At the gate of the year
Commentary
Object:
Time is the news of the day. Yesterday was yesteryear. Today we wipe the slates clean, turn the ledger page to a new fiscal period, and leaf through the engaging photos that will mark the progress of the calendar we freshly hang. Time is on our minds, even if it is only a hangover from last night's partying. What time is it?
Einstein got it right, of course: time is relative. We're all related to it, and it treats us differently as we hold its hand. Says the poet:
When as a child I laughed and wept, Time crept.
When as a youth I dreamt and talked, Time walked.
When I became a full-grown man, Time ran.
When older still I daily grew, Time flew.
Soon I shall find while traveling on, Time gone.
Why does time seem to speed up as we age? Roy Drusky, in a classic song of decades ago, crooned about the variable speeds of time like this:
I've been up and I've been down;
I've worked the fields, I've plowed the ground.
I've taken strain and pressure till I thought I might explode.
Now I search for childhood days
Of model planes and lemonade,
When the days stretched out before me like a long, long Texas road.
Yes that long, long Texas road's about a million miles or so.
When you're just a child there ain't no time but now.
Must have left that long old road seven hundred years ago,
And I'd find it once again if I knew how.
Drusky contemplates the rush and frenzy of his life, wishing, at least for a morning, to rejoin his younger self in the careless play of a lazy Texas day. But he also knows that nostalgia is yesterday's prices at today's wages, and an unreal world that can never be found. It is the true "Neverland" of Peter Pan, and what is given up to reach it costs more dearly than the price is worth. So Drusky continues his musings:
So I watch the children play
And dream my dreams of yesterday.
Don't tell them to be grateful,
I'm sure that they've been told.
If I'd known then what I know now
That would've messed it up somehow
When the days stretched out before me like a long, long Texas road.
Entering a New Year is a moment in which time and its relativity becomes very meaningful. A year ago there were folks in our congregation who are no longer with us. Others of us will not survive this calendar turn. So the question of the day is how we will turn the ticking of the clock into moments of meaning while we can. Welcome to the new year of our Lord!
Jesus pits tick-tock time against meaningful moments in our famous gospel passage. In essence he challenges us in a comparison between chronos and kairos, between the chronology of events that happen in succession and the significance they build as an era that we can define. It is an important gem tucked into a dark caldron of despair. We think we are doing this and that and the next thing, bopping along in time, and suddenly the eyes of eternity are on us and the meaning of everything changes.
Before we get to Jesus' wonderfully ominous and encouraging parable, we need also to think about time as the preacher of Ecclesiastes expresses it. It is well for us also to gaze into eternity, as John allows us to do in the final pages of Revelation.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
When I was in high school, a spiritual revival swept our area and many of us pondered together the big questions of life and meaning. A friend and I formed a Bible study group (that was actually more of a social club) in which we tried to wrestle with faith and angst, while sheltered in the home of some trusted adults who were not yet over the horrible age of thirty. We would meet together on Sunday evenings, often deciding only when we arrived what we were going to "study" that night. Invariably Jeff, hidden back in a corner between sofas and stuffed chairs, would murmur that we should read Ecclesiastes because he was depressed, and it was depressing, and maybe these two woeful laments would find each other and somehow make the world right.
Jeff was on to something, of course. Ecclesiastes is indeed a rather dark and depressing diatribe. "All is meaningless!" is the cry, both in the beginning (Ecclesiastes 1:2) and again at the end (Ecclesiastes 12:8). In between there are lists after lists of things that only prove the "teacher's" dark and troubling point of view:
• A king builds a massive empire and his successor wastes it to nothing (2:12).
• A man wrestles out an education that makes him incredibly perceptive, but he dies the same death as a fool and is forgotten (2:13-14).
• A man works all his life to create a marvelous and productive estate, but there is no one to leave it to and he dies alone (4:7-8)
• A wealthy man amasses greater fortunes, but dies consumed by greed (5:10-12).
The litany is incessant and drums its way into our brains like a leaky faucet chasing away sleep on a muggy and worrisome night. Wisdom, pleasure, folly, toil -- they all come to nothing (1:12--2:26). Time itself is a cruel taskmaster that binds and breaks down (v. 3). Other dimensions of life leave us hopeless: oppression, hard work, friendlessness, political advancement, unfulfilled vows to God, amassing wealth (4:1--6:12).
