You can tell me if it is just that I’m strange, but I always thought most of us have this junk drawer of various topics that just keep returning. Nothing in that junk drawer is absolutely necessary, except in that exact moment when you need a potato masher or small flashlight or battery tester or the letter opener. The big potato masher of my mental junk drawer has always been the doctrine of election. The first thing that you see when you open that junk drawer. The thing that might be big enough to prevent the drawer from opening. And you have to fiddle with it a bit – shaking the drawer to get some things to move – to get into it. Not today election, I don’t have the time. And if you demand my attention, I’m just going to force this drawer open. I’m going to become a gross Calvinist so I don’t have to think about you anymore. Sure, forcing that drawer open breaks the countertop. Like Calvinism breaks the incarnation. Who needs an incarnation with its revelation if the eternal decrees which remain His forever are all that matters? Who needs time? But somedays you just need the potato masher firmly in hand.
Some days you don’t need the potato masher. Somedays there are other things in that junk drawer. Right next to that potato masher of the doctrine of election is the kitchen timer – time itself. Somehow the eternal decrees and “I AM” and speculations about the eternal now, morph their way into this one moment. Running through Dr. Who’s timey-whimy tardis adventures and AI dreams of titanium terminators coming back in time for John Carter – another JC. Advent is a season in some ways about time. A season of waiting, of longing, of fulfillment. All things that depend upon time. And then you find yourself thinking that you live your life week to week – Sunday to Sunday rhythms. And how many of those weeks you might have (50 x 80 = 4000 plus 160 for the other 2×80). And how many of those weeks did you make matter?
We live in time. And we can become so used to its rhythms. 60 beats a minute, 60 minutes an hour, your heart beats them out. If you’ve got a pacemaker, you know how disturbing it can be when the heart isn’t keeping time. Or if your heart in your 53rd year starts throwing in extra beats that occasionally wake you in your 8 hours of slumber. Maybe trying to make up for weeks that didn’t mean anything? We live in time. We like our ruts.
And in the middle of our ruts, we hear a voice in the distance. Is that the TV? Does one of the kids have their earphones out? “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”
“You brood of Vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”
“Even now the axe is laid to the root of the tree!”
And we are no longer in time. This is not the week by week. The heart is running a little faster. We’ve been called out into the wilderness. Maybe we’ve gone there willingly. Maybe we’ve been drug there. Maybe we are there because we want to turn it off and get back to our time, to our rut. “Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him.” Right now, we are not in time exactly. Today we have been called to a moment. Today we have been called to the desert where time doesn’t move the same.
Today you have been baptized with water and fire for repentance. Today the voice calls, “make straight the way.” And don’t think you can call on ancestors – “we have Abraham as our father.” This is about you. This moment is yours. Tomorrow the threshing floor clears and the chaff is burned. Today, this moment, is yours. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”
And then you are back. In time. What are you going to do with it