What are you doing with your time?

The End Times!  The Day of the Lord! The Kingdom of God!
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This Sunday's readings are packed with images of what it means to live in the eternity that is an awareness of God's life for the world.

The early Christian community - and various strains of the Judaism(s) from whence some had come - was asking, understandably: okay, when is this Day happening?  How long do I have to prepare? What should I do with my life in the meanwhile?

The response from the tradition is clearly: the Day is both already here, eternally Now, and always coming more fully present among us.  

The other line of texts/questioning is often: alright, is this a Day to be welcomed, or a Day on which I'll hide under the covers and not come out?

Given the eternal Now-ness of Becoming that is the Day of the Lord, I think it is safe to say that an answer to that question might be: it depends.

Not because of The Lord -- whose judgement is nothing more or less than the Love that eternally creates the cosmos (big and small). The Lord is faithful in all these promises.

And, our species seems to be doing a good job already, on our own, creating days of vengeance and violence. Let's not let ourselves off the hook for that, ascribing that agency or desire to God.

What have we been doing with our life - our brief, fleeting time - in the great meanwhile, while this Day comes ever more fully among us?

Jesus tells a weird story about servants and masters (he worked in storytelling with what he had close to hand!), and how some of these servants spend their time while their master goes away, seemingly, for a bit.  Some of the servants are industrious, attentive, and living as if the master were present anyway.  One, though, hides what he has been given and seems to just hang out in fear, or anxiety, or recrimination - and projects his reasons/fears onto his version of who/what the master is.

Which one am I?  Often a question I ask myself when reading Jesus' parables. Better, perhaps, to assume that I am all of them at once (parables work like that...).  Sometimes I am living and loving and taking what I have clearly been given by God, using it all for the glory of the Day of the Lord (justice! peacemaking! feeding the hungry and clothing the naked - this is Matthew's gospel, after all, where that is the basis for 'judgment'); at these times I feel full.  Full of life and possibility, full of the wisdom and knowledge of God (in part, in part, but…).  I feel like this just keeps multiplying and growing within me and among us.  

Sometimes I am fearful, and feel as if I have nothing.  Nothing to offer anyone. Nothing to offer myself. 'To those who have little, even what they have will be taken away.'  Too true.

Because, this isn't an economics lesson Jesus is giving -- or, not the economy of getting and spending in the marketplace...

He says, 'the kingdom of God is like this.  It's as if...' 

The reality that is God's life for the world is all around and within, always -- whether I perceive it, or not.

The Day of the Lord is now.  And, now.  And now.

How, then, shall we live in the meanwhile, as we follow along the path and grow into the shape of Christ, together?

Practice the flow of generosity that is God's very nature.  Invest in the future.  (Plant sequoias, Wendell Berry says...).  Multiply those 'talents' in community, and in a view of 'return on investment' that has a timeline in eternity. Peace-making and justice-speaking, forgiving and receiving forgiveness are what have currency here. This is the investment that is multiplying while we sleep, after our day of work. It is the eye on eternity - unbounded by time - that sees the long, slow, arduous task of making peace as being worthwhile.  Godly.  What we are called to be up to in the master's absence.  Not because the Master made the war, but because we did.  And do. 

So, what shall we do in the meanwhile?  Make peace.  Love one another.  Start untangling those strands of evil, hatred, injustice.  We have time.  We actually have nothing but Time.  Time is another way of saying 'our responsibility.'

God is faithful.  God will show up.  'I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master.'

In this is strength, and in this is joy - beyond our needing, and beyond measure.  Daily.

What else are you doing with your time?