Getting Your Clock Cleaned April 3, 2011 Fourth Sunday Of Lent, Year A Ephesians 5.8-20

            Wasting time was once against the law in Massachusetts. The statute decreed that “no person, householder or other shall spend his time idly or unprofitably, under pain of such punishment as the court shall think meet to inflict.” This was in 1663; Facebook has made the statute unenforceable.

            Paul admonishes the Ephesians from within a world of moral clarity and takes the proper investment of time as a major test case.

            In verses five through eight he sets forth a series of stark ethical contrasts: dark and light, fruitfulness and unfruitfulness, waking and sleeping, wisdom and unwisdom. The New Testament never hesitates to take certain moral options off the table for those who profess Christ, and since we must live in a world beset by such behaviors, clear borders become all the more important. “God too,” writes Calvin Miller, “stands often near to evil – like silent chessmen – side by side. Only the color of the squares is different.”

            But the color makes all the difference. Christian morality has an evangelistic purpose since light by its very nature exposes darkness. We are not good for goodness’ sake; we are good for God’s sake, but we are also good for the sake of those who otherwise would not know good from evil.

            As the alarm clock rings in verse fourteen Paul turns his thoughts to time as a major proving ground for Christian morality. He employs a marketing term and urges us to “buy up” our opportunities. The verse does not command us to corner the market on chronology; the future, C. S.  Lewis observes, is “something everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” A few weeks back the country went on daylight savings time, but of course we didn’t save any time. We “sprang forward,” but we did not, in fact, “lose” an hour. When a white man complained of not having enough time Red Jacket the Iroquois chief replied, “I suppose you have all there is.” Paul uses instead a word that refers to opportune moments. It’s exactly the same thing Nebuchadnezzar accused his wise guys of doing: piling up minutes waiting for the right moment (Dan 2.8).

            Time has no sell-by date. We use minutes to create moments or we wind up with the rotting pulp of once-fruitful hours oozing gooey procrastination onto our souls. “The moving finger writes,” warns Omar Khayyam,

. . . and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

            Shakespeare’s playboy king Richard II squanders his throne and, too late, laments that “I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.”

            Interestingly, worship is the first commodity Paul advises us to purchase with our time. Marva Dawn rightly points out that worship should not function as a sixty-minute megachurch infomercial, and it isn’t even useful for getting on God’s good side. “Worship,” she thunders, “is a royal waste of time, but indeed it is royal, for it immerses us in the regal splendor of the King of the cosmos. The churches’ worship provides opportunities for us to enjoy God’s presence in corporate ways that take us out of time and into the eternal purposes of God’s kingdom.”

            Redeem the time, seize the day, use the crass, commercial ticking of the clock to buy an intersection with royalty.

Time’s Up!

Doug

Collect

Eternal God, you place us within passing time and permit us to exchange it for unceasing eternity. Grant us grace to live our daily lives so that at each second we show to darkness the beauty of light, that a world trapped in time might glimpse the eternal life that comes only through Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

Blessing

May the Lord enlighten you,

            That darkness might know the difference between death and life.

May the Lord awaken you,

            That you might spend each precious second as a sacrifice to Our Lord.

May the Lord invest in you

            With moments made eternal through the music offered to the Almighty God

Who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

Amen.

This Little Light of Mine March 27, 2011 Third Sunday Of Lent, Year A Romans 5.1-11

         “They can have my incandescent bulb when they pry my cold, dead fingers from its threaded base!”

            Well, no one has actually slapped that sticker on his bumper yet but it may happen soon. Civil libertarians, it seems, are up in arms about a law that would in effect drive the globular 100-watt light bulb out of existence in favor of those energy-efficient corkscrewed jobs. Joe Barton, Michele Bachman and Rand Paul have raised the cry of “No illumination without representation” and it may not be long before a mob of Tea Party activists, tricked out in feathers and war paint, dumps containers of Asian-made pigtail bulbs into the Los Angeles harbor.

            Paul reminds believers that God promises to light us up but warns that we do not pick the method or manner of our own illumination. “We exult,” the apostle explains, “in hope of the glory of God.” Glory here basically speaks of the shining rays of God’s Shekinah that left Moses with a God-burn (Ex 4.29-30), drove the priests from Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8.10-11) and lit Jesus up like a Roman candle on the Mount of Transfiguration (Mk 9.3).

            This promise probably does not appeal to modern conceptions of Heaven. “Who,” C. S. Lewis frankly asks, “wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb?” Yet promises of reunions with friends and family, let alone calorie-free fudge and endless TV sports seem curiously absent from the Bible’s picture of eternity: We reflect fully the glowing glory of God’s face.

            Not only do we not choose whether to glow; we do not pick the means of our own glorification. Paul lists three of them by his repeated use of the word “exult” (v.2,3,11). We “exult” in hope – that is, the confident expectation of something we cannot see but which we embrace by faith. We “exult” in tribulations – getting our noses bloodied and our shins barked by the rough and tumble of life because this produces the kind of heart that can hold up to the burning blaze we must one day channel. We “exult” in the sacrificial death of Christ, ultimately admitting that only God’s grace enlightens the blackened filaments of our own burned-out souls.

            Mystery, misery, and mercy intertwine to fill us with the fluorescence of God’s greatness. Meanwhile we believe what we cannot see and endure what we cannot understand in the conviction that we have received what we could not earn. No illumination without transformation, but the death and life of Christ assure us that the change is on the way.

Let’s Light This Candle!

Doug 

Collect 

God of Glory, you give us the certain hope that we one day will share your glory. Grant that we might boast in the certainty of Your promise, in the suffering that is the path to that promise, and in the security that the promise rests not on our merit but on the death life of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, Amen.

Benediction

May God grant you glory

            As you exult in a hope you cannot see.

May God grant you glory

            As you exult in suffering you cannot understand.

May God grant you glory

            As you exult in a salvation that you cannot ever earn.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

Amen.

A Seat at the Table March 20, 2011 Second Sunday Of Lent, Year A Romans 4.1-5, 13-17

On November 5, 1998 the scientific journal Nature published what appears to be the definitive answer to a nagging historical question: DNA evidence seems to confirm that Thomas Jefferson fathered all of the children of his slave Sally Hemings. The living descendants of her four surviving children are also descendants of the author of the Declaration of Independence. Those descendants now argue that they should be eligible for membership in the all-white Monticello Association and burial in the Monticello Graveyard.

Paul argues that membership in the Kingdom of Heaven and burial in the hope of resurrection depend on something other than DNA. The interpretation of this passage turns on the translation of verse 1 which many scholars argue is actually two questions that set up a rhetorical position Paul will then refute: “What shall we say? Is Abraham found to be our ancestor according to the flesh?” In the case of Gentile believers that answer is clearly “no.” Most of us, in answer to that question, would have to reply as did the great writer J. R. R. Tolkien, “I can only reply that I regret I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.”

But that does not exclude us from the inheritance. Paul insists that Abraham is more than the founder of a gene pool; he is the father of those who follow God in faith. Because all have opportunity to trust Christ’s sacrifice, “Abraham,” Paul concludes, “is the father of us all.”

Jefferson heir Theresa Shackleford explains her support of fencing out the Hemings clan: “We are not racist, we are snobs.” She claims not to care about skin-tone, just bloodlines. But of course Jefferson left another legacy entirely apart from a hilltop mansion and a Virginia boneyard: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” By that standard what matters is membership in the human family, not the Jefferson family.

The gospel has no place for either racists or snobs. “The promise is guaranteed to all the descendants.”

It’s Self-Evident,
Doug