Move Beyond the Time Famine

Scriptures for Advent: The First Sunday

Isaiah 2:1-5

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

In my family, we celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, the Jewish New Year, Passover, and Easter. My husband is Jewish, and I am Christian. We've been this way together for thirty years. Some people rest on the minor holidays, but I usually have to work because parish pastors work opposite of the regular workweek. "Can you see me on Columbus Day? It's the only day off I have until President's Day." Couple requests like this with "Mom, why can't you go to the beach with us? You are always working."

If clergy were the only people living in time famine, especially around the holidays, maybe I wouldn't complain. But I don't know anyone who doesn't say, "I don't have enough time." This is a universal lament, which is as much about death and dying as it is about living. The poor join the rich, Jews join Christians, men join women, and adolescents join octogenarians in this great sign of our time and times. We are the richest people in the world in many ways, and yet we live in a time famine.

Indeed, we don't have enough time. Our days are numbered. Advent is the cessation of the numbing numbering and the beginning of a different kind of counting. Advent shows us the way of peace, of sword changing into iron plow, of pointing to the unexpected in each hour, of understanding Jesus, who told us that the time for the Son of Man to come is unknown. Best we wake up, as Advent admonishes. Best we wake from our sleep, which keeps us in the dark, and get lit. This chapter is about how to get lit. It is for the person who doesn't want to say, "I am burnt out." It is for the people who know we aren't machines and aren't burnt out. Instead, more truthfully, we are not even lit. How could we be burnt out?

Advent people put on the armor of light against the time famine of darkness. We have a spirit of joy that edges out the spirit of anxiety. We are the people who choose, digest, and chew. We are people who get nourishment from a way of being in time. Instead of acid reflux from too much fast food, we maintain a diet of peace, quiet, calm, and joy. Advent can show us a way to move out of a time famine into a time feast. In this chapter, we see how to get from having a time famine to a time feast by turning the sword we now use on ourselves into a plow that aerates our spiritual soil, by waking up, and by learning to expect the unexpected.

ABOUT THOSE PLOWS ISAIAH 2:1-5

Isaiah 2:1-5 offers a hopeful and peaceful vision to Judah and Jerusalem during a time of political turmoil and attacks from other nations. The vision is sharpened with the images of the swords and the plows in verse 4:

God will judge between the nations,
and settle disputes
of mighty nations.
Then they will beat
their swords into iron plows
and their spears into pruning tools.
Nation will not take up sword
against nation;
they will no longer learn
how to make war.

A sword is a weapon that finishes things off or threatens to finish things off. Many of us don't have real swords, but we do have weapons we use against each other and ourselves. We close down, close off, or live with the great anxiety that today will be the same as yesterday. We say unchristian things like, "It will always be this way," "Nothing can change," or "That's just the way it is." We do violence equal to that of the sword to ourselves. We become infected with anxiety. We abuse the days we do have. We inoculate them with a persistent pessimism. Because we have no hope of peace or sense of satisfaction, we live through the time famine of never being good enough or having enough as though it was a permanent condition. We actually consent to the bad news about human beings and create more bad news.

An iron plow is a different kind of tool. It plows. It aerates. When we pick up an iron plow, we act out our hope that we will be fed, not famished. This tool grows things. The promise of the Old Testament lesson for Advent is that we can and will grow. We will be fed. We will stop the great sword of war as well as the small sword of self-flagellation. We will get out of the great stagnation into a beautiful economy. We will plant seed in soil, and that seed will flourish because of the hope we plowed in with it. With every second we give to the sword, we are hurting ourselves; but with every second we give to the plow, we are helping ourselves.

Advent is not simply a 40-day holiday or season. It is more like a process. The sword finishes things off quickly; but the plow slowly, steadily creates and opens space for new possibilities. I love Advent and don't particularly like holidays. Holidays have sword-like tendencies. They imagine all the joy, peace, and hope will be on a certain day. They offend the gardener in me. They have a tendency to become a time famine themselves, especially when we try to do too much.

To switch the metaphor from an agricultural one to a culinary one, Advent is a process of marinating and preparing. The holidays yell peace and joy at us, but Advent prepares us for peace and joy. During the preparation, we become the ones marveling at a God about to be born. In the shouting, we are frequently disappointed by all that the holidays promise but don't deliver. The time famine is the takeaway of the holidays much too often for many people. Advent promises a time feast.

Planning can help. People say they don't have time to plan because they are so overwhelmed by the things they were supposed to do yesterday and didn't do. Planning to put the sword down and pick up an iron plow—or planning to marinate in the moments you do have—can help. It just takes a second to hope. I often describe that second of hope as a turning. People talk to me about how defeated they feel, how they don't dare believe that anything good could still be possible for them. I often ask them to simply turn around. Just turn around. Look back at something good that happened. How did it happen? Why do we waste our time beating ourselves with swords? Could we expect just a small thing, just a look up or around or back or over?

The word for this kind of turning is reflection. Lives that are all action and no reflection yield a time famine. Lives that balance action with reflection yield a time feast. Can we give a second per minute to reflect? a minute per hour? an hour a day? Why not? I know the e-mails are waiting. I know the house is a mess. I even know that you think if you were just more efficient then you'd have a better job, a better resume, or a better report for the boss. I also know that you will get each of these by reflecting on your next action and strategizing your next move, rather than just doing, doing, doing. The biggest proof of the value of reflection is the mess many of us feel...