Making the Most of the Time
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost - August 17, 2003
By The
Very Rev. James Hubbard
- Proverbs 9:1-6
- Psalm 34:9-14
- Ephesians 5:15-20
- John 6:53-59
(From The Lectionary Page)
It is summer and I suppose that some of you have made it to a beach. And there on that beach you may have indulged in creating sand castles. Sand creations which last until the tide comes in, if your child or someone else’s did not flatten them first. Summer is like that, ephemeral, vacation time to be planned, anticipated only to recognize that it has somehow slipped away without making the difference for which we had hoped. St. Paul in Ephesians 5 addresses life as if it were time slipping through an hour glass. Be careful how you walk, how you live your life, ‘making the most of the time’.
According to a Lou Harris survey, the amount of leisure time enjoyed by the average American has shrunk 37 percent since 1973. A major reason is an expanding workweek. Over this same period, the average workweek (including commuting) has increased from fewer than 41 hours to nearly 47 hours. And in many professions, such as medicine, law and accounting, an 80-hour week is not uncommon. Harris therefore concludes that “time may have become the most precious commodity in the land” [Kerby Anderson, “Time and busyness”]
Paul is concerned with our allowing our life to be given to the Lord, in communion with God and his people. Now I know that is not a very attractive way to visualize spending your time. Lets take a look at that and see if we can understand why not. What does the culture say about the way we should spend our time? What do the scriptures say, and how might we approach this in a fresh light?
The culture suggests that we have about 30 years to make our mark—from say about age 25 to 55. We are here this morning all sorts of ages and I ask you are you making or have you made your mark? Have you accomplished what you set out to do in terms of the culture? And what did it bring you? Family, friends, security, pleasure? And what has it cost or is it costing in terms of trading your time for it? I can answer that for myself. Many of us long to retire to do and be what we want to do and be. It is amazing really, from the middle of despair we often see most clearly what we long for. That despair may be the loss a friend or spouse or child. That despair may be the failure to become the CEO having hit the ceiling at the Vice President’s chair or section management level. For me it is realization that the people around me are not coming to an increasing experience of the joy which is available in Christ, that what I am doing or not doing is not making a difference spiritually in the lives of those I hope to serve. It is out of the middle of that sort of insight that I begin to realize how I want to change.
In the past few weeks our church has had its General Convention. The results have been fearful and for many upsetting in a number of different ways. Old wounds, a sense of loss, backlash that was unexpected and the potential of serious weakening of our beloved church has become a part of the lives of many Episcopalians and other Christians across this country. Personally, I have been in agony. But on Wednesday of last week I was privileged to celebrate the Eucharist on the Feast of the Transfiguration. Somehow, as is so often the case, as I read the scriptures I caught a glimpse of the glory of the Lord Jesus. And at that moment I so wished everyone in our church across this land could catch such a glimpse, and make Jesus the Lord of their lives.
The scriptures are clear. The world, as beautiful as it has been created to be, is a fearful and exceedingly sinful place. From Monrovia to Baghdad, from Jerusalem to Paris, from Washington to Belfast despair lifts its ugly head in the form of lives discolored by sin and rebellion and failure. God recognizing that reality came to this self-same world in human flesh and Jesus gave his life to redeem our sinful, sorry selves. We know that and we come to this blessed place week after week to catch a new glimpse of this miracle brought about by crucifixion and resurrection. But do we ever give our lives over to it?
Last Sunday night Mary Jane and I were the guests of a couple and we went to a performance of "Godspell" at the Theatre in the Park. It was a low budget production chosen, produced and performed by a group of high school and college students And I know I was not the only one who was energized by the message of Jesus in that musical. For the age old invitation from Jesus to love, to give all the pain and the rejection and the failure and the despair over to him rang out as fresh as it must have those many years ago when he did so in person.
That’s what we need to do today, this morning. To once again when we come to this altar and receive the bread and the wine, to recognize that we can all over again give our whole life over to the Christ. Our identity at the deepest level of our being is that we are loved by Christ. Our deepest identity is not our race or our work or our gender, our money or sexual orientation; it is not our level of education or the neighborhood we live in. Those are incidental to the reality that the creator of the universe, the one who stepped out in space and with a few words flung the planets into their courses, made water to flow and land to green and life to thrive. That same God in the person of Jesus loves you and wants to make your life over anew in God’s own image. That God wants to fill you with the Holy Spirit so that you may begin to address each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father. Now that will be making the most of the time.
