William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 14, 1999)

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-	Now, concerning times and seasons,	0:11
	sisters and brothers, let us not fall asleep as others do.	0:15
	But let us keep awake and be sober,	0:20
	that whether we are awake or asleep,	0:23
	we may live in him.	0:27
	Therefore, encourage one another with these words.	0:31
	I don't know about you, but I've had just about enough	0:38
	of the pre-millennium.	0:41
	I can't wait for the year 2000.	0:45
	My intention is just to mention the millennium	0:48
	just this once, and then promise never to bring it up again.	0:52
	This whole thing is a vast, Silicon Valley conspiracy	0:56
	to sell computers; you heard it here first.	1:00
	(laughing)	1:04
	I'd like to take Bill Gates	1:05
	and shove that Y2K bug up his modem.	1:06
	(laughing)	1:10
	25,000 teenage Baptists converging on Atlanta	1:15
	to wait for the end of the year.	1:20
	Fundamentalists assembling in Jerusalem,	1:23
	Druids at Stonehenge.	1:26
	The mathematically fastidious among us believe	1:31
	that the real third millennium is still a year away.	1:34
	I hope not.	1:38
	I couldn't take another.	1:39
	(laughing)	1:42
	You've got suburbanites hunkered down with generators,	1:43
	hoarding corn!	1:47
	What is somebody who can't even follow the directions	1:52
	of a cake mix gonna do with 50 pounds of corn, I ask you?	1:55
	There was actually serious discussion over whether or not	2:03
	we should close the Duke campus on New Year's Eve,	2:07
	just like we did during the Final Four,	2:11
	in case at the strike of midnight,	2:13
	the citizens of Durham went crazy	2:16
	and began running towards Duke and began burning benches.	2:18
	(laughing)	2:23
	David Duncan's book, Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle	2:29
	to Determine a True and Accurate Year, reminds us	2:34
	that the calendar itself is an arbitrary concoction.	2:37
	The 365 day year was a comparatively recent invention.	2:43
	And not a very exact one, at that.	2:48
	For instance, when ought we to date Jesus's birth?	2:51
	Early Christians appear to have had	2:56
	little interest in the matter.	2:58
	To this day, we do not know whether Jesus was born	3:00
	in four BC, or maybe in six AD.	3:04
	But we do know that he couldn't have been born	3:08
	when our calendars say, in one AD,	3:10
	which means that most of us missed the new millennium,	3:13
	when we were watching the Super Bowl in 1995.	3:17
	(laughing)	3:21
	As Saint Augustine said: who cares?	3:24
	Christ wanted to make Christians, not mathematicians.	3:27
	So at the strike of 12 on December 31st,	3:31
	you may raise your glass and you may say:	3:34
	happy new millennium!	3:37
	For that portion of the world that is using	3:39
	the Gregorian calendar, who do not bother	3:42
	with the inaccuracies of the 365-day year.	3:44
	Well, what is the deal with the millennium?	3:50
	I read about Atlanta's plans to whoop it up for the new year	3:54
	and they had originally planned for a five-week celebration,	3:58
	but then they found out nobody cared,	4:02
	and they've scaled it back to one week,	4:04
	with one night of fireworks.	4:06
	According to the Bi-Millennium Organizing Committee,	4:08
	a very disappointed, Chicago-based company,	4:12
	hoping to cash in on New Years, four out of five	4:15
	of us are going to celebrate the night at home.	4:19
	Dick Clark is bad for your health.	4:23
	Well, good, let's get this straight.	4:27
	Christians have got absolutely nothing at stake	4:31
	in the beginning of a new millennium, whenever it begins.	4:35
	The change of the capriciously concocted calendar	4:39
	from this year to the next has zero religious significance.	4:43
	At least that's what I think Paul would say,	4:50
	if he were preaching today.	4:53
	A text from First Thessalonians has Paul speaking	4:55
	to people who get all lathered up over the times	4:59
	and the seasons.	5:03
	And he says to them:	5:05
	it is important to know what time it is.	5:08
	But that's the issue.	5:13
	What time is it, and what is the proper,	5:16
	faithful response to the year?	5:19
	Maybe our pre-millennial madness,	5:23
	or my anti-millennial abhorrence, maybe these are revealing.	5:26
	I wonder if the excitement of those who are going	5:31
	to such great lengths to greet the new year,	5:33
	as if this were something significant,	5:37
	is maybe testimony to the human desire to make something	5:42
	of time, even if we've got little reason for doing so.	5:47
	We want something to happen.	5:55
