Rev. Tatiana Cantarella

Psalm 62:5–12; Jonah 3:1–5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29–31; Mark 1:14–20

Kairos time – a chance to seize and hold onto the eternal

Every year, on February 2 a small American town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania has a special festival called the Groundhog Day.  A groundhog it taken from it’s burrow and used to foretell the weather by its behavior. Every year a selfish and arrogant TV commentator Phil Connors from Pittsburg goes to this festival but he is both sick of his job and hates this small town event.  One day after he did his TV coverage on the groundhog he doesn’t wake up the next day, February 3… he wakes up again on February 2! He is caught in some time loop from which he can’t get out: February 3^rd just doesn’t come! He is forced to experience February 2^nd Groundhog day time and again, to do the live broadcasting of it again, to return to his hotel again and the same thing every new day.  At first Phil decides to just use this for his enjoyment: eats like a pig, have sex, rob the bank and spend all the money – but with time he gets really sick of it all and February 3^rd still doesn’t come. Phil goes to the doctor, tries to leave town and even kill himself but nothing helps – the next day he wakes up again at 6 am on February 2^nd in a Punxsutawney hotel. And finally when he’s tried it all and exhausted himself trying but not getting anywhere, Phil, finally realizes the vanity of the way he lives out his time and decided to use this fatal Groundhog Day doing selfless, useful and kind things.  And to his own surprise, unexpectedly, the time loop is broken and February 3^rd bursts in, but he enters it a completely different person.

This story in reality is a great parable of what is time.  Greek language has two words for time and their meaning is evident all the way through Scriptures.  One work is chronos – measurable kind of time – days, weeks, and years. We get our chronology word from it; when one event is followed by another or how long something lasts. As this time passes, human life is moving slowly to its end.  When we get doing something we often say that "we are killing time” but Greeks knew that in reality it is "time that kills people”. It is this time was killing Connors with pointlessness, vanity and purposelessness.

Greeks recognized that it didn’t really matter how long or short, how trivial or important was chronos, because is no match for kairos - time as a moment, time as occasion, time as qualitative rather than quantitative, time as significant rather than dimensional. They knew it didn’t matter how long you’ve spend time with someone as much as "how was that time spent”. Longevity, length of days, is a pale imitation and sad substitute for a decisive choice at a critical moment, however short the time may be. Kairos – this opportune moment – is the time reporter Connors finally recognized and responded to, which completely transformed his life and opened a new future ahead of him.  It is about such time – kairos - the unique opportune moment of God’s visitation that Scripture talks about today and invites us to recognize this visitation among us and accept that it will have to change radically our values and way of living. 

In the Gospel this week Mark begins his story of Jesus with a stunning announcement, "After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God”. Very few words are spoken by Jesus here, so what exactly was this "good news of God” that He announced? The time has come – the kairos has come, the Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news! Paul in all his letters reveals to us the content of that Good News.  In Col 1:5 he says that the Good News of God is truth. Before Jesus’ coming people only could seek for God blindly. Job was crying out: "If only I knew where to find him!» People looked for God wherever they can (many continue to do so) but they search like one would in the darkness and get disappointed time and again.  But when Christ came people could see what God is like, they no longer need to guess and search in the darkness.  The Good News also brings hope (Col 1:23). The ancient world was rather pessimistic.  Seneca spoke about «our hopelessness in the most important things». And today we still live in a very pessimistic world. Russian seem to have lost any hope that things can change for better, that people can change for better. And Paul says: Jesus' coming brought hope for despairing hearts.  The Good News is also that Jesus brought peace. If we are honest with ourselves we will admit that we all have a rather split personality, that in a strange way we combine both the godly and the pure with sinful and rebellious. Robert Burns said about himself: «My life reminds me a ruined Temple. What strength, what proportions in some parts! And what amazing flaws, what piles of rubble in others!”  Don't all our problems come our simultaneous desire for both the good and the sinful? But when Christ came he united our split personality into one, He gave us victory and peace. The Good News that Jesus brought is also that of immortality (2 Tim. 1:10). For the gentiles life was the road to death.  And even today people who don't know Christ are in essence are dying people.  But Jesus' coming brought us the news that we are on the way to life not death. And His coming is the Good News of salvation (Eph. 1:13). Not just salvation from something (like punishment or sin) but salvation for something – victorious life. When Jesus came into this world it became the Good News for us because in Him we found the truth of where to find God, we found hope and peace, freedom from fear that we are on the way to eternal extermination and the power to live in freedom from sin.

And that's why Jesus' coming into this world is the kairos – the critical juncture, a divine appointment or intervention, not just some clock time has come.  We might yawn at chronos, forget whether it is Wednesday or Thursday, but kairos provokes a radical response, an urgent choice, and a fundamental reorientation, change of values. The Kingdom of God is here.  In announcing the Good News of God Jesus identified the coming of God’s reign with his own person, which is why he then invited Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, "Come, follow me”. And Mark is very clear about their univocal response: "At once they left their nets and followed him”.  Then Jesus called a second set of brothers, James and John, who were at work in their boats. They too left everything at once to follow Jesus – left their father, the hired help, the boat and their nets. 

