Jesus Christ and Time

12/07/11 Jesus Christ and Time GUMC Youth

We live in a country that has been historically shaped by the Christian message. This shaping has been so strong that there are many who would argue that America is, at its roots, a Christian nation, a nation that does not just have a bunch of Christians who live there, but one that fundamentally is Christian. This, perhaps, goes even farther when we look at our culture here in Northwest Iowa. You have all told me about people who go to school with you who are atheists or otherwise hostile to Christian faith, but if you look around at much of the adult population, you will find that most adults presuppose that Spencer is a Christian town, one that is made up mostly of Christians, who believe in Jesus, who believe in God, and who go to church, or at least, used to go to church.

What I think we find is that, when we are in this kind of culture, we end up with a whole bunch of people who simply assume that everyone is a Christian, that being a good Christian is one and the same thing with being a good American, that right and wrong as understood by out culture must be the same as right and wrong as understood by the gospel of Jesus Christ. When this happens, we tend to lose sight pretty quickly of the things that really matter, the things that make Christian faith what it is. So as we get closer and closer to Christmas, I want to spend a bit of time looking at one of the most important things we are celebrating during Advent and Christmas.

How much thought do you give to time? I don't mean, how often are you late or early to places you need to be, nor am I talking about how you like to spend your time. I am asking, how often do you think about time itself, what it really is, how it functions, what to expect from it. The fact of the matter is that not many people really spend all that much time thinking about time. They don't see how it can matter to their lives and, in a lot of ways, they are right to do so. I have no interest in standing up here and going into a huge analysis of time, but there are some things about time, that have to do with Christmas, that I want to talk about because they actually are important; more important than most people realize.

Many, if not most, cultures throughout the ages have had a conception of time that it is kind of like a big circle. There is a certain way in which this makes perfect sense. After all, days go in a kind of circle. We have a day today, we had a day yesterday, and we will have a day tomorrow. Even our clocks reinforce this idea. Just like the hands of a clock keep spinning round and round, marking the passing of time that never really runs out, just keeps repeating itself over and over, we could say that the day and night cycle is like a circle. Never ending. You can just keep going around and it will never end, only repeat.

In a larger sense, our years follow a cycle. Right now we are in winter, but we don't imagine that the sun is going out, or that the world is just getting colder and colder. Instead, we realize that winter is not the end, but we will eventually get to Spring and Spring will give way to Summer and Summer will give way to Fall, until we get back to Winter again. There are some little differences from year to year, some winters are worse than others, for example, but the yearly cycle is basically the same. You can always count on the fact that the seasons are not just going to stop suddenly, but will keep going, like going around a circle.

What if we thought of time the same way? What if time never really began and never really ended, but just kept going on a loop, like a CD or a playlist left on repeat? There are many, but not all, scientists who say that the universe began with the Big Bang and that it will end with some kind of Big Crunch, where it could explode again in a new Big Bang. What if those big moments weren't just big moments, but the bookends of time itself, that the universe, after it collapsed, would explode again and everything would happen just as it has happened before? What if even this youth group, this message, had been given who knows how many times before and it will be given who knows how many times again, over the course of trillions upon trillions of years? What if the whole universe as we know it is just going to repeat itself over and over again, never ending, never changing, always just going along, like going around a circle?

This was, generally speaking, the view of many cultures throughout the years. It is kind of like the idea of reincarnation, where you never really die, you just become a new person over and over again. There is a certain comfort in this way of thinking. It takes a lot of pressure off, because nothing ever really changes. There really isn't anything you can do to make a truly lasting impact, since things will just repeat, regardless of what you do. For some, it might seem like life is just pointless, but for others, it can be liberating. Things have already happened before and they will happen again. I can just float along and let things happen.

What is interesting is that this is not the view of the ancient Jewish people and it was not the view of the first Christians. If we could say that this first view of time is that time is a big circle that repeats over and over again, we could say that the Jewish and Christian conception of time is like a big line that has a very definite starting point and a very definite ending point. I mentioned earlier that some scientists think that the universe will collapse one day. Not everyone thinks that. There are plenty of scientists who are convinced that the universe will just keep expanding. If that is the case, then the universe can never repeat. It can never get back to its starting point.

