16th Sunday Homily Chronos & Kairos

Time is relative, as Einstein theorizes and as scientists have discovered. Time is not an absolute but changes according to different contexts in the Universe.  

We all know this in a very local and personal way. Kids experience time much different than adults. It takes forEVER for Christmas to get here. Adults, OMG, is it that time again! Kids, it will be forEVER until I am 10. Parents--there is no way my child can be 10 years old. Kids--summer break goes by tooooooo fast. Parents---will it never end!



Time, pun intended, for another Greek Lesson: Chronos and Kairos. These wonderful words describe different aspects of Time. Chronos can be best described as the time as measured on our chronographs, aka, our clocks. Objective and seemingly unchanged (except Einstein says not).  Kairos, this is the fun one. Kairos we can say is God’s time. Kairos happens in God’s way. Kairos is the mystery; time on a different and uncontrollable scale.

Here is the hard part. We live in both worlds as humans: we often remain slaves to our watches and to chronos; to accomplish and do things on schedule or to achieve certain goals by a certain date; and we are also attached and invited to live in Kairos, God’s time; in which schedules, calendars, goals are rendered seemingly irrelevant. This living in both worlds can be frustrating.  And it is okay to be frustrated. It’s not sinful. It means that we are trying to be human. We are living out what it means to be Human as God created us to be.

We hold that tension between time and time, chronos and kairos within us. I don’t think we can balance it. It is more like a tug of war,,, we allow ourselves to be pulled in one direction, then another.

Love these parables from Jesus. They speak really of Chronos and Kairos; of reacting and acting. They speak of acting in Chronos and waiting in Kairos. We do our part, that which we can control. And then we surrender to the mystery.  If we react and react too quickly, we could damage someone; we could ruin our bread.  So we wait, discern, and see, and trust that God acts, and we are able to work more efficiently, we get tasty sourdough bread, we get a tree that provides so much more.  Waiting means we sit with that tension. We have to give up control of the situation.This is the frustrating part because we, especially in our American Culture, we like to believe we have control! Yet, the truth is we control so very little, and we again, need to wait for the mystery to unfold.  

We have done our parts, we have planted seeds or implanted yeast...we have raised our children, we have pastored a parish; we have said yes in our marriage vows, yes to being ordained...and then we kind of take it day by day, we wait and discern how this will all work out.  We trust those kids we have raised will do their best.  We trust people to choose well and do good.  We trust our spouses to grow with us.

Think again of that ancient movie from 1989 “Parenthood” with Steve Martin. A man desperate to remain in control of his life, his family. So uptight. He finally gets it when all collapses at a child’s play. Initially horrified at the situation, he gains insight and joins in the laughter of the people at the humor and beauty of the circumstances.  

Salvation means freedom. It means we accept that tension, and live within it. It means we remain humble and accept we are not gods of time, nor of anything else.  When we do not have to worry about managing time, managing the universe, then we actually can experience life.  Christ revealed to us the life that comes.  The Son of God, Kairos was incarnated into Chronos.  He too experienced the tension; and yet he lived the mission.

We celebrate all of this in the Sacrament of Eucharist. We celebrate and remember that we can live with the tension and still live the mission.  We celebrate and live freedom. We remember that time, chronos and kairos move all around us. We participate in them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

19th Sunday. With just a little faith...

Image
Parents, you are amazing. Each day you wake up and walk into the chaos of life with those special little somethings. Each day you walk into life and make choices, with little preparation, with those kids that are inherently bipolar: angels in one moment, in another, even Satan would be scared of them. Again, there is little prep; there is no easy app for parenting. I will repeat again, I do not mind noisy kids in mass; noisy adults I do, you all know better, but kids…please bring them and have them here. Parents thank you for bringing them and for having the courage and faith to be parents. Recently a friend asked me about depression. He asked me to describe what it is like. I could only give my experience: it is like a fog. It is being so overwhelmed by everything and feeling everything, and lacking the ability to take a step forward, to make a choice. There is no movement, only stagnation. It takes a lot of energy to be able to make a choice, to take a step. Earlier this week I w
Read more

22nd Sunday Following the Messiah

Image
My first car was a 1977 chevy nova, v-6, two doors; under the hood there was so much space. I got it the summer before my sophomore year in college, so I was 18-19. I wanted to change the oil so my dad told me how to do it. He said when I change the filter, hand tighten first, then give a small turn with the wrench, do not overtighten it. Me, being a college man, and knowing everything, gave it a good strong turn and thought well done. Several months later, it was time to change the filter again. I could not get it off. I tried and tried. My dad noticed and came to help. He told me that I had cranked it hard the last time didn’t I. Yup, with a degree of shame. He worked to get that thing off. My Uncle who lived nearby saw the commotion, He came and helped. It took them a long time, and what they did was eventually pound through the tire jack, and twisted it off that way. I learned my lesson; I felt a lot of shame on that one. Being able to hold in tension or conflicting ideals signifie
Read more

2nd Advent - Finding our way in God's Love

Image
Many years ago a friend living in Texas came up to visit me in Fernley. This friend had been born and raised in the city. Anyway, I had asked him what he would like to do and he wanted to go geocaching. Okay, I thought it is March in Northern Nevada, fun! But we went, found a cache located near Lahontan Reservoir, and so we drove out there. I parked the car near the cache and the gps device told us the cache was about 500 feet away. I looked around and had a sense of where it would be, on this hillside. My friend became worried: worried that we would get lost. I said not a problem. What if we lose sight of the car? I looked around, it was Nevada sage, no tree for miles; and again we were only going 500 feet up a hill. I said we will be fine, we will never lose sight of the car and we won’t get lost. We didn’t. I have been lost in the wilderness once. It was scary. I was in Northern New Mexico, in a thick forest and it was an overcast day. I was by myself, and nobody knew where I was, a
Read more