritual crisis of our time is that we have stopped
expecting great things of our civilization, our nation, even ourselves, I am convinced:
that, as a nation, we are in the process of making a very bad bareain with history,
settling for survival and relinquishing a precious grasp, on some very noble hopes Like
disarmament and world peace and the abolition of hunger,)And religiously, we have
abdicated - to the sect groups who are the only ones talking about the future at all,
We have forgotten how to hope and expect and, again, settled for the sterile bargain
of survival, Firty years ago D,H,Lawrence wrote one of the most provocative para-
graphs I have ever read, Listen to it:

"I know the greatness of Christianity: it is a past creatness. I know
that, but for those early Christians, we should never have emersed from the chaos
and hopeless disaster of the Dark Aces, If I had lived in the year 400, pray God,

I should have been a true and passionate Christian, But now I live in 1924, and the
Christian venture is done, The adventure is gone of Christianity, (Selected
Essays, p.48, quoted by E, Campbell, ob,cit. p.55).

Those words haunt me every time I see a church in the process of dying from
terminal boredom: or every time I see church people scurrying for safety instead of
standing up in the political arena and calling racism racism and violence violence
and greed greed, and all of it sin: or every time I catch myself looking with
greater attention to the Buildings and Grounds account than the Community Ministries
budget, There is no surer way to extinction for this or any church than to lose its
ability to hope, its affinity to expect great things - even impossible things to
happen,

But how, personally, to live with time, to use time, to enjoy time, to accept
time gracefully, Someone once asked Robert Benchley how he manazed to get so much
done and still look so dissipated, He replied - "Wouldn't you love to know," and
then went on to suggest that "Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't
the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment," (Howard F Lowry, College Talks,
p.121),

Part of the answer is to relax, If God is working His purposes out and there
is a season for everything, part of what the Bible invites you to do is accept,
with grace, what comes at you day by day, Worry about what you can alter and
influence, work hard at it, take care of yourself, but learn the difficult lesson
that life will hand you some things you can't plan for or influence at all, The good
news, born of our own experience, is that God will give you the resources you need

to meet whatever comes with courage and strength and grace, I cannot prove that,
but I can testify on the basis of the experience of being pastor to sick and dnilins:
people that it is gloriously true,

No one ever said that bette than Robert Borwning in familiar lines from
Rabbi Ben Ezra -

"Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life for which the first was made;
Our times are in his hand

Who saith, a whole I planned

Youth shows but half; trust God

See all, nor be afraid,"

Trust God, Face tomorrow - next week - next year with courage and gratitude
and openness to what God is goinz to do,) After all, the wreaths are still in
place and the Carols have not yet faded, It was a most unusual birth we celebrated
a week ago: it happened in a most unlikely place to an altogether improbable cast
of characters, \But God has come into this life of ours in the Christ Child - and
if that event means anything it means that He promises to come again into an
unlikely, improbable life like yours and mine, If it amounts to anything at all
it means that the gloomy Old Testament writer was closer to the truth than even
he had any right to expect,

"There is a time for every matter under heaven,..I have seen the business
that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with, He has made everything
beautiful - in its time,"

Amen,

God, our Father, our time - the days and weeks and years of our lives - are
in your hand, Give us faith to trust, to reach out into a new year, knowing that
You will meet us and challenge us and judge us and love us and save us, Through
Jesus Christ our Lord,

Amen.