Fruitful Use of Time

Rebecca Sheridan

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Psalm 121

            “The Lord will not let your foot be moved, nor will the one who watches over you fall asleep.  Behold, the keeper of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep,” our psalm for the day, Psalm 121 tells us.  I know this psalm well; it is one of my favorites.  I had never really thought about the idea that God never sleeps, though, until I had the opportunity last year to travel to Wittenberg where I was able to meet 22 Lutheran pastors from all over the world through a Lutheran World Federation Seminar.  We still keep in touch, a year later, via a Whatsapp group, celebrating birthdays, births of children and grandchildren, and supporting one another in prayer for our ministry on every continent except for Antarctica.  And, you know what? I know a Lutheran pastor now in almost every single time zone. So, throughout the day and night sometimes, people are texting on the Whatsapp group. I’ve learned to put my phone on silent so I can sleep.  In a concrete way, my friends around the world remind me that God never sleeps.  When we are sleeping, others across the world are going about their days, being watched by God.  Isn’t it a lovely thought to know that God is being served and worshipped 24/7 as well?  God is vigilant and watching over us all of the time, Psalm 121 tells us.  God gives us all of his time, all of the time!

            Today, we are beginning a three-week emphasis on stewardship, and I think it’s important that we talk about money (giving to the church) LAST instead of first in terms of how we understand stewardship.  Because the word “stewardship” does not exclusively mean giving money to the church.  Stewardship is about recognizing that EVERYTHING we have is a gift from God, and God has lent what is actually his to us for us to live an abundant life.  So in the next few weeks we’ll be thinking together about the traditional “time, talent, treasure,” but we could also think about how we take care of our bodies (our physical health) as a gift from God, or how we care for the Earth, which God gives us as our responsibility, or how we steward our relationships with others – friendships, neighbors, co-workers, fellow church-members, and so on.  Faithful stewardship begins with recognizing all that God has given us. Today’s gospel has that famous verse from Jesus that reminds us of the greatest gift we have been given: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life.”  That sums it up – if God has given us everything, especially his only Son so that we may have eternal life, how can we use what God has given us wisely, and give thanks back to God?

            So, we start with the gift of time, today, which is something everyone has, rich and poor alike.  And I wonder, if someone said you could have $50 or 1 extra hour of time a week, which would you choose? Which is actually more valuable to you?  I have to say, I might choose the extra time over the extra money.  I often feel like I do not have enough time. I really don’t run out of things to do, almost ever.  In Psalm 121, we hear some incredibly comforting words that God has all the time in the world for us.  God is never too busy, God doesn’t have anything else more important to do, than to watch over and care for us.  While it often may seem like for us we’re running around from thing to thing, getting less sleep than we should get and getting distracted spending time on things that aren’t that important, God is the only one that truly has time on his side, as the creator of time itself.

            Jesus, in our gospel for this morning, takes time with Nicodemus who comes to talk with him by night, likely because he is afraid of peer pressure from his fellow Pharisees who would ostracize him for spending time with the radical guy who claims to be the Messiah.  But maybe he also came at night because he was too busy during the day?  Whatever the case, night was the time Nicodemus had for conversation with Jesus.  If you read through the gospels, you can see that Jesus is sometimes trying to get away from the crowds to pray or to rest, but as the crowds press in, as individuals like Nicodemus come to him for healing or for knowledge, Jesus always takes time for them.  He understands this is why he came to Earth – for healing of body, mind and spirit, to tell people the good news of the kingdom of God.  Jesus tells Nicodemus of the possibility of being “born again” or having a spiritual rebirth through baptism so that the time God has given us on Earth might be used purposefully for God’s glory.

            That’s the question before us today:  How do we use the amazing gift of time from God wisely? We often talk about tithing, giving 10% of our income to the church and charity, but have you ever thought about tithing your time?  If we (theoretically) sleep 8 hours a day, that gives us 116 waking hours a week. Ten percent of that time is a little over 11 hours.  Some of you give more than that to the church, I know.  A lot of us, unfortunately, have been taught a strange notion that God only needs an hour of our time on Sunday morning. It’s a difficult thing to change our mindset to remembering that every hour of every day is a gift from God.  God calls us to live our whole lives in praise and service to him.  I don’t think tithing our time means that we should sit in a church building 10+ hours a week, but we should think about the attitude in which we go about our day and our work, the time we spend in prayer and scripture study at home or with friends, the time we spend with our family, and yes, how the church could use a donation of time ESPECIALLY if your personal finances are tight.  Sometimes I dream of what the church could do if money was no obstacle, like if everyone actually tithed their incomes.  The same could be said of time – imagine if we had 50 people giving 10 hours of their week to feeding the hungry, serving those in need, studying scripture, praying for others, inviting people to worship and so on?!  Imagine how God might change the world through us as Christians if we all shared our time so generously.

            The tricky thing in talking about stewardship is that it can become a huge guilt trip.  If you feel God tugging at you to give a little more money, or a little more time, you don’t have to jump from giving less than 1 % to 10% or more.  Try just 1% more, 1 hour more.  Remember what I said at the beginning – stewardship is first and foremost about recognizing all that God has given us, not about what we do for God.  Jesus tells Nicodemus, and us, this morning, that it is possible to hit the reset button on our lives, to reevaluate our priorities to live by the Spirit.  Lent is a good time to look at our calendars and hit the reset button to think about what we need to do and what is most valuable to us in terms of time – we all have been given the gift of time, and yet we also have only one life to live? How will we use what God has given us?  And, most importantly, let us thank God that God has all the time in the world for us.

Amen.