We are so used to this story that it’s natural for us that when Jesus calls people to follow Him they drop everything and immediately follow. But imagine yourself in their place; try to understand why they respond like that? It wasn’t really a natural response! Mark doesn’t tell us what Jesus’ intension was in calling these four. It seems that they didn’t even know each other. Mark doesn’t say anything to explain why disciples followed Him just like that.  But from what Mark does tell us we can see how authoritative Jesus’ call was. This starkness of the call is so contrary to our consumerist society in which everything, including faith is seen as commodity that is to be packaged and marketed right.  And another thing that Mark is clear about is that this stark call is responded to without hesitation. But why? Did they see in it an opportunity for promotion, a step towards something better and bigger than what they had? Mark doesn’t give us anything to think that the first disciples knew of any reward that would get. And if we look in the later chapters, all we see promised to them would be persecution and resentment on the part of those who will not believe (13:9–13)! 

The call of Jesus didn’t contain any gains, on the contrary, those fishermen left behind a secure wages and more or less stable lives for something rather uncertain.  What caused them to follow a man whom they still don’t understand on the way, which will often puzzle and even scare them to a destination unknown? The only explanation of this response is that these fishermen recognized in the call of Jesus that special opportunity – kairos – God’s visitation, God’s Kingdom to the presence of which there is only one right response – repentance and faith, reorientation of one’s life, values, realization that life as it is with the coming of God into it can be changed into a life as it should be.

But this change can only happen when we recognize in the coming of Jesus this decisive moment – Kairos –, which demands us to respond with repentance and faith. «Repent and believe in the Gospel» Jesus says. And repentance is not as simple as we sometimes think.  Repentance is a radical change of thinking and not just feeling sorry for something. Too often we mistake being sorry for sin with being sorry about consequences of a committed sin. Many people are sorry about all the problems that they sin caused them and other people. But if they could be certain that those consequences could be avoided they would do it again. But this is not repentance.  It's not sin that they hate but it's consequences.  But true repentance means «hating the sin for it's sinful nature, not just avoiding doing it but hating it with one's whole heart».   True repentance means that a person who once loved that sin begins to hate it for its sinfulness and wants nothing to do with it anymore. And having met Christ, he or she begins to believe Him, believe that God is just the way Jesus told us He is, believing that God so loved the world that He gave what was most precious to Him in order to bring us back to Himself.  And when we seize that moment, that Kairos, when we believe the Good News that Christ brought, our whole life is turned around and all our understanding and attitudes change and in the midst of hopelessness and struggle we all of a sudden are filled with hope and peace.

It was this that Paul proclaimed in 1 Corinthians today, "I say to you, brothers and sisters, the time is short” – the time as it is will last long, the world as it is now will come to an end. That’s why Paul calls believers to respond to kairos, a chance given in Christ. He warns us not to postpone, not to get stuck in this time, which is about to end, not to be distracted from things, which really matter and are eternal. Paul sensed the closeness of God’s Kingdom and knew that all human relationships and actions are relative before it. Human emotions: "tears and joy”, family priorities, "marriage or singleness”, economical situation, "buying and selling” – all that while still taking place, is redefined because God’s purposes are much greater and deeper than all of that together. Paul believed that with the coming of Christ, something decisive happened, and the world as it is now is not the world that will be. He realized that in Jesus the promise of the new world broke in, of a new creation, new order in which everything will be different. And it already takes place now; the new order is breaking in to human lives. And those who are in Christ already have the freedom to imagine the world differently and to live it out differently. Those in Christ are no longer limited or bound to live like the rest, to follow the order around us. We are free to see and live already now according to how it will be in eternity. That’s what Paul is describing, saying, "live as if”, live as if the new world was already here, life is not forced to remain as it is.  Everyday life continues, people keep getting married, to cry and laugh, to sell and to buy, to deal with the world. But those who are in Christ do not do that as if it all had the greatest value. All these things are relatively valuable and transitory when we see life in the light of eternity that belongs to God.

What Paul calls us to is a sober reevaluation, which happens when we face some real crisis, especially when unexpected and acute.  If our child is suddenly found seriously ill – this changes our lives completely; it changes its direction and common order.  What used to be so urgent all of a sudden can wait and we begin to order our life according to true needs of life and death.  And until this crisis passes, until the life threat to a child passes, nothing will interest us like before. And even when the crisis passes, it leaves an inevitable imprint on our values.  That’s what Paul is talking about it – an encounter with God, the coming of Christ breaks open what really matters in life that all our values cannot help but change.  When you realize what is really lasting and matters, you begin to live not just to pass your chronos in a way to gain something that you like but to live in the way as not to miss the kairos - an opportunity to seize the eternal, a chance given to us all even now.  Paul knew that we can live today taking life seriously but not being obsessed with it, to look in to the future with confidence and not be naïve! We do not have to live as always because the kairos of God’s coming to us in Jesus calls us to a radical transformation of our life priorities.

If we think about it, past is no longer and future is not yet and in the strictest sense, "there's no other time but now." And it’s truly Good news for all – young and old – age doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how long we’ve lived and who rules, whether God acts quietly or loudly, whether Jesus comes to us in something mundane or in a supernatural way – now is the time, now kairos is here, the call to reorient your life from what it is into what it can be if God rules it. The Psalm reminds us: "Lowborn men are but a breath, the highborn are but a lie – if weighed on a balance, they are nothing; together they are only a breath”. Such is the value of thing belonging to chronos, the temporary – our past and our near future, the longevity of life – all that will come to an end.

It is kairos that matters – the encounter with Jesus, the time as significant and decisive. This is the time of which St. Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 6:1--"In a favorable time (kairos) I heard you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the most favorable time (kairos); behold, now is the day of salvation." The only time we can ever really seize is the now. The kingdom is near, how will we respond, how will we reorder our values and our lives? It is now that we are called not to pass the opportunity, God’s visitation, a marked pulsing of the heart, the moment to lay hold on eternity.