St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday Sermon – Second Sunday After Christmas – January 2, 2011
“Time is . . Opportunity!”
Text: Ephesians 5:15-17
It’s one thing ask, “What time it is?” But it’s something else to
ask, “What is time?”
An opening line meant to get a laugh from a room full of pastors
at a pastor’s conference is when a speaker steps up to the podium,
takes his watch off, lays it down on the podium where he can see it,
and then asks, “Do you know what this means?”
And because I’ve told this to you a time or two before, some of
you know the punch line. The punch line is: “It means absolutely
nothing.” It means sometimes speakers say they’ll be brief or act
like they’re going to be brief but usually they aren’t which makes
taking one’s watch off to look at it a kind of meaningless gesture.
What about when it comes to the end of another year? We don’t
take our watches off, but we do take our 2010 calendars off the wall,
old & scribbled on as some of them may be. What’s that mean? To
a lot of people it means, another year over and done with; time to
move on! Yes! But then we put up new calendars, fresh and clean,
soon to be marked & scribbled on adding up to another year of days &
nights filled with activities, meetings, special times, and familiar
routines.
In a recent column on the editorial page of the Kearney Hub titled,
“Time rolls along. . .” Dr. Tom Martin, professor of philosophy at
UNK wrote,
Sometime after New Year’s, we will find there is nothing novel in
the novelties of another Christmas, and like children who have raced
through opening gifts, we will wonder if there is anything more.
Meanwhile, time rolls along, and each year seems more of a nemesis
than a friend. There is never enough time to complete assignments,
keep all the appointments, or get the children where they belong.
Time locks us into the daily grind. Time is elusively tick-tocking
through our fingers.
(Hub, Wed. Dec. 15, 2010)
So here it is the second day into the New Year, only the second
day on a whole new calendar of 365 days, and the first part of this
first message of the new year is to tell you that, “to take time
seriously is not easy, sometimes threatening,” but the second part is
to help you to realize, to remember & to rejoice that every day of
every new year and every moment of every new day is precious beyond
what we do or don’t do with it because first & foremost TIME is a
gift from God for God to give, or God to take, or God to fill.
First part is to impress upon us the seriousness, the account-
ability, the judgment over against how we view, how we use or don’t
use this incredible gift of time? “Look carefully then how you walk,
not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time . . “
How goes it with making the best use of your time?
In a book titled “Prayers” translated & published from French into
English over 50 years ago, Father Michel Quoist says it well when he writes,
I went out, Lord. Men were coming and going, walking and running.
Everything was rushing: cars, trucks, the street, the whole town.
Men and women, students and merchants were rushing not to waste time.
They were rushing after time, To catch up with time, to gain time.
Good-bye, Sir, excuse me, I haven’t time.
I’ll come back, I can’t wait, I haven’t time.
I’d love to help you, but I haven’t time.
I can’t accept, having no time.
I can’t think, I can’t read, I’m swamped, I haven’t time.
I’d like to pray, but I haven’t time.
It’s like the woman, who with an air of frustration and impatience
complained to her best friend how little time she had, how full
her “day planner” was with this, that, and all the others things she
was supposed to do and places she was supposed be. When the friend
asked to look at her “day planner”, she said to her, “I don’t know,
it look’s like you’re handwriting to me.”
Writes Michel Quoist, And so all men (and women) run after time,
Lord. They pass through life running – hurried, jostled, overburdened
frantic, and they never get there. They haven’t time. In spite of
all their efforts they’re still short of time. (Prayers, Quoist,
Sheed & Ward New York, p. 98)
Lord, where does the time go? Lord, did you make a mistake in your
calculations. The hours are too short, the days are too short, our
lives are too short.
This is the seriousness, the accountability, the judgment over
against how we view and how we use or don’t use this incredible gift
of time? It’s not God’s fault. It’s our fault. It’s not that we
don’t have enough time but its human nature to complain about it, to
blame others for it, to refrain from holding ourselves accountable.
The problem most of us have with time is not that we miscalculate it,
but that we easily lose sight of and are prone to miss the benefit,
the meaning of the time we have, whether we have a little or a lot.
So the apostle Paul writes:
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,
making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord
is. (vv.15-17)
When the apostle Paul writes, “Look carefully then how you walk,
not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time,” Paul is
not thinking of time in terms of what our clocks say or what our cal-
endars help us to keep track of, but Paul is knowing, saying, time
is “the stuff that living a God-pleasing, Christ-centered, servant-
style life is made of.”
And there in is the crux of the matter, not so much that the
meaning of time is tied to abundance or achievement or the enjoyment
of life, but the true essence & meaning of the hours & days & weeks &
years we have from God is for God to will & to work in us that which
is well-pleasing in His sight, for His glory, and for our good and
the good of others around us.
That brings me to the second part of this message and that is to
realize, remember, and rejoice in the good news that first & foremost
the TIME we have is for God to enter, for God to work in, for God to
fill Every day has its opportunities; and every hour, every week,
every New Year has its offer of life-redeeming, sin-forgiving,
attitude-transforming grace.
I like the story a pastor tells about a man in his congregation
who was facing serious open heart surgery. The man was told by his
doctor he had no more than a 50-50 chance of survival during the
surgery. But the surgery went well and the man survived.
When the pastor visited him afterwards, he said to the man,
“You’re here! You survived! Isn’t that great? Isn’t that wonderful?”
To which the man said, “No, pastor, I didn’t just survive. I did
more than survive; I was born again. I’m not the same person I have
been for the past 50 years. I’ve been given a second chance and I’m
going to be different, better than before.” The man’s post-operative
time was for him a time grace & great gratitude, great redemption and
greater opportunity.
I know the feeling. After surviving a sub-arachnid brain hemorrhage
nine years ago, I was given a second chance when I was released from
the University Med Center a few days into the New Year of 2002. And
what a difference that has made on me and my life & ministry. The
good news in all of this is that time is the time God gives us to do
what God want us to do until He calls us home to Himself.
Dr. Tom Martin writes, “Christmas redeems the times; it frees man
from the cyclical wheel and breaks him out of an accidental world
where everything is dying & decomposing without resurrection. . .
It is the joy and hope that the bright star which shone over the
manger of the entire Christian world still shines over the world and
speaks to us of a new life where each moment is as festive as New
Year’s Eve.
So, while we do not say “Happy New Sunday, Happy New Monday, Happy
New Tuesday,” and while the cycle of minutes, hours, days and seasons
seems to remain the same, may we not forget, may we not be selfish,
may we not waste this most wonderful, precious gift. Time is always
rolling on, but the good news is: By God’s grace we have time! God
graciously gives us enough time, one day, one week at a time that we
may do conscientiously & consistently in the time God gives us, what He
