Don Friesen
Time is a tricky thing. Sometimes it appears that years have passed in a twinkling of an eye, while at other times a moment lasts forever. Last Sunday I arrived at church only to discover some desperate deacons looking in vain for the grape juice and grapes to be used in the communion service. Both were safely stored in my fridge, at home. I returned home to retrieve them, but it was my misfortune to get behind a motorist on Alta Vista Drive who was travelling a consistent 30 kilometres per hour. Knowing those deacons were waiting for me made me feel pressed for time, and when the slow motorist and I arrived at an intersection near my home, and the light was red, it was the longest wait I have ever endured at that traffic light. When the New Testament says that one day is like a thousand years, I know exactly what that means.
When I arrived back at church with grapes and grape juice in hand, I discovered that my hearing aids were also at home. I had run out of time and patience, however, so I didn't bother going back again. And it turned out for the best, because I hardly heard the clattering noise when, later in the service, my microphone transmitter took off in the direction of the piano, and the communion trays tried to follow! Sometimes a moment lasts forever, and that was one of those moments.
An Expectant Christian Community
The New Testament churches also struggled with time. The apostles had inspired a keen sense of expectation among the believers. Matthew, for example, told his community, "...about that day and hour no one knows... two (people) will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." (Matthew 24:36, 40 and 42)
The Old Testament often talks of the Day of the Lord. (e.g., Isaiah 13:6; Jeremiah 46:10; Ezekiel 13:5; Joel 1:15) The people of God viewed time in terms of two ages – the present age, and the age to come – that golden age when the kingdom of God will come to fruition, and it will come about through the direct intervention of God. The Day of the Lord is a day for which both Jews and Christians wait. It was the conviction of the early Christians that Christ would return on that day, which the Church calls the Second Coming of Christ, or his Second Advent. It was an expectation fuelled by Old Testament prophecies such as our reading from Isaiah 40, with its sweeping promises of valleys lifted up, mountains and hills made low, and rough places made plain. (Isaiah 40:4) Our Gospel reading opens with a dramatic wilderness figure who tells us to prepare for this road construction. He impresses upon us a sense of urgency. Then our reading from the epistles speaks compellingly of "new heavens" and a "new earth". (2 Peter 3:13)
Views about the nature of Jesus' Second Coming vary among Christians, but the French philosopher and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) wrote that "expectation – anxious, collective and operative expectation of an end of the world ... is perhaps the supreme Christian function and the most distinctive characteristic of our religion." (Advent Sourcebook, page 29) After all, we wait for nothing less than "new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." (2 Peter 3:13) While our contemporaries are waiting for elves and reindeer to appear, as snowflakes fall and chestnuts roast over an open fire, Christians are waiting for the fulfillment fulfilment of the fourth-century Nicene Creed promise that Christ "will come again ...to judge (both) the living and the dead...."
A Ridiculed Christian Community
The expectation of Christ's Second Coming doesn't motivate us quite as much as it did the first-generation Christians. When you're suffering persecution, then the promise of a new world order takes on great urgency. And for them the transition to this new peaceable and just order seemed a little slow in coming! They wanted this comfort promised by Isaiah, but where was it? They wanted peace, but there was little of it to be seen!
And that's what the skeptics of the day were saying to the early Christians: "Didn't your Lord promise to come back? Yet (your) first leaders have already died, and the world hasn't changed a bit." (2 Peter 3:4, CEV) Their skepticism echoes throughout Scripture:
A Timely Lesson on Time
Peter answers his critics by asking them to consider various measures of time: "Do not ignore this one fact, ...that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness...." (2 Peter 3:8-9) One translation phrases it this way: "God isn't late with his promise as some measure lateness." (MSG)
We know how equal units of time can be experienced so differently. We talk about some moments being "frozen in time," like the first time you see your infant child. Sometimes we look at the calendar, or a photograph, and wonder, "Where in the world has the time gone?" The older we get, the faster time seems to fly, but to children even a short time seems unending. To a child the wait for Christmas seems to take an eternity. An hour spent on homework is a much longer hour than an hour spent playing a video game.
