The Time Has Come
John 12:20-33
One of the funniest moments
in television came on Monday, January 19, 1953 at 9:00 pm. That was the time that CBS aired the 21st
episode of “I Love Lucy.” Lucy is nine
months pregnant. While Lucy is resting,
her husband Ricky rehearses with Fred and Ethel Mertze the roles that each will
assume when Lucy needs to go to the hospital.
Ethel will telephone Dr. Harris’s office. Fred will get Lucy’s suitcase. Ricky will get Lucy’s coat and then lovingly
walk her to the door and to the cab. The
rehearsal starts with Ricky, in his Cuban accent, playing the role of Lucy in
announcing solemnly that “The time has come.” Each of them then calmly go through the
motions of what they will do—they accomplish their tasks in a matter of
seconds. But then, Lucy appears and
says, “Ricky, this is it.” All of their
preparations go out the window and absolute panic follows. If you haven’t seen that episode, it’s really
worth watching.[2]
“The time has come,” vs.
“Ricky, this is it.” Two very different
ways of saying that something very important was about to take place.
It didn’t take long for other
time-related quotes to start popping into my head.
"The time has
come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and
ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling
hot--
And whether pigs have wings."[3] Lewis Carroll, Alice through the Looking Glass.
“These are the times that try
men’s souls.”[4] Thomas Payne, writing in The Current Crisis in December 1776.
Some of the time references
are stated in different words. Take
Frank Sinatra’s song, “My Way,” (actually written by Paul Anka[5])
which begins with this phrase: “And now,
the end is near, and so I face the final curtain.”[6]
Or there are the words
uttered by Shakespeare’s Macbeth when he learns of the death of the Queen:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to
day
To the last syllable of recorded
time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted
fools
The way to dusty
death. Out, out, brief candle![7]
Did you notice the
time-related words in our Opening Hymn?
You might look again at the words to “O God, Our Help in Ages
Past.” Look at some of the different
ways that Isaac Watts refers to time:
o “Ages past” and
“years to come.”
o “Before the hills in order stood.”
o “From everlasting” to “endless years”—that is, from
eternity to eternity.
o “A thousand ages,” “an evening gone.” “The watch that ends the night.”
o “Time like an ever rolling stream.” “A dream dies at the opening day.”
o “While life shall last.”
o “Our eternal home.”[8]
I was struck by the notion of
time when I read the Scripture Lessons for this morning. In John
12:23, Jesus says “the hour has come.”
That is a fairly literal translation; a number of English translations
(such as the Common English Bible)
translate it as “The time has come.” And
the passage that we read from Jeremiah
31:31, that introduces God’s “New Covenant,” begins with this phrase, “The
time is coming, declares the Lord.”
As I looked into this
question further, I began to find a number of different ways that the Bible
speaks about time.
There is what we call
“chronos” time. Chronos time is
chronological—as in calling to your children at the beginning of a day, “it is
time to wake up.”
But notice how those same
words mean something very different when we speak poetically about the
daffodils poking through the ground, “it’s time to wake up.” We are referring now to a season—something
that recurs over and over.
And yet that same phrase
still means something very different when spoken to a teenager who needs some
motivation: “it is time to wake
up.” Same word, but we are no longer
talking about a clock. We are talking now
about “kairos” time—God’s time, appointed time.
This is the time about which Frank Sinatra sang when he crooned about
“the end is near.”
One way is that I am starting
to think of chronos time as a segment of kairos time. What do I mean by that? We have a limited portion of eternity in
which we enjoy this physical life. In
the overall span of eternity, our little bit of kairos time is our chronos
time. Our chronos time corresponds to
our finiteness, our limits as human beings.
God’s kairos time is unlimited. “A day with the Lord is like a thousand years
and a thousand years is like a day.” (2
Peter 3:8). Maybe that is why the Gospel
of John can begin with those poetic words:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word
was God. (John 1:1).
