Do You Know What Time It Is?

(Romans 13:8-14)

Have you ever thought about just how short life can be? How suddenly it can come to a end. 

I did a phone call to one of our senior high kids. When I asked how he was doing he said, “Not very well. Did you hear about the car accident on Davis Blvd.?” In fact, we had just returned from a walk past the corner where a Volkswagen had crashed into a tree. I went to his house. We sat on the front door step and talked. One of the guys in the car was his friend. The driver sat beside him in class. Suddenly, unexpected, untimely death had barged into his life.

Life is short. Sometimes when we least expect it, the game is over. The time is up. That’s something like the feeling beneath Paul’s words: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”

He was writing specifically about the parousia, the final coming, the ultimate day of the Lord. Like all the first generation Christians, he expected Jesus to return any day, next Tuesday at the latest. One of the fascinating things to see in the New Testament is how the early Christians responded to the lengthening of the time before Jesus’ return.

There’s a clear movement from the expectation of an immediate return, to a life of faith which looks forward to a final coming, sure enough, but in which every moment can be a kairos moment, every hour has divine importance, every day is lived with the awareness that the time is now, the day is at hand.

There’s spiritual urgency in Paul’s voice: “You know what time it is.” Now is the time to wake up! Now is the moment to respond to God’s salvation. Now is the time to put away the works of darkness. Now is the time to put on Christ and live in the light. The night is far gone and the day is at hand.

We all need that kind of wake up call now and then. I read a fascinating article in which the writer quoted a conversation between Alice and the queen in Alice in Wonderland. Alice begins,

“I don’t care for jam.”

“It’s very good jam,” said the Queen.

“Well, I don’t want any jam today, at any rate.”

“You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the Queen said. “The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.”

“It must come sometimes to jam today,” Alice objected.

“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day; today isn’t any other day, you know.”

The writer said that for too many of us there is resurrection yesterday, when Jesus rose from the dead. And there is resurrection tomorrow in the final coming of the Lord. But many of live as if there is no resurrection today. The great good news of the Gospel is that today, here and now, the Spirit of Christ is alive with us and can be alive in us. Now is the time. This is the day of salvation.

Well, what would it look like for that salvation to become a present, practical reality in our lives? For one thing, it means entering a new relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul tells us to, “Put on Christ.” The Christian life is a conscious choice, like choosing to put on the clothing you wore to church this morning.

There are a lot of Biblical images to describe it. For Nicodemus it was like beingborn again.

For the woman at the well it was a drink of living water.

For Peter and Andrew it was a call to become fishers of men.

For Paul it was a radical reorientation of his life on the Damascus Road.

For Timothy it meant stirring up the gift of God which he had received from hismother and grandmother.

For John on Patmos it was a vision of Jesus standing at the door saying, “Behold I stand at the door and knock and if anyone opens the door, I will come in and eat with them.”

Whatever image you use, it means saying “Yes” to the pervading love of Godrevealed in Jesus Christ. It means that along the path of our lives we acknowledge whowe are – sinners who stand in need of God’s grace – and as a conscious choice wereceive, by faith, the forgiveness and grace of God. And that can happen any day.

And I can’t help but believe that for someone here this morning, now is time to

wake up. Now is the time for you to “put on Christ” at some new level of your being, to

say “Yes” to Him.

You know what time it is. Now is the time for a new relationship with Christ.

Now is also the time for a new way of relating to other people.

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves anotherhas fulfilled the law.”

Art Buchwald, the Washington humorist, delivered the commencement addressat USC years ago. If you ever heard Buchwald speak, you can hear that unique voicesaying: “I don’t know if this is the best of times or the worst of times. But I can assureyou of this – it’s the only time you’ve got. So you can either stay in bed or go out andpick a daisy.”

Paul would have liked it. This is the only time we’ve got. If we know what time

it really is, if we realize how short life can be, if we actually believe that salvation isnear, then we know that this is the time to love the people around us. Because “love isthe fulfillment of the law.”

The sister of the teenager who was killed in that car accident is in my wife’s third grade class. One of the other classes wrote their own sympathy cards to her and I sneaked a peek at them before they were delivered to her. The art work is fascinating. The spelling is atrocious. But catch the feeling in these words.

“I am sorry your Brother died. P.S. You can tell me anything.”

“I am very sorry for you. . . .I know a little how you feel because my mother has a kidney problem and she might die.”

“I’m sorry about what happened. [Signed] A friend you can trust.”

Paul said, “Owe no one anything but love, for one who loves has fulfilled the law.

Will Willimon is one of the most insightful preachers I know. He said that early in his ministry, fresh out of seminary, he and his wife attended a funeral in a small, hot, crowded church in rural Georgia. He described the way the obviously uneducated, country preacher shouted, fumed and flailed his arms around over the casket.

