TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Prospect United Methodist Church
Bristol, Connecticut
December 20, 2009
Galatians 4: 4-7
Luke 1: 26-38
While the children’s count down to Christmas is finally gleefully at zero, many adults have been counting down for opposite reasons. For, let’s face it: love Christmas season or not, Christmas is a lot of work. Happy work for most, but work nevertheless. For example, take Christmas cards. For many, sending greetings of cheer has become more a chore than cheer. I just love the cards that come with a signature written so hurriedly you have to look at the envelope to see who sent it.
I did hear an interesting story that kind of sums up all this Christmas rush business. Seems a woman got so behind in her Christmas preparations that two days before Christmas she remembered she hadn’t sent out cards. So she raced to the Hallmark store, bought several boxes of one kind that had a pretty picture of the nativity on the front.
She dashed home, stopping at the post office to get stamps. No time for messages in the cards, she scribbled the addresses and signed her name and sealed and stamped the envelopes and drove back to the post office, quite satisfied with herself.
She came back home, fixed herself some tea, sat back and took a deep breath. Without really thinking, she picked up one of the left over cards, realizing she hadn’t had time to even read the message inside. To her horror the cards consisted of but one little line: “This simple note is just to say . . . a little gift is on the way.”
Timing. Christmas preparations often leave us with too much to do and too little time in which to do them.
The real celebration of Christmas, the birthday of Jesus, however, is about another kind of timing. It’s about God’s timing in history and in our lives.
Timing. Timing is always important. People who garden know about timing. Plant too soon or too late and everything’s ruined.
Investing in the stock market or purchasing a CD? It’s all about timing lest you end up buying high and selling low or locking in a CD for 5 years at 1% just before inflation takes off. Timing!
Buying real estate? Well, who knows what real estate is going to go. People have gotten burned in the last couple of years. They say we’re near the bottom, but who really know? Timing. Timing is everything.
Lots of things involve timing, including our careers and our relationships. Even our relationship with God’s baby of Bethlehem.
Take me for example. My father died when I was 7. He was a hard-driving, hard-living sort of man who had no time for anything religious. To keep him happy, my mother seldom took me to church.
After his death, though, my mother married a very religious man. And I seldom missed church. In fact, he probably was the single most influence in my Christian life.
Honestly, I wish my father had lived longer. I’d like to have had his influence in many ways growing up. Nevertheless, if it hadn’t been for the timing of my step-father in my life, I’m almost certain I wouldn’t be here this morning. Timing.
Then there’s the way Jeanne and I got together. A senior English class and a casual offer I made of a ride to the library to work on a research paper. Well, okay, I did have other things on my mind, but if it hadn’t been for that English class. Timing, you know.
And our son – I’m keeping it in the family because that’s what I know best. In a minute you can think about your own examples. We paid deposits on dormitories at both Syracuse University and Indiana University where Grant was recruited for a partial track scholarship. But then he decided he liked the track coach at James Madison University in Virginia. So, fine.
We figured if got serious about a young woman he would meet there it would probably be a Southern Baptist. Instead, he met a wonderful Roman Catholic woman who is now the mother of our grand children. If Grant wouldn’t have married Michelle, we wouldn’t have Lauren and Katie.
Timing. Biblical religion makes the bold assertion that God seeks to get involved in the timing in our lives, seeks to get involved in the history, the decisions of our lives, the good, the bad and the ugly of our lives.
Which is why it’s no surprise to read in the Scriptures, “When the fullness of time had come [when the time was right] God sent his Son, born of a woman, in order to redeem the world.”
When the time was right, God came to earth in a human being, to reveal things to us about God we could know no other way, to live a model life and to die a death on our behalf so that we need never die. When the time was right. Timing.
Most likely, when Jesus was born, Mary probably had some doubts that God’s timing was in any of it. Think about it. There was Mary, somewhere between 13 and 15 years of age, who had not yet consummated her marriage with Joseph, who then had their lives disrupted by a census which compelled them to go to a town where they didn’t have friends or any kind of support system, where a stable had to suffice for a maternity ward. If you think about it, nothing seemed to be timed right for Mary or anybody.
But if you look back from the advantage of history, we get an interesting take on maybe why God chose the moment God did.
Although tensions were high, Jesus was born into a world that was mostly at peace. It was the Pax Romana. A few years later things would erupt again, but at the time of Jesus’ birth, the conflict level was low. Thus, no one needed anything like a passport. There were no travel restrictions. There were no national barriers.
Plus, Jesus arrived at a time when travel and communication were at their most advanced. There were good roads and dependable mail. And, he came when there was a virtually common language, Greek, that enabled most everybody to understand most everybody.
The middle-eastern world hadn’t been exactly like this ever before. And wouldn’t be again for a long time. It was an unprecedented time. It was the right time. It was the perfect time. It was THE time – the time for the birth of God’s son.
St. Paul suggests that there is a great dynamic at work here that’s applicable to our lives. That God is able to use all the events of history, all the circumstances of our lives to create new things.
But God needs one thing to do this: for us to act with good timing ourselves. For us to act believing, trusting that God is at work trying to help us make the most of the times.
Mary couldn’t imagine what the angel Gabriel was telling her. Couldn’t begin to imagine what lay ahead of her. Yet, her statement of faith in God has been heard every year since: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Sometimes, like Mary, we can’t see God at work in what’s happening to us. We think the equivalent of, wow, here I am, 15 years old, unmarried, pregnant, in a stable, with 3 old geezers bearing gifts for which I have absolutely no use. What’s going on? Sometimes we’re as clueless about what’s going on in our lives as Mary was with hers.
What’s going on of course is that God is trying to make a way where there is no way. Trying to fill our sails with the wind of God’s Holy Spirit. Indeed, God is trying in every moment to redeem the moment that confronts his wonderful world and his beloved children.
Sometimes it’s a new father. Sometimes it’s a spouse. Sometimes it’s a son’s decision. Sometimes -- you fill in the blanks from your life. What has it been for you in the past? And, what would it be for you now?
What, at this time in your life, is God trying to do, trying to get you to see, trying to help you do, help you be?
The thing is, nothing stays the same for very long. Life isn’t just a catalog that you pick up and order what you want out of it. Life doesn’t stay the same. You and I don’t stay the same. You aren’t the same person you were last Christmas, and neither am I. Things have happened. We have responded. We have made some good decisions. We have made some bad decisions.
Things don’t stay the same. Doors don’t stay open forever. Maybe you get two shots, or three to do the right thing. And, then . . . . God has to start all over with us.
So, what time is it for you? What has been going on in your life that might just be God trying to get your attention? What has been going on that might just be God’s trying to divert you from a wrong path? Or, God’s trying to lure you to the right path?
When the fullness of time had come [ when the time was just perfect ], God acted. In a way no one in the world could have imagined. A baby, of all things. A helpless baby. Who would have figured?
Dear friends, this same God is every bit as active in your life as he was in the world 2000 or so years ago. Even amidst the Christmas rush, when there seems to be no time, it is God’s time.
The poet Ann Weems writes, “When God is ready, God will come, even to a godforsaken place like a stable in Bethlehem. Watch, for you know not when God comes. Watch, that you might be found whenever, wherever God comes.”
Timing. Maybe the best gift we can ask for and receive this Christmas is timing.