How many of you have heard that the Big Bang Theory is very much an anti-Christian idea? Usually, this is because there are many who think that this raises questions about the first chapter of Genesis, where we read that God created the universe in six days. What is interesting is that, when the Big Bang Theory was first put forward, it was suggested by a priest who was also a scientist. When he published his ideas, the mainstream of scientists were offended and said that he was trying to bring religion into science. What is interesting is that, even though the Big Bang Theory is not, I want to stress that not, the same thing as the Christian doctrine of Creation, it is actually closer to it than the idea of an eternal universe. At least the Big Bang allows for God to have created the matter and caused it to explode, where the other views do not. The Big Bang Theory is science agreeing with Christian faith that the universe had a concrete beginning. The universe hasn't always existed. There was a time before it came into being and, many scientists say, there is only this universe; there will never be another one. If something happens to this universe, thats the end of the story.

The point is that the single most important reason why Christians cannot really believe in a repeating universe or an eternal universe is, believe it or not, Christmas. That might sound like a weird thing to say, but Christmas actually has profound implications for the nature of time and how we understand it. First, I want to show you what it means for time and then I want to point out why this actually matters in our understanding of God.

What do we celebrate on Christmas? We celebrate the birth of Jesus, right? But what is the significance of the birth of Jesus? Its significance is that the God of the universe, who created all there is with a word from his mouth, who has interacted with people since the beginning of the human race, has actually stepped into his creation. Think about it, we are talking about God, the one and only God, the God who is all powerful, all knowing, and all-everything-you-care-to-mention coming here. Not here as in Spencer, Iowa, but here as in Earth! This is the Creator of the universe stepping into his creation, this is the maker of humanity becoming a human. This is the almighty God of all, whom the highest heavens cannot contain coming among us, not just as a human being, but as a baby, so small you could hold him in your hands.

What is amazing about Christmas is not only that God actually did this but that he did this for the very first time. It isn't that we had God come among us in our human flesh over and over again, just in different forms throughout the years. It isn't that, in Jesus, we are dealing with just one more human teacher. In Jesus, we are brought face to face with God in all of his majesty in a way that we never experienced before and we could not have experienced in any other way. Jesus is not just one more example of God coming to earth, but the only one there is. God came among us in a very specific place and time, lived in specific towns, met and spoke with specific people, ate specific pieces of food, and spoke specific human words in a specific human language. And not only that but he did this for the first time in all the eternal life of God and he has never done it before and will never do it again.

God coming into our midst is an absolutely singular and unrepeatable event that never happened before and will never happen again. It is because of this incredibly singular event that we cannot really believe that time is just a loop that keeps getting played on repeat. If that is really how time worked, it would mean that Jesus had come over and over again; it would mean that God is just as bound by space and time as we are, which would mean he was not the Creator of the universe, by the way.

So, what does all of this mean to us? Well, there are lots of people who emphasize the fact that Earth is not the only planet out there, that the universe is incredibly large. And yet, out of all those places that God has created, out of all the vastness of our universe, when God enters into it, he doesn't do it just anywhere, but here, on this planet where we live. Not only did God meet us here, but he met us now. I know its been a long time since Jesus came, but especially if we listen to the scientists who tell us the universe is about fourteen billion years old, we realize just how close to Jesus' time we really are.

The point is that God came here. Out of all the places he could have gone, he came here. He didn't go to Mars, he didn't go to the outer reaches of the universe, but came here. When he came, he did not come as just any creature, but came as one of us. By coming precisely when he did and precisely where he did, God in Christ has set that time and place aside and said to us, "Here I am, come meet with me here." And through the power of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the Bible, we can actually stand with the original witness of God's self-revelation, the disciples, and actually meet him there and then in the here and now.

There are so many people in the world who talk about God as if he were someone who is far off, who does not actually meet with us, about whom there is not much that we can say. And yet, that is not what we read in the Bible and it is not what we believe as Christians. We believe that, in Christ, God actually came here to meet us and to transform us.

So how does this tie in with how we understand time? Well, remember that, because God actually came among us at a particular time, what the scriptures call "the fullness of time," we can't really believe in time as a circle. Instead, we need to think of time as being a line, with certain very precise points on it. The line starts at a specific point, with the creation of space and time by God and then, at another precise point, God came into this world in Jesus of Nazareth. But that wasn't the end of the line. The line continues on, doesn't it? It has continued to this day, where you and I are living and it may well continue on for a while. The point is that it does not continue on forever. There will come a time when time as we know it will be done away with. There will come a time when Christ will return and change the whole game. When will that happen? We don't know; nobody does. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they are mistaken.

The point is, as we celebrate this Christmas season, we should remember every day that Christmas, in many ways, is the center of all space and time. It is where God the Creator stepped into his creation and made it his own in a powerful way that was new, even for God. Christmas is a really, really big deal. It is such a big deal that it impacts all of time and space. So let us celebrate, not any less, but all the more, because our God has come to meet with us. Let us pray.

AMEN