Timely and Logical

We have decided to focus on Luke for the fall semester in one of our worshiping communities on campus. Luke is the gospel lectionary for this year between May and December. However, we switched things around a tad, according to the ebbs and flows of campus life. For example, the Good Samaritan text is long passed. However, as we are are arriving to campus over the next few weeks, it seems like an appropriate time to ask "Who is my neighbor, anyway?" So, our opening worship service will feature the story of the Good Samaritan.

As i was explaining this to a colleague, i heard myself say, "We are using this season's gospel lectionary, but not in chronological order." I thought about "chronological" order, from the root "chronos." Chronos is Greek, and refers to the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, etc. that mark the passage of time. In light of this, i defined our lectionary clock as "kairos-logical."

Kairos time, often described as "God's time," does not mark uniform passage! It constricts and expands relative to the perceiver of the time. For example, a teen at summer camp may awake long before she wants to at 7:30 or 8am, participate in many consecutive enjoyable activities and say at 1 or 2am, "I can't believe that today is over! It flew by!" Many think of truly touching and priceless moments, such as the two or three minutes during which they pledged their love and commitment to their spouse, and experience the same visceral feeling during which their vows were spoken as though no time had passed. It is measured in moods, seasons, relationships,ebbs and flows, overwhelming senses of timelessness, and overjoyed glimpses of hope. I am often struck by my simultaneous connection and annoyance with my least favorite song from the musical "Rent." "525,600 minutes; how do you measure a year?"

In musical terms, we "borrow" time while performing a selection. This is called "rubato," or "agogic" time. The musician interpreting the piece in performance uses his skill, talent, and practice in order to determine when the tempo should be slowed, paused, or accelerated.

In theater, and many worship settings, people with different jobs use many types of rehearsal to practice the things that are particularly significant to them. A "cue-to-cue" is a rehearsal only for techies who need to learn the cues that signal them to do their important, behind-the-scenes work. A "dry tech" is a special kind of cue-to-cue, during which the stage hands move the sets around, on cue and in order, without any actors onstage. The things that happen onstage in the mean time are important to the performance, but the light and sound and stage techs need to focus on the things that happen while no one is paying attention.

In our worshiping this fall, and i hope always, we will celebrate the kairos-logical process of planning, participating in, and evaluating corporate worship. We work to hone a holy discipline of moving through a service considering things to which many will not pay attention. We certainly hope to survive the minutes that are taken in this process, but the goal is more than that. We notice, in context, the time that passes while we are together and apart, and hope to tie them together. We hope to live gratefully into the time with which we are gifted.