How do we stay sane in such an existence? The teacher suggests that we ought to try at least to get a bit of practical working wisdom, for this seems in some way to take the cynical edge off the meaninglessness of life. As a push in that direction, he offers a variety of proverbs that sound very similar to those in the more famous book known by that name (7:1--8:6).
But the full impact of the teacher's observations is left for some concluding reflections (8:7--12:7). Since we cannot find certain or standardized meaning in the whimsical affairs of our lives, we must look beyond. In chapter 3, as we read today, there was already a hint of this: "[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men" (v. 11). The teacher even suggested a way to make it through life with some degree of sanity: "I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live" (v. 13). Again in chapter 5 the teacher nods in this same direction (vv. 18-20).
Yet the deepest insights of the book are to be found in the last chapters. Here there is a reminder that all of life is progressing toward a common end, and one which we are powerless to control. So we might as well enjoy life while we have it, and go with the flow rather than against it by gaining some practical wisdom. But in the end, it is our relationship with our Creator that puts the rest of life into focus.
So the final reflections of the teacher might be summarized in this manner:
• If this world we live in is a closed system, then all is tragedy and meaningless.
But if there is a God, life may be brief and seem random, yet it is ultimately very meaningful.
• We may not be able to understand the ultimate meaning of all things and experiences from our vantage point; nevertheless, we sense it as we connect with transcendent realities.
• If we truly believe there is a God, then the three most important things for us to use as core values for life are these:
-- Live boldly, for it is better to engage life than to fear it.
-- Live joyfully, for laughter melts the sorrows of our sometimes meaningless existence.
-- Live godly, for though we are not always able to understand meaning and purpose in life, the Creator's ways are still the best, even if we know them only in part.
My friend Jeff was right. Ecclesiastes is depressing. But that is only the beginning of the story. On its surface, and especially at its beginning, the screaming message is this: All we do and everything that happens to us is ultimately meaningless and has no lasting value! But if we take the time to hear the notes of hopeful optimism that begin to leak through, starting already here in chapter 3, a more moderate message speaks out: Yet life goes on, so let's make the best of it and be more wise about it than foolish. And if we attune our ears to the religious confidence that forms a bedrock foundation underlying all of the teacher's reflections, a subtle but profound message whispers as well: Life can only mean something if there is a God who sets the values (e.g., time and morality) and gives us a link to eternity which confirms our right to exist.
For this reason Ecclesiastes is in the Bible. It expresses powerfully the worldview of the Sinai covenant. This is the message that Israel could portray to the nations of its world. Indeed, this is, at its best, the true wisdom of Solomon that should have been the evangelistic beacon of his great kingdom. After all, Israel had been strategically poised to preach these things in a social and political arena where the Creator had come to be largely forgotten, and because of that life itself often had burdened down into meaningless tedium and recurring cycles of incessant depressing failure. But only if people stopped their depressing busyness long enough to think, might these woeful thoughts drive them desperately to look for a religious perspective that was never meaningless.
We are bound by time, the great organizer of all that we experience. We cannot return to yesterday except in our memories, and these do not allow us to change anything which has already taken place. Human (and, for that matter, universal) existence is hung on the sweeping hands of time. We do not understand time. We cannot control time. Even when we explore the relativity of our experiences of time we are unable to alter its massive grip and pull on our existence.
But why? Why did God invent time as a prerequisite for life on planet earth? Could we not bop about through space staying forever young? The writer of Ecclesiastes is sober enough to know that such speculation leads nowhere. But he also has begun to show grudging appreciation for time as life's great organizing principle. Time makes sure that we all move in the same direction at the same rate. Time provides the context for both memory and hope. Time destabilizes pain, even while it takes the edge off excessive hilarity. Time is the janitor that keeps the classes moving through the school so that they don't get stuck in "Hotel California."
Then comes the preacher's affirmation. We live in time, but eternity tells us why. It is like Grant Tuller's marvelous reflection:
My life is like a weaving
Between my God and me
I do not choose the colors;
He worketh steadily.
Ofttimes he chooseth sorrow,
And I in foolish pride
Forget he sees the upper
And I the underside.
Not till the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the skillful Weaver's hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern he has planned.
Revelation 21:1-6a
The book of Revelation is non-historical in that it does not, for the most part, try to identify specific, recordable experiences of persons or cultures either past, present, or future. Instead, it is a type of allegory that powerfully pictures the perennial and ongoing combat between God and the devil, between the church and the world, and between good and evil in general. Instead of trying to find contemporary or past events linked to certain scenes in the book, we should interpret every situation of human history in light of the overarching themes of the book:
• Jesus is the powerful resurrected and ascended Savior.
