Easter III

A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.
St. John xvi. 16
 
        
Time is a strange thing. No sooner do we seem to catch it, and it is gone. Tempus fugit, the old Latins said. And how true it is. Time flies. Seconds become minutes, minutes hours, hours afternoons and evening, then days and night, and weeks, and months, and years. And because of this, it behooves all men to make the best of time, the times. In some valid and worthwhile way, man is made to redeem the time with thought and action that bless and consecrate it all to a greater purpose, through knowledge for joy.

Capturing time, of course, is only possible for men. Human beings alone, after all, can think about time, appreciate it, and preserve it in memory. No other creature has the gift of remembering good times for joy and even remembering bad times for education and repair with the time that we still have.

This latter course, redeeming the time, learning from it, changing for the better is what human life used to be all about. Men used to learn from the mistakes they made in time and for times. They used to muster up the courage to replace mistakes committed in past time with correction in the present for the future. This is the only way man can become better and good as he pursues excellence through knowledge for happiness. In time we fail and then succeed if we are determined to recover our integrity for the satisfaction that comes with learning.

Of course, for Christians, of all men, the urgency of redeeming the time is of utmost significance. Christians believe that every thought they think, every word they use, and every action they do constitutes a record in time of who they are and what reward they shall win for it. This is because Christians believe that they are imago dei, made in the image of God, and to perfect that image in likeness by the use of reason and free will. Christians, in other words, believe that God has made us for Himself through thinking and willing the good in time for eternity. Every snatch of time matters because in it we reveal who we are, what we know, and what we love. And all this has eternal significance. In the end, how we use our time will determine where and what we shall be for eternity.

So how does this relate to our opening quotation from St. John’s Gospel? We are in Eastertide, and in this season Christ is teaching his Apostles how He has redeemed the time and times for God the Father and for them. In other words, He is teaching them how His thoughts, words, and works reconstitute and recapitulate human nature for God. He is giving them a repaired version of fallen human nature so that forever thereafter men who believe and follow Him might redeem the time for its return to God.

So Christ today presents us with a solution to the human predicament. By reason of sin, man cannot redeem the time for eternity. The best that fallen man can know and will is a kind of approximation to eternal joy. And to be fair, the record of fallen man’s attempts at imitating the divine and putting it into play for human life was not all wrong and sinful. Ancient man, whether Jew or Gentile, sought after God. Ancient man believed more in the divine than in the human. The pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Lighthouse at Alexandria, the Temple at Jerusalem, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the works of Plato and Aristotle all testify to man’s intention to redeem the time and bring God’s goodness into play in human life. But neither Jew nor Greek could save himself or redeem the time for something beyond time, but was always locked into the repetition of moments and memories. In Christ alone can all times be remembered for the good of eternal joy.

For this reason, Christ gives us radical new way to understand time. Christ has come into time to redeem it and reconcile it to God. The facts of time that He reconstituted as man for God are not to remain the absolute truth. Time is made to be swallowed up in eternity. Every thought Christ had, every word He spoke, every deed He did were part and parcel of moments of time filled with eternal purpose for man. His earthly Incarnation was a tool and instrument for man’s redemption of time for eternity. Time has a future if men will follow Christ back to its source and meaning. Thus, He says, a little while and ye shall not see me (idem). His most holy Incarnation is not ultimately to be grasped by bodies with bodies in time, the way men depend upon others for goodness and joy. Rather, He must leave the time and space medium to be with and for His followers in a new way. A little while and ye shall see me because I go to the Father. (idem) Christ must leave us because He intends that we should see and know him inwardly and spiritually, in time but for eternity with the Father. The real meaning of Christ for the world could forever thereafter mean seeing and knowing Christ as Logos, in the heart and soul, as the informing principle of life for salvation to as many as would believe. In other words, Christ the Word and Wisdom of God intended to be made flesh in His followers not bodily but spiritually, not materially but supernaturally. Christ, the way, the truth, and the life (St. John xiv. 6) would be present to His followers as the spiritual road we must follow, the truth we must embrace, and the life we must live with His Spirit animating us by rule and governance.

Christ says a little while. If truth be told, He was only and ever with His friends for a little while, thirty some odd years to be exact. But who He was in the flesh and what He did through the flesh, though only present for a little while, made all the difference in the world for those who would believe. The time He redeemed with His teaching and preaching, healing and loving, suffering, sacrifice, and death were all a collection of times expressed in the flesh for a little while that could lead to eternity. What would matter most would be remembering that little while and what was accomplished by Christ in it. His friends would be called to remember and treasure that time in which He established a new pattern and model for redeeming the time, and all times, for eternity. Christ’s life was to become his followers’ life. Christ’s truth was to be theirs. Christ as the way was the road they must travel.

The Apostles had to learn the hard way that Christ’s spiritual nature was far more important than His earthly presence. Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. (ibid, 20) They would sorrow at His eventual departure from them to return to the Father in Ascension. And the sinful world would be glad to have gotten rid of Christ the interloper and nuisance. But He insisted that His friends would need to redeem the time, His time, the little while that He was with them, for the work of their salvation and that of many others. Christ’s time on earth, short though it may have been, contained within itself the seeds of eternal truth for future joy.

Today, my friends, Christ is inviting us to see His Resurrection in Easter Tide for the spiritual truth that it reveals. Just as His death must become our death to sin and Satan, His resurrection must become our rising up into new life. Holding the short time of His visitation in our memories, it must become the instigation for death and new life as we embrace the pattern that He establishes for us. The imitation of Christ really means habituating our lives to His for salvation.

Thus, in this morning’s Epistle, St. Peter says, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. (1 St. Peter ii. 11) Christ was a stranger to this world and its sinful ways, and we must follow His example. Christ was a pilgrim, journeying from Heaven down to earth and back again, and we too must understand that this is our origin and destiny. As He abstained from fleshly lusts, warring against the soul, we must do likewise. And all this because in
Christ, we can redeem the time for the future of eternal joy. St. Peter continues by saying that our lives in time and through time must be beyond reproach in the eyes of nonbelievers that they might see the goodness of God in Jesus Christ alive and at work in us. If we are redeeming the time in Jesus Christ, nonbelievers might end up praising God and joining us. St. Peter concludes by saying we should obey earthly rulers since even their limited goodness is to punish evil and encourage goodness. We cannot redeem the time for eternity until we begin to redeem the time in an earthly manner as Christ did, submitting Himself to Caesar’s justice. That Caesar’s justice is not final is no reason to subvert it, for if Caesar keeps the peace, we have better conditions in which to redeem the time by spreading the Gospel.

Of course, redeeming the time will always involve suffering. Christ promises it. The world may oppose us, and our own fallen natures might be just as frustrating. But if we remember that in time Christ has redeemed us, His earthly life can become the pattern of our new lives, as we die to sin and come alive to righteousness. Though time flies, in and through it we shall find redemption and eternal joy.
Amen
©wjsmartin