Promises of Time

Promises of Time

Isaiah 55:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

March 24, 2018

You probably saw the news this week about the death of Alan Krueger, the Princeton economics professor who served as chair of President Obama’s council of economic advisors. Professor Krueger died from suicide at his home in Princeton last weekend. He made his mark in economics by focusing on people, and studying the economic aspects of such basic questions as what makes human beings happy.

As John noted in our prayers of the people last Sunday when he lifted up a young relative who survived a suicide attempt, most of us will never know or fully understand the pain – whether it’s physical or emotional – and utter despair that lead people to take their own lives. Professor Krueger’s family and friends no doubt long for some understanding just now.

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, who was an undergraduate student of Krueger’s and credits her former professor and long-time friend for launching her journalism career, captured the sadness and deep irony of her mentor’s death, writing “So why, all those years ago, was Alan studying happiness, a topic that usually falls under the fiefdom of psychology, not the dismal science? I don’t know whether Alan felt he had a personal stake in the subject; right now, it’s hard not to wonder, though he never said anything to me indicating this was the case.”

Another friend of Krueger’s, New York Times op-ed page editor David Leonhardt, wrote about two distinct economic lessons about happiness that he learned from his friend:

“The first lesson that Alan gave me comes from a finding that sounds a bit like a letdown: People waste a lot of money on gifts. In particular, surveys show that gift recipients don’t have much use for many objects that they receive. They usually appreciate the thought behind the gift, but the actual item isn’t of much value to them. In economic terms, they place a lower value on the gift that it cost.

“But experiences are different. When someone receives an experience – say, a nice meal out – they often both appreciate the thought and enjoy the actual gift.

“The second lesson involves spending time with friends. It’s one of the best ways to increase happiness, according to the survey data.

“Alan said this finding has stayed with him. At the end of a long day or long week, he said his instinct was sometimes to skip a social gathering. In the moment, he felt too tired. But the data had persuaded him to push though his fatigue more often.”

In other words, what we have to give and to receive from one another is time. It’s ironic to focus on time during a Lenten season when we’re also focusing on “generative church.” After all, time is the one thing we cannot generate, we cannot make more of it.

We say, in English, that we’re going to “make more time for family,” or “make more time for exercise,” or “make more time for” some other thing that is, typically, on the list of things that are not getting enough of our time. But the truth is, we cannot make more time.

All we can do is choose how we are going to spend the time that we are given. There are, obviously, all kinds of restraints on that, and every hour over which one has real choice is, itself, a huge mark of privilege.

My friend David LaMotte often opens concerts with a song called “Deadline.” Its refrain is simple: “there’s no time like the present; there’s no present like time.” One verse mentions a teenage child who “hangs the tassel from the mirror of the present parked outside.”

Whenever I hear the song I think of the prep school where I taught driving when I was fresh out of college. In the parking lot of the school sat a brand new Porsche 944 that had replaced another brand new Porsche 944 that had been a 16^th birthday present to a high school boy who wrecked the first one so his parents naturally bought him another.

I didn’t teach that kid – if I had maybe he wouldn’t have wrecked the first one. Who knows? But I have often wondered about him. He was a boarding school student whose parents lived at the other end of a very long state, and I’ve wondered if he would rather have had time with his parents than a new car from them. Did he know they loved him? Only the gift of time can answer that question for any one of us.

Last week I was running along 4 Mile Run and saw a little boy – toddler age – digging for worms as a man I took to be his dad stood close by with a fishing pole. I caught the man’s eyes as I ran past and we shared a smile. I’m confident in the judgment I made based solely on dress that that little boy is highly unlikely to get a new Porsche when he turns 16, but I bet he knows already that he is loved.

Why do we spend our money for that which is not bread? Why do we spend our money of that which does not feed us?

I imagine Jesus had Isaiah in mind when he said, “I am the bread of life; come to me and never be hungry.”

“Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live,” Isaiah put it. “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly,” Jesus says.

In the life of Jesus we see God’s great gift of time and of self. It’s almost as if Alan Krueger’s economic model is trying to measure that. In economic terms, he found that giving time creates value – creates abundance.

In theological terms, in God gift of time and self made flesh in the life of Jesus, God creates abundant life.

In terms of discipleship, that is to say, in terms of Christian living, in terms of living in the manner of Jesus, we find that when we give of our time and of ourselves we create abundance in the lives that we touch.

But the stark truth remains: we have only so much time. The fig tree has another year to produce or it’s getting cut down and used for fire wood. As the Ash Wednesday refrain reminds us, we are dust and to dust we shall return.

We cannot create more time. So, as Mary Oliver so pointedly asked, “what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”

To what will we give our time? To what will we give ourselves? To what will we give our lives?

I trust the great promise of Isaiah, that when we seek the Lord, when we aim to follow in the ways of justice and of peace, then we shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth in song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Let us join our voices to their song as we live faithfully following the way of the Rabbi Jesus. Amen.