• Evil is constantly trying to usurp God's authority and destroy God's creation and God's people.
• We are living on a battlefield in which all people are affected by the scars and wounds of war, and few signs of victory are ever seen.
• All human beings must choose to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior and stand firm to that testimony no matter what the cost, or they will slip into an alliance with evil that will eventually destroy them.
• Jesus is returning to make all things new, but before that happens this world will undergo even more powerful and threatening advances of evil.
• One day the faith of the faithful will be rewarded, and the dead and living together will enjoy the perfections of the new creation in which all evidence of parasitic evil will have been removed.
Although the paragraphs and scenes in Revelation may seem convoluted and unrelentingly dense in many parts, there is also an obvious movement to the flow of its passages. Driven by sevens, the images and happenings are grouped into clearly defined sections. When these collections of sevens are marked out from one another, it becomes apparent that they are triggered by exactly three critical scenes in which Jesus is shown to play a pivotal role. John has three major visions of Jesus (1, 4-5, 19), and each is followed by one or more series of sevens. Overall, the progression moves from local congregations that are experiencing persecution, heresy, and compromise (2-3) to a global battlefield in which all citizens of planet Earth are caught up in the horrible conflict between evil and good (6-18), and finally to a transcendent victory brought about by the return of Jesus and the divine renewal of creation itself (19-22).
Our reading for today comes in John's third vision of Jesus, who now appears both as conquering king and ravishing bridegroom (Revelation 19:1-10). Before the victory and wedding celebrations can begin, however, a mopping-up operation takes place in which seven aspects of judgment and restoration are sorted out (mostly introduced by John with "then I saw"):
• The king appears to fulfill his destiny (Revelation 19:11-16).
• The last battle is fought in which all the evil in the human arena is focused and repelled (Revelation 19:17-21).
• Satan is bound for a certain period of time (Revelation 20:1-3).
• The dead are raised to life for good or for ill (Revelation 20:4-6).
• Evil is destroyed (Revelation 20:7-10).
• The final judgment determining the eternal destiny of all humankind (Revelation 10:11-15).
• Earth is re-created and restored in its relationship with the Creator (Revelation 21:1--22:5).
Revelation ends where it began, with a call to faithfulness in the face of mounting opposition. While its details provide endless fodder for teachers, preachers, and theological speculators, a consistent core message emerges: during times of crisis, when evil seems to dominate the human scene, don't lose heart, because God is still in control of all things, and Jesus is returning soon to annihilate evil and transform creation into all that God intended for it to be.
Obviously this was a necessary message late in the first century when first Nero's and then Domitian's persecutions of the church killed many and caused thousands of others to huddle in fear. Since the language and cosmological perspectives in the book are very similar to those in the gospel of John and the letters of John, there is every reason to suppose that they, along with this book, were written by the disciple of Jesus who pastored the congregation in Ephesus late in the first century. This John was exiled to Patmos by Domitian as a way of undermining the courage of the Christian church, which Domitian despised. Since Domitian ruled from September of 81 through September of 96 AD, the Revelation of Jesus to John was probably penned and sent sometime in the mid- to late-80s.
Its message is timeless:
• To be a Christian is to be in conflict in this world.
• If one tries to opt out of this conflict, one automatically joins the other side and has been trapped by the powers of evil.
• Faithfulness to Jesus almost invariably leads to martyrdom, because this conflict is all or nothing.
• But those who trust in God will find the strength to remain faithful through suffering, die in hope, and have their confidence rewarded by Jesus' ultimate victory and the renewal of creation that includes the resurrection and glorification of all God's people.
• This is a great New Year's message!
Matthew 25:31-46
The three parables of Matthew 25 are Jesus' amplification of his eschatological visions and challenges to his disciples in Matthew 24. After the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples walked through the temple courts on their way to a time of prayer on the Mount of Olives. The buildings of the temple had gone through a massive renovation by Herod the Great, one of the most astounding builders of human history. The construction work was completed only a few years before and these rather rural Galilee folk were astounded by the immense structures and their marvelous beauty. This is the background to the introductory notes at the beginning of Matthew 24.
While his disciples are agape at the splendor of the renewed temple buildings, Jesus quickly tosses water on their ardor by announcing the coming destruction of these great structures in the Roman campaign only a generation into the future (70 AD). Then Jesus springboards from that prophecy to more complex and frightening scenes from the end of time.
As his disciples shake their heads in disbelief and wonder, Jesus moves on quickly to this trilogy of parables in Matthew 25. All three are part of the great eschatological teachings that meander through both the Old and New Testaments. While each segment of the Bible contains a lot of moral instruction and ethical guidelines addressing many dimensions of life and behavior, the grand culmination of behavior modification in the faith community is the challenge: What should we be doing at the end of time?
It is in that light where we need to read and interpret this last of Jesus' three Matthew 25 parables. No indication is given by our Lord as to when the final morning of human history will break. In fact, it is precisely the unknown hour that makes this parable tug at us. What will be the driving forces that shape our behavior? How will looming expectations of eternity keep time organized and schedules written with meaning and purpose?
There is much that is both comforting and at the same time disquieting in this familiar parable. We all expect to be sheep, bringing kindness to the ill, care to the poor, hope to the incarcerated, and food to the hungry. But the point of Jesus' parable is that those who do such things do them as a natural outgrowth of their religious disposition and are not even aware that they are this "sheep" kind of person! If we were able to rack up points, so to speak, we could keep score about our holiness and win heaven through our good deeds. But we cannot. Yet in the mystery of grace, if we are informed by God's love and transformed by God's grace, we somehow do things that truly matter.
Notice that the actions Jesus commends are all good, upright, moral, and socially transforming. But notice as well that those who do such things, to the glory of God and the honor of Jesus, don't even realize what they are doing. It is not a checklist of perfections that they mark with a pious pen. Instead it is a lifestyle of other-focus that leads to blessings on those around them.
New Year's resolutions are appropriate, to a degree, since self-discipline is one of the most powerful educational devices available to the human race. Moreover, goals are extremely important in building a life of significance, for "he who aims at nothing will always be certain to achieve it"! But spirituality is never served best when packaged in its nutritional information and festooned with a snobbish price tag that boldly declares "See what a good boy am I!"
Instead, the point of Jesus' teaching is to tumble our New Year's resolutions on end and develop eyes for the world around us. If by the close of this New Year the edges of darkness are pushed back slightly, children have slept in greater peace, sores have been soothed, and loneliness reduced, Jesus' parable will have taken root, and we won't even have noticed it. But others will!
Application
Chronos happens to us, and we fill it with minutiae -- the daily reports in journals and news and business quarterlies. But kairos is what Billy Graham always called "The Hour of Decision," and what T.S. Eliot pointed to as "the moment that gives meaning." How will this "Year of Our Lord" reach upward from chronos to kairos? What will lift the ticking of the clock into an eternal destiny of significance?
Minnie Louise Harkins (1875-1957) penned a poignant reflection that serves well each New Year's celebration:
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied,
"Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!"
New Year's Day makes us think about time and opportunity. In that context, Robert H. Smith summarized well what we all know:
The clock of life is wound but once,
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
An Alternative Application
Revelation 21:1-6a. John's vision of a new heaven and a new earth in Revelation 21 does not wipe the slate clean entirely as the do-over begins. Instead, there is a purging process that brings with it memories of the greatest acts of both God and humankind, while sanitizing out those bits that the devil spit in with tarnish. We recognize all the elements of this scene: heaven is there, as it has hovered over our world from the beginning; earth remains, though chastened and restored; then comes Jerusalem, David's city, the temple town, and symbol of how closely humans can reach toward heaven while the Creator stoops down to touch their fingers; a throne appears, not unlike the combination of the Ark of the Covenant, Yahweh's portable dais during Israel's wanderings, and the grand seat of messianic royalty established by the royal grant of 2 Samuel 7.
But the same old, same old is wonderfully new as the tears are gone, the frustrations dissipate, the scything specter of death has disappeared, and pain is no longer needed as a divine megaphone calling us wandering wretches back home.
What a scene for a New Year's morning! It's the kind of thing singer Murray McLaughlin penned for a year-end holidays song in 1989:
May I get what I want, not what I deserve
May the coming year not throw a single curve
May I hurt nobody, may I tell no lies
If I can't go on, give me strength to try
Ring the old year out, ring the new year in
Bring us all good luck, let the good guys win
May the one you love be the one you get
May you get someplace, you haven't been to yet
May your friends surround you, never do you wrong
May your eyes be clear, may your heart be strong
Ring the old year out, ring the new year in
Bring us all good luck, let the good guys win
Of course, McLaughlin's prayer and hope is John's testimony and anticipated reality. Whatever the New Year brings today is a day of confidence for the child of God. It is indeed "The Year of Our Lord," and we know how the story ends. Or perhaps, finally truly begins.
Einstein got it right, of course: time is relative. We're all related to it, and it treats us differently as we hold its hand. Says the poet:
When as a child I laughed and wept, Time crept.
When as a youth I dreamt and talked, Time walked.
When I became a full-grown man, Time ran.
When older still I daily grew, Time flew.
Soon I shall find while traveling on, Time gone.
Why does time seem to speed up as we age? Roy Drusky, in a classic song of decades ago, crooned about the variable speeds of time like this:
I've been up and I've been down;
I've worked the fields, I've plowed the ground.
I've taken strain and pressure till I thought I might explode.
Now I search for childhood days
Of model planes and lemonade,
When the days stretched out before me like a long, long Texas road.
Yes that long, long Texas road's about a million miles or so.
When you're just a child there ain't no time but now.
Must have left that long old road seven hundred years ago,
And I'd find it once again if I knew how.
Drusky contemplates the rush and frenzy of his life, wishing, at least for a morning, to rejoin his younger self in the careless play of a lazy Texas day. But he also knows that nostalgia is yesterday's prices at today's wages, and an unreal world that can never be found. It is the true "Neverland" of Peter Pan, and what is given up to reach it costs more dearly than the price is worth. So Drusky continues his musings:
So I watch the children play
And dream my dreams of yesterday.
Don't tell them to be grateful,
I'm sure that they've been told.
If I'd known then what I know now
That would've messed it up somehow
When the days stretched out before me like a long, long Texas road.
Entering a New Year is a moment in which time and its relativity becomes very meaningful. A year ago there were folks in our congregation who are no longer with us. Others of us will not survive this calendar turn. So the question of the day is how we will turn the ticking of the clock into moments of meaning while we can. Welcome to the new year of our Lord!
Jesus pits tick-tock time against meaningful moments in our famous gospel passage. In essence he challenges us in a comparison between chronos and kairos, between the chronology of events that happen in succession and the significance they build as an era that we can define. It is an important gem tucked into a dark caldron of despair. We think we are doing this and that and the next thing, bopping along in time, and suddenly the eyes of eternity are on us and the meaning of everything changes.
Before we get to Jesus' wonderfully ominous and encouraging parable, we need also to think about time as the preacher of Ecclesiastes expresses it. It is well for us also to gaze into eternity, as John allows us to do in the final pages of Revelation.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
When I was in high school, a spiritual revival swept our area and many of us pondered together the big questions of life and meaning. A friend and I formed a Bible study group (that was actually more of a social club) in which we tried to wrestle with faith and angst, while sheltered in the home of some trusted adults who were not yet over the horrible age of thirty. We would meet together on Sunday evenings, often deciding only when we arrived what we were going to "study" that night. Invariably Jeff, hidden back in a corner between sofas and stuffed chairs, would murmur that we should read Ecclesiastes because he was depressed, and it was depressing, and maybe these two woeful laments would find each other and somehow make the world right.
Jeff was on to something, of course. Ecclesiastes is indeed a rather dark and depressing diatribe. "All is meaningless!" is the cry, both in the beginning (Ecclesiastes 1:2) and again at the end (Ecclesiastes 12:8). In between there are lists after lists of things that only prove the "teacher's" dark and troubling point of view:
• A king builds a massive empire and his successor wastes it to nothing (2:12).
• A man wrestles out an education that makes him incredibly perceptive, but he dies the same death as a fool and is forgotten (2:13-14).
• A man works all his life to create a marvelous and productive estate, but there is no one to leave it to and he dies alone (4:7-8)
• A wealthy man amasses greater fortunes, but dies consumed by greed (5:10-12).
The litany is incessant and drums its way into our brains like a leaky faucet chasing away sleep on a muggy and worrisome night. Wisdom, pleasure, folly, toil -- they all come to nothing (1:12--2:26). Time itself is a cruel taskmaster that binds and breaks down (v. 3). Other dimensions of life leave us hopeless: oppression, hard work, friendlessness, political advancement, unfulfilled vows to God, amassing wealth (4:1--6:12).
How do we stay sane in such an existence? The teacher suggests that we ought to try at least to get a bit of practical working wisdom, for this seems in some way to take the cynical edge off the meaninglessness of life. As a push in that direction, he offers a variety of proverbs that sound very similar to those in the more famous book known by that name (7:1--8:6).
But the full impact of the teacher's observations is left for some concluding reflections (8:7--12:7). Since we cannot find certain or standardized meaning in the whimsical affairs of our lives, we must look beyond. In chapter 3, as we read today, there was already a hint of this: "[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men" (v. 11). The teacher even suggested a way to make it through life with some degree of sanity: "I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live" (v. 13). Again in chapter 5 the teacher nods in this same direction (vv. 18-20).
Yet the deepest insights of the book are to be found in the last chapters. Here there is a reminder that all of life is progressing toward a common end, and one which we are powerless to control. So we might as well enjoy life while we have it, and go with the flow rather than against it by gaining some practical wisdom. But in the end, it is our relationship with our Creator that puts the rest of life into focus.
So the final reflections of the teacher might be summarized in this manner:
• If this world we live in is a closed system, then all is tragedy and meaningless.
But if there is a God, life may be brief and seem random, yet it is ultimately very meaningful.
• We may not be able to understand the ultimate meaning of all things and experiences from our vantage point; nevertheless, we sense it as we connect with transcendent realities.
• If we truly believe there is a God, then the three most important things for us to use as core values for life are these:
-- Live boldly, for it is better to engage life than to fear it.
-- Live joyfully, for laughter melts the sorrows of our sometimes meaningless existence.
-- Live godly, for though we are not always able to understand meaning and purpose in life, the Creator's ways are still the best, even if we know them only in part.
My friend Jeff was right. Ecclesiastes is depressing. But that is only the beginning of the story. On its surface, and especially at its beginning, the screaming message is this: All we do and everything that happens to us is ultimately meaningless and has no lasting value! But if we take the time to hear the notes of hopeful optimism that begin to leak through, starting already here in chapter 3, a more moderate message speaks out: Yet life goes on, so let's make the best of it and be more wise about it than foolish. And if we attune our ears to the religious confidence that forms a bedrock foundation underlying all of the teacher's reflections, a subtle but profound message whispers as well: Life can only mean something if there is a God who sets the values (e.g., time and morality) and gives us a link to eternity which confirms our right to exist.
For this reason Ecclesiastes is in the Bible. It expresses powerfully the worldview of the Sinai covenant. This is the message that Israel could portray to the nations of its world. Indeed, this is, at its best, the true wisdom of Solomon that should have been the evangelistic beacon of his great kingdom. After all, Israel had been strategically poised to preach these things in a social and political arena where the Creator had come to be largely forgotten, and because of that life itself often had burdened down into meaningless tedium and recurring cycles of incessant depressing failure. But only if people stopped their depressing busyness long enough to think, might these woeful thoughts drive them desperately to look for a religious perspective that was never meaningless.
We are bound by time, the great organizer of all that we experience. We cannot return to yesterday except in our memories, and these do not allow us to change anything which has already taken place. Human (and, for that matter, universal) existence is hung on the sweeping hands of time. We do not understand time. We cannot control time. Even when we explore the relativity of our experiences of time we are unable to alter its massive grip and pull on our existence.
But why? Why did God invent time as a prerequisite for life on planet earth? Could we not bop about through space staying forever young? The writer of Ecclesiastes is sober enough to know that such speculation leads nowhere. But he also has begun to show grudging appreciation for time as life's great organizing principle. Time makes sure that we all move in the same direction at the same rate. Time provides the context for both memory and hope. Time destabilizes pain, even while it takes the edge off excessive hilarity. Time is the janitor that keeps the classes moving through the school so that they don't get stuck in "Hotel California."
Then comes the preacher's affirmation. We live in time, but eternity tells us why. It is like Grant Tuller's marvelous reflection:
My life is like a weaving
Between my God and me
I do not choose the colors;
He worketh steadily.
Ofttimes he chooseth sorrow,
And I in foolish pride
Forget he sees the upper
And I the underside.
Not till the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the skillful Weaver's hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern he has planned.
Revelation 21:1-6a
The book of Revelation is non-historical in that it does not, for the most part, try to identify specific, recordable experiences of persons or cultures either past, present, or future. Instead, it is a type of allegory that powerfully pictures the perennial and ongoing combat between God and the devil, between the church and the world, and between good and evil in general. Instead of trying to find contemporary or past events linked to certain scenes in the book, we should interpret every situation of human history in light of the overarching themes of the book:
• Jesus is the powerful resurrected and ascended Savior.
• Evil is constantly trying to usurp God's authority and destroy God's creation and God's people.
• We are living on a battlefield in which all people are affected by the scars and wounds of war, and few signs of victory are ever seen.
• All human beings must choose to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior and stand firm to that testimony no matter what the cost, or they will slip into an alliance with evil that will eventually destroy them.
• Jesus is returning to make all things new, but before that happens this world will undergo even more powerful and threatening advances of evil.
• One day the faith of the faithful will be rewarded, and the dead and living together will enjoy the perfections of the new creation in which all evidence of parasitic evil will have been removed.
Although the paragraphs and scenes in Revelation may seem convoluted and unrelentingly dense in many parts, there is also an obvious movement to the flow of its passages. Driven by sevens, the images and happenings are grouped into clearly defined sections. When these collections of sevens are marked out from one another, it becomes apparent that they are triggered by exactly three critical scenes in which Jesus is shown to play a pivotal role. John has three major visions of Jesus (1, 4-5, 19), and each is followed by one or more series of sevens. Overall, the progression moves from local congregations that are experiencing persecution, heresy, and compromise (2-3) to a global battlefield in which all citizens of planet Earth are caught up in the horrible conflict between evil and good (6-18), and finally to a transcendent victory brought about by the return of Jesus and the divine renewal of creation itself (19-22).
Our reading for today comes in John's third vision of Jesus, who now appears both as conquering king and ravishing bridegroom (Revelation 19:1-10). Before the victory and wedding celebrations can begin, however, a mopping-up operation takes place in which seven aspects of judgment and restoration are sorted out (mostly introduced by John with "then I saw"):
• The king appears to fulfill his destiny (Revelation 19:11-16).
• The last battle is fought in which all the evil in the human arena is focused and repelled (Revelation 19:17-21).
• Satan is bound for a certain period of time (Revelation 20:1-3).
• The dead are raised to life for good or for ill (Revelation 20:4-6).
• Evil is destroyed (Revelation 20:7-10).
• The final judgment determining the eternal destiny of all humankind (Revelation 10:11-15).
• Earth is re-created and restored in its relationship with the Creator (Revelation 21:1--22:5).
Revelation ends where it began, with a call to faithfulness in the face of mounting opposition. While its details provide endless fodder for teachers, preachers, and theological speculators, a consistent core message emerges: during times of crisis, when evil seems to dominate the human scene, don't lose heart, because God is still in control of all things, and Jesus is returning soon to annihilate evil and transform creation into all that God intended for it to be.
Obviously this was a necessary message late in the first century when first Nero's and then Domitian's persecutions of the church killed many and caused thousands of others to huddle in fear. Since the language and cosmological perspectives in the book are very similar to those in the gospel of John and the letters of John, there is every reason to suppose that they, along with this book, were written by the disciple of Jesus who pastored the congregation in Ephesus late in the first century. This John was exiled to Patmos by Domitian as a way of undermining the courage of the Christian church, which Domitian despised. Since Domitian ruled from September of 81 through September of 96 AD, the Revelation of Jesus to John was probably penned and sent sometime in the mid- to late-80s.
Its message is timeless:
• To be a Christian is to be in conflict in this world.
• If one tries to opt out of this conflict, one automatically joins the other side and has been trapped by the powers of evil.
• Faithfulness to Jesus almost invariably leads to martyrdom, because this conflict is all or nothing.
• But those who trust in God will find the strength to remain faithful through suffering, die in hope, and have their confidence rewarded by Jesus' ultimate victory and the renewal of creation that includes the resurrection and glorification of all God's people.
• This is a great New Year's message!
Matthew 25:31-46
The three parables of Matthew 25 are Jesus' amplification of his eschatological visions and challenges to his disciples in Matthew 24. After the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples walked through the temple courts on their way to a time of prayer on the Mount of Olives. The buildings of the temple had gone through a massive renovation by Herod the Great, one of the most astounding builders of human history. The construction work was completed only a few years before and these rather rural Galilee folk were astounded by the immense structures and their marvelous beauty. This is the background to the introductory notes at the beginning of Matthew 24.
While his disciples are agape at the splendor of the renewed temple buildings, Jesus quickly tosses water on their ardor by announcing the coming destruction of these great structures in the Roman campaign only a generation into the future (70 AD). Then Jesus springboards from that prophecy to more complex and frightening scenes from the end of time.
As his disciples shake their heads in disbelief and wonder, Jesus moves on quickly to this trilogy of parables in Matthew 25. All three are part of the great eschatological teachings that meander through both the Old and New Testaments. While each segment of the Bible contains a lot of moral instruction and ethical guidelines addressing many dimensions of life and behavior, the grand culmination of behavior modification in the faith community is the challenge: What should we be doing at the end of time?
It is in that light where we need to read and interpret this last of Jesus' three Matthew 25 parables. No indication is given by our Lord as to when the final morning of human history will break. In fact, it is precisely the unknown hour that makes this parable tug at us. What will be the driving forces that shape our behavior? How will looming expectations of eternity keep time organized and schedules written with meaning and purpose?
There is much that is both comforting and at the same time disquieting in this familiar parable. We all expect to be sheep, bringing kindness to the ill, care to the poor, hope to the incarcerated, and food to the hungry. But the point of Jesus' parable is that those who do such things do them as a natural outgrowth of their religious disposition and are not even aware that they are this "sheep" kind of person! If we were able to rack up points, so to speak, we could keep score about our holiness and win heaven through our good deeds. But we cannot. Yet in the mystery of grace, if we are informed by God's love and transformed by God's grace, we somehow do things that truly matter.
Notice that the actions Jesus commends are all good, upright, moral, and socially transforming. But notice as well that those who do such things, to the glory of God and the honor of Jesus, don't even realize what they are doing. It is not a checklist of perfections that they mark with a pious pen. Instead it is a lifestyle of other-focus that leads to blessings on those around them.
New Year's resolutions are appropriate, to a degree, since self-discipline is one of the most powerful educational devices available to the human race. Moreover, goals are extremely important in building a life of significance, for "he who aims at nothing will always be certain to achieve it"! But spirituality is never served best when packaged in its nutritional information and festooned with a snobbish price tag that boldly declares "See what a good boy am I!"
Instead, the point of Jesus' teaching is to tumble our New Year's resolutions on end and develop eyes for the world around us. If by the close of this New Year the edges of darkness are pushed back slightly, children have slept in greater peace, sores have been soothed, and loneliness reduced, Jesus' parable will have taken root, and we won't even have noticed it. But others will!
Application
Chronos happens to us, and we fill it with minutiae -- the daily reports in journals and news and business quarterlies. But kairos is what Billy Graham always called "The Hour of Decision," and what T.S. Eliot pointed to as "the moment that gives meaning." How will this "Year of Our Lord" reach upward from chronos to kairos? What will lift the ticking of the clock into an eternal destiny of significance?
Minnie Louise Harkins (1875-1957) penned a poignant reflection that serves well each New Year's celebration:
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied,
"Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!"
New Year's Day makes us think about time and opportunity. In that context, Robert H. Smith summarized well what we all know:
The clock of life is wound but once,
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
An Alternative Application
Revelation 21:1-6a. John's vision of a new heaven and a new earth in Revelation 21 does not wipe the slate clean entirely as the do-over begins. Instead, there is a purging process that brings with it memories of the greatest acts of both God and humankind, while sanitizing out those bits that the devil spit in with tarnish. We recognize all the elements of this scene: heaven is there, as it has hovered over our world from the beginning; earth remains, though chastened and restored; then comes Jerusalem, David's city, the temple town, and symbol of how closely humans can reach toward heaven while the Creator stoops down to touch their fingers; a throne appears, not unlike the combination of the Ark of the Covenant, Yahweh's portable dais during Israel's wanderings, and the grand seat of messianic royalty established by the royal grant of 2 Samuel 7.
But the same old, same old is wonderfully new as the tears are gone, the frustrations dissipate, the scything specter of death has disappeared, and pain is no longer needed as a divine megaphone calling us wandering wretches back home.
What a scene for a New Year's morning! It's the kind of thing singer Murray McLaughlin penned for a year-end holidays song in 1989:
May I get what I want, not what I deserve
May the coming year not throw a single curve
May I hurt nobody, may I tell no lies
If I can't go on, give me strength to try
Ring the old year out, ring the new year in
Bring us all good luck, let the good guys win
May the one you love be the one you get
May you get someplace, you haven't been to yet
May your friends surround you, never do you wrong
May your eyes be clear, may your heart be strong
Ring the old year out, ring the new year in
Bring us all good luck, let the good guys win
Of course, McLaughlin's prayer and hope is John's testimony and anticipated reality. Whatever the New Year brings today is a day of confidence for the child of God. It is indeed "The Year of Our Lord," and we know how the story ends. Or perhaps, finally truly begins.
