(a sermon for July 17, 2022, the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, based on Luke 10:38-42)
“Five-hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, Five-hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear, Five-hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife; in five-hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure a year in the life?”
If you don’t recognize those words, let me tell you that they’re the opening lyrics of a wonderful song from the Broadway musical Rent called “Seasons of Love,” which itself is a story of a year in the life of a group of young adults living in an inner-city tenement. I’ve also heard it sung at a number of high school graduation ceremonies, and it seems to pop up on television news shows every year around December 31, when we’re all busy trying to measure a year; because, yes, there are 525,600 minutes in a given year. That breaks down to roughly 43,800 minutes a month (depending on what month it is), exactly 10,080 minutes a week and a whopping 1,440 minutes a day. And here’s the thing: no matter how we seek to measure them or to add them up, at the end of the day, the month or the year, that’s all the minutes we get; never any less and no more than that!
So… the question becomes, then, how do we make use of that time? What choices are you and I making every day with those 1,440 minutes? Well, there was actually a study done a few years back by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that offered up some interesting answers to that very question. For instance, it was discovered that on average, we spend 8 ½ hours a day sleeping, which is not all that surprising; but the fact that we spend only 3.8 hours engaged in working or work-related activities kind of is! This study also revealed that only 1.8 hours per day is spent in cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the house (and that includes yard work; hey, I use that much time just in mowing the lawn!); in addition, “caring for and household members” – which includes children – only takes up a couple of hours a day, while five hours or more a day are involved in sports or leisure (with about half of that, by the way, spent in front of the TV), and that only .2 hours every day is spent on the phone (actually, based on what I see everywhere, every day, I’m guessing that they weren’t including the use of “smart phones” and other so-called “devices” in that estimate; and this is to say nothing of the excessive amount of time spent that’s spent on phone “apps” and all manner of social media!). But perhaps most interesting of all, at least to me, is that in this study, religious and spiritual activities accounted for only .15 hours a day, which amounts to less than 10 minutes!
Now, to be fair, that’s really not putting Sunday into the mix, nor does it appear to include people who are deeply committed to their faith and involved in their churches, but I think you get the point here; that oftentimes, the things we consider to be among the most important things in life end up getting short shrift in the time we give to them! The bottom line is that each one of us is given a finite amount of time, and that time is always ticking away, most often without our even realizing the extent of it. So the bigger question – most especially for us as people of faith – ends up being how we can truly be good stewards of the time we’re given; how do we assure that our time is well spent?
Well, friends, I think it starts with a biblical understanding of what time is, which actually is a two-fold understanding. In the Greek language of the New Testament, for instance, there are two words for time: the first is chronos, which is measured time, and where we get our word “chronological.” It’s the ticking of the clock, the flipping of pages on the calendar, the regularity of passing years – in other words, to quote a song from the 1970’s, “time keeps on ticking into the future.” That’s chronos. But the other understanding of time is kiaros, and that is the time that God marks off to fill. In other words, it’s not so much that God creates time, but that God does something with that time. A prime example of kiaros is when we’re told that “in the fullness of time” God sent Christ into the world. God wasn’t on a time clock or facing a deadline for Jesus to born in the manger of Bethlehem; God did this because from the very beginning God always intended to do this. God created time, you see, but is not confined by it.
And to a lesser extent, it’s the same for us. Chronos and kiaros are always intermingling in our lives; this mixture of that which we have to deal with simply because the clock is ticking, and those other incredible, often wondrous but sometimes perplexing moments when you don’t have time, but you’ve got to deal with anyway! As John Lennon was quoted as saying, “Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans!”
I love to tell brides and grooms that I counsel the story of two very dear friends of mine from childhood, Darrell and Anne, who when they were first married, had what became known as “the five-year plan,” which was that in their first five years, they were going to get a house, fill it with furniture, buy and pay for their two vehicles, get themselves all set up financially, and then – and only then – would they start having children.
Which was fine – commendable, even – except that about three years later, I get a call one night from my friend Darrell, who gave me the news that Anne was expecting a baby! And, I, being the good and loyal friend that I was, of course answered by saying, “But you’re only three years into the five-year plan!” And he said, I know, it scares me to death; in fact, I just drove off the road today!
