BELIEVE – Chapter 18 – OFFERING MY TIME RUMC March 5, 2017

BELIEVE – Chapter 18 – OFFERING MY TIME

RUMC March 5, 2017

On evening, a young lady got ready for a date. She put on her best dress, makeup and even put her hair up in a special way. Then she sat down to wait for her date to arrive. And she waited. And she waited. And she waited for more than an hour and a half for her date. Disappointed, the she decided she had been stood up.

She changed from her dinner dress into pajamas and slippers, fixed some popcorn, and resigned herself to an evening of TV.

No sooner had she flopped down in front of the TV than her doorbell rang. There stood her date. He took one look at her and gasped, “I’m two hours late... and you’re still not ready?”

•           Time: we all struggle with time, don’t we? I am not alone am I?

•           How many of you struggle with being late at times?

•           How many struggle with procrastination?

•           How many wish you had more time or a better handle on your time?

One more question... How many feel that what we do with our time is a spiritual issue? I believe it is.

Even the way I asked the question betrays a problem. I said “our” time. The first thing we have to acknowledge is that like every other good gift, time belongs to God. Time is a sacred gift of creation. Therefore, how we use it is a spiritual issue.

This week’s spiritual practice in Chapter 17 of BELIEVE is called “offering my time.”

 In Greek, the language of the New Testament, there are two words used for time. One was chronos. It is what we think of first when we think of time. It is sequential time, or chronological time. It is time in minutes and seconds. It is measurable with clocks and calendars.

God created chronos time, but we are the ones who have enslaved ourselves to it. Time for a moment of honesty. Am I the only one that sneaks a look at their watch as the sermon starts? Probably not. Why? Because we are obsessed with time

How many of you feel like you live by your calendar? How many of you get nervous or upset if someone shows up late, or something starts late? Even if you are immune, as a culture, we are enslaved to time: Schedules, and alarms, and calendars, and tardy bells, and election cycles, sleep deprivation, unused vacation, overtime, thousands of time saving devices, volumes on time management, and deadlines… think about that, “DEADlines”… what does that say about us?

There is nothing wrong with tools like alarms and calendars and todo lists and all of that. (At least I hope there isn’t!) Unless… unless or until… the tools become our masters. Time is a gift to us… not something meant to oppress us or rule over us.

 The fourth commandment, about the Sabbath, is not a restrictive commandment, but a permissive one. It does not say, “Thou shalt not.” It says, “Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy.” It goes on to say you don’t have to work that day because, “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” 

Jesus reiterated this freedom giving, and permission giving nature of the Sabbath when he said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.”  Time and Sabbath are gifts, not burdens. Jesus Says “My yoke is easy and my burden light.”

Therefore, I want to give you a gift today. I am not going to ask for more of your time. I am not going to ask you to do anything extra. The last thing we need is to try to fit one more thing in our chronos time calendars. The gift I want to give you today is a different kind of time.

Think about the story we read today.

There is an interesting juxtaposition between the gift and the command. The Lord says, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and instructions? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath, therefore on the sixth day he gives you food for two days; each of you stay where you are; do not leave your place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.” 

This is actually the first use of the word “Sabbath” in the Bible. The idea was established at creation, but this is the first place the word appears.

•           Obviously, the Manna was a gift of the bread of life. However, the Sabbath was a gift of a richer life.

•           The bread was a gift to sustain the body. The Sabbath a gift to satisfy the heart.

•           Manna was permission to enjoy having enough daily bread. The Sabbath gift was given that we might be satisfied by living bread, God himself.

•           The Sabbath was a different kind of gift, because it was the gift of a different kind of time.

 That different kind of time requires a different word in Greek. Not Chronos, but Kairos. Kairos time is a period of opportunity, a season of significance. When God breaks into our chronos time, the days and hours of your life and makes them holy… that is Kairos time. When the wonder of the eternal sneaks up on a routine moments of life to transform it into something remarkable, that is Kairos time. … You know what I mean?

There are two parts to the discipline of practicing Kairos time.

 The first we might call “the Sabbath pause.”

As you move through your day, there are times when God breaks into your day with a Kairos moment. We can ignore it like a bad TV commercial, or we can pause. And that moment becomes a Sabbath pause.