	We want for time to be full, as the Bible sometimes speaks.	5:58
	Weather reporters on TV, this fall,	6:07
	were unable to conceal their delight that this year	6:11
	was bad with hurricanes.	6:16
	At the first sniff of bad weather in the Atlantic,	6:19
	they get hyper, they bring out the maps,	6:22
	they say we're going to be on down here,	6:25
	24 hours a day, to keep you posted.	6:26
	And if, by chance, the hurricane fizzles,	6:30
	they say they're pleased.	6:34
	But you can tell by looking at the dismay on their faces.	6:36
	(laughing)	6:40
	Well, of course you're thinking to yourself: well,	6:45
	what job is more pointless than reporting on the weather?	6:48
	True, hurricanes are one of the few interesting things	6:52
	that happen to a weather-caster.	6:56
	But isn't it interesting, isn't it interesting how many	7:00
	of us, not just pointless weather-casters,	7:04
	but how many of us really long for something,	7:09
	anything to happen.	7:13
	Even if it's something bad.	7:15
	Because most of our lives plod along	7:18
	in these comfortable ruts.	7:22
	Then there's the phone call,	7:25
	then there's the crisis.	7:27
	And you say that your life has been disrupted by the crisis,	7:30
	but isn't it interesting how much more alive you can feel	7:36
	in the middle of a crisis than when your life	7:39
	is the more predictable, tick-tock, tick-tock	7:43
	of time's dreary progression?	7:47
	For most of us, time is that of Macbeth.	7:52
	The tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty	7:56
	pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time,	8:00
	and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way	8:06
	to dusty death.	8:12
	I'm talking about time like that.	8:17
	We speak of killing time.	8:21
	When all the while, time is killing us.	8:24
	Minute by minute.	8:27
	If there's something worse than bad news, it's no news.	8:31
	No news, nothing new.	8:36
	For everything, there is a season.	8:41
	There's a time to be born, a time to die,	8:44
	a time to build up, a time to take down,	8:46
	a time to plant, a time to read.	8:48
	And there's really nothing new under the sun,	8:53
	says depressing Ecclesiastes.	8:57
	We wish for the new.	9:01
	We long that the year, like 2000,	9:04
	might really be interesting, right?	9:08
	Might bring some truly new age.	9:11
	Last week, I heard a former Czech dissident	9:19
	being interviewed and they were talking to him	9:22
	about his time in jail, the time when the communists	9:25
	were in charge, the time when they were being persecuted,	9:28
	and he said: you know, the worst thing the communists	9:31
	took away from us was time.	9:34
	And the reporter said: I thought you might have mentioned	9:40
	the worst thing they took away from you was your freedom.	9:43
	And he said: no, no, no, they gotta get your time	9:45
	before they can get your freedom.	9:49
	And they took away our time.	9:52
	Because under communism, whether you were in jail	9:55
	or whether you were out of jail,	9:57
	there was never any newness,	10:00
	there was never any surprise.	10:02
	And that meant that what you did,	10:07
	or however you lived your life didn't count.	10:09
	They took away from us the time.	10:13
	Matthew's gospel speaks of the days of Noah,	10:20
	when people were eating and drinking,	10:26
	and they were eating and drinking,	10:29
	and they were marrying and being given in marriage,	10:31
	and then they were eating and drinking,	10:33
	and then the flood.	10:35
	Or today's parable, which says: it will be as, ah,	10:37
	an owner that gives away everything he's got	10:44
	to his servants, and then he leaves.	10:46
	And life goes along okay, but when,	10:49
	in the middle of the night, there is a crisis, he's back.	10:53
	And suddenly, life gets interesting.	10:57
	Life gets interesting when something gets over,	11:04
	and something new begins.	11:08
	And Paul says that's just how it was,	11:12
	that's just how it is, for Christians.	11:15
	An old age has ended, a new is being born.	11:19
	Jesus describes that as kind of dark, cataclysm.	11:24
	It's like a thief in the night.	11:29
	That sounds kind of frightening.	11:33
	But I wonder if there's also something in us	11:36
	that finds it really interesting.	11:38
	In time, our time, a kind of listlessness settles in.	11:44
	The French call it: ennui.	11:49
	I really expect that we will wake up on the morning	11:52
	of January the first, and we will feel nothing.	11:55
	Oh, that's right, we will have to wait until	12:02
	January the first, 2001, for the "real" millennium, but,	12:05
