University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

URGENCY

Romans 12:1-2; 13:11-14

A Communion Meditation by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time   September 7, 2008

            For those of you who have recently arrived at UPC and for those of you who may have forgotten during my recent sabbatical summer, my name is Bob Dunham… and I am grateful for the privilege of standing before you once again. There will be time to share stories and get reconnected, but I want to take a moment to say “thanks.” Thanks, first of all, to you, for the gift of this summer… and to Anna and John and Tom and Kim and Sallie and Beth for so capably doing their parts along with you to keep this worshiping, serving community going strong this summer.  Marla and I worshiped in a number of different places this summer – all of them warm and welcoming, all of them thoughtful and gracious… but I can’t say enough how good it is to be home.

            Our Scripture reading today comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans.  The lectionary assigns for this Sunday a portion of the 13^th chapter, which I will read in a moment. But that section forms the closing bracket of a section of Paul’s letter that begins with the opening bracket of the first two verses of the 12^th chapter. It is not too simplistic, I believe, to say that an overarching theme of the whole of Romans is faithful obedience. For eleven chapters the emphasis has been on faithful obedience.  Now, with a powerful “therefore” at 12:1, Paul turns the emphasis toward a faithful obedience.[1]

            Listen for God’s Word for you first, from the opening bracket in Romans 12.

12 I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.

            And then these words from the closing bracket in chapter 13:

13 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Both of these sections of Romans stress a need for separation from conformity to this world and a change into a new identity. What is distinctive to the final section is its tone of urgency.[2]  These closing verses of chapter 13 are often described as “apocalyptic” or “eschatological” in tone… as pointing to the end of human history as we know it and the return of Christ.  They are words full of urgency and a sense of the encroachment of time that may seem foreign to many of us. It’s not that we don’t understand urgency.  We’ve heard the warnings on climate change.  We think about it every time we go through a TSA security check at RDU. We’ve had a steady dose of it for the last two weeks at the political conventions in Denver and the Twin Cities. But not “end of time” urgent.  Not “apocalyptic” or “eschatological” urgency.  A friend said a while back that we live in an age unaccustomed to that kind of urgent talk, an age that has relegated the apocalyptic spirit to the Weather Channel. Nowhere else but there are we ever told that: 1) Something’s coming, 2) It’s going to be big. 3) You better get ready.[3] That line was funnier when he said it than it is here just after Gustav, in the immediate wake of Hanna, and in anxious expectation of Ike. But he was right: we don’t much know what to do with language that is apocalyptic or eschatological in nature.

There has been some scholarly debate across the years about what the apostle Paul actually had in mind here. Did Paul here anticipate the end of history, the coming of Jesus to free His people from the approaching wrath? Such a reading is surely possible. It is also possible, as biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson argues, that it points us in another direction:

            Paul thinks of “salvation” as the process of forming the people of God out of Jews and Gentiles. [Earlier, in chapter 8, Paul] … spoke of the birth pangs of all creation awaiting “the revelation of the children of God,” an event that appears to take place in a this-worldly context.  If Paul’s mission is in service of bringing about this salvation, that is, the revelation of God’s people within creation, then its “being closer than when we first came to faith” is not so much a statement about the end of history as it is an optimistic prognosis concerning the success of God’s cause through his ministry.

In this light, the call to the reformation of morals is not a matter of “repent before it is too late,” but a matter of “live according to the identity you have been given, for the formation of the entire Israel is closer than you thought, and this people needs to be holy, root and branch.[4]

            Of course, I would argue there’s still another way to read Paul’s exhortation, and that is personally and existentially. Such a reading says of Paul’s words about the time being short:

I may not know how long the world will be around, but I do know that I personally will not be here forever. So I need to live my … life with alertness. Life isn’t forever; there is an urgency about it. You can’t put it off until tomorrow, because who knows for sure about tomorrow? When you hear words like [“the time is short”] personally or existentially, they caution us against the eternal temptation to keep pushing the “real life” we mean to live into a tomorrow that never comes. We are forever tempted to do so:

Real life will start after I graduate from college.