But you know what? Turned out that for them it was the perfect time to start a family. Not the time they planned for, not the time that were carefully calculating, but the time that God had marked off for them. Kiaros, that time that God sets aside for us to give life its real meaning.
Our text for this morning is that wonderful story from Luke’s gospel in which Jesus is welcomed into the home of a woman named Martha and her sister Mary. Now, to say the very least, the two sisters’ personality types are in stark contrast with one another. Martha, on the one hand, is definitely a chronos type of person (and more than a little bit type A, Enneagram One as well!); she’s “distracted by her many tasks,” fussing over a house full of guests, cooking dinner, making sure everything was perfect for Jesus. Mary, on the other hand, recognizes what’s happening on that evening and just who it was that was at their table: Mary’s a kiaros person, who inherently understood that in Jesus, God was in the house and was filling that moment with meaning; and now she’s taking every minute she can to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to what he has to say.
Martha, of course, can’t accept that; in fact, Martha expresses some annoyance at the fact that her sister was leaving all the work that needed to be done to her! And, understand, it’s not that Martha is out of line for saying so; it’s simply that she’s acting in a typical way, doing what needed to be done with the limited time she was given. But Mary was focusing on something different, you see; the “one thing” that was more lasting and important. And Jesus commends her for this, saying, “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
What this gospel story reminds us is that for all the ways we spend our time; considering all the many demands that are made of that time and all the choices we make regarding those demands, at the end of the day, when those 1,440 minutes have been spent, the moments that carry the most lasting value are that way because God is in the center of them. What makes our lives more than merely “four score and ten,” but something of real meaning is that it involves reverence and respect for God; and, I might add, a heart for serving God in amidst all the other moments we’re given.
We’re called to be stewards of time; and what that means is discerning what it is that God is up to in our lives and in our world, and then to make our choices accordingly. And ultimately, says Jesus, the better part is to be like Mary, choosing to focus on what God is doing so that God will fill up our time with meaning.
Does this mean we should never again set our alarm clocks, and lose our appointment books? That we ignore the deadlines that are set at our workplaces and by our creditors, and simply decide to live our lives from day to day without any kind of routine, scheduling or accountability? Tempting though that may be sometimes, certainly not; there will always be a place for chronos type of living, because like it or not, the clock is always ticking and there is always stuff that needs to be done on time. But maybe it means we should rethink the choices we’ve made about this gift of time, and then seek to choose wisely as to what make that time truly well spent.
It’s okay, you know, to stop once in awhile and take stock of your usage of time! In fact, I’d challenge you every day this week to take five minutes off – all you need is five minutes; understanding of course, that you need to spend these five minutes alone, and in silence (that means no TV, no radio, no “Wordle” or “Toon Blast,” cell phones off and not just on vibrate, with nothing else to distract you) – and take just five minutes to experience what it feels like to not spend the time on anything else that’s clamoring at you?
And ask yourself, what am I thinking about this? What do I hear? What do I see that maybe I didn’t see before? And if I could spend time today doing something somewhere that would give this day its fullness for me, if I could involve myself in something that would help me to know the presence and power of God in and through my life right here and right now, what would it be?
Would it be spending time with your kids or your grandchildren? Would it be taking a walk out in the stillness of a summer morning? Would it be time spent in reading your bible, or in prayer? Could it be answering that persistent little voice in your heart that’s telling you there’s a better part in your life, and if you’ll only pay attention… you might just discover that better part as something real and purposeful and even life changing.
Just try it, friends; there’s never a better “time” than right now to seek to make this spiritual discipline in your life; this is how time intersects with faith, and not only becomes a blessing to you, but also to others… to your family, your friends, neighbors and co-workers, even strangers… and might I add, to those inside and outside of the church; there is a reason, after all, that time is one of the three “T’s” of stewardship, right along with talent and treasure.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes… how do you measure a year in the life? More immediately, how do you measure a day, friends? To quote the song from Rent again, “How about love?” In this instance, in the love of God permeating your time! That would be, most certainly, time well spent… and “the better part.”
May God bless you in your spending of time; and may our thanks for all that we do be unto God!
AMEN and AMEN!
© 2022 Rev. Michael W. Lowry. All Rights Reserved.
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