	lathered in millennial froth, a thousand years ago,	12:10
	the faithful flocked to Zion to await the end,	12:14
	but there was no end.	12:17
	We've been working at the gospel for 2,000 years now,	12:20
	and how many times has the story read this morning	12:24
	been read before: keep awake!	12:27
	Watch!	12:29
	That's hard to do for 2,000 years.	12:32
	We've had the alpha, and we've been told:	12:35
	you just wait, here comes the omega.	12:38
	We did, it didn't.	12:43
	Our cosmic eschatological hope for that new heaven,	12:47
	new Earth, it mostly in our age turned inward,	12:51
	and it turned psychological, and therefore trivial.	12:55
	The Christian faith all condensed to what you can get	13:00
	on a WWJD bracelet.	13:03
	There was a time when thoughts of the end of time	13:08
	were mostly concerned with the shape of that new beginning.	13:13
	When white hot expectation among Christians needed	13:17
	to be channeled into something more positive,	13:21
	and something more manageable.	13:24
	Maybe that was Paul's problem with the Thessalonians.	13:26
	I don't think that's our problem.	13:32
	Our problem is neither overwrought imagining	13:34
	about some brave new world, nor is it the modern shock	13:38
	of the new; our problem is a kind of post-modern languor.	13:43
	There is nothing new under the sun.	13:50
	Paul compares his time to that of a woman in labor.	13:55
	Time before birth, it's a frequent Old Testament	14:00
	eschatological metaphor; God's redemption is drawing near!	14:03
	What's wrong with this world is just about to be set right.	14:09
	Christ is coming to rule!	14:14
	And that metaphor doesn't seem quite to fit	14:19
	at a time when the end of the age talk	14:21
	becomes little more than how to sell more computers	14:24
	and less about God's reign.	14:28
	History is but this kind of endless loop of wars,	14:31
	and rumors of wars, time is nothing but eating	14:36
	and drinking and marrying and giving marriage,	14:39
	and there's nothing new under the sun.	14:42
	It's just like sleep.	14:43
	Paul expected the soon return of Christ.	14:46
	But Christ didn't return.	14:50
	Furthermore, as Paul says, some of the early church had	14:54
	already, in his words, fallen asleep.	14:57
	They had died.	15:03
	Some during cruel persecutions.	15:05
	This is the kingdom of God?	15:09
	It was a tough time.	15:12
	Wherein was there hope?	15:15
	Paul begins by telling the Thessalonians:	15:18
	I ought not to have to waste my time	15:22
	writing to you about trivial matters like the times	15:26
	and the seasons, and Y2K.	15:30
	For one thing, nobody but God knows the real time.	15:35
	God, who comes among us like a thief in the night.	15:41
	We know something, though, we do know something,	15:46
	about time that the world knows naught.	15:50
	Namely, as Paul says, whether we're awake	15:53
	or whether we're asleep, we live in him.	15:57
	Encourage one another with those words.	16:04
	We Christians, you see, we don't know what the future holds.	16:09
	After your dear husband's death,	16:15
	I don't know that life will now go well for you.	16:18
	After the end of the war, I don't know if there'll be peace	16:24
	in Bosnia in our time.	16:26
	I don't know that God has picked the one right person	16:30
	for you to marry before you're 25.	16:35
	That's not what we Christians mean when we talk about hope.	16:39
	For the future.	16:43
	We have no way to lay our cards on the table	16:46
	and tell you how your hand is going to play out.	16:49
	What we do have is the constant encouragement	16:56
	that whatever the future holds,	17:01
	God holds the future.	17:06
	Wherever we go in the future, God will be there.	17:10
	In ways often hidden,	17:16
	bringing all time to fulfillment in Christ.	17:19
	Christians don't believe in progress.	17:24
	We believe in a promise.	17:28
	Neither life nor death nor anything in all time	17:30
	will be able to separate us from the love of God,	17:36
	in Christ Jesus.	17:38
	We don't have prediction for what will happen	17:42
	in the year 2000.	17:45
	I, for one, do predict the sky will not fall	17:48
	amid Y2K computer-generated chaos.	17:52
	I predict the chapel will feel stupid	17:56
	that we just spent $22,000 on new computers.	17:58
	Still, I could be wrong.	18:02
	We don't, all we've got is a promise.	18:06
	But the same God who went to such great lengths	18:11
	to raise Jesus Christ from the dead	18:14
	should also raise us, shall bring us home,	18:18
	whether we are asleep or we're awake.	18:23
	We shall be in him.	18:28
	Encourage one another with those words.	18:31
