WHAT TIME IS IT?

January 3, 1988, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture

John 1:1-5
Ephesians 3:7-13
Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter upder
heaven." -Ecclesiastes 3:1 (RSV)

What time is it? Don't look at your watch... It is 11:20,
January 3, 1988, but that's not the time I mean.

What time is it in your life? If there is a season for every matter
- what matter is this the season for?

One of my favorite prayers is entitled Lord, I Have Time, It is ina
popular book of prayers by a French priest, Michel Quoist... I think about
this prayer a lot... I have found myself thinking about it even more since
moving vocation and personal life to Chicago...

“T went out, Lord.
People (men) were coming and going.
Walking and running.

Everything was rushing: cars, trucks, the
street, the whole town.

People were rushing not to waste time.

They were rushing after time,

To catch up with time,

To gain time.

Good-bye, Sir, excuse me, I haven't time.
I'll come back, I can't wait, I haven't time.
I must end this letter ~ I haven't time.
I'd love to help you, but I haven't time.
I can't accept, having no time.
I can't think, I can't read, I'm swamped,
T haven't time.
I'd like to pray, but TI haven't time."

One of the major differences between this culture and other cultures
is the pace at which we live. And, one of the differences between city
fife in this culture and life elsewhere, is that here we live even faster.

Like passengers in a jet airliner, cruising at 600 m.p.h., we mostly aren't
even aware of how fast we are going until] we Jand somewhere, come down to
earth, so to speak, and see how life is possible, pleasant and productive
even, at something like a fraction of the pace we customarily keep.

It seems to me sometimes that our greatest unhappiness, and our most
frequent lament, has to do with the scarcity of time. The complaint about
how terribly busy we are has become a kind of ritualized social greeting.

“It's good to see you! How have you been?" "I'm busy! And, you?..."
"Busy, too" ~ has become the accepted mode of social salutation. It seems
to me... "Tim busy"... "me too" has replaced “Hello and good afternoon."

My project - in which I invite you to join me - is to swear off, cold
turkey — saying how busy I am - no matter how busy I am, no matter how
tempting it is to establish my own identity in conversation with other busy
people.

At some point in the not-too-distant past, we made a big moral
assumption in this culture that busyness means goodness. At that
point it became a mark of status and importance, to be busy, or at least to
seem busy. And at that point, empty time became suspicious, if not
dangerous,

Henri Nouwen, experiencing our culture from the perspective of an
outsider, notes how many of his telephone callers begin with "I know you
are busy, but...," and muses that it “would confuse the speaker and harm
our reputation were we to say, 'Oh no, I am completely free, today,
tomorrow and the whole week.' The other person, our client, might well
lose interest in a person who has so little to do." [Reaching Out, p. 52]

Church members, by the way, support this ritualized behavior by

saying to ministers: "I would have called you, but you're so busy... I
wanted to come in and talk — but you're busy... I would have told you I
was going in for surgery, but you are so busy"... with what, one wonders,

that could be more important than the needs of the people we have been
called to serve?

In any event, keeping busy is somewhat of an obsession with us. I
love the Robert Benchley vignette on the subject. Someone once asked
Benchley how he managed to get so much work done and still look so
dissipated. He answered, "Wouldn't you like to know?" The secret, he went
on to say, was a simple one, based on a well-known psychological principal.
“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is
supposed to be doing at that moment." fHoward F. Lowry, "A Time for
Beholding," College Talks, p. 121]

Now, it is one of the ground rules of preaching that if the preacher
doesn't need to hear the sermon, he or she should not preach it. One of
the criteria by which we evaluate what we do, is whether or not we need the
word we propose to say to others... So before we go further, let me come
clean. I need this sermon. In respect to this topic I am not only not
without sin, I am the chief of sinners. But having confessed, let ne
hasten to add my opinion that our time consciousness is not all bad. It
makes a fat target in sermons like this and it is a subject which reveals
our own foibles and occasional silliness, so we can laugh at. ourselves.

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But it doesn't take me long, in another culture, to see the value of this
in our own. Our consciousness of time has made us productive. And
productivity is good stewardship... to waste time is to waste a marvelous
gift... in a sense the only thing we really have and really control. We
have become efficient because we value time.

