Proper 15B, 2024
Text: Ephesians 6:6-21
Title: Free Time
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There are two ways to talk about time. The Greeks even had two different words for time.
The first kind of time is time that you can measure. Time as minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years. This is what the Greeks called “Chronos” like chronology, or a certain comic book character by the same name.
Chronos time is oppressive. You can’t escape it. Chronos time is the alarm clock going off in the morning telling you that it’s 6:00am, time to wake up and get to work, to go to school. Chronos time is the calendar telling you that it’s April 15, so it’s time to pay your taxes.
Chronos time makes you anxious because you never have the right amount.
When you’re young, time moves slowly, and you’re constantly looking forward in time to your next birthday, to Christmas, to being able to drive or vote or drink.
When you’re older, time flies and you never have enough. Your life is filled with appointments and deadlines. You rush to get everything done in time. And then you reach middle age and you realize that your time on earth is more than halfway over, and there might not be enough time to do everything you wanted to do in life. And then retirement hits, and still you have demands on your time, and you begin to realize that your time is getting shorter and shorter.
Paul says that “the days are evil.” It’s the evil in the world that makes time so oppressive for us.
Sometimes the evil is your own laziness and procrastination, so that time is a burden to you.
Sometimes the evil is in those around you who waste your time, who make your tasks difficult and oppressive.
Sometimes the evil is in the world itself. In our broken world, time becomes a burden just because the world has been infected with sin, and there are consequences if things aren’t done on time.
If I don’t harvest my tomatoes in time, they will rot or get eaten by critters.
If I don’t change my oil in time, it will break down and my car’s engine will burn out.
If I don’t file my taxes in time, there will be fines and penalties.
With Chronos time, with time that you can measure, there’s always the burden of getting things done on time or facing the consequences.
What if there was another sort of time, time that isn’t measured, time that wasn’t a burden, but instead, time that was a gift?
The other type of time is what the Greeks called Kairos. Sometimes this is translated as “opportunity.” The best way to think about this type of time is not how much of it that you have, but what the time is right for.
An example of Kairos time would be saying something like “It’s time for dinner.” It could be 5:00p, it could be 7:00p, it doesn’t matter what the clock says. What matters is that the food is ready, everyone is here, it is a good, appropriate time to sit down and eat.
In Kairos time, you don’t care what the clock says or what the calendar says. In Kairos time you care about what is the best you can do with each moment of your life.
In Ephesians 5, Paul says that you should “make the most of the time, because the days are evil.”
The kind of “time” that Paul speaks of here is this Kairos time. And rather than “make the most of the time,” the verb Paul uses means to “redeem,” “buy back,” or to “set free.”
“Redeem your time,” says Paul. “Buy it back. Set your time free.
This word is used for liberating slaves, setting them free.
Can you imagine having real free time, time that is not a burden? Can you imagine living each day unburdened by the shackles of time?
Jesus has come to set you free, to make you free in every way, including the way that you experience time.
The reason why time is oppressive is because you’ve got a limited amount of it, and when your time is up, you die. Death is the reason why time makes you stressed and frantic, because one day your time will run out.
But Jesus has risen from the dead. And He promises to give you eternal life in paradise.
Think about it like this.
Vacations are wonderful, but they always have an end. As soon as you start your vacation, the clock is ticking. I don’t know about you, but for me, whenever I’m on vacation, in the back of my mind, I know that it will come to an end, and so there’s pressure to see everything, to enjoy everything. There’s a countdown to get the most out of everything before it’s over.
Imagine if you had a vacation that never had to end. You could sleep in or sightsee or do whatever you wanted at your own pace with no deadlines at all.
Because you have eternity in store for you, because you have a future with no deadlines or pressures, you have true free time every moment here and now.
Here’s what I think Paul is getting at here.
Every moment, every day is an opportunity to live wisely and to show the love of Jesus. Not because you are obligated or burdened to do so, not because you are afraid that you’ll miss an opportunity and be punished for it, but because you have the freedom in the gospel to make the most of each Kairos moment God gives to you.
It’s more a matter of perspective and mindset than anything else. You can’t show up late for school or late for work and tell your boss, your teacher, “I’ve been set free by Jesus Christ, and the constraints of time don’t apply to me any more. I was having a Kairos moment.”
What it means is this. When you are out there living your life, sometimes doing the most ordinary, mundane things, be aware of the opportunity that God has given you in that time, in that moment.
Whether you’re walking down the hallway at school, standing in line at the grocery store, or getting an oil change, ask yourself, “What’s the best use I can make of this time that God has given me? How can I show love to the people around me right now, in this moment?”
And that’s really what wisdom is all about. Making good decisions, making good choices, not doing the works of darkness, like drunkenness and debauchery, not using this time for yourself and what makes you feel good, but using this time for what is good and right and true.
Paul says to be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The best use of your time is to be here, to be filled with the Spirit, to sing and give thanks. Church should be a place outside of time itself, where time stands still and you are drawn into the praise and worship of God that started before you were born and will never end.
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