Stewardship of our Time
Collect:
Holy God, your Kingdom extends beyond space and time; Teach us wisdom to number our days and to use wisely our time here on earth so that by the power of your Holy Spirit, your Kingdom may grow in this place, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Readings
First Reading
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) -
Everything Has Its Time. 3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; 7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
Ps 90:1-17 (APB pg. 719) – The Message: A Prayer of Moses, Man of God
90 1-2 God, it seems you’ve been our home forever; long before the mountains were born, Long before you brought earth itself to birth, from “once upon a time” to “kingdom come”—you are God.
3-11 So don’t return us to mud, saying, “Back to where you came from!” Patience! You’ve got all the time in the world—whether a thousand years or a day, it’s all the same to you. Are we no more to you than a wispy dream, no more than a blade of grass That springs up gloriously with the rising sun and is cut down without a second thought? Your anger is far and away too much for us; we’re at the end of our rope. You keep track of all our sins; every misdeed since we were children is entered in your books. All we can remember is that frown on your face. Is that all we’re ever going to get? We live for seventy years or so (with luck we might make it to eighty), And what do we have to show for it? Trouble. Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard. Who can make sense of such rage, such anger against the very ones who fear you?
12-17 Oh! Teach us to live well! Teach us to live wisely and well! Come back, God—how long do we have to wait? And treat your servants with kindness for a change. Surprise us with love at daybreak; then we’ll skip and dance all the day long. Make up for the bad times with some good times; we’ve seen enough evil to last a lifetime. Let your servants see what you’re best at— the ways you rule and bless your children. And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, confirming the work that we do. Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do!
Psalm 90
Second Reading
Ephesians 5:8-12 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
8 For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— 9 for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. 10 Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly…
Gospel
Mark 13:32-37 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV): The Necessity for Watchfulness
[Jesus is teaching about the end times, and says] 32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.33 Beware, keep alert: for you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.35 Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36 or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
May I speak….
Have you ever felt “I don’t have time for…” and you could add “family?”, or “prayer?” or “to do more for someone we love?” Hopefully, it’s not “I don’t have time to make enough money?”
For us mortals, trapped in time, surely time is one of if not the most precious resource we have?
Thus, looking at our stewardship of our time is very important – if we look at Jesus’ life and ministry on earth, they were relatively short – the common assertion seems reasonable that if Jesus "began his ministry" when he "was about thirty years of age" (Luke 3:23) and engaged in a three-year ministry (John mentions three Passovers, and there might have been a fourth one), then he was about 33 years old at the time of his death, yet He made the most of His of these few years here with us on earth – He was a good steward of this time. Likewise, we are also all called to be good stewards of the time God gives us on earth, and we’ll be investigating this from the perspectives of our readings...
Psalm 90 expresses an important understanding of God – God is “timeless”, meaning “beyond time”. The easiest way to explain this is imagining time as a fourth dimension [physicists and mathematicians can describe any number of dimensions, so a 4th should not be beyond us].
We know a 3D solid has length, and breadth, and height, but it also has “duration” - a fourth dimension: time…
We can only see the present moment, and remember or learn a bit of history from a limited perspective, the same way we are only aware of a tiny bit of three-dimensional space – we are only aware of a fraction of space-time: reality is infinite in at least these four dimensions, yet we are only dimly aware of the tiny piece we have seen and understood from our limited perspectives of 3 dimensions over a tiny duration of eternity…
Yet God is fully aware of all time, all space, all of the 4 dimensions we have discussed, as well as all others – like the psalmist is trying to describe, God is “from everlasting to everlasting” – in terms of time, and in terms of all dimensions….
GOD IS SMALLER THAN THE SMALLEST & SHORTEST DURATION: If we look in the spaces between the nucleus and the electron of the tiniest atom, the first ever created, that ceased to exist after an instant, God is there…
GOD IS BIGGER THAN THE BIGGEST & LONGEST LASTING: If we look beyond our universe, and all other universes, in any number of dimensions, from the beginning to the end of time, space so big and time so long lasting that it is beyond our space-time continuum, God is there too…
The Psalmist tries to describe this, saying that, comparatively, we seem to be as dust, yet we must never forget we are all (every created mite) infinitely important to God, every one of us, and the incarnation is the proof – God loves all creation, even us so much, that God became incarnate in Jesus, and thus paradoxically limited in both space and time, just like us, to show us infinite love, and to give us an example of how we too can live fully, even constrained in time and space and understanding…
How? Through love… Love of God, love of others, and love of self…
Have you noticed how Jesus spends His time showing Love of God, love of others, and love of self?
Jesus focusses primarily on being in tune with and in communion with God, and on doing what He can do…
Even God incarnate does not heal everyone, or talk to everyone, or save everyone, or do everything while on earth, but God incarnate does what He can, within His constraints, and shows us how to do likewise, knowing that God and only God sees the full picture…
Yes, Jesus is busy, and people make extreme demands of Him and on His time, yet Jesus never seems out of control – he never rushes, or panics, and yet He always has enough time for prayer and He fully accomplishes what God asks of him…
Mark 1:21-34 describes a day in in Jesus’ life: It’s a Sabbath, so starts with Jesus teaching in the synagogue, where he drives a spirit from someone. He then goes and visits Simon’s sick mother-in-law and heals her, before sharing a meal with his friends and the family. In the evening, the whole town gathers at the door, and Jesus heals many and drives out many demons. An exhausting day!
And yet even Jesus does not rely on His own abilities, and spends extensive time in prayer, seeking God’s strength to complete His mission, allowing God to nurture Him spiritually…
Yes, we get a sense of Jesus’ sense of urgency, but we also see how Jesus also takes time to share a meal with friends, nurturing himself physically and socially too….
The Gospels are also full of examples of Jesus going off alone or with his friends, giving Him and them time to recuperate too – one of my personal favourites is the resurrected Jesus taking the time to light a fire and to cook some fish for His friends while they were out on a boat, fishing…
Do you allow yourself enough time to be alone? Or to sit quietly God in prayer and worship, nurturing your spirit? Do you allow yourself enough time to care for yourself physically? Or socially, by spending enough time with family and friends, even as you minister to them, and those in need around us?
A tempting response is to say: “Ah, but I don’t have enough time to do all that!”, but that is a lie – the truth is we have enough time to do all we need to do, just as Jesus did – if we feel we don’t have enough time, we need to first take the time to carefully study HOW we spend our time, and then to re-prioritise…
In our Gospel passage, Jesus warns us to keep alert: for we do not know when the time will come. We must persevere, diligently, not falling by the way.
Jesus exhorts us: Be vigilant! Keep awake! We do not know when the Master will come, and He will come suddenly.
Finally, our reading from Ephesians gives us an idea of how to do this – the author exhorts us to live in the light, and not in darkness. In the context of how we spend time, the passage could be interpreted as meaning we can spend time in two ways: wisely (living in the light) or foolishly (living in darkness).
Surely, we too, like Jesus, can better allocate time to living more and more in the light by relaying on God’s help and guidance through prayer?
Amen!
Rev Gavin Smith
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