November 02, 2025
• Rev. Dr. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
November 2, 202
Stewardship Series
MINE!
My Time
Luke 10: 38-42
All Saints’ Day
My last church was located near a lake community. We had a lot of members who owned beautiful waterfront homes. Many of them worked in Charlotte about 30 minutes away. One day, our staff was discussing the obstacles to getting more volunteers, and why that was so. Our ministry director said, “I just had a conversation with a member a few days ago that might shed some light.” This person told him that when he drives home from work and gets to his driveway where he can see the lake, that he is now on “Me-Time.” He’s been working and giving to others, now it’s “me-time.”
Almost sounds like a little child saying, “Mine!” doesn’t it? But have you ever thought of time as a possession to be stewarded; something we can view as “MY time” or “My TIME?”
Now before you assume that this sermon is going to be judgy and make us feel guilty for taking time for ourselves, just know that I am a big fan of Me-Time. I think the problem for a lot of folks is not that we’re selfish with our time, it’s that we don’t take enough time for ourselves. So my point today is not to ask whether we use our time for ourselves or others. I want to think about a different division of time. I want to think about the way God divides time.
There are two Greek words that describe God’s categories of time: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is the root our word chronology. It’s time as we know it. You can measure it on a clock. Seconds, minutes, hours. Kairos, on the other hand, refers to eternity, to heaven, where time is not measured. Everything is one present “now.” Kairos is what Jesus meant when he said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Jesus came from Kairos time. Kairos literally means, “the right time,” or “opportune moment.”
It means that when God draws close to us in our everyday, ordinary, chronos world, there is an opportune moment presenting itself.
Celtic Christians had an expression for this. They called them “thin places,” moments where we feel the nearness of God. These can happen at any time, at work or rest or recreation, God can show up. It may happen when we get interrupted, or in a conversation that turns unusually deep, or even at an art gallery or in nature where suddenly we feel the need to pause and just absorb something. Those can be “thin places” because we sense something bigger than just the chronos moment happening. Something eternal is going on. God is near.
We see an example of this in the story about Jesus visiting his friends Martha and Mary. Martha was very much a chronos, Me-time kind of person. She immediately got busy working as fast as she could to prepare a meal for Jesus. She wanted to be a good host.
But Mary had a different clock inside her. She could sense a “thin place,” that God was showing up in a way she doesn’t get all the time, and that was too important to let herself get distracted.
Of all people, you know who has the hardest time recognizing Kairos moments? Religious people! Talk about a contradiction. Religious people are ones who tend to get so busy doing the work of God, they miss the work God wants to do for us.
Think about what’s going on in this story. Martha was busy serving Jesus. Serving Jesus got in the way of her experiencing Jesus.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells how she finally had to leave the increasing demands of parish ministry to save her soul. She writes, “My flagging attempt to be all things to all people was turning into a bad case of amnesia about my own Christian identity. My role and soul were eating each other alive.” (Leaving Church, p111) You don’t have to be a religious professional to identify with that.
I think of Martha as a wonderful Christian servant. Our world needs more Marthas! But Martha is also a warning for all of us who can be tempted to live only in Me-Time. It doesn’t mean we are selfish, just distracted. We get absorbed with all we have to do, with our agendas, or the agendas others give us, and we can get so focused on what we do with our moments, that we miss what’s happening in those moments.
Me-Time. It doesn’t mean we’re selfish. Martha wasn’t selfish. But she was self-absorbed. She said to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” (v.40) Did you count the personal pronounces in that sentence? Doesn’t it sound like the creed of a religious person? “Lord, straighten out these people around me and so that they can be more like me!”
And Jesus calls Martha out on it. He says, “Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part. It won’t be taken away from her.” (v.42) Mary was living in kairos time and that last part gets my attention, “it won’t be taken away from her.” What is eternal is what lasts.
This is an appropriate thought on All Saints’ Sunday, because I think about many of the people we have recognized today, members of our church who died this year. In conducting and attending most of these services, family and friends paid tribute to their loved ones. And I notice something they all shared in common. People talked about the time that loved ones gave them. How they could be busy and absorbed by other things, but they would stop what they were doing to give them attention. They would tell how these people went out of there way to let them know they were thinking of them, and what they said those gestures did for them, the impact it had on them, was nothing shy of holy. In the end what people most appreciated was not an inheritance or a tangible blessing left to them. It was the time they gave them.
Time is temporary. We certainly recognize that face on All Saints’ Day. But we also recognize another fact. That in our temporary time we can experience the eternal, and we experience that through people. Maya Angelou said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” That is what lasts forever.
And that brings us back to stewardship, because stewardship is one the tool we have that allows us to invest in kairos purposes. This past week I sat down with Denny Jones who talks about his own “thin place” moment in talking with his wife Judi about what will become of their resources after their gone. Take a look…
Denny and David Heetland will be at a table outside the sanctuary after worship. You may want help setting up a will, doing estate planning, or learn about tax laws related to charitable giving. They have so much to offer.
This is part of what it means to live out our sainthood, to see that our temporary, Me-time stuff of this world can be used for Kairos purposes. Just like these aging bodies of ours can be used by God to draw and make of us “thin-places.” This is living out our sainthood. Whether we are giving time and attention to someone to let them know they are worthy of that, or making sandwiches to take to Fletcher Place, or serving at the Food Pantry, or engaging in ways to care for our planet, or standing up for the just treatment of immigrant families, or serving in our children’s ministry, or visiting the sick and shut-in. These are all ways we live out our sainthood.
Saints are people who take all we have in the Me-time that we are given and allow God to use them for His Kairos purposes.