THE MEANING OF TIME (PART I)
Advent marks the beginning of the church year, which is the beginning of the church's annual experience of time. The experience of time in the church stands in contrast with the experience of time outside of the church, in “the world" (cf. 1 Jn 2:15-17). Each experience of time brings us into its own narrative or story and forms us accordingly. Many Christians struggle to live out their faith because they live in the wrong time. They "believe" in the sense that they hold in their minds certain things to be true, but they are stuck in the world's experience and narrative about time. Living in the world's time and story cancels the impact of a merely cognitive faith.
Time implies a goal or a “telos.” We are counting towards something—or else why would we count? In the Christian experience of time, we are moving towards the coming or revelation of Jesus (cf. 1 Thess. 3:13, Tit. 2:13). In the world’s experience of time, we are moving towards a promised future that is subsequently lost. In his book For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann highlights the issue:
Through time on the one hand we experience life as a possibility, growth, fulfillment, as a movement towards a future. Through time, on the other hand, all future is dissolved into death and annihilation. Time is the only reality of life, yet it is a strangely nonexistent reality: it constantly dissolves in a past which no longer is, and in a future which always leads to death (Ch. 3, par. 1).
Christ died to save us from sin and death. This means he died to save us from this futile experience of time that always ends in death. It takes a reorientation of our time to break free from that experience of futility. This reorientation takes place through our participation in the church’s life of prayer that becomes a new way of experiencing time.
The Bible reveals to us the meaning of time as it is experienced in the church. In Genesis, “God said Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14). The meaning of these seasons, days, and years was revealed to Israel on Mt. Sinai (cf. Lev. 23). Israel was given a distinct way to observe time in two cycles, the week and year. Each week was six days of labor leading to a day of rest, a sabbath—mirroring God’s activity in creating the world. Each year was narrated by series of feasts that celebrated what God had done for Israel. The central feast was the Passover, the Exodus from Egypt.
At the end of the Old Testament, Israel was judged by God for her unfaithfulness to the covenant and sent into exile in Babylon (cf. 2 Kings 24-25). After the exile, the feasts of Israel developed a forward looking emphasis based on the message of the prophets that God would bring his people back from exile and establish a new covenant with them. Jeremiah expressed this hope:
Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. (Jer. 31:31-33).
Between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament (roughly 450 BC until the birth of Jesus) Israel continued to celebrate what God had done in the past, but the focus changed to the promise of what God would do in the future. God acted to fulfil his promise by sending his Son. Galatians expresses it this way:
When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. (Gal. 4:4-7).
The coming of Christ transformed the way the people of God celebrate the feasts and fasts of the year because Christ fulfilled both time and the covenant. The Incarnation, the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension and Pentecost fulfilled the covenant obligations and promises of Mt. Sinai and established a New Covenant. The church year is the way the church experiences the true meaning of time that was revealed to Israel on Mt. Sinai in the light of the fulfilment of that time by Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel.
Next week Part II will explore how this covenant fulfillment changed our experience of time.