The bright-purple Advent banner at St. Thomas Episcopal Church caught my eye as my two daughters and I drove along Main Street. We decided, on a whim, to pull over and attend the worship service there before our five-hour journey home, arriving just in time to slide quietly into the back row of wooden pews. The sanctuary’s A-frame ceiling rose like folded hands in a prayer posture, the honey-colored wood beams converging toward a large, bright window behind the nave. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, rows of worshippers in fleece jackets and ski caps exuded both outer and inner warmth. The altar was modest and luminous, lined with candles flickering like small promises on the cold winter morning. Behind the altar, the snow-capped mountains rose, solemn and enduring. Their silent presence felt devotional, as though they were keeping vigil alongside the worshippers gathered within. We peeled off our coats, and I found myself exhaling as my body settled and relaxed.
The topic of the sermon was time: the passing of time, the relentlessness of time, the cruelty of time, the gentleness of time, and, most poignantly, the bending of time. “It is in moments when time stands still,” the priest said, “—moments of transcendent beauty, awe, and joy, as well as paralyzing moments of agony and sorrow—that Christ in-breaks.” The priest introduced two Greek words that are used to define time: chronos and kairos. Chronos suggests quantitative time that can be measured in seconds, hours, days and years, while kairos is qualitative time, measured by significant moments of meaning. Jesus is “predictably present” in kairos, the priest suggested, if we are willing to receive Him.
Despite the years that have passed, I haven’t forgotten the sermon I heard on that first Sunday of Advent, and how it felt to be held in that space of shelter and sanctuary, carved from wood and light.
The word advent, from the Latin adventus, means “coming.” During Advent, we prepare and look forward to the coming of Christ as the Babe in the manger, but we know, of course, that Christ has already come. “Jesus has already brought the kingdom of God near. He has already stretched out His hands to heal and to bless. He has already been broken on the cross and defeated death. He has already poured out His spirit. So why do we re-enter a season of waiting each year? What are we waiting for?” Perhaps, as Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren suggests, we as Christians put our hope in not just one coming of Christ, but three: the coming of Christ in the incarnation, the Second Coming of Christ in the last days, and “the coming of Christ in our present moment, through the Holy Spirit’s work and through Word and sacrament.”1 Advent encompasses all three “comings” of Christ, past, present, and future. Ancient yet urgent. Chronos and kairos.
As a hospital chaplain, I experience both chronos and kairos on a daily basis. Time marches, time drags, time stills, time transcends. Time can be so gentle, allowing space for healing, connecting, and hoping, and in the very next hospital room, time can be so cruel, robbing patients and families of the chance to say goodbye. Chaplains are witnesses, holding space and watching for grace as time moves between chronos and kairos.
In this season of Advent, I offer four glimpses of kairos from my experiences as a chaplain, where the in-breaking of Christ bends time. Perhaps these glimpses will allow you and me to pause and to “remember that we do not bring the kingdom of God to the world through our own effort or on our own timeline. We wait for one outside of us and outside of time.”2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this presciently when he wrote from prison to his fiancée that “for the greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the world, we must wait.”3 Just like that middle space, that Holy Saturday, between Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, the space between the celebration of the first Advent and the waiting for Christ’s ultimate return is “rife with contingency and unpredictability.” However, in this space of waiting, we find love “that remains even amid its weariness.”4 Love sustains us as we wait. Love breaks through as “plea and gift and sign,”5 interrupting and bending time through moments of kairos.
Come, Lord Jesus.