Real life starts when I land the dream job.

Real life starts when I find the perfect spouse.

Real life starts when we have the kids we long for.

Real life starts when they’re out of diapers.

Real life starts when they start kindergarten.

Real life starts when they get through adolescence and go to college.

Real life starts when you don’t have any more tuition payments.

Real life starts when we retire.

Real life is never now [from within such a worldview]; it is always tomorrow. Eschatology read existentially is a counterpoint to living as if life were always just around the corner.  Annie Dillard once captured this truth in a few pithy words…. “How we spend our days,” she said, “is how we spend our lives.”[5]

            How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. My guess is that the apostle Paul would nod his head to such an affirmation. There is an urgency to human existence that ought to command our attention and focus our energies and alter our behavior toward one another, and toward God. Kathleen Norris, that wonderful writer, notes that her family crest includes the motto, “Regard the End.” “So, maybe,” she says… “Maybe eschatology is in my blood.” By eschatology, she writes, she doesn’t mean something otherworldly, or even focused exclusively on the future. She says, “It seems more in tune with quantum physics and its sense of time as fluid, constantly in motion in what we call the future, present, and past.”  And it’s not something scary, she argues, but is, instead, life-affirming in so many ways. Then, to explain, she tells a story:

An acquaintance of mine, a brilliant young scholar, was stricken with cancer, and over the course of several years came close to dying three times.  But after extensive treatment, both radiation and chemotherapy, came a welcome remission. Her prognosis was uncertain at best, but she was again able to teach and to write. “I’d never want to go back [to my pre-cancer days],” she told her department head, an older woman, “because now I know what each morning means, and I am so grateful just to be alive.”  When the other woman said to her, “We’ve been through so much together in the last few years,” the younger woman nodded, and smiled. “Yes,” she said, emphatically. “Yes! And hasn’t it been a blessing!”  [That, said Norris] is eschatology.[6]

            “The night is far gone, the day is near,” Paul says. Oh, I know that when we’re young, we may feel a certain aura of invincibility, but even then, relatively speaking, the time is short.  We think our days will last forever, but they won’t.  I think of so many deaths this last year of young men and women we have known and loved.  No one is invincible. Our days are numbered, and each day we are given is given as a gift, and all our days are in God’s hands.  “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”  So wouldn’t it be better to do what the apostle Paul urges? Wouldn’t it be better to conform our lives to God’s best hopes for us, “to live honorably in the day,” as he says, rather than living thoughtlessly, carelessly, as though it really didn’t matter how we spend this day, for there will surely be another? I’m not proposing that we live in fear of what may happen. I’m calling us, instead, to live with gladness and with gratitude and with hope, with a consciousness, like that of Norris’ young scholar friend, of the blessedness of each new day.

            “The night is far gone, the day is near,” Paul says. With some sense of urgency about our days, we come to understand that there may not be another day to extend forgiveness.  There may not be another day to love and cherish and hold close those who are dear to us. There may not be another day to stand up in the face of injustice, or to extend kindness and compassion, or to do a host of important things we know are important. There may not be time, at least not unlimited time to make the choices we keep putting off.  In one of his songs, North Carolina singer-songwriter David Wilcox says it this way:

The search for my future has brought me here

This is more than I'd hoped for, but sometimes I fear

That the choice I was made for will someday appear

And I'll be too late for that flight

So hold it up - hold it up to the light,

It's too late - to be stopped at the crossroads

Each life here - a possible way

But wait - and they all will be lost roads

Each road's getting shorter the longer I stay[7]

            “The night is far gone, the day is near.” That piece of Paul’s counsel is tied to another: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern God’s purpose for your life.” There is an urgency here, but it’s not for fear; it’s for blessing.  The future…and the present… are in God’s hands. And so are you!  The day stretches out before you now.  Spend it well… for how you spend your days is how you spend your life.