	We got a hope, a hope that's based	18:36
	that the God who raised Jesus from the dead	18:39
	thus obliterating time, the same God that on Easter,	18:41
	sort of said: let's just start this whole thing over	18:47
	from the beginning; let's recreate the world,	18:51
	that shall recreate us as well.	18:54
	That isn't optimism.	18:58
	It's called: faith.	19:02
	When what we call time ends,	19:05
	and all the clocks are dashed,	19:09
	and all the calendars fail,	19:11
	God will be there.	19:16
	I know a doctor who got out of Duke	19:23
	and went as a missionary to Africa.	19:26
	And there, he works among the victims of the AIDS epidemic.	19:30
	Over half of the entire population has AIDS.	19:35
	In the area in which he's working, in Africa.	19:40
	His little hospital is so overwhelmed,	19:44
	they've got to put patients out under trees,	19:47
	after surgery, because they lack the beds.	19:50
	Well, why?	19:56
	How do you keep going, we ask.	19:59
	Well, he said, you know you just have to take the long view.	20:04
	You just have to kind of stubbornly	20:10
	cling to the possibility of hope.	20:12
	I like that phrase.	20:18
	You just kind of stubbornly cling to the possibility	20:20
	of hope; you take the long view.	20:23
	None of this silly optimistic: I believe	20:27
	that for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.	20:31
	Or none of this better living through chemistry,	20:34
	or Bill's going to see us through, or, none of that.	20:37
	You just cling to the possibility of hope,	20:42
	the hopeful possibility that our times are not in our hands.	20:46
	You take what you already know of that relentless,	20:54
	eternal love of God and Jesus Christ,	20:57
	and having experienced that kind of relentlessness	21:00
	and resilience in the past,	21:04
	you are given hope for the continuance	21:06
	of that love in the future.	21:10
	That whether this culture endures or not,	21:13
	whether we're asleep or awake, drunk or sober,	21:16
	we live in him.	21:19
	It really is curious that early Christians appear	21:24
	to have had absolutely no interest in the calendar.	21:27
	No interest in dating precisely when Jesus actually was born	21:32
	or even in when he died.	21:36
	Paul, again and again, tells people:	21:40
	would you please stop bothering yourselves	21:42
	about these silly times and seasons!	21:44
	Now, why was that?	21:49
	Well, don't you see?	21:53
	It's because Paul really believed that in Jesus Christ,	21:55
	time had ended.	21:58
	It was no more of this, this ceaseless circle	22:01
	of turn and return that the Greeks knew.	22:05
	The day after day after day, there was no more of that.	22:08
	There was no more of keeping track.	22:12
	A new age had been born, and an old age was over.	22:16
	There will be a new heaven and a new Earth,	22:22
	but not of our own devising.	22:25
	For we have not within ourselves the means	22:28
	to make such a time.	22:32
	We can't make history work out.	22:35
	But through the not always apparent	22:40
	but nevertheless sure work of God,	22:41
	time was being worked out, as God's time.	22:44
	Whether we are awake or asleep,	22:50
	dead or alive, we shall be with Christ.	22:54
	Our time shall be his.	22:58
	Encourage one another with these words.	23:05

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 14, 1999)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 0:38. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 23:12.
The preacher argues that Christians have nothing at stake in the beginning of a new millennium (i.e. the year 2000). God has opened a new age at the first coming of Christ and set an end time of the world when Christ comes again. Christian hope is not about living a comfortable life free from predictable disasters, but instead, knowing that nothing can separate them from the love of God in Jesus Christ. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4bv7b98g

Date:

November 14, 1999

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

1 Thessalonians

Chapter and Verse:

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0985
ref10127_nh0
uachapelsermaud
duke:320618
dcrau001629
ark:/87924/r4bv7b98g
408ff7a5-17c2-496e-bd5f-9b9b44e673fd

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 14, 1999)

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1. William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 14, 1999)

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William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 14, 1999)

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