Sermon, 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

We live in different worlds with different ways of marking different times.  We are all affected by the time of school, which begins at the end of August and ends at the end of May. That's one kind of year in which we live.  There is the time we inherited from the Romans.  That is the year which begins with the trees leafless, the animals in hibernation, and the daylight beginning to lengthen, minute by minute, day by day.  That year ends with the daylight as short as it's going to get.

Finally, of course, there is Church time.  When you hear visions of apocalypse and second comings, then you can be sure that the Church year is coming to an end.  Next Sunday will be the last Sunday of the liturgical year.  On November 29th, we will begin a new cycle of Advent as preparation for God coming to us in the flesh at Christmas, a season that begins on December 25th, not ends.  Later we enter the season of Lent as preparation for the Passion of the Christ, his death and Resurrection.  Then we will mark our Sundays as "ordinary time."

In one sense of course, our time as a Church, with Jesus Christ living in us is anything but "ordinary."  But we call the time after Pentecost "ordinary" so that people will come to appreciate how extraordinary it is that we the risen Jesus should offer to live with us in his Word given and received, and in the sharing of Himself through the bread and the wine.  Still, we do seem to live our lives in an "ordinary" way.  We wake, we work, we argue, we put off, we eat, and we sleep, as though the minutes must unfold into days and the days must unfold into years.

But what if you knew you had only one month left in your physical life?  Would you finish up important matters at work?  Would you travel to a place you always wanted to go?  Would you pray more, go to church more, do that generous act you always wanted to do for others?  Would you find ways to leave a mark on the world?  Would you reconcile and repair a broken relationship?  By answering yes to one or more of these possibilities, we indicate that in our last days we would be better stewards of all the things God has given us in this life—better than we are now.  The question is: Why do we need to be under threat of death to be better stewards?

Here's another "what if." What if we discovered that our Parish only had one more month to exist?  As members of a congregation at the end of its life, we would have a great opportunity to decide what we wanted to do with our assets. Provided God or the bishop left that up to us, we would have a few million dollars worth of real estate, cash and furnishings to disperse back into the local community and the Christian community.  How would we decide what to do with the money? We wouldn't have time to fight about it. We'd have to focus fast and get our priorities straight. What would we support and what would we want our final legacy to be? We could help start a new ministry where none currently exists. Or we could support an existing one, endow scholarships, build a youth center in town or a better shelter for the homeless.  We could do so much—if we had only a month left!  We could be really great stewards of our resources— if we only had a month to live.

In truth, it is impractical to live like that.  It can even be irresponsible.  This weekend, the movie 2012 is opening.  If you haven't heard, its premise is the cycle of years in the ancient Mayan calendar, which ends every 5000 years and starts over again.  That cycle is ending on December 21, 2012.  From that premise comes a film about the end of the world.  Sadly, Christians have not been immune from the desire to force God's hand by informing him that they have figured out God's schedule for the "end time."  In a world of wars and rumors of wars, it is understandable that to hear Jesus say, "Not yet," is unsatisfactory.  But such efforts to calculate God's schedule are as futile as trying to control God's gifts of time, talent and treasure.

Yet, even as Jesus says in this 13th chapter of Mark's Gospel that not even He knows the time of his second coming; still he keeps telling us in this chapter: Keep watch, take heed, stay awake.  Jesus Christ comes to us every day, in our prayers, our worship, our fellowship, and the opportunity to care for our suffering friend and the suffering stranger.  Keep watch, take heed, stay awake.  Your time, your talent and your treasure are not yours.  And none of us know when those gifts will have to be returned to their Giver.  Keep watch, take heed, stay awake.  Take the extraordinary gift of God's time and make it an ordinary part of your lives.  Keep watch, take heed, stay awake.