Sermon: “Time (Not) in a Bottle”
Wayne McLaughlin
December 6, 2020 – Second Sunday of Advent
Leeds Presbyterian Church
Isaiah 40:1-11
40:1 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
40:2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
40:3 A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
40:4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
40:5 Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
40:6 A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.
40:7 The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.
40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
40:9 Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, "Here is your God!"
40:10 See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
40:11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
85:1 LORD, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
85:2 You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin. Selah
85:8 Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
85:9 Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.
85:10 Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
85:11 Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
85:12 The LORD will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.
85:13 Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.
2 Peter 3.8-15a
3:8 But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.
3:9 The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.
3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.
3:11 Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness,
3:12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?
3:13 But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
3:14 Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish;
3:15a and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him.
SERMON TEXT:
God’s Time
It was 1970. The singer, Jim Croce found out his wife was pregnant just before he went out on tour. He was inspired to write a song. He called it “Time in a Bottle.”
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
'Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I'd save every day like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with
The author of 2nd Peter (whom I’ll refer to as “Peter,” though it was probably a much later writer) is concerned with “time.” It’s been a long time since Jesus was executed, then showed up alive again, then left the earth, promising to come back. In fact, it’s been about seventy years. His followers had been saying that he would return soon. When people who were not part of the Church heard them saying that his return was imminent, they scoffed; they made fun of them.
“Soon, you say? Why, it’s been seventy years already. What’s the delay?”
Peter starts out by saying, Look, our view of time and God’s view of time are totally different. Peter quotes Psalm 90:
With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.
God’s watch doesn’t work like our watches. Time is nothing to God. What we think is a long time is only a snap of the finger to God. We humans experience time as past, present, and future. But for God it is always NOW. There is no past or future to God. We are limited by the passing of time. God is not.
The Season of Advent plays with “time.” It’s a little confusing. In this season we anticipate something that has already happened! We wait for the birth of Christ. But Christ has already been born. We anticipate a past event! If that doesn’t confuse you, you’re not paying attention.
Inner Time
Think of it like this: The nativity is both a past event and an ongoing existential reality. What happened two thousand years ago is an outward event that has meaning only if we allow it to become an inward reality for us. We are preparing to internalize the Birth and its power.
The 14th century Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, used to say that each of us must become Mary—we have to let Christ be born in us if the power of Christmas is going to affect our lives. When the birth of Christ takes places within us, the result according to Eckhart is that wherever you look, “Everything stands for God, and you see only God in all the world.”
Eckhart’s mystical language is not the kind of vocabulary we usually hear today. Nevertheless, allow him to instruct us:
The birth takes place …
“in the purest thing that the soul is capable of, in the noblest part,… in the very essence of the soul which is the soul’s most secret part,” its “silent middle” into which “no image or form of activity from outside can enter…. Here God enters the soul.”
And how do we prepare for this inner birth? Eckhart says it is by “utter passivity.” The soul must be “empty, unencumbered, free.” You must “come to a forgetting and not-knowing. There must be a stillness and a silence for the Word to make itself heard.”
To translate all of that mystical language into 21st century terminology—the meaning of Christmas only becomes real to us if we (1) allow our minds to be silent and calm; (2) acknowledge that God is a mystery beyond our understanding; (3) empty our egos by serving others instead of living selfishly; (4) making room for the Sacred and the Holy in the center of our being.
When Christ is born within us everything shines with the light of God. The whole world looks different. We see every person as our sister or brother. We see Nature as part of who we are.
We don’t have to become mystics in our preparation for the interior nativity. We simply need to slow down, be still, and surrender to the Holy Spirit. To be Mary in a Martha-world is the spirit of Advent.
St. Paul speaks of this inner birth when he writes to the Galatians:
My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, I wish I were present with you now (Gal. 4.19-20).
He’s says: I’m feeling a birth taking place in me as I work toward the gestation of Christ in you.
What this season asks of us is
to take a past event,
the birth of Christ,
and make it happen again in our hearts.
We are invited to allow Christ
to be born again inwardly.
We have to make room in the Inn
of our souls so that
Christ can be born again in us.