“It’s too late for Joe,” he screamed. “He’s dead. It’s all over for him. He might have wanted to straighten his life out, but he can’t now. It’s over.”

Will said he was thinking, “What a comfort this must be to that poor family!” Then the preacher pointed his finger at the congregation and shouted,

“But it ain’t too late for you! People drop dead every day. So why wait? Now is the day for decision. Now is the time to make your life count for something. Now is the time to give your life to Jesus!”

Willimon left thinking it was the worst funeral sermon he had ever heard and told his wife so on the way home. She listened. She agreed that it was tacky, manipulative and callous. But then she said, “Of course, the worst part is that it’s all true.”

Oh God, we thank you that your resurrection power is not just for yesterday, not just for tomorrow, but is available for us today. Around this table, as we share this bread and cup, may we discover the living present of your Spirit and know that now is the moment to wake from sleep. Amen.

Weak or Strong?

(Romans 14:1-12)

The cartoon characters were two young children in that wonderful age of discovery. A boy and a girl. They were standing in a small wading pool and they had both stripped off their bathing suits and one of the characters looked at the other and asks, “Are you the opposite sex or am I?”

The question that comes in response to Paul’s description of those who are weak in the faith and those who are strong in the faith is “Are you the weak or the strong?”

There are those who have so been caught up in the revelation of what God has done forus that they become convinced that nothing that they do makes much difference in the mathematics of salvation. There are the others, those who are called the weak, who somehow feel that redemption is more tenuous and that there are certain things that they might do to keep the connection alive. 

In Paul’s day they did not eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. They had certain days of obligation in which they felt compelled to do certain things. The weak are those who do not yet feel comfortable with the great gift of the Grace, the Freedom of God and they still claim a value for certain rules and rituals as necessary for the nurturing of their souls. The strong live in the confidence that the “Kingdom of God cannot be inaugurated by busy movements of reforms; that men are not justified by the practice of asceticism, that the Christian is not concerned with rules, regulations, with programs and policies, with absolute commands and prohibitions, to make any principle of conduct an absolute requirement is to betray the conviction that our redemption has already been accomplished by the grace, power and love of God and is our by a gift.”

Are you the weak or the strong? And which of us is right? They are both part of the church at Rome and they want Paul to tell them which is correct. They are still part of every church and we still want Paul to tell us which is correct. 

Paul has just poured out his deepest and most profound understanding of the love of God, of the God who brought forth creation, who because He so loved creation began immediately to work for its redemption when things went wrong, who called to Himself a peculiar people, made promises of faithfulness to his chosen leaders, acted in special and providential ways – to bring about a faithful and holy people, who acted in a particular and redemptive way in Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection, and gave that to us. 

Paul has just shared that amazing story of God’s grace, that “while we were yet sinners, God died for us in Christ Jesus.” That God has acted in Jesus Christ to reconcile the world to himself and has made that event known to Jews and gentiles by the preaching of the good news. It is ours as a gift. It is ours by faith. We don’t have to do anything to earn it. Suddenly we now are alive in the freedom of God to live in the joy of that redemption. 

Paul has put that Freedom of God into that great passage earlier where he declares that our redemption is dependent on the power of God and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. So now, no sooner does he conclude that magnificent affirmation of the Grace and Mercy of God than this universal question comes up: Who is right – the weak or the strong?

One has the feeling that if Paul had ever had the chance to see the TV program M*A*S*H, he would have had a great deal of sympathy and compassion for Colonels Blake and Potter. The Church is a theological M.A.S.H. unit. The church is supposed to be the place where those who are wounded by the pain and suffering and evil in the world are patched, treated, heal and loved. 

And there are Major Burns and Major Hoolihan, who keep insisting on the necessity to feed the patient by the regulations. Margaret and Frank want regulation food and regulation uniforms. Margaret and Frank think that doing it by the book insures that all patients will be given the necessary treatment. The majors we call the weak. Meanwhile Captains Pierce and Honeycutt want to serve whatever food they can get. They want to ignore all the little rules in the service of the greater obligation to care for, nurture and heal. The captains we call the strong. Are you the weak or the strong?

Paul understands the question. He just refuses to give the expected answer, for he knows that as soon as he has picked one side or the other, he has denied the freedom of God in which he has been called to live. As soon as he says that eating or not eating matters, he will have reduced the greatness of the grace of God to a horrible little question of whether or not to eat a hamburger. The magnificent grandeur of God’s grace is reduced to a matter of meat. 

Paul knows that as soon as he says whether or not playing cards, working on the Sabbath, tithing, reading your Bible regularly, daily devotions, or any matter he has reduced the amazing love that was willing to die on the cross to a matter of trivial insignificance. And he will not do that.