When our oldest daughter, Shauna, was two years of age, Donovan was in the hospital for about six months, much of that spent at Sick Kids' in Toronto. Shauna and I stayed in Ottawa, and each morning Shauna would come into my room and ask, "Is Mommy coming home today?" And knowing a two-year old had a very limited sense of time, I would answer, "No, a different day." And that seemed to satisfy her without dimming her expectation of her mother's return.
Peter indicates that the number of days between Jesus' birth in a manger – his first coming – and his Second Coming does not matter. God has all the time in the world to fulfill His promise. God has all the time in the world and then some, because time seen from an eternal perspective is of a different quality. This is also the wisdom of Isaiah, who says that "the grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever." (Isaiah 40:9) Rest in God's time, Peter suggests, it's different than ours.
When I was following that motorist on Alta Vista I did not have an eternal perspective in mind – although it seemed like it took an eternity for the light to change. I was impatient over a very, very small human measurement of time. Few of us like to wait. One woman was so irritated by her long wait in a waiting room that when the doctor finally made his appearance and apologized for the long wait, she told him, "That's all right; I just thought you'd prefer to treat my illness while it was still in its early stages!"
Our impatience is always at the ready, and many times it makes us look foolish. For example, in 1863 the American Commissioner of Patents sent his resignation to the President, citing his conviction that everything exciting had been invented and patented already, and there was nothing else for him to do!
The prophet Isaiah referred to God as "the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity (Isaiah 57:15), so it seems highly presumptuous and foolish to demand that God operate according to our timetable. Our expectation of new heavens and a new earth comes from a source beyond time, from a place only imagined. It is not something calculable or measurable.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), a Christian scholar and pastor who wrestled with the social issues of his day, striving hard to establish peace and justice in his community, wrote, "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith." The nature of biblical hope is that it is cast in the time frame of eternity. "Still the vision awaits its time," wrote the prophet Habakkuk:
Peter told his congregation, "The Lord does not delay and is not tardy or slow about (His) promises, according to some people's conception of slowness, but ...is long-suffering – extraordinarily patient toward you...." (2 Peter 3:9, AMP) God isn't late with his promise as some measure lateness. (God) is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn't want anyone lost. He's giving everyone space and time to change." (2 Peter 3:9, MSG)
God is not slow, God is patient. God wants to include us in his plan of salvation. God wants us to be a part of the Divine program. God wants each one of us so badly that He's been waiting an eternity for us so that we can be with Him in eternity. Paul stresses the forbearance and patience of God (Romans 3:25), telling us that God "has endured with much patience" things that are destined "for destruction...." (Romans 9:22) God wants to provide ample opportunity for us to amend our lives.
Ruth Graham (1920-2007) and her husband, Billy, were motoring through the mountains of Western North Carolina one day, when they encountered they a long stretch of road construction. Traffic trickled down to one lane, there were detours, and it was time-consuming and not a little frustrating. At the end a sign read: "End of construction. Thank you for your patience." Ruth Graham turned to her husband and said, "I would like to have those words printed on my tombstone."
"End of construction. Thank you for your patience." Most of us are still due for a little more spiritual reconstruction, or reconstructive spiritual surgery, if you like. God is patient with us, and Peter asks us to rest in God's time; it's different than ours. Peter asks us to wait for Jesus in hope, but also in patience. Regard the patience of the Lord as salvation," he writes.
While we wait ...
Well – what to do while we wait for God's design for the world to come to fulfilment? Peter tells us that "in accordance with (God's) promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found ...at peace, without spot or blemish...." (2 Peter 3:13-14)
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.
All valid questions when the fulfilment of what was promised is so long delayed. A sustained delay tends to erode the intensity of your expectation when an entire generation has passed on and still nothing!
Still the vision awaits its time....
The Extraordinary Patience of God
If it seems slow, wait for it;
It will surely come...." (Habakkuk 2:3, RSV)
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.