The Fullness of Time

Sermon

A Christmas Eve Homily

Of all the carols and hymns in the Christmas repertoire, I think the one that best captures the sentiment of this particular year is “In the Bleak Midwinter,” in which the frosty wind made moan and earth stood hard as iron.

The earth is hard, in the cold days in the northern hemisphere, and life has been hard too, since the middle of March, when our Catholic friends observe Mary’s visit from the angel, since mid March until now. It has been a nine hard months, and now, nine months later, we celebrate a birth.

But in some ways, the time does not feel right for celebration, on this night when too many of us are not with our loved ones, when the apartment feels too empty, when we long to sing together and share holiday food together, and all those things.

Perhaps it is good to remember what the writer of Ecclesiastes observed: that for everything there is a season, and a time, and a purpose under heaven. And in his letter to the church in Galatia, the apostle Paul writes that in the fullness of time, God sent the beloved Son to us.

There’s a lot packed into those words, and on this particular occasion, a prerecorded meditation in the midst of a Christmas Eve video, it doesn’t seem right to give a long exposition on the theology of that statement. So let me instead offer an observation or two about time, about our time and God’s time.

The Greeks had two words for time: chronos time, which is our time, human time, measured in seconds and minutes and days and years and millennia. This is time that can be marked and put on a calendar and recorded for history. This is the time we set on our watches and for our Zoom meetings. This is the time in which we count 284 or so days of self-regulated quarantine.

The other word the Greeks had for time was kairos, which was something different. Philosophers and mystics understood kairos – we might call it deep time, time beyond counting. We might even call it God’s time.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul talks about the fullness of chronos time – when in the course of human history it was the right time, God sent the beloved Son to earth. Why? To save us, some say; to heal others, others say; to know what it meant to be human, still others would say.

But why that time? Why not earlier? Why not later? Why not now? Do we not need saving and healing? Do we not need God with us, too?

What if we looked at this differently and understood that God is always present in kairos time, the deep time that cannot be measured? And what if what Paul is saying is that God entered into human time, God showed up on earth on a date on the calendar? And what if the point of all of that is that from then on, God has been with us – God is with us, and that God has never left our time?

Perhaps there is comfort in that in this bleak midwinter. Perhaps looking back at these past nine months of isolation, and masks and hand sanitizer, and doing church and everything else online or not at all – perhaps looking back we see that we have not been alone, that there has been a holy presence around us and among us and even within us.

One of the things I love most about the Christmas Eve service at Westminster is singing “Silent Night” by candlelight because it feels so holy, and it feels like a kairos moment or two. Hearing the hymn just isn’t the same. But that doesn’t mean that God isn’t with us when, in a few minutes, we listen to the hymn, and maybe warble along, and in the spirit of things, turn off our lamps and light a few candles.

As it turns out, God has been here all along, and it is God’s presence with us that makes time full. And meaningful. And grace-filled.

I hope there is comfort in that for you. Just as the light never really leaves the world, so God never leaves us. That’s our God, Emmanuel – God with us.

Alleluia. Amen.