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By Dr. Mickey Anders
First Christian Church
Pikeville, Kentucky
July 1, 2001
Text: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Galatians 4:4
"It's about time!" We sometimes use that phrase with an impatient tone. We say it when we have been waiting for someone. When they finally show up, we say, "It's about time!"
But that is not the meaning of the phrase for today's sermon. Today it simply means that I want to talk about time. "It's about time." This sermon is about time. And it's not an easy subject.
One of my favorite stories comes from the musical Big River written by Roger Miller. "Hand for the Hog" is a wonderfully silly song paying tribute to our porker friend, with each line ending, "How about a hand for the hog?" One line says, "If you took a notion, I bet, you could teach a hog to smoke a cigarette. Well, it might take a little bit of time, but, hey, what's time to a hog?"
What IS time to a hog? It's a funny question in the musical, but one worthy of addressing. I think time to a hog is one thing, time to a human is something else, and time to God is something else still.
We deal with time every day. We have clocks in the hallway, watches on our wrist, clocks on the TV and a flashing "12:00" on the VCR. We have time clocks at work, bells at school, the tornado siren on Wednesday's at noon and church bells on Sunday. We know the opening times and closing times at the local department store. But what really is time?
Random House unabridged dictionary says time is "the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another."
Most of us assume we know what time is, but it is one of the most difficult concepts to define. Nobel prize winner, Richard P. Feynman, said, "We physicists work with it every day, but don't ask me what it is. It's just too difficult to think about."
Gernot Winkler, Director of Time Services at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. said, "Time remains an abstraction, a riddle that exists only in our minds."
Perhaps the best definition I have heard comes from the graffiti on a wall of a cafe in Austin, Texas. It said, "Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."
A physicist might say time is one of the two basic building blocks of
the universe, the other being space.
For a clockmaker time is the ticktock of his handiwork.
For a science-fiction fan it is the fourth dimension.
A biologist sees time in the internal clocks that keep plants and animals
in sync with nature.
For a banker time is money.
A philosopher once wrote, "Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately,
it kills all its pupils."
What's time to a hog? Time to a hog is simply the ticking of a clock. It's what the Biblical Greek word "chronos" means. Time as it ticks away hour by hour. A hog hardly notices or cares. He doesn't sense that any time is more special than another.
Time to a human is something else. Oh, sure, sometimes it is just "chronos." But then at times humans experience time as a special moment filled with meaning. For that the Bible uses the word "chairos." That is a special time, time filled full.
Galatians 4:4 says, "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son…"
Mark 1:15 says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
Ecclesiastes 3 portrays this meaning in a marvelous poetic way. It says, "To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. A Time to be born, a time to die."
One of the great contributions of the Jewish faith was the concept that time is linear instead of circular. Most cultures had seen the repeating cycles of the year and concluded that time is circular and somehow repeats itself again and again. The Jewish conception of time was radically different, seeing time with a beginning and an end.
Time is often portrayed as a time line. A line is drawn on the chalk board with a definite beginning and a definite end. The present moment is defined as a point somewhere along that line.
This model is certainly helpful, although it implies that the past and the future exist right along with the present moment. Time is not really a line, and I agree with the scientists quoted earlier than such a simple model cannot really capture the meaning of time.
What does time mean to God? That's an even tougher question. Classic theology says that God is timeless. Such theologians believe that God looks down on time from above much like we look down on the line drawn on paper. According to this view, God sees all time at the same time. God can see the past, present and future all at the same time. God can see the beginning and the end and all points in between. God sees the past as it happened and the future exactly as it will happen. God sees it all at one time.
I have always been drawn to that analogy, but lately I have come to question it. While that picture is a worthy effort to ascribe glory and majesty to God, I am not sure it makes sense. I am not sure it makes sense of time as we experience it. And I am not sure it is the Biblical view.
As I contemplated the picture of God looking down on the line representing all time, I could not help but ask myself the troubling question, "Does God know what time it is?" If God sees the past, present and future as points on the time line, how can God know where we are now? He sees tomorrow as if it were today. He sees a thousand years from now as if it were yesterday.
If God sees what will happen tomorrow and next year and the next 1,000 years on the time line all at the same time, then God does not know what time it is for us now. It is all happening at the same time for God. That graffiti scribbled on the wall seems to describe God's problem: "Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once." If God is timeless, then everything really is happening all at once! How can that make sense? For me, it doesn't. And it discounts the meaning of the time for us.
A couple of Biblical references give some idea of what time is like
for God.
Psalm 90:4 says, "For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday
when it is past, or like a watch in the night."
2 Peter 3:8 says, "But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day."
I believe the Bible asserts that God is everlasting, but not timeless. Everlasting means God had no beginning and will have no end, but the Biblical witness does not say that God is timeless or that God is somehow outside of our time.
I have come to believe that it adds dignity and worth to our sense of time if we view it as we experience it. Now is all there is. The past is gone and does not exist. The future is the not yet and simply does not exist.
God's foreknowledge concerns those things that God knows because God will make them happen. God knows the sun will rise. He's going to make it rise. God knows how he will bring the world to an end because he will make it happen. But God does not see all the details of the future because they have not happened. It is not a insult to God's power to say that God cannot know the future because the future is not possible to know.
I find this view of time and of God compelling because of the mind-boggling complications that arise from any other view of time. Humans have long been fascinated with the idea of going back in time or forward in time. It makes for fun books and interesting movies.
The 1980s movie Back to the Future is just one of many fanciful adventures in time travel. Marty McFly and the Doc whizzed back and forth from the past to the future in a Delorean equipped with a "flux capacitor." But by the third installment of the movie, the past, present and future had changed so many times that I couldn't keep up with it. Perhaps the moral of the move was, "When you start messing with time, life gets impossibly complicated."
The same complications arise when we portray God as somehow outside of time. With the future and the past equally immediate and the now only a mark on a line, suddenly time has no meaning whatsoever. The picture of God looking forward to know exactly what we will choose to do and then looking back at our moment of indecision becomes too complicated to imagine. What if we change our mind and decide to do the opposite? Can we change our mind? Can we change the future? Not if God has already seen it.
Do we have real choices in life? Or are our choices just illusions of choice. After all, the future is already determined and laid out before God like a line in the sand. When I start contemplating such a view of time and timelessness, it all becomes too complicated and moves farther and farther from life as we experience it.
I have decided to leave time travel to the movies, and keep God out of it. I find that my concept of God becomes much easier to understand and life itself becomes much more meaningful when we see God as simply moving through time with us. It takes nothing from God, and adds everything to the importance of now.
So I have come to believe God experiences time just like we do. The difference is that God knows everything that has happened and everything that is happening. And God knows what he intends to bring about in the future. He knows that because it is in his power to make it happen. But that does not mean that it has already happened, even in the mind of God. It does not mean that all of the future exists out there on a line ready to be seen by God.
This view of time returns us to simple idea that now is all there is. And we must make the most of the now. The Bible speaks of an opportune time, a time of testing, the right time, the appointed time, the acceptable time, the fullness of time, harvest time, all time, due time, a time to repent, a time for judging the dead, the last times, enough time and making the most of the time.
With NOW as all there is, we conclude where we started - It's about
time. Isn't it about time for you to make a positive decision about
your relationship with God? You can't go back and make a decision
in the past because the past is gone. And the future doesn't exist.
All you have is right now. Isn't it about time to get your life right
with God?