We were guests in a home near the northern coast of the Republic of
Treland, on a forty acre farm which had been in my wife's family for
generations. There were a few chickens, five cows, two pigs and forty
acres of potatoes, and five adults to do the work. In order to make
conversation (on the evening of our arrival and welcome, which was
wonderful and gentle and gracious, in a situation which by nature was a
little stilted) I asked about the farm, how it operated and who did what.
They told me that who did what depended on who was up at the time and felt
like doing what needed to be done. 1 tried again, “What's the schedule for
tomorrow?" They didn't. even understand the question. I love those people.
They couldn’t live there and think like we do. Nor could we live there.
We'd have everything arranged and completed by 8:30 a.m. and the rest of
the day in which to be bored, anxious and stressed. But, on measure, those
kind of experiences teach me that there is value to our way of thinking as
well as the potential for obsession and neurosis...

it is also easy to romanticize the days when life was simpler, when
all our Jabor and time saving technology had not been invented. But there
was nothing romantic about washing clothes by hand, standing in a cold,
damp cellar working with a wash board and tub. Nor, I would submit, was
there anything ethically or aesthetically superior about child care in the
days before Pampers.

And yet, there is some tension here, some give and take which we
ought at least to measure. Every time-saving advance in technology has at
least the possibility of depriving us of something. It has been suggested
that high-tech sound projection, such as that represented by the sound
system in this Sanctuary, has not only enhanced what we can hear, but also
has diminished our capacity to listen and to speak. After all, they used
to be able to do it in these places without any technological assistance.

That was a favorite topic of E. B. Whyte, one of my favorite
essayists, who had a love affair with the wood burning stove in the kitchen
of his Maine cottage. Whyte knew it was inefficient; that it really didn't
heat as well as the furnace, or cook as well as the electric range. But it
was so aesthetically and spiritually pleasing that it was worth the loss of
efficiency. One time Whyte happened on a speech made at a Kitchen Design
Conference by a man who said that we will get to the point of eating simply
and fast... just push a button and peas would appear ona piate... no
preparation at all. "It all depends," Whyte observed, "on what a man wants
from a plate of peas."

There are areas of human life where efficiency and time-saving
technology can be actually detrimental to more important human and
spiritual values... No one in their right mind would wish to return to
the medical care available fifty years ago. And yet, who hasn't observed
the danger that medical care will become essentially mechanical
engineering, with medica] personnel working with machines attached to

1/3/88

people? Let me hasten to add my opinion that nurses are unfairly
criticized, often by people who are concerned about personal care. Nurses
hold on desperately to personal care, they really do, I find. But there is
tension and pressure here. A nurse wrote recently that though she had
entered the profession to practice mercy she had been hired "to be swift of
hand, to help the hospital process its clientele as rapidly and non-
litigiously as possible."

"For everything there is a season" the ancient poet/preacher whose
words are in the Book of Ecclesiastes proposed. The Bible actually uses
two words and two concepts of time.

Chronos ~ in Greek - is time measured from a beginning point;
minutes, hours, days. July 4, 1776 is Chronos. "Kairos," on the other
hand, is a point in time that has a fixed content, a moment which is
especially favorable for an undertaking. "Independence Day" is Kairos.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which taken at the flood, leads on to
fortune."

[William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar]

That's Kairos.

When Jesus taiks about time, it is usually Kairos... "My time is
near — Have you come to torment us before the time.”

"There is time for every matter under heaven
A time to be born, and a time to die
A time to weep and a time to laugh.”

It's a lovely passage. It suggests, with great wisdom, that
timeliness is a virtue, that there is an appropriate time to do something
and that the better part of wisdom is in not rushing it.

There is a time to learn. It was Emerson who said somewhere that
"God screens us from premature ideas... We cannot see things that stare
us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened." Ever try
to show a ten year old beautiful scenery? You simply aren't ready to
comprehend passion, grief, ecstasy - which is so much a part of art and
literature and music, until you've lived long enough to experience some of
it.

The passage also suggests to me that we are in charge of the time
given to us. We are stewards, responsible for this great and mysterious
gift. We are, to use one of the most over-worked phrases in our vocabulary,
in charge of setting priorities

We miss a lot, I think, because we neplect to set cur priorities. We
gel caught in our obsession with busyness and let Kairos - time pregnant
with meaning content and opportunity, slip by us. Tolstoy observed that
only the near thought of death can bring us to a sense of what is important
in life. How sad! How much we miss in the meantime! [Lowry, op.
eit., p. 127}

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In the middle of Miche] Quoist's prayer there is a very poignant
section...

“You understand, Lord, they simply haven't
the time.

The child is playing, he hasn't time right
now... Later on...

The schoolboy has his homework to do, he
hasn't time...

The student has his courses, and so much
work...

The young man is at his sports, he hasn't
time... a

The young married man has his new house; he
has to fix it up. He hasn't time...
Later on...

The grandparents have their grandchildren.
They haven't time... Later on...

They are ill], they have their treatments,
they haven't time... Later on...

They are dying, they have no...
Too late!... They have no more time!