When we allow this to happen,
then Christmas becomes something more
than bright lights and continuous music
and shopping online.
It becomes a real, inner spiritual reality
of Newness, Hope, and Peace.
The Slow Work
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Catholic Priest, a Jesuit, and a scientist—a paleontologist. His writings are creative, poetic, and a little mystical. He combined a scientific sensibility with a spiritual ambience. In his correspondence with a young man he wrote:
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
I love that first line: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”
Our universe came into existence about 13.8 billion years ago. About 9 billion years went by until our planet came into being: the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. It took another billion years for life to appear on the earth. It took another 3.499999 billion years until humans came on the scene.
I repeat. The universe has been around for over 13 billion years. We humans didn’t evolve into our species until 100,000 or maybe 300,000 years ago. What took so long? Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
Peter said to the scoffers: God is patient. God is in no hurry. We, in the 21st century, with our knowledge of the cosmos can put that into perspective. We too can say, God is patient. Astrophysics and Evolution agree with Peter: God is patient.
Therefore, if we are godly people, we will imitate God—we will be patient. We will learn to wait calmly, without being antsy.
This liturgical season invites us to double down on our practice of patience—one of the disciplines of the Christian life. This is a time to learn to trust in the slow work of God.
We cannot do what Jim Croce suggests—we cannot put time in a bottle. But another song writer named David says in Psalm 31: My times are in your hand (Ps. 31.15). If we put our time and our lives into the hands of God, we don’t have to worry about anything.
The Fire
I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about time, and I should probably stop right there. After all, I know some of you are thinking about time—you’re asking yourself, How much more time is this sermon going to last? I can sympathize. I listen to some sermons and ask the same thing.
But I feel like I should at least say something about the fire. Peter scares a lot of people with his talk of how the world is going to end by being burned up. He writes:
and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire… the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire.
Poetry. Think poetry. Think philosophical poetry. In the first century the major philosophical schools of thought were Epicureanism and Stoicism. The Stoics taught that one day the world would end by burning up. Then it would be created again. After a while it would end by burning up. Then it would be created again. And so on, and so on. That was a widely held belief in the Roman Empire.
I think what Peter is doing in his letter is simply taking the cultural language of the day and using it symbolically to get his message across. He takes the commonly held belief and mixes it with the Biblical message which is the creation of a New Heaven and a New Earth, which is language that comes from Isaiah, and is repeated several times in the New Testament.
Did you know that the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace” makes an allusion to the “fire” in 2nd Peter? Yeah. There are two verses in that hymn that we never sing.
The first verse begins: Amazing grace! How sweet the sound…
The second verse begins: ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear…
The third verse says: Through many dangers, toils, and snares…
The fourth verse: The Lord has promised good to me…
The fifth verse, which we never sing, says:
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
The sixth verse (which we don't sing) alludes to 2nd Peter:
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.
“The earth shall soon dissolve like snow.” Peter says: “and the elements will be dissolved with fire.”
Amazing grace! The world will be dissolved! Poetic language for the transforming power of God’s grace. The snow will be dissolved so that the Eternal Spring can come.
I think the “fiery” terminology Peter uses is poetic language pointing to a transformation that will take place. After all, “fire” is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. When we Christians think about the “end of time,” we don’t need to be scared. What God promises us is a transformed world where life will continue in a pleasant manner.
Remember what the Westminster Catechism says? The chief end of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy God forever. We are going to enjoy God. The life to come will have continuity with this life, except it will be more enjoyable. When Peter speaks of the burning fire, I think he means positive transformation that will come about by the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing to be worried about, but something to look forward to.
Then, time will be no more. We can’t imagine what that will be like. Life without time. We won’t be “doing time.” We will be enjoying God, and enjoying each other, and enjoying good music, and enjoying so much more than we can enjoy here and now.
This season invites us to internalize the birth of Christ and to anticipate the birth of a New World in the future.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, Trust the slow work of God. Trust the transforming work of God. Trust the God who comforts his people. Trust the amazing grace of God.
Now it’s time to put this sermon in a bottle and let it age.
