When will these things be?

 Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

If I ask you, “What time is it?” How do you respond? (9:50 am, time for the sermon, etc) Those answers are about chronos / chronological time. It’s the time we live in, day after day. We set our clocks in accordance with a standard set by an official person. If we travel east or west, we need to adjust our clocks to the local time.

We spend our day focused on time – when to get up, when to eat or feed the family, when to go to work or church, when to go to bed, and so forth. We try not to be late, or too early. We calculate how long it takes to get somewhere. Recently, L moved from 5 minutes away to 10 minutes away from the church, and it was an adjustment.

When he walked the earth, teaching and preaching and healing, Jesus lived in chronos time. Of course, there weren’t clocks in the ancient world; the sun told people and critters what time it was. Jesus rose before dawn to pray, he noticed when it was meal time, and when it was time to be home or set up camp for the night.

… There are other words for time, that refer to other aspects of time. The Greek word Kairos refers to an opportune moment in chronological time. Joyce and I had known each other when our children were in elementary school. She and her family moved and we lost touch. Forty years later, she had no way of knowing I had been divorced and had gone to seminary and was now a pastor with a new husband. Joyce and her husband Ned were looking to buy a home in Florida and looking for the best location. I was in the office the day they came in to check out the church near their prospective home, and now the four of us get together regularly sharing meals and stories. Our meeting in the church was a Kairos moment.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus uses what is happening as a Kairos teaching moment. There were some men prepared to stone a woman for adultery. Jesus heard the story, stooped to write something in the dust, and the men suddenly disappeared. Jesus instructed the woman to change her life.

… The Greek word aion, or aionios, refers to eternity, forever. It is a relative term, for us humans who exist in chronos time. For children waiting for Santa, Thanksgiving to Christmas is an eternity. The last month of pregnancy is an eternity. Ten courses of radiation or chemotherapy is an eternity. Getting our home rebuilt after a hurricane is an eternity.

In Bible terms, aionios starts “In the beginning…” as Genesis 1 says, that God made everything that is. As we study the Nicene Creed, we discover that it is almost impossible to comprehend that Jesus is God, from the beginning.

In the West, we tend to think of time as linear. One thing follows another, and is only slightly connected to the past. We remember Easter, but we don’t relive the grief of his death, so we don’t feel the true joy of his resurrection. In Jewish thinking, the present and the past are connected. Jews observe Passover each year and relive the past, so their celebration is a reliving of the freedom found in following Moses out of Egypt.

And beyond that, when we think of time as cyclical, as eternal, we can more easily imagine Jesus showing up in a Kairos era, living a chronological life and dying, to return to the eternity of God’s time. At the same time, Jesus is still God, because he lives eternally as God.

Every year on the first Sunday of Advent, the readings are chosen to help us understand Jesus' place in God’s history. Jesus cautions the disciples, “Stay awake. Stay alert. Because you don’t know when or how God’s reign will show up.” The disciples and Paul live and think in chronos time. They expect Jesus to return chronologically soon, because it is what they understand, even though Jesus said several times, only God knows the time.

… Two thousand years after Jesus, there are still people trying to predict when Jesus will show up. For me, Jesus returned in the resurrection and the forty days between then and the ascension. And then, he returned with the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Through the gift of the Holy Spirit we see Jesus all the time, if we are paying attention, in Kairos moments. I often hear stories of Jesus showing up at hospital bedsides or cemeteries, reassuring the sick or grieving of God’s love. Jesus shows up when we give a dollar to a homeless person on the corner. Jesus shows up when we reach out to include an outsider in whatever we are doing.

We believe Jesus shows up in the anointing oil for healing. And we believe he is present in the bread and wine or juice of Holy Communion. We can feel Jesus touch us with the oil on our foreheads, and with the bread swimming in our blood to all parts of our bodies, from our lips to our fingers and toes.

… Since Jesus is more likely to show up in kairos moments of our daily chronological lives, it’s important that we pay attention, keep alert, to what is happening around us. Zachaeus was a small-sized man, and he struggled to see what was happening because taller people blocked his view. He climbed a tree, and saw Jesus. What’s more, Jesus saw him in the tree and invited himself to lunch at Zachaeus’ house.

When we are actively watching for Jesus, we may just spot him, and amazing things could happen. Amen