Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the first Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2000, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipations and drunkenness and the worries of this life.
   -Luke 21:34

     "When you see the trees sprouting new leaves," he says, "You know summer's near." And when the temperature tumbles into the teens and it gets dark at four in the afternoon, you know that summer's a ways off. You know what time it is.

     A catalogue came from L. L. Bean. The cover proclaimed in large bold print, "There's still time!" Exclamation point. I think that was supposed to be reassuring, but it didn't reassure me. It just made me feel crazy. It arrived before the end of November, for Pete's sake. Somebody is losing their grip on reality, and it can't be Bean's so it must be me. Apparently I have no idea what time it is.

     The preacher Will Willimon tells about a funeral he went to once in a little rural Baptist church in Georgia:

They wheeled the coffin in and the preacher began to preach. He shouted, fumed, flailed his arms. "It's too late for Joe," he screamed. "He might have wanted to do this or that in life, but it's too late for him now. He's dead. It's all over for him. He might have wanted to straighten his life out, but he can't now. It's over. But it ain't too late for you! People drop dead every day. So why wait? Now is the day for decision. Now is the time to make your life count for something. Give your life to Jesus!"

     On the way home Willimon said to his wife, "I've never heard anything so manipulative, cheap and inappropriate. I would never preach a sermon like that." She agreed that it was tacky, manipulative, callous. "Of course," she added, "the worst part of all is that it was true."

     "There's still time," screams the catalogue, and the addressee asks, "There is? Time for what?" And the catalogue answers, "Time for whatever you really need to do." Well, not the Bean's catalogue, but my catalogue that I'm trying to send you right now. To which you, the addressee or current occupant, might reply, "How can you or I know that? The time might be very short."

     Which is true, I admit, but short time or long time is beside the point. You and I are obsessional about, clock time, calendar time, measured time, elapsed time, schedule time, but Jesus and the Baptist preacher are asking a different question. They're asking, "What is it time for?" or, "Whose time is it?"

     When a woman who is great with child says, "It's time," everybody knows exactly what she means. If a terminal cancer patient says, "It's time," everybody knows exactly what that means too. Well, even if we don't happen to be actively pregnant or actively dying, it's time for something; it's somebody's time and it's high time for something.

     Whose time is it? It's your time. But even more than it's your time, it's God's time, your time is God's time because you are God's. Surely you don't think you own yourself or your time. I know you don't really think that. You just act as if you do. Because you don't think about it much one way or the other. You were born knowing that time is sacred, time is holy, all days are days of miracle and wonder, and you've forgotten. Not just you, we all have.

     So what is it time for? Time to think about it! Time to make a habit of thinking about it. Time to change one's habits of thinking, which by the way is the meaning of the word, "Repent."

     The Bible has its own vocabulary for talking about this. Time to be alert, it says. Time to be on guard. Time to pray. Time to stand up and raise your heads and look around. And the granddaddy of them all, time to wake up! Time to rise and shine, as I announce to Jane every morning when I fling the curtains open wide and she grunts and puts her head under the pillow. Can this marriage be saved?

     Time to face the music. Sarah is playing some honest-to-God wake-up music today for the Offertory: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme! Wake up, the voice is calling us! The soul of Johann Sebastian Bach reaches across a few hundred years to show us what a miracle it is to be awake, and if he can't convince you nobody can.

     Time to stop wasting time, killing time, marking time, doing time. But be clear about what that doesn't mean. It doesn't mean time to get frantic, as the bumper sticker says: JESUS IS COMING. LOOK BUSY. On the contrary, it might be time to start doing some serious nothing. Time to start being instead of doing. Time to start living, caring, knowing, loving, pondering, wondering, trusting, hoping, connecting, changing, and such like stuff that doesn't produce any results or output.

     And where does one start? One starts by stopping, which I will now do. Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand.