Sermon: Short-Timers
Texts: Mark 1:14-20; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Date: January 25, 2009
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
Short-timers. I looked up a definition in the “urban dictionary” online, and find I cannot repeat what is written there in a G-rated sermon. However, I can paraphrase: A short-timer is the son-of- a-gun who has already gotten a new job and no longer gives a rip about the business of the business. Various job-search websites give sage advice about avoiding “short-timers syndrome” once you have successfully landed another job and given your two weeks’ notice.
Have you ever worked with someone who had succumbed to short-timer’s syndrome? It can certainly be irksome to work alongside someone who has got one foot out the door and is no longer invested in the long-term well-being of the business or in their relationships with others at the business. Disinterest can even morph into sabotage—didn’t the outgoing Clinton team remove all the “W’s” from the keyboards of the White House computers before the Bush administration moved in? Short-timers run amok.
It’s curious that St. Paul seems to hope his addressees will cultivate a form of short-timers syndrome. “The appointed time has grown short,” he writes. Then there are some peculiar instructions for people who are going about their business as usual. Let those who have wives act as if they did not; let those who mourn and those who rejoice act as if they were not; let those who are buying act as if they had no possessions, and those who are dealing with the world should act as if they had nothing to do with it. Why in the world would he advise the Christians in Corinth this way?
One important piece of background information is that Paul apparently believed that time, real time, was indeed short. He thought that Jesus was going to return and end history as we know it at any moment, ushering in the fulfillment of the Reign of God. Much has been written about Paul’s “interim ethic”—advice and instructions he gave the early Christian communities which may be more suited to short-timers on this earthly plane than to those who are going to be sticking around.
He was obviously wrong about the end of history being imminent. Here we are, some 2000 years later, still slogging along as a human race. So here is a question: Does Paul’s misjudgment about the end of history negate his teaching? Does his advice only apply to short-timers?
I read a good article about this chapter of Corinthians that led me to believe there is wisdom in Paul’s words whether you are a short-timer or a long-timer or something in between. The scholar I was reading, David Kuck, says that Paul was not trying to imply that all aspects of normal life, like family relationships, our ups and downs, doing business and so forth should not go on. But the person who has begun a new life in Christ has changed. The person who is grounded in Christ recognizes that relationship as primary, and eternal. All other relationships, habits, moods, and institutions are impermanent when seen in the light of being rooted and grounded in the Christian life. All forms, all structures of human life are continually passing away. Therefore we may participate in normal life but we do not see our engagement with people, markets, possessions or moods as our primary reason for living. We are to hold our relationships with humans and their institutions lightly compared to our connection with Christ.
St. Paul certainly did not want Christians to withdraw from the world, just sitting around and waiting for Jesus to swoop in and change everything. This is not a call for retreat from “normal” life; it is what Kuck calls “a charter for critical freedom.” Kuck puts it this way: “Since we know that these relations and institutions are all part of the form of the world already passing away, we can live freely and responsibly in the world, but ‘as if not.’” The relationships and conventions with which we are involved do not define us at the core of our being. Rather, being disciples of Christ defines us, and we engage with other people and with our life circumstances and corporations out of that heart of who we are. We may still be wives and husbands, but we are Christian wives and husbands. We may still be consumers (the fallback way all Americans are identified!) but we are Christian consumers. We may still be in business. But we apply ethics inspired by the Christ life to our business practices. And so on.
Christ comes first. One commentary I read said that the literal translation of the invitation issued in the gospel to the fishermen—“Follow me!”—is “Come behind me.” Scholar Brian Stoffregen explains: “The word for behind (opiso) can be a spatial term, to stand or walk behind someone. It can be a temporal term, to come at a time after something else. This might be the meaning behind John's use, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me" (1:7). It can also be a status term, behind (or under?) in terms of rank or importance. Jesus' rebuke of Peter, "Get behind me Satan" (8:33), is probably concerned with Peter trying to assume too much importance -- trying to be ahead of Jesus. The command, "Come behind me," may be a way of saying, "Make Jesus the most important thing in your life." Even one's own self comes in second behind Jesus.” [1] When the fishermen Jesus called immediately leave their nets and boats they are signifying that their successful occupations and family relationships are henceforth going to take a back seat to Jesus. Everything they were up to that moment of call got behind Jesus.
There is a great sense of hurry and urgency in both the gospel lesson and in Paul’s directive. Paul didn’t want Christians to waste any time getting their priorities in order since he believed time had grown short. Jesus didn’t want people to waste any time either. The Message translation of Mark 1:15 rings like an alarm clock: “After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee preaching the Message of God: "Time's up! God's kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message."” Here it’s not even “time has grown short”—it’s “Time’s Up!”
That phrase “Time’s up” makes me think of various exams and tests I have taken. They are usually not welcome words, “time’s up,” especially when you’re in a timed test. Seems like you could always use a little more time to answer more of the questions, or to make sure you had gotten the ones you had answered right. Hearing the instructor declare “Time’s up” always felt stressful even when I thought I had done well on the exam.
Good thing our lives are not on a timer. Or are they?
The truth is that all of our lives are on a timer. We just don’t know when “Time’s up” is going to be called, for us or for our loved ones. Forrest Church writes about this in his book Lifecraft. He tries to encourage people to keep the matter of meaning (the meaning of our lives) somewhere in our consciousness so that we don’t end up squandering the most precious gift we are given, the gift of time. He writes, “Try this experiment. You are tending your children. Imagine for just a moment that a trapdoor swings. You or one of your loved ones drops out of the picture. The backdrop of our lives at any given instant may seem mundane or chaotic, but the bond between ourselves and our loved ones in the foreground is both unimaginably precious and very fragile. One day either you or they will be left with nothing but memories. A little nostalgia for the present prevents such memories from becoming reflections on lost time, lost meaning, and lost love.” [2] I don’t know exactly what Church means by “nostalgia for the present” but I think he is trying to encourage us to recall that we may well be short-timers, and it is incumbent on us to ask ourselves whether we are spending our time and energy in meaningful ways. In the play Our Town one of the dead characters comments sadly how she sees now from her side of the grave that to be alive was “to move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years.”
I don’t know about you, but I frequently spend and waste time as if I had a million years. That’s not all bad; it’s good to have time when we can rest and play and not be completely ruled by the ticking of the clock. On the other hand, perhaps the urgency of “Time’s up,” the insistence on putting Christ first NOW, as if time is short, is an aspect of the invitation to discipleship that should not be ignored.
For one thing, our collective service is needed, and while we may personally have time to waste, there are those whose lives are in danger who do not have the luxury of time. Since I had Martin Luther King, Jr. on the brain this week I tracked down one of his answers to critics who accused the civil rights leaders of wanting to move too fast. In his “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” King quotes a white Texas brother who has said, “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a hurry…The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” King’s answer was that his remarks grow out of a tragic misconception of time: “It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will eventually cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.” [3] I think those are very wise words. That is part of the message of the gospel: the time is always ripe to do right. The time has come for people of good will to use time more effectively to do what is right. What if all the people of good will turned in unison to all the forces of evil in our world and announced, “Time’s up! Repent and get with the program, the domain of love.”
The time is always right to re-organize our priorities. Suppose I said with some authority that you had one week to prove that you are a Christian, and bring the evidence to the community next Sunday. Would there be any changes you would have to make? Are there aspects of your identity that do not yet reflect the stamp of Christ on your life? Are there changes you need to make that you have been putting off as though you had a million years to spend and waste? Does the urgency of a deadline make any difference?
Are you a short-timer in this world or are you going to be around for a long time to come? The plain fact is that you don’t know. None of us does. Why not act as if our time has grown short, and we need to pack all the love we can muster into the precious days we have left? Love not just for our family and friends, but love we share in the form of justice for those who are poised on the trap door of hardship and who need a hand up before they fall into darkness.
I want to finish with a few words from President Obama’s inauguration speech which I found inspiring and which I think are apropos:
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
The time has come. The time is now.
[1] http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark1x14.htm
[2] Church, Forrest Lifecraft: The Art of Meaning in the Everyday Boston: Beacon Press, 2000, p. 21-22
[3] King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. James M. Washington, ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986, p. 296