23^rd Sunday After Pentecost Year C

Now is the Time (Remembrance Sunday)

Haggai 1:1-12

11 November, 2007 

     I am obsessed by time. It is hard for me to imagine my day apart from the clock. Usually I awaken from a dead sleep exactly five minutes before the buzz of the alarm clock. The first thing I do is role over and instinctively glance at the clock radio on the night table. I stumble to the kitchen, help fix breakfast and pack lunches for the kids, quickly peruse the newspaper, all with an eye on the clock and my schedule. I jump in the shower for seven or eight minutes, dress and leave for work. If I am going in the car I mentally plan which route I will use; which one will avoid the most traffic lights, allow me to get to my destination a minute earlier. I pride myself on being on time. I hate to be late and I’m often irritated by those who are. I like saving time. I like efficiency in my everyday tasks.

    And yet strangely enough the more I try to manage my time the less time there seems to be. The more I try to exert control over the time in my life, the more I realize it is uncontrollable. There is never enough time.

  I know I am not alone. In the frantic age in which we live time has become more scarce than money and therefore more valuable. Our age is one in which there is a time famine. People seeking the good life are finding it increasingly difficult to enjoy it, even if they can afford it. According to one recent survey, the amount of leisure time enjoyed by the average North American has shrunk 37 percent since 1973 but the average work week has increased from fewer than 41 hours to nearly 47 hours. In some professions an 80 hour week is not uncommon.

         It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  A 1967 government report predicted that “by 1985 people would be working just 22 hours a week or 27 weeks a year and could retire at 38.” The major problem for us should have what to do with all the leisure time provided by all the technological wizardry we surround ourselves with. But instead we are busier than we have ever been. Faxes, cell phones, and email mean we never really get away.

     Everywhere, it seems, people are over scheduled and over-committed. Workers are weary. Parents are preoccupied. And the things we say matter the most are often neglected.  I have found that the number one pastoral issue for members of this congregation are issues related to the very busyness which defines us.  Dual income couples struggling to find time for each other. Single parents, alone responsible for demanding work and raising children. Men and women physically at the breaking point. Almost every day I talk with someone who wonders aloud about what their scrambling, crazy existence really means.

     After learning of his wife’s death Shakespeare’s Macbeth ponders the meaning of his plans:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing (Act V, Scene 5)

    Does our busyness signify nothing? It hits us at odd moments, in the drive-through for our double double, in the middle of the night, in the shower, or gazing blankly at a computer screen; we have one of those frightening moments when we realize that our lives are filled with “sound and fury”, that we strut and fret pretending there is some significance to all our busyness. We are so often but “walking shadows.”

    As a minister I am always amazed at the endless ability of scripture to speak to our situation. Words and texts written centuries ago seem to have an eternal application, speaking beyond their own historical setting to bring comfort and correction to us in our times. So it is with the little book of Haggai. It isn’t often read, overlooked because of its brevity. But listen to the words again; “Consider how you have fared.  You have sown much and harvested little; you eat, but never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm, and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.” (Hag. 1:5-6)

   Haggai describes a people scurrying about to complete the tasks of daily living, but never seeing the fruits of their work, never reaching the security they seek, never seeing the full benefits of their labour. Do you see yourselves?

   At the end of the sixth century BC the Babylonian Empire was firmly entrenched as the world’s great superpower. Judah, the homeland of the biblical Jews, struggled to remain a small but independent state. By 587 after an 18 month siege, it succumbed and was finally conquered by Babylonian forces and the people were deported and scattered through out the empire. The invading armies took apart the walls of Jerusalem and burned the city. The temple, the centre of religious, political and cultural life for the Jews was destroyed. For all intents and purposes Israel, its religion, its monarchy, its way of life as described in scripture was destroyed along with the temple.  

     But like all great empires, Babylon could not maintain global dominance. By 539 another world power, the Persians, had conquered the Babylonians and began their hegemony over the known world. The new emperor Cyrus had no use for all the Jewish exiles in his midst and passed a decree allowing them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their culture. Over the next several years there was slow emigration back to their homeland. By 522 as many as 50, 000 exiles returned to Judah.

     Expectation was high among the returnees. Many saw the opportunity to return as a sign from God that Israel would once again return to prosperity. Full of religious zeal they dreamed of rebuilding the temple and restoring Israel’s religious glory. Reality was much different. The returnees discovered that much had changed in Judah during their exile. The familiar economic structures, the political hierarchies, and religious institutions had all vanished. There was much work to be done to establish the basic needs of life. The returnees got busy, they worked hard. They built houses and tilled the land. They attempted to create a workable economy, a viable living. But they soon realized that the building of the temple would have to be put off. Prophets like Haggai urged them to get at the rebuilding of the temple. But they were reticent. Now was not the time. There were no extra human resources, there was not sufficient cash. Besides who had the time for temple projects? Wasn’t there enough to do just to eek out a living? First things first. A rebuilt temple became a dream deferred.

    It is to this reality that Haggai speaks. For Haggai, the people’s priorities are askew. They were busy, but with the wrong things. Time, that most precious of all resources was being squandered on selfish concerns rather than being devoted to those things that would rebuild society for the better.

  Today as I hear Haggai’s words I am drawn to the final stanza of “In Flanders Field”.  
Take up our quarrel with the foe;

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch, be yours tp hold it high

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders field.

     Once, our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and grandparents felt called to arrest the fires of nationalism and fascism. They felt it necessary to give their time and in many cases, their lives to that cause. They fought to secure the values we hold dear, they fought and died to ensure a better way of life for their children and children’s children.

And yet just a generation later their sacrifice often goes unappreciated. Our lives are so busy that we rarely stop to remember that the very freedom to be so busy in the first place, was secured by their efforts.

  Our veterans ask only one thing of us; continue the struggle. Continue to make the world a better place; continue to oppose oppression, to work for peace and justice and equality. Continue to make Canada a country where freedom reigns. That’s the torch that has been thrown to us.

     But this takes time and effort. It means devoting some part of our energy, making some investment of time in those groups and efforts that are striving to make a difference in our society. Unlike war peace never just breaks out; justice never just happens. It takes commitment. It is not good enough to simply wear a poppy for a couple of weeks, or gather at the cenotaph on a damp and cold November 11^th. Our veterans deserve more time than this.

   Haggai’s words are strangely prescient. He speaks about the meaning of human time. What is our time for? Is it for scurrying here and there, procuring material things, securing our basic needs? Is our priority to be simply looking after ourselves and our families? Or is our time pregnant with greater possibility? Our time is our greatest resource. To what are we devoting our time?

  Peace and justice are not things to be deferred. The time is now. If we are not working for peace, for quality of life for all, for an end to violence and racism, then we have indeed broken faith with our veterans. These men and women gave their lives that our lives may be free of the evil that they faced head on. How will we honour that?

  Immediately after reading “In Flanders Field”, Edna Jaques wrote a reply to the challenge contained in that poem. Her poem “In Flanders Now” she writes,

We have kept faith, ye Flanders' dead, 
Sleep well beneath those poppies red, 
That mark your place. 
The torch your dying hands did throw, 
We've held it high before the foe…

Rest in peace, that task is done,’

the fight you left us we have won.

And peace on Earth has just begun,

In Flanders Now.

     Today let us commit our time to making these words ring true. Let us not become so consumed with our own busyness that we forget the sacrifices of our veterans. A better world takes times; it starts one person at a time. One home at a time. One street at a time. One school, one office, one church at a time. Friends now is the time.