Maybe you pause at the sunset, or pause for the deer in the field, or pause and notice the joy of the children as you watch them cross in front of your car, or the moment when you hand brushes up against the hand of the person you love and you pause to give their hand a squeeze. Those are all Sabbath pauses. Maybe you pause as someone unexpectedly smiles and greets you, or maybe you pause in compassion when you see the mother and her child standing on the side of the road with a sign, maybe you pause in prayer as you hear the ambulance pull out of town. Those are all Sabbath pauses. Maybe you pause when you consider your own mortality at the funeral of a friend. Maybe you notice a way to serve someone, and you pause to share God’s love. Those are all Sabbath pauses.

I struggle with this because I let myself become a slave to my chronos calendar. Part of my spiritual practice in the last couple of months has been to try very hard to slow down, and pause… to notice those Kairos moments. The Pause to kneel down to listen to the Parkview resident who just needed someone to care. The Pause to see God in the faith struggles of the confirmation class. The pause when I was rushing to the hospital this week, but took time to notice 5 majestic bald eagles sitting in a field not far from the road which reminded me of Isaiah’s words, “they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.”  I am getting better. I have had many Sabbath pauses. But I am sure I am also missing many more.

 Eugene Peterson describes, “Sabbath as that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing”   I say that on one level that only needs to be moment… a pause… that that is Sabbath.

 The other part to the discipline of discipline of practicing Kairos time is leaving a Sabbath margin.

Our lives get so crowded with things and we keep adding more and more and when the boxes on the calendar are full we start writing notes in the margins and fill those up and before long there is no room for God on the page.

Leave a margin in your life. Leave some white space that is just time for you to be in God’s presence as a child of God. Maybe it becomes prayer time… maybe it becomes Bible study time… maybe it becomes time when you are serving others… but maybe it becomes time to just sit in a favorite chair and watch the squirrels while you feel God’s love wrap around you. Maybe it becomes time to take a walk and let the freshness of God’s spirit fill your lungs. Maybe it becomes time to take a nap… yes… that is a spiritual practice too. I call it the practice of “holy rest,” others call it the practice of “holy leisure.” We all need it. That is why God gave us the gift of Sabbath: Holy time.

Let me tell you a secret. None of us is so important to the operation of this world that we can’t take a nap after lunch. None of us is so essential to the people around us that anyone is going to die if we take 15 minutes to sit on the deck and enjoy the love of God.

Let me tell you another secret. If you leave room in the margins of your life, God will find a way to wiggle out of those margins into every other part of your life.

Yes, this too is Sabbath. Time… any time… an hour, a day, maybe even a weekend, when we stop doing and focus on just being a child of the almighty loving creator of all that is.

Yes, I know that God says take the 7th day, but I am trying to be realistic. If I tell you that you have to do a whole day, you would laugh me right out of here. If I tell you to take an hour… maybe you can do that. If I tell you to take an afternoon, maybe you can do that. The important thing to me is that you know it is not only OK, but it is essential that we leave Sabbath margins in our lives where we can just be a child of God.

Yesterday, I was feeling pressured and stressed and I just stopped and built an hour of margin tossing a baseball around in the back yard with Noah. Was I accomplishing anything? Nothing on my todo list, but I was loving God and loving Noah while he marveled at my lack of eye hand coordination. That is Sabbath margin.

Treat yourself to something that really renews your spirit. Something you haven’t done in a long time. Something that clears the margins so God can bore deep into the heart of your life. You will be happier. You will be healthier, and you will be closer to God.

See, I didn’t ask you to add one more thing to your life, did I? I am just suggesting that the practice of giving our time to God… what God calls practicing Sabbath… living in Kairos time…is as simple as being ready to pause to notice when God shows up, and leave some margins in your life so God is not squeezed out.

 Will that solve the world’s problems? No, but you know what? Sabbath will not solve the world’s problems. It will, however, satisfy some of your deepest longings.

God has given us a gift. God thought and thought, and worked, and worked, and worked, and worked, and worked, and worked for 6 days until it was just perfect. Then he said the gift is ready. The 7th day is all yours.

Generations later, God wrapped himself up in the prettiest wrapping paper he could find: human skin and became Jesus Christ. God said I am living water. He who drinks of me will never thirst. I am the bread of life. I am the resurrection and the life. People not only left the package unopened, the crushed it on the cross.

But fear not. The gift is still here. It is inside you. Unwrap it. Take the time to bask in the love that God has placed in you. Take time to relish in the saving power God has offered you. Take time to delight in the joy God has given you. Take time to… take time. It is God’s gift to you.

 “The time that God gives to us is God’s gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.”