Whether one is weak in the faith or strong in the faith, Paul says the matter is whether or not what you are doing is “in faith.” All of us are invited by the freedom of God to live in the response of faith to the love of God that has redeemed us. For some it may be important and helpful to have certain kinds of routines, certain kinds of rituals, certain kinds of obligations in order to keep one’s heart and mind upon the grace and power of God. For others those aids and means of grace may not be important. 

The question God will ask is not whether or not you read your Bible daily, whether or not you observed the sabbath, whether you tithed or not, but “How did you live and honor me in what you said and how you lived with your fellow human beings whom I loved and died for? How did you use your gifts and talents to bear witness and give evidence of the wonderful mercy and goodness of life that I made possible for all?”

Whether weak or strong in the faith, the test is whether what she is doing is being done in response to the grace and mercy of God already made possible for her by God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. Is the observing of the holy days being done to honor God? Is the not eating meat being done to honor God or to impress the neighbors? If the one who eats meats is doing it to bear witness to the freedom of God and the one who abstains is also doing it to bear witness to God, God will know and rejoice. 

The weak and the strong are both servants of God and God is the one who must judge how each is accomplishing the tasks and missions God has given to each. Neither the weak nor the strong has been given the job by God to judge the other. 

Are you the weak or the strong? Perhaps the truth is that most of us are somewhere between the two. Sometimes strong and other times weak. Weak or strong? For Paul the only test that mattered was “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord, so then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” If we are united in our commitment to God’s mercy and grace as we have seen that revealed to us in Jesus Christ, the weak and the strong look the same. 

“Who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine or nakedness, or peril of sword? For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Rick Brand)

No-Lose Living

Philippians 1:21-30

Have you ever heard of a “no-win” situation – no matter what direction you take, it’s a losing proposition. The opposite of a “no-win” situation is a “no-lose” situation where any alternative you take will have a positive result. Frankly, that has a lot more attraction for me!

Paul understood that the Christian life is a “no-lose” situation (v. 21). Paul couldsay, “If I live, great! I get to be with Jesus!” He could also say, “If I die, no problem! I’mgoing to be with Jesus!” If we have given our lives to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,then every area of our lives, every circumstance in which we find ourselves, can glorifyChrist. How does that happen?

We Glorify Christ in Our Work

When Paul talks about “fruitful labor” (v. 22), he is talking about purposeful activity; done with a goal in mind. 

We live in a culture that glorifies leisure and pleasure. Drive through the park on Saturday and you can see folks working hard at resting. (I’m still waiting to see my first smiling jogger, however.) Yet the reality is that those people who are most satisfied are those with meaningful work to do – with a task to accomplish. We need some goal, some purpose, to give meaning to our days. And all the work we do for Christ is meaningful.

Do you teach a class of four-year-olds? You give glory to God! Do you cookchurch suppers? You give glory to God! Do you sing in the choir? You give glory toGod! Do you help keep up the physical facilities of the church, so that we have a niceplace to worship? You give glory to God!

Everything we do for Christ plants seeds that will blossom in eternity. What willyour garden look like on the other side?

We Glorify Christ in Our Struggles (vv. 24-26)

Even in our struggles and difficulties, God enables us to bring glory to Him aswe influence others. As we model Christian faithfulness in the midst of struggle, Goduses us to bring joy to others.

God can also use us to encourage others in their own struggles (vv. 27-30). Theycan know they aren’t alone in their own difficulties as they see us walk with Christ 

through the storms of our own lives. 

We Glorify Christ in Our Death (vv. 21, 23)

What is the greatest day of your life? Was it the day you got that first car? The day you graduated from college? The day you were married? The day your child was born? What would it be?

The apostle Paul knew that the greatest day of his life would be the day he would die! That’s because it is the day he would be able to meet his Savior face to face. And Paul would want us to understand that the greatest day of our existence will be the day you and I depart this temporal sphere and enter into the very presence of the living God. To be ushered into the presence of God, to see the Lord Jesus who gave His life for us, to experience in a profoundly new way the presence of the Holy Spirit who has comforted and directed us – no wonder Paul dreamed of that day!

Have you watched the Olympics on TV? I particularly admire the marathon runners, because of the strength, endurance and patience they must have to be successful. For a marathon runner, the most glorious moment must be when they turn the final corner, reenter the stadium, and see the finish line before him or her. All the struggles and efforts are forgotten in the joy of arriving at the ultimate goal.

Someday you and I will have that great privilege, to finish the race, to reach the goal, to stand before the Christ who loved us and gave His life for us. May we give glory to Christ in our lives, that we might truly bring glory to Him at the end of the race.  (Michael Duduit)