Or maybe, to continue the
geometric metaphor, our chronos time runs parallel to God’s kronos time. And every once in a while, they
intersect. Maybe even run together.
We see this in the life of
Jesus. Frequently in the first third of
the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus using another time word when he says, “my
hour has not yet come.” (See John 2:4).
What spiritual lessons can we
draw from all of this discussion about time?
1.
First, we can
remember that Jesus, as the Christ, the Word, was with God in eternal
time. “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John
1:1-2).
2.
When God became
man, incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, God entered chronos time. That is why we can read in Luke 2 that “the child grew and became
strong…” When we live in chronos time,
we are subject to the finiteness of being human. But that is not all bad; because with
chronos, with our humanity, we have opportunity for growth. We can look at freedom. We can look at love.
3.
Living in chronos
has its challenges. We also are subject
to weakness. We are subject to
fear. For example, Jesus pointed out in
today’s reading that he was troubled by the approach of His “hour.” “Now I am deeply troubled. What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, of this is the reason I have come to this
time.” (John 12:27).
4.
Jesus was very
conscious of his mission and his allotted time.
He knew when his hour had not yet come; but he also knew what it had
arrived. In John 17, when Jesus offers his prayer for his disicples, he begins
with the words “Father, the hour has come.”
(John 17:1). It was His appointed time.
5.
When Jesus’ hour
had come, he did not run away from it or evade it. He did not pray to be saved from it; rather,
He prayed, “Father, glorify your name.”
(John 12:28).
6.
There is another
time word that we should consider. The
Greek word, nyn, means “now,” “at the
present time.” This is the word that is
used in John 12: 31: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the
ruler of this world will be driven out.”
Jesus knew that there are “now” times on God’s timeline. There were “now” times for him and there are
now times for us.
What is your “now” time? Perhaps it is a time to go on a diet, to lose
weight, to let go of something that is no longer quite so important. Or to escape from the grasp of an addiction. Perhaps it is a time to pray.
Let me suggest that “Now” is
the time to be reconciled to God. “Behold,
now is the acceptable time; behold, now
is the day of salvation!” (2
Corinthians 6:2).
And each NOW in our lives is
the time to walk with Jesus. In a few
moments, we will sing an African-American spiritual:
I want Jesus to walk with me.
I want Jesus to walk with me.
All along my pilgrim journey,
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.[9]
Notice the “time” words in
this song—especially the words “all along my pilgrim journey.” Each “now” in our lives is the time to be
walking with Jesus, receiving His love and forgiveness, and sharing His love
with the world around us.
I love this hymn. But there is one thing about this hymn that
strikes me as slightly backwards. We
sing that we “want Jesus to walk with me.”
But so often, we (like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus[10])
remain oblivious to the fact that He
already is walking with us. This is
an example of God’s grace—what we call prevenient grace—God loves us even when
we don’t think we need God. It is not a
matter of whether Jesus will walk with us; rather, it is whether we are ready
to acknowledge His presence. Will we
walk with Jesus? He is already here. Remember His words to His followers, just
before He ascended. He assured them, “I
am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew
28:20).
Thanks be to God.
[1]
Preached at Cunningham United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia on the
Fifth Sunday of Lent.
[2]
“Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” viewed on the internet on March 22, 2015 at http://www.tv.com/shows/i-love-lucy/lucy-goes-to-the-hospital-15136/.
[3]
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
(1872), viewed on the internet on March 13, 2015 at http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html.
[4]
Thomas Paine, “The Crisis,” viewed on the internet on March 22, 2015 at http://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-01.htm.
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Way.
[6]
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/frank+sinatra/my+way_20056378.html.
[7]
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5,
Scene 2, viewed on the internet on March 22, 2015 at http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/page_202.html.
[8]
Isaac Watts, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989),
117.
[9]
Afro-American spiritual, “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville:
The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), 521.
[10]
See Luke 24:13-25.
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