Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark 1: 14-15
“Time’s up, test-takers. Please put down your pencils.” “I’m going to need this on my desk by Friday.” “What’s your five-year plan?” “They’re always late. So we told them to meet us at 6:30, even though our reservations aren’t until 7!” “Later. I don’t have time for that right now.” One of the primary ways we measure and order our lives is through time. We keep track of it almost obsessively. We hate for it to be wasted. We often wish it would move faster, yet we also regret that we can’t slow it down. The Greek word for this kind of time is “chronos.” It’s the linear flow of events, one after the other, in a sequence that can be marked and quantified.
“Time’s up, test-takers. Please put down your pencils.” “I’m going to need this on my desk by Friday.” “What’s your five-year plan?” “They’re always late. So we told them to meet us at 6:30, even though our reservations aren’t until 7!” “Later. I don’t have time for that right now.” One of the primary ways we measure and order our lives is through time. We keep track of it almost obsessively. We hate for it to be wasted. We often wish it would move faster, yet we also regret that we can’t slow it down. The Greek word for this kind of time is “chronos.” It’s the linear flow of events, one after the other, in a sequence that can be marked and quantified.
But that definition doesn’t suffice. We experience time in yet another way. Babies aren’t always delivered on the due date. When we’re fully engaged in an activity, we can lose all sense of time. An event from twenty years ago can seem like yesterday, and yesterday is already a distant memory. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is told in our liturgy each year as a continuing reality 2000 years later. Time sometimes defies our attempts to package it up into neat increments. “Kairos”: time untamed. God’s time. When the divine breaks into our ordinary lives and we feel the stirrings of a beautiful kingdom very near.
Jesus’ time had come; he had a job to do. What time is it for us, for our world? What is our ministry?
Gracious God, even as I keep my calendar and my clock close at hand, may I turn to you for the deepest and fullest sense of time. Open my heart, my mind, and all my senses to the Good News proclaimed in Jesus Christ. Amen.
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