Now Is the Right Time
Reflections on Ephesians 5.15-20
RCL Proper 20B
19 August 2018
Holy Trinity Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Ephesians 5.15-20
5.15Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, 19as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Every family has at least one time in its life when it faced both welcome and unwelcome challenges. The autumn of 1990 and the spring of 1991 was just such a time in the life of our family here in Metro Vancouver. The Board of Governors at Vancouver School of Theology had unexpectedly given me the gift of a full year’s sabbatical rather than just the six months I was entitled to have so that I could make significant progress on my doctoral thesis. The same day that I learned of the Governors’ decision, Paula told me that she was pregnant with Owen, our youngest, and that he would be born in October, just as I was beginning my sabbatical --- another bit of unexpected news. Juggling two young children, a pregnant wife and the research and writing of a thesis made for an autumn that was, to say the least, both eventful and stressful.
We did have an unexpected source of support. Marjorie and Cyril Powells, retired missionaries of the Anglican Church of Canada, took up residence in the apartment across the hall from us at VST. Their presence was a gift of calm, of stability and of perspective during that autumn. A few months after Owen was born, early in the spring of 1991, Paula and Marjorie met for a cup of tea. The conversation turned to the future and Marjorie asked Paula what her heart was calling her to do in the years ahead. ‘I want to become a priest,’ Paula said, ‘but I’ve been waiting for the right time to begin the process.’ Marjorie was a very wise person and she replied, ‘Paula, there is no such time as the “right” time. There is only the here and now. We do what we think God is calling us to do and figure out the details as best we can as we go along.’ That afternoon I arrived home to learn that my spouse had applied for admission to VST. And, just as Marjorie said, we worked out the details as we went along. Even now I have no regrets. It was not and has not been easy, but it was the right thing to do.
There is a sentence in today’s reading from Ephesians that Paula and I could have used as our working principle during those days: “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” [1] The writer reminds his audience that the days are ‘evil’, in other words, they are living in a time when being a Christian is not easy in a culture and society that was often hostile to the claims of the good news of God in Jesus. Some Christians at that time might have thought that it would be better to hunker down and avoid notice, in the hopes that the promised ‘day of the Lord’ would come soon. But hunkering down was not then, nor is it now, an option for the disciples of Jesus. To be sure we wait with longing for the promised ‘day of the Lord’, but we live in the present.
Our present day, just as it was for our ancestors in the faith, is both the ‘meantime’ and the ‘mean time’. It is the ‘meantime’ because we live and witness to Christ in the time between Jesus’ life, death and resurrection two thousand years ago and the day when God’s purposes for the creation will be fulfilled ‘so that we and all [God’s] children shall be free’.[2] But our time is also the ‘mean time’ because we are witnesses to the continued human resistance to doing justice, to loving kindness and to walking humbly with God. What the writer of the Letter to the Ephesians describes as evil days we might easily call ‘mean times’ when the ‘better angels of our nature’ struggle to assert themselves against ‘the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God’. [3]
My friends, there is always something said for taking time to discern what God is calling us to be and to do, whether as individuals, families or communities, and then to plan how we are to move towards the goals we have discerned. But we can find ourselves paralyzed when we keep looking for the ‘right’ time to act upon the plans we have made. The only real time we have is ‘now’.
This is something that the writer of Ephesians knew all too well. When he exhorts his audience to make the most of ‘the time’, he chooses a very particular word for ‘time’ --- ‘kairos’. ‘Kairos’ is sometimes translated in the New Testament as ‘the right time’ or ‘the fullness of time’. It is a quality of human experience rather than a measure of our journey around the sun which is the source of our calendar and our clocks. ‘Kairos’ is the realization that we are living right now, right here, with these people in God’s reign of justice and peace. The world we hope for is both a future hope and a present reality --- if we have eyes to see it, ears to hear it, wills to embrace it and hands to work with God in making it present now.
In the months and years ahead this community of faith we call Holy Trinity Cathedral will write a new chapter in the story of our life and witness to Jesus here in New Westminster. Our decision to re-develop this property is a clear indication that we do not plan to hunker down and hope for ‘better’ times. We have chosen to act and, in choosing to act, we have set ourselves on a path which will no doubt bring unexpected challenges even as it will bring unexpected gifts of God’s grace. What we shall be five or more years from today, we can only imagine. But what we can say is that we are God’s children now, that we have a part to play in God’s love and compassion for New Westminster now, that we are being transformed, bit by bit, into stronger and more able disciples of Jesus now.
Friends, we are not unwise people. We know that we are living in the ‘meantime’ and in the ‘mean time’. But we shall make the most of the time, giving thanks for all that God has done for us, all that God is doing for us and all that God will do for us. And we shall work things out as we go along, knowing that we do not travel alone but in the grace of God, in the love of Christ and in the communion of the Holy Spirit.
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