The Time-bound yet the Time-Redeeming
Imagine a mother of four standing in the kitchen, surrounded by her children who are bored and can’t think of anything to do. She has six more hours before supper and the lunch cleanup is nearly completed. The crushed tomatoes need olive oil and wine added to them while they simmer. The lasagna noodles need to soak. Onions, celery, and peppers need to be chopped and thrown in a hot cast iron pan. At some point, the supper table will need to be set. The baby needs to be changed. The three older kids need their math sheets checked. Someone needs to switch over the laundry. And it would be optimal if everything converged well so that a lovely dinner could be had by all right around the time dad comes home from work. The idea behind all of this is that a lovely meal as a complete family is a way to redeem the time. Those moments that comprise the meal would be worth all of the less significant moments required to get there. In other words, redeemed kairos is worth its weight in cumulative chronos. At least that’s how we think about it. The meal is worth the preparatory moments; but all of the forces that build this redemptive moment are the restraints of time that threaten its very existence. This is inevitable for time-bound creatures.
It is necessary to remember that, since we are creatures and not the Creator, we are immediately excused from having to operate as though we are eternal. When people feel compelled to escape the reality of being time-bound, they are often desiring something that is not only impossible but is in rebellion to their creaturely design. People regularly try to figure out ways to not have to sleep, to carve out more time, or to lengthen their days. “Everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die,” runs the old adage. The Bible, however, teaches that anxiety around our being temporal is sin.
The redemptive arc of what the Scriptures teach regarding incarnation is that the time-bound is redeemed by the eternal. It does not eliminate it; it redeems it. We can be both constrained by time and still be redeeming time. Not every moment is as special as the others, but each is sacred in accordance with its design. Plunging the toilet before the lovely supper is not as special, but it is sacred in its utility when done unto the Lord. Plunging the toilet has a necessary part to play in the oratorio entitled, Lovely Supper.
The mother of four does not only redeem the time by having her children don aprons and peel potatoes in front of the wood cookstove. It’s not only the lovely moments on the way to the lovely meal that is redemptive. The supper event may be one of the ways she redeems time, but the ordinary bustle need not be thought of as non-redemptive, despite its ordinariness. Redemptive events are kairotic in nature, but the kairotic contains the chronological under its wings.
For the sake of the exercise, imagine a redemptive event as being a kind of box. Don’t think of it as being a unit of time, but rather think of the moment as a space within which time-bound actions are arranged and embodied. For a moment, think of time as a thing. When we think of the soul occupying each moment in the same way a person may occupy space, then our perception of time begins to accord more with moments being actual things built around specific philosophies of design. In order to redeem them, we need to use them in accordance with their design. We use a saw well when we use it to trim branches or cut a board and we use a saw poorly when we attempt to turn the pages of a book with it. We may break time. We may waste it. We may ignore it . . . or we may use it properly. When we use moments in accordance with their design, by the power of God and unto God, we redeem them. As Thomas Aquinas once said, concerning a different subject, “Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.” And so the consecrating of time unto God, according to its proper use, makes the time holy.
Let’s consider the words of Scripture:
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. - Romans 14:17
Why would the apostle contrast eating and drinking with peace and joy? He doesn’t. He contrasts an eating and drinking that stand on their own with righteousness, peace, and joy that are in the Holy Spirit. Eating and drinking are the most common fountains from which people who are not inside the Kingdom of God attempt to draw peace and joy. They eat their feelings. They drink away their sorrow. The Kingdom of God is not about that. Is it possible that drinking beer can be done to the glory of God? Absolutely, if the drinker knows how to discern the time and sees that the moment is appropriate for beer drinking and it is done in gratitude to God, with a joyful peace and righteous conduct. But we may be tempted to think that the Godly event of beer-drinking must be the rare moment within which beer-drinking becomes special in some way. Special times of beer drinking may indeed be redemptive, but learning to think liturgically about time enables us to see that the ordinary need not be special in order for it to be consecrated . . . or brought into the realm of the sacred. The advancement of the kingdom of God on earth means that all of the ordinary is going to be consecrated eventually. The whole earth will be filled with the glory of God . . . plungers and all.
Speaking of ordinary eating and drinking, the apostle Paul says:
1 Timothy 4:4-5 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
Notice, it is not only special foods that qualify as being redemptive. Beer-drinking may be a redemptive act on a hot day after a handful of guys from church have helped the new family move their grand piano to the studio on the third floor. It may be redemptive to drink a beer when playing a round of Scrabble; it need not even be an expensive beer. But the thing that makes the moment redemptive is not the rareness of the occasion, but its being done in a sanctifying manner. Continue to consider moments as things and hear the apostle, paraphrased, from the passage above, For every ordinary moment is a gift of God and not to be dismissed as profane if it is received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. Even chronos need not be special in order for it to be sacred.
Christians pray before they eat. Why? Because eating and drinking are to be sanctified as acts of grace from God to the believer, received with the thanksgiving by the believer. In addition, thanksgiving and the introduction of God’s Word consecrate the very food and drink about to be ingested.
What the above passage teaches is that eating and drinking, inside the kingdom, are to be done as though they are sacred things because, for the believer who liturgically consecrates them, they are sacred. It’s not only the seven course spread on the anniversary that is a redemptive meal, or the Ascension day feast, but the mac ’n’ cheese with fish sticks on paper plates may also be redeemed. The good news is that the kingdom of God claims the ordinary. We do not only thank God for our food at Christmas dinner or on Sunday when everyone has on their finest clothes. What we see is that every bite, every cheap beer, every plunging of the toilet in preparations for guests is sacred when done in the Spirit unto God, by His grace, and in gratitude. Some meals are undeniably more special than others, but, apart from the Lord’s Supper whose specialness is unmatched, all meals, and the moments leading up to them, have the same potential to be time-redeeming events.
