On the Fullness of Time . . .

The Revd Deacon Polly M. Bowen

On the fourth Sunday of Advent I came to my office and found a snazzy new keyboard and monitor in place of my old ones. The old ones were taking a well-earned rest near the door, on the first leg of their journey to wherever old electronic parts go. 

I played with the new apparatus for a few minutes, and found it to be substantially the same as my old one, but with a newer, leaner and snappier appearance.  It still depends on the same maze of cords and wires, my picture of Jesus washing a disciple’s feet still rests comfortably at its base, but alas! my Pentecost angel, who for years has guarded my old monitor, is no longer able to balance on the new slim-style one.  She sits forlornly on the windowsill, perhaps hoping for a better place to live.  (That she is now in the company of the bobble-head Jesus my niece gave me may be adequate compensation for being dispossessed from her former glorious perch.)

The old gives way to the new.  This is a given in life, a given met sometimes with joy and sometimes with foreboding, depending on what is being replaced and how powerful the ties to it. 

As you read this, Christmas is winding down (except in Orthodox Churches, where it is celebrated on January 6.)  In the stores, the valentine hearts have been out for some time, as the forward-thinking commercial world prepares for the next big moneymaker.   In the church, the children and youth are preparing an Epiphany pageant (a holiday largely ignored by shopkeepers) that will prolong our celebration and help us linger over the cozy familiarity of Matthew’s nativity story for a bit longer. 

The old gives way to the new.  In my almost twenty years as deacon in this place (and even more as a layperson) I have seen countless little children - sheep and donkeys, angels, kings and shepherds, innkeepers and travelers  - give way to younger children.  Some of them, now grown, sit in the congregation watching their own little ones in the pageant and no doubt remembering their own performances.  The cycle of life moves on, and the pageant continues to enthrall us with its simplicity, its old and unpolished yet ever shiny-new story. 

In the fullness of time, God did a new thing in Jesus Christ.  Was the world ready?  A curious question, one that from our post-multimillennia position seems like a silly question.  Yet it is one that gets asked whenever something new happens, especially in the Church.  Were we ready for the Council of Nicaea?  the Synod of Whitby?   the Dominican and Franciscan ministries?  the Elizabethan Settlement?  the emancipation of slaves?   What about an independent church in the Americas?  And is it really the time for women to serve on vestries, as layreaders, clergy, or (gasp!) as Presiding Bishop?   And why do they even have a Liturgy Commission when the old prayers are so comfortable!

It’s a never-ending litany of questions, and there has never been a controversy-free time in the Church.  From the disputes between Paul and Peter down through the centuries to current disagreements over gender and sexuality, there has always been discord.  But when we come together to watch our children in the Christmas-epiphany pageant, the poignancy of the performance and the familiarity of the story soften our hearts and bring us together again.  And we meet in Holy Time at the altar of God, as the pettiness of our division pales before the majesty of the great Love that surrounds us – in the fullness of time. 

Even my Pentecost angel looks a little less somber as she contemplates her surroundings from her new windowsill perch.   Ready or not, change happens – in the fullness of time.