Lord, you must have made a mistake in your
calculations.

There is a big mistake somewhere.

The hours are too short,

The days are too short,

Our lives are too short."

Dr. Martin Marty will be in this pulpit on January 24. Dr. Marty is
the most productive person I know. He is a professor at the University of
Chicago, prolific author, lecturer, editor of the Christian Century,
President of the American Academy of Religion. He reviews books, writes
articles for encyclopedias, creates editorials, and reads so much that he
publishes Context, a bi-weekly commentary of religion and culture. He
enjoys his children and grandchildren, you can actually talk to him on the
phone and every time I attend a Symphony Concert, I see him there. One of
the great mysteries of modern theological education, in addition to who
actually wrote the Book of Hebrews, is — how does Marty accomplish it all.

In the last issue of Context, he let his readers in on a secret. He
knows what matters most. He has his priorities straight. "Daily as I mount
the house stairs and enter the study I see this motto ~ which was given to
me by my mentor and former Bishop...

or)

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“Life is short and we have not much time for gladdening the hearts

of those who travel the Way with us. Oh, be swift ty love, make haste to
be kind.'"

Tt is our responsibility to set the priorities and to do with time
what we decide is important to do. We are in charge, "Oh, be swift to
love."

I have kept for some time a remarkable Speech by a Vale Professor of
English — for a library dedication. Instead of the usual approach
Professor Richard Sewall told the students about what he had recently
Jearned through the death of his wife. He quoted Emily Dickinson ~

“BY a departing light

We see acuter, quite,

Than by a wick that stays.
There's something in the flight
That clarifies the sight

And decks the rays."

He observed: “It's a sense of the ending that makes the beginning
and all that follows therefore, so much more meaningful." “Love them while
You can," he advised, “and never, never be embarrassed, Look at things not
only as if you were seeing them for the first time, but as if you were
seeing them for the last time..." And that's the part that every Person who
has ever loved can understand. "What has tortured me these past ten months
Since she died are the things | didn't say, the love I didn't express. Why
was I so dim, so finicky, so inhibited, so embarrassed? Or were the look
in the eyes enough, the Squeeze of the hand, the kiss on the brow? 1 hope
to God they were." (Williams Alumni Review, Fal] 1975, p. 2-4]

You and I are in charge of priorities. There is a time for
everything and you and IT are responsible for deciding what time it is,

May I suggest that we learn the lesson of timeliness and that
we might begin precisely by telling those we love - that we love them.
That is a priority that Should not be postponed... We know in our hearts
that it is the most important thing in the world. If you love someone --
tell him or her. If you used to tell her or him, but have gotten out of
the habit of verbalizing it - Say it ~ "I love you." [It's really quite
easy and quite nice.

And may I presume to suggest that we heed the motto... "Be swift to
love - make haste to be kind." Don't put it off. Be kinda. Do something
helpful for Someone who needs you.

And may I Suggest that we spend some time measuring the Kairos - the
time ~ and that we find out what now needs doing... that we find that
little bit of truth that is ours and take our stand on it. And further,
nay I propose that the Ecclesiastes passage teaches that - we have enough
time; that those who have their priorities Straight will have enough time

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A little more than a week ago we celebrated the birth of Jesus
Christ. We believe that event happened at jusi the right time in God's
economy. In fact, we believe that the birth is a turning point in human
history, and so we have numbered our days and years from that point of
reference.

We believe that God continues to come into our lives like that. We
believe the Bethlehem birth is evidence of God's continual invasion of time
and space, that God will give us moments of light and grace and joy in the
time to come. In Michel Quoist's prayer the underlying concern is putting
off the matter of one's own spiritual journey. That's fairly common... we
are simply too busy to deal with fundamental matters. And so may I suggest
that among your priorities and mine - is to be receptive to deal with God's
initiation in Jesus Christ and to respond in faith...

How sad to miss that - to keep God's love at arm's length, on the
assumption that semeday. we will feel it, and know it and respond to it...
But for now we're simply too busy. What a pity - to walk through the days
and weeks and months ahead, failing to see or rejoice in God's presence in
our lives and God's love for us.

Michel Quoist's prayer concludes -

“Lord, you make no mistakes in your
distributions of time to (us).

You give each one time to do what you want
him/her to do.

Lord, I have time,

I have plenty of time,

All the time that you give me,

The years of my life,

The days of my years,

The hours of my days,

They are all mine.

Mine to fill, quietly, calmly,

but to fill completely, up to the brim...

I am not asking you tonight, Lord, for time
to do this and then that,

But your grace te do conscientiously, in the
time that you give me, what you want me
to do."

Amen.

What time is it ~ for you? Amen.

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