Live Each Day - 8-15-21
Live Each Day
1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Ephesians 5:15-20
1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14
Then David slept with his ancestors, and was buried in the city of David. The time that David reigned over Israel was forty years; he reigned seven years in Hebron, and thirty-three years in Jerusalem. So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David; and his kingdom was firmly established. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.”
Ephesians 5:15-20
Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Prayer – Lord we understand that our days are numbered; we have only so much time here on this earth. Time to make a difference; time to leave our mark; time to do your work. So often we confuse our mark and your work, thinking that it is up to us on how we live each day. Help us to discern that all that we are and all that we do is grounded in your everyday grace – amen.
Anne Lamott is one of my favorite authors. If you aren’t familiar with her, she is a member of a Presbyterian Church just north of San Francisco and many of her books are sacred texts of irreverancy and deep meaning. In her first book, Traveling Mercies, she shares much of the pain of her life that was filled with alcoholism and drug addiction, bad choices in relationships and finances as well as the people who were sojourners of truth that helped her to redeem much of the tragedy of her life up to that point. One poignant story from the book relates to Anne’s best friend, Pam. Pam had been a rock for Anne during her struggles to get clean and Anne’s world was really rocked when Pam developed breast cancer. She went with her for treatments, held her, fed her, cared for her deeply; and yet, Anne struggled tremendously with what was important as Pam’s battle was coming to a close. Pam knew she was dying and needed to have a last conversation with Anne before she died. Anne was visiting Pam this day and Anne was avoiding the conversation as hard as she could. She was distracting Pam with lots of inane topics – ranging from whether her blue jeans made her butt look to big to what kind of hair cut Anne should get later in the week. Exasperated with Anne’s distractions, Pam, or Pammie, as Anne would call her, finally said, “Annie, would you just stop it. We just don’t have that kind of time.” I was struck then by the power of that statement about making the most of the time we have, and I continue to be motivated by those words even today.
What are we supposed to be doing with our time? That is the question I offer to us this morning for reflection. Ironically as I was working on my sermon this week, reading and reflecting while listening to some music, Tim McGraw’s song “Live Like You Were Dying” rang through my head as well. It was a song he wrote after his father, former major league baseball pitcher Tug McGraw died from a brain tumor. The words to the song ask the question, ‘what do you do when you know you have limited amount of time?’ The songwriter’s response is ‘sky-diving, Rocky Mtn climbing, bull-riding, love deeper, speak sweeter, give forgiveness that had been denied, being a good husband, become a good friend, read the ‘good book’, and ask the question – what would you do if you could do it all again?’ Live each day and make the most of your time.
Time is important to us. It seems that we are obsessed with keeping an eye on the clock. The average home in the US has five clocks, not including watches. If you listen to the radio, the announcer will frequently give the time of day. If you delay a hurried person, he or she will likely cry out in exasperation, “My schedule, I haven’t got time.” How many of us have said, or at least thought, “My, how time flies.” Yes, time is of great importance to us. Time. We all know what it is. We are in it, of it, on it, in the nick of it, or out of it. We are its creatures. Hurry up, you’ll miss _____; when’s dinner; are we there yet; I’m late, I’m late for a very important date; are you having the time of your life; let me give you some timely advice; remember that time? We live like this, all of us and each of us, tick-tocking our way through the unknown in a regularity of minutes and hours that are beyond us and within us. Is there time to live each day?
The writer of Ephesians points out the many ways we waste time, and our lives. “The days are evil” he asserts; and what else is new. I’m not talking about spectacular cosmic evil but the more banal, unimaginative brand of evil – drunkenness, debauchery, fornication. Not the vast evil of the superstars of evil like Hitler, Pol Pot, Hussein or bin Ladin, but the democratic, petty, two-bit self-destruction in which we indulge – a hardening liver, a swimming head, the tarnished lungs, a grubby little affair on the side and a week-end escapade where what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. These are the symptoms of a deeper malaise. Our lives are confused, disordered, pointless resting from one mistake to the next. It’s not that we are intentionally bad, nor spectacularly evil; we’re just foolish at times. Such is the time we live in.
“Make the most of time,” says our text this morning. And what does that mean? Keep busy and moving at break neck speed all of the time? We middle class, Protestant work ethic, upward mobility achievers know all about it. Drunkenness and debauchery are not our particular brands of sin. For many of us, we are ‘drunk’ with activities, busyness, things to do and places to be, carpools with grandkids, meetings and more. Being “busy” is the accepted badge of value and worth in our world today. That’s our way of ‘making the most of time’ – fill time, use time, kill time, keep moving, don’t stop, don’t look back. The clock keeps ticking and we keep running for the merry-go-round of busyness, breathlessly pursuing – WHAT? What was it we wanted when we jumped on this treadmill of busyness? (William Willimon, Making the Most of our Time)
How many of you are not really here at this moment, but have already, in your mind, moved on to Monday morning and the lists of things to do next week? Why waste the precious minutes in anything so pointless as worship? Keep moving, don’t stop, don’t think, don’t let time catch you! Making the most of time in these evil days means falling prey to the very evil we deplore – foolishly filling our days with harried, meaningless busyness, crowding out boring time with chatter, loud music, humming machines, and the sounds of our quickening footsteps racing down the empty corridors leading us where? What’s needed, I suppose, is some way not simply to fill time or kill time, but to fulfill time, to redeem time, to live each day, maybe even like we were dying.
