Here is part of the Epistle next Sunday: …you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. …the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ… (Romans 13:11-14)
Paul is making use here of the familiar
process of waking up, jumping out of bed, and getting dressed. …you know what time it is… Well-informed meditators know about kairos
and chronos, two Greek words meaning time. Chronos means time on the clock, in
this case time to get up – 6 o’clock it may be – some people even sleep in
until 7 o’clock. But Paul does not write
chronos here, he writes kairos, the special time, the time of
change, of challenge, the time God sends, the meaningful moment when we are
paying attention. It is waking up time, he
says, the night is far gone, the day is near… now is the moment for you to
wake from sleep. Wake, here,
in Greek, is the verb used for resurrection.
Paul is writing about waking to a new life.[1]
So we… lay aside the works of
darkness. Sorry about all the linguistics,
but Paul did write in Greek, and here he is deliberately choosing words with
special meanings for people of faith. Lay
aside is the verb for taking clothes off, throwing off pyjamas, or whatever
they wore in bed in those days… and then, as you might expect, put on the
armour of light, where put on is the verb meaning getting dressed. This is one of Paul’s favourite analogies.[2]
But it is the kairos that
is the real issue here. Something is
changing. The new day is not the same as
yesterday. The post-pandemic world will
not be some return to “normal”. We need
to wake up and be aware of it, greet it, understand it, “dress”, as it were,
for the climate and the circumstances. Paul’s
1st century advice is: Let us live honourably as in the day, not
in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in
quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ… the
same verb again… putting on Christ as an
enveloping garment.
Well, it may be a lovely thought,
but we are awaking to a world of pandemic, environmental crisis, chronic
warfare including cyber warfare, refugees and homelessness, political
ineptitude and corruption, racism, populism, hatred and fear. True discernment, then, might suggest that we
embrace our powerlessness to do or change anything much. We “put on” Christ and his pathway of
humility, hospitality, helpfulness, in love and openness.
I thought at this point I had
finished this talk, but then, from darkest USA arrived the Text for Today, sent
out by Sojourners magazine on the first day of spring: For now the winter is past… the
flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the
turtledove is heard in our land… (Song of Songs 2:11-12) With all that’s wrong, life is reasserting
itself. While adversity is bringing out
the worst in some, it is generating the best and even better in others. Science, arts and religion are all being
tested and challenged… we are needing more than ever to discern truth from
falsehood… ill will is being seen for what it is, along with greed and resort
to violence, power is more and more being held accountable… The time of
singing has come, and the voice of the kereru is heard in our land.
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