Marking Time: Reading Scripture at the River's Edge

At 8:46 a.m. there was silence. No sound on radio or television. No shouting or laughing in the grade school auditorium. No speeches. No taxis honking. The day was September 11, 2003, and New York City was marking time. How long will this go on? Will the silence be broken when the memorial is completed? When Freedom Tower reaches to the sky? When the children sitting in the grade school auditorium have graduated? There are no answers now, only the need to mark time.

"Marking Time" has at least two meanings. When the drum major whistles a certain signal, the marching band comes to a stop. The marchers' feet are still moving up and down, but the band stays in one place. We say they are "marking time." There is another meaning: an intentional attentiveness to the time so that an hour or a day does not pass unnoticed. Someone held in captivity scratches a line on a wall or a stick to mark the rising of the sun, the numbering of the days. The people in the city watch the clock: at 8:46 a.m. they mark the time when the first plane hit the glistening tower on the bluest September day. They etch another mark on their memories, drenched again in sorrow, grateful to be alive one more year.

Throughout the centuries, cultures have developed rituals for marking time: birthing and dying, naming and coming of age. Families celebrate birthdays and circle the dates on the calendar even after loved ones have died. Nations mark the end of a war or its beginning. Religious communities mark time in Sabbaths and seasons. In the church year, even the long season not marked by events in Jesus' life has a name—"Ordinary Time." The longest of the Ten Commandments gathers up both meanings of "marking time." Even as the Hebrew people marked time at the foot of Mount Sinai, God called them to mark their time intentionally with the remembrance of Sabbath:

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (Exodus 20:8-11)

For those wilderness wanderers, time was to be marked not only by sunrise and sunset but by making a special mark on the stick—a longer mark, a different color—a reminder that God created the days and the nights and all that is in them.

I learned to mark time in a different way during my years as a pastor in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. In earlier times, this uptown neighborhood on the cliffs above the river was known as "Frankfurt on Hudson" because of the many German Jewish immigrants who settled there during and after World War II. Our church was on Bennett Avenue, an obscure street only eleven blocks long, still home to two Orthodox congregations. On weekday mornings the men rise early for study and prayer at the yeshiva before going to work and on the holidays the street is filled with people.

The parish I served shared space with Beth Am, a Reform Jewish congregation. Every Friday night, the music of Sabbath worship drifted up three flights of stairs to my apartment. Over the span of years, I learned to mark time by the rhythm of the Jewish Sabbath. September and October were marked not only by the falling leaves, but by the coming of the new year, Rosh Hashanah. Though I have moved from that street and the apartment above the sanctuary, this rhythm still marks time for me.

The Beecher Lectures that form the core of this book began on the day of Yom Kippur. This timing was coincidental, since convocation at Yale Divinity School was normally scheduled for the second week of October. But as the date approached, my chosen theme of "marking time" intersected the rhythm of these holy days. On the morning of the first lecture, the people of Beth Am had gathered to pray the Yom Kippur liturgy:

This is the day of awe. What are we, as we stand in Your presence, O God? A leaf in the storm, a fleeting moment in the flow of time, a whisper lost among the stars.

This is the day of decision. Today we invoke You as the Molder of our destiny. Help us to mend the evil of our ways, to right the heart's old wrongs. On this Sabbath of the soul, inscribe us for blessing in the Book of Life.

This is the day of our atonement. We would return to You as penitent children long to return to a loving parent. We confess our sins on this day, knowing that the gates of repentance are always open. Receive us with compassion, and bless us with Your forgiving love.

At the end of the day, the setting sun marked the time when the long day of fasting was broken by sharing a simple meal. The fall cycle of holy days ends with Simchat Torah when people dance the scrolls down the aisle of the synagogue and out into the street. On that day, the Jewish people read the last words of Deuteronomy and the first words of Genesis within the same service. The end and the beginning are brought together. Then, for the rest of the year, they unroll the scroll, reading from Genesis toward Deuteronomy, until they arrive once more at the river. No matter that we are almost certain Deuteronomy was written centuries after crossing the Jordan. No matter that we understand the "Books of Moses" as metaphor rather than historical reality. (Hadn't we wondered even in junior high how Moses could have written about his own death?) But in their wisdom the ancient writers returned to that place on the far side of the Jordan. Before crossing over into the new land they stopped. They did not move. They marked time and they listened:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying [God] ... so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Every year it is the same. The Jewish people unroll the scroll until they reach the river. Of course they are not the same when they arrive. The same people do not hear the same text in the same way.

In Christian congregations Advent marks the beginning of the church year as the secular year is coming to an end. The Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Advent startles us with words about the last days even as we anticipate Jesus' birth. End and beginning are gathered into one piece. Like Jewish people gathered beside...