We live in a culture which pushes us to act as though there is never enough time. We are constantly rushing, with every moment of every day absorbed in our desire to be connected and productive. In other ways, we try to tell ourselves that we have all the time in the world, and that mortality and its limitations will not impinge upon us. Either way is a path of foolishness. To be awakened and wise people of God means that we can be good and honest stewards of time, so that opportunities to do justice, seek kindness and walk humbly in God’s ways are not missed.
Our days need not be frantically filled with our busyness, our self-help techniques for salvation, our attempts to make time count for something. It is not entirely left up to us to make history come out right. We don’t have to work hard to make our lives count for something because, in Christ, God tells us our lives already count for something, tells us our lives are somehow caught up in the grand purposes of God. This world is the place of God’s redemptive work. We think we live in ‘kronos’ but we really are living in ‘kairos’ – God’s time.
Here at Trinity Presbyterian church, in our ordinary little town of Mansfield, among everyday folk like you and me, God is present. That changes everything. So what are we to do? How are we to make the most of God’s time? Questions that can be answered in each of our own lives by looking at how we live each day. How am I wasting, or killing God’s time? What is God up to and how do we get on board? What am I doing; what are we doing to make the reign of God present in this time and place? Paying attention to these questions may help us decide how to order our days differently, we may decide to live life this Monday morning differently. We may decide to stop allowing the unimportant things to crowd out the really important times in our lives. Surely that would be wisdom for us all in living each day.
There was a young minister who returned to his hometown in north Georgia. He struck up a conversation with an old farmer one day. They stood by the fencerow and watched as a new picking machine rolled through the cotton field. Until now, the farmer had picked cotton using a machine pulled by a team of mules. “That’s an amazing machine, picking six rows of cotton in minutes,” the young minister said in admiration. “Yes it is,” says the farmer in reply, “but I’ve got to tell you, I really do miss my mules.” “Really? Why?” “Because these machines work day and night, every day. My mules only worked six days a week, and then they needed rest, so they had enough energy for the next week. When my mules rested, I rested. And I was better off.” In an effort to work more efficiently, the old farmer has lost his rhythm of life.
We know that something is lost when we give up our mules. Our souls resonate with stillness, slowness and renewal. We know that the mules represent something essential, even non-negotiable; something restorative and grounding. How do we reset? How do we refocus on God’s ‘kairos’ and release the hold that humankind’s ‘kronos’ has on each of us? And perhaps just as important, what will it mean for our church and our community to focus on what God is doing in God’s time?
As all of you know that last year has changed the way we think about church. Covid caused us to reframe many of the ways we have operated in the past and perhaps have invited us to think about how we want to operate in the future. Many churches today are worried about how to survive, about how to grow, about how we are going to replace the air-conditioning system or the roof. All of those are important ‘things’ to consider. And, not but, and how do we serve and how do we join God’s work in our lives and in our community says something about important ‘times.’ When Jesus got overwhelmed by the ‘doing-ness’ of his ministry, he went off by himself, usually to a mountain to pray. He took time out if you will, to recharge, to renew, maybe even to redeem his time. Jesus was pretty intent on maintaining the rhythm of his life.
In February 2014 my dad called our family together to let us know that he had made some decisions about his choices regarding his treatment for lung cancer as well as kidney failure. He shared with us that he had decided to forego chemotherapy but that he had made a decision to undergo dialysis for a short time in order to get his ‘affairs’ in order so mom wouldn’t have to worry about them. He said ‘I want to sell my car and give the proceeds to the grandchildren; I want to give my boat to Mike and a time share to Susan; I want to get the finances transferred over to you mom; and I want to get the taxes done. Once I have completed all of that I will stop dialysis and let nature take its course.’ It was difficult to hear, it was difficult to accept, but dad wanted to make the most of each day and not be stuck to machines eternally. He wanted to live each day, not suffer through each day. He knew he didn’t have, nor want, that kind of time.
When the apostle writes that ‘the days are evil,’ I take that to mean that day upon day upon day can be evil if we don’t in some way, shape or form redeem the time.Sameness, boredom, work, heaviness, laboriousness.We redeem time by filling it with things that give life to us and the people around us.Making the most of our time also means that we focus on God’s time – what are we doing that aligns with God’s work.I want us, you and me, to live each day – faith-fully and trusting that ‘kairos’ offers us redemptive time, time to transform and be transformed – thanks be to God – amen.