"Now
is the Time"
an adapted version of
the sermon that would have been delivered by Rev.
Kirk Moore on Ash Wednesday, February 6, 2008, but instead was
delivered the following year, Ash Wednesday, February 25,
2009 at Union Congregational Church, United Church of
Christ, in Somonauk, Illinois.
|
I love time travel movies, books and television shows. I remember being fascinated the first time I watched HG Wells&rsquo "The Time Machine" on WGN's Family Classics in the early 70&rsquos. I loved the Back to the Future films and even Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. I have read the more recently published "The Time Traveler's Wife" (Soon to be major motion picture!) and have loved television shows like Quantum Leap, Timecop (yup &ndash it was a short-lived series too!) and the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles . And recently, I learned that a real, respected and current scientist, Ronald Mallett, is working on plans for a real time machine. A couple of years ago he published a book called Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality. Spike Lee has acquired the rights to the book and is adapting it for an upcoming movie , too.
Professor Mallett's real quest, and all of the fictional films, books and television shows deal with time travel. And really -- we all travel in time &ndash only in one direction, but we do travel in time. (Professor Mallett is planning to challenge that, but for now . . .)
Just a few weeks ago I preached about time -- using these terms. Do you remember?
The Greek word that describes time is Chronos - the kind of time it would be fascinating to travel forward and backward in but the time that simply passes.
That's not the time that comes from tonight's Bible reading, however. That time - the acceptable time -comes from a different Greek word - Kairos. And that time is equally, if not more fascinating as Chronos.
Kairos describes an urgency - as in high time we got this thing started!--There's no time like the present. In tonight's reading it describes the urgency of reconciliation to God.
Lent is a time for us to prepare for the reality that in Jesus &ndash we are reconciled to God. No more obstacles. No excuses. No worries about it. The time is here and Jesus came to give us live and we have that life -NOW. There's an urgency in that it has already happened and it is happening. Now is the time.
Yet we don't live in Kairos time. We're Chronos people. And our lives are a journey. We have good days and bad days. We are sometimes poor and sometimes rich. Sometimes we have the respect of others and sometimes not. Sometimes we feel like we're really close to God and sometimes we feel apart.
Our Lenten journey and our life journey have similarities. For Lent, we&rsquore beginning a somber journey of self-reflection. We may give up things to help us focus more on what God is doing instead of how much we can do. We can "give up" things that keep us from really experiencing the reality of God's unconditional love. Last year I made some suggestions -- this year they've been updated - about things we could "give up" for Lent
Do you remember them? How did things go? Are you ready for another round this year? What if we took the whole &lsquogiving up&rsquo phrase out of the equation this year. What if we all decided this year that we&rsquod seek ways to prepare for the celebration of Jesus&rsquo resurrection by actively doing something that makes a change in the world?
Let's see what we can think of as a community as we gather together. What will we hear as we listen to God'os whispers? How will we find ways to give our prayers"legs" that God inspires us to walk with?
God can and does give us the ability to do things just like that -- not only in our season of Lent, but all the time. Tonight' reading calls us to focus on returning to God. God has never left . God's never been any nearer or closer than at any time before, but our return to God will help us to experience it more fully.
I can't tell you exactly how that works &ndash only that God can and does make it work. We can be ready for what God does. We can let the poetry run through our heads this whole Lenten season &ndash the words from Psalm 51 that began our service -- will be part of the imposition of ashes and how we will sing as we end our service.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
Now is the time.
© 2009 Union Congregational Church, All Rights Reserved