The Middle of Time
Luke 24: 43-52; Acts 1:1-11

May 8, 2005

I found out from my daughter that this past Thursday, Ascension Day, was a general holiday. Just Thursday, no long weekend, but it meant she had no classes that day. I was surprised that someone was keeping count, that Ascension Day - the 40th day after Easter - was actually considered holiday-able in an increasingly secular society. I never remember Ascension Day being noted in North America - it always falls on a Thursday - and I imagine few of you have noticed either.

Most veterans of Sunday School remember the event, if not the story. After Jesus was resurrected from the dead and appeared to his disciples, he stuck around for a number of weeks teaching and encouraging his followers, and then decided it was time for him to go and for his followers to make their own way. The story says he simply ascended, escalatored up into the heavens and disappeared from sight. Just like Enoch who “walked with God and was no more because God took him,” and Elijah who was carried into heaven in a chariot of fire, Jesus did not die.

Of course, after the defeat of death on the third day of Easter morn, it would not have made sense theologically for Jesus to have simply died later on. The Ascension becomes, therefore, a poetic expression that struggles to maintain the integrity of Easter. It is not the dogmatic description of a three-tiered universe - hell below, earth here, and heaven above. Poetry is elusive and seldom easy to grasp, and open to more than one interpretation.

We are for one last week in the middle of time.

Hans Conzelmann was one of the last generation’s foremost New Testament students. One of his earliest books was a study of the Gospel according to Luke, entitled in German Die Mitte der Zeit (“The Middle of Time”). Conzelmann sees the history of the world divided into three eras or times: (1) the time of Israel, from the creation through the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, and up to and including the appearance of John the Baptist; (2) the time of Jesus, in which the kingdom of heaven is in the midst of you; (3) and the time of the Church, from the tongues of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost until at least the present moment.

The Middle of Time sounds like a Tolkien clock in Middle Earth, a legendary period in which magic reigned and heroes and villains loomed larger than normal life. That may be the imaginative universe in the Lord of Rings, but the Time of Jesus was the Right Time, the Kairos, for our universe. Time did not stand still: there were days and years and events mentioned regularly. The Time of Jesus was not a mythological play. Yet it was anything but ordinary.

The before and after times - those of Israel and of the Church - are the ordinary times when God’s people go about the rise and fall of empires and emperors, kings and slaves, great accomplishments and horrific sins. The story of the God’s people in Israel and the continuing story in the history of the Christian Church is that all too often we are hard at work to pretend that God does not matter all that much. There are many more good reasons why right now is not the time to see, comprehend, and act as if through God’s eyes. Economics appear to rule the most important decisions we make. The realities of government and political life can assume a reality that if it is not heaven on earth, it is certainly is out of this world. Family and other personal relationships can engulf our thinking so much that all becomes a legitimate means to our personal end. And when Saturday nights are restored to their rightful place as Hockey Night In Canada, who needs Sunday morning worship to experience the presence of the holy?

In the middle of time, in between the ordinary, comes the right moment when we see clearly what God has been talking about. We are not interested in bettering our positions of power, prestige, achievement, and income. We are infinitely, wildly happy in being in sync with the God of the universe, and that leads you and I to be and do a lot of other things. Compassion for the suffering neighbour, friend, or stranger grasps our heart. Injustice stabs inexorably into the heart of every unfulfilled hope.

And somehow, not by our abilities or talents, some remarkable things happen by the grace of God. The moment you start taking credit for that remarkable accomplishment, it is no longer the middle of time. The kingdom of heaven has disappeared as if in a puff of smoke.

In Conzelmann’s book, the Middle of Time may appear to have occurred only for a few years in the early part of the first century A. D. While it is not timeless, the middle of time is not restrained by our clocks and calendars and agendas. You cannot program it, but it can happen anytime.

60 years later, the photo of the crush of deliriously happy Reginans can still make you tingle. V-E Day was suddenly the middle of time. The Nazis had finally been defeated, the world war that had claimed so many lives, Canadian and German, and changed the way the world and its citizens lived and thought had ended. Now there was a period of time - those who remember have to say how long - when anything seemed possible again, when hope was allowed to flourish, when peace and good will among all people was finally permitted again.

But once we started thinking about victory in war, rather than peace, then the grace that surpasses all human understanding has a habit of leaving us. Victory keeps us too much interested in the machinations of war and the emotions that are necessary to sustain our war effort. Human beings keep having trouble putting an end to war, and the 60 years since then have demonstrated that trait loudly. War is always regrettable and never really justifiable, for the means to the end of victory are always so immoral. As long as war is not a suitable option, amidst the greatest conflicts, we will be living in the middle of time every now and then.

If there are people who have their watches set to the Middle of Time, it has to be mothers, or more widely, those who whether related to us or not are mothering to us.

People who care for you and try to help us live a full, rewarding and perhaps a little bit of a holy life are never concerned in the first place for themselves. They are always alert to doing the right thing at the right time. Time indeed does not matter, as long as the loved one is loved and provided for as he or she requires. When you are being mothered properly, you know that you are being granted all the time in the world by the one mothering. There is no clock; just the middle of time.

The story of the Ascension is told twice by the author of Luke and Acts. It is the same author, so it is a little odd that the description is different. In the second version in the Book of Acts, it is only a few days before Pentecost. The disciples are watching Jesus disappear, their minds blown away, and then two angels confront them. Perhaps these were the same two as at the tomb in Luke’s Gospel. Essentially, the angelic duo give the disciples ‘what for?’ Why are you standing around gawking? Get on with it. You can’t extend the middle of time by trying to stay mesmerized in a pietistic holy zone. Get on with ordinary living and make sure that God still matters in how you live at each ordinary moment. Don’t worry, there will be lots of moments and occasions when it will be like Jesus is still walking with you -- in the middle of time.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan