Chronos and Kairos          Epiphany 3A         January 27, 2008

We’ll have some fun with the balloons this morning.

When Jesus began his ministry, he returned to Galilee preaching and saying, “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.” Did you hear that word, time? New Testament Greek has two words for time – chronos and kairos. Chronos, which give us our word chronology, is clock and calendar time. Each second is exactly the same length, like the one that preceded and the one that will follow it. The same is true for the months and the days and the hours that make up our lives. Each can be measured, and each come to and end.

Did you ever notice that as we get older, time seems to go by faster and faster? As a young student, summer vacation was one of my favorite times. In the early grades, the summer seamed to go on forever. But as I advanced to higher grades, the summer seemed to go faster and faster.

I heard about a study where they asked young people and older people to close their eyes, and tell them when the thought a minute was up. The participants of all ages closed their eyes, and the told them when the thought one minutes had gone by. After them samples a few hundred people, they found that younger people all thought one minute was shorter than it really was, by an average of ten seconds. The older people thought that the minute was longer that it really was, about ten seconds longer.

The study proved what I, and many of you already suspected was true. Time does seem to go faster as we get older. Of course it’s not true, but our own internal clock seems to slow down as we get older. Chronos time is like that. Chronos time doesn’t wait for anyone, no will it speed up for anyone either.

Each one of you had been given a balloon. Let’s use the balloons to think about time. First, let’s blow up the balloons. .... Got it all full? Let all that air represent chronos time. We should spend about eight hours, a third of each day sleeping. Doctors say that if we don’t get enough sleep, it’s hard on our health. If you disagree, and say that all you can sleep each day is seven hours or six hours, just let our a little less air.

Next we spend about one, two or maybe three hours a day taking care of our selves. This includes, time in the shower, getting dressed, doing the laundry, making meals, and so on. Let a little air out of your balloon. Let out a little more for the time you spend eating. If you’re taking care of small children or someone in your family, let out from your balloon the portion of air you think is the number of hours you spend doing that. How about time to pray, read the Bible, time to worship, to fellowship with other Christians? How about time to exercise? How much time do we spend doing that? Truth is, we might easily spend four hours or more, one sixth of a time just taking care of ourselves. Let out about one sixth of the air. Now how full is your balloon?

Next, for those who are working or going to school, count up the number of hours you spend working. Add to that the time it takes to get to work. If you work eight hours and it takes a half hour to get to work and then get home, consider that nine hours. Eight hours is a third of a day. If you work more or less than eight hours a day, make adjustments as you let the air out of your balloon. If you’re a student who has to do homework, let out a proportional amount of air for that, too.

How is your balloon doing? By now most of the air is gone out of your balloons. How about the time you spend doing necessary chores or other duties in your life? If you’re taking care of someone else in your family, that could be several hours per day. Let out even more air. By this time, I have very little air left.

So how can we get more air back in our balloons? We can’t. It’s the law of chronos. There’s no way to manufacture time. But what we can do is remember who gave us the time or our lives in the first place. One of our offing prayers says, “We gave thanks for our selves, our time and our possessions, signs of your gracious love. God gave us our lives, and the time of our life.

Chronos has its limits, and one day, our time will be done, and we die. That’s just the fact of life. Scientists are still looking for the fountain of youth, and with good medical care and diet, we can live longer and happier lives. But even then, it will still have limits. That’s chronos- limited time.

Here’s good news. When Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” the word for time was not chronos; it was kairos. Kairos means the opportune moment. For Jesus, it was the time to begin his long journey to the cross, which was his throne, where he would usher in the kingdom of God for us by the forgiveness of sin.

In your life, have you ever had a kairos moment? Have you ever had a moment that changed the direction of your life forever? Have you ever had a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something? How about the time you decided to take a new job, or to get married, or to make a major investment? How about the time you signed on in the military, or gave birth to a child? How about your baptism, or other moments when you knew God was offering you something that changes everything for you?

It seems to me that people who are wise have the ability to recognize when a kairos moment was happening, and made the most of it. Their wisdom is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s given to those who can see kairos moments that other can’t. Wisdom is a gift given to those who know how to choose a relationship or a course of action that will change their lives for the better. It a great gift for investors. It’s a great gift for people who are choosing a spouse. It happens when people have a faithful epiphany. Wisdom, the power of the Holy Spirit is working whenever we hear good advice, and we listen to it.

But you know, I think some people seem to routinely sabotage themselves when a kairos moment is happening. When God is giving them a kairos moment, they po-po it and continue to do they same old thing and waste all the chronos time that God gave them. They go from one relationship to another, and each one is worse than the first. When they hear good advice, they ignore it. When they have a decent job, the find a way to either quit or get fired. Now I’ve made a few bad decisions in my time, but I hope I’ve learned from them, and chose to go in a better direction. I can only pray that wisdom, the Holy Spirit will come to them.

When Jesus said, “Repent” what that means is to go in a new and better direction. In order to repent, we have to first recognize what direction we are going, how we are spending our time. Once we do that, we then see kairos, where it is God is calling us to go. Following Jesus is about going the way that Jesus calls us with the time talents and possessions God has given us. It is daily repentance.

In the gospel story, Jesus knew that the kairos moment had come. It was time for him to begin his journey that would lead to Jerusalem. He knew his purpose was to forgive the sins of humanity so that we could follow him into the kingdom. He needed others around him to do it. He recruited four men to do it, Peter, Andrew, James and John.

As I read this story, I’ve always been amazed that these four simply walked away from their jobs, their families, and immediately followed him. Were they crazy? I don’t think so. I think that what they saw in Jesus was a kairos moment. He was so compelling, so enticing, exciting, they knew there was no chronos time to lose. This was the power of the Holy Spirit. From that moment on, their lives were changed forever.

In the Bible, the word for spirit is pneuma, which also means breath. In John’s gospel, after the resurrection, it says that Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on them. The Holy spirit is the breath of life that comes not from chronos day to day living that ends when we die. It comes from kairos, the decision we make every day when we follow Jesus Christ into his eternal kingdom.

If you want to follow Jesus, and gain the kingdom of God, here’s my advice. Don’t let the daily grind, chronos kind of time zap your life away. Fill you life with the breath of the Holy Spirit, and the eternal life God gives will never run out of gas. By way of example, let’s take out those balloons again.

Give one long breath into that balloon because you came to worship today. Worship is the first way to fill yourself with the breath of the Spirit. Second, will you pray daily? Blow into your balloon one short breath for each time you pray in a week. Third, if you read the Bible daily, breath one short breath for every day you read it during the week. Fourth, do you give generously of yourself, your time, talent and your possessions? Do you know what percentage of these you give? If you give a tithe or tenth of these as the scriptures tell us, breath one short breath for every percentage you give.

Is you balloon full? That means that you have enough breath to share with others who don’t have that! Once your balloon is too full, you have to let it out. Now your ready for having a spiritual relationship with others who need the Spirit within you. And you know there will be times when your Spirit will need their breath as well. The best gift you can give yourself is to surround yourself with those who will breath spiritually with you and for you. You probably have a few of them with as we worship this morning.

Now let’s have some fun, let’s let these balloons go, and see how high they fly. Are you ready? Let the Spirit of Christ soar with you now and forever. Amen

Amen!