to deal with the questions his people had written to him about. But has this anything to do with us? You are in the Stewardship scheme if you are single, but not if you are married, or vice versa? No, but to be serious, Stewardship is about the pattern of Christian living, the Christian responsibility with which we should treat all our possessions and resources. And nowhere does Paul set out the pattern of Christian living more profoundly than he does here.
If only because Paul has so often been misrepresented notice carefully what he does say, and what he doesn’t say. He does not say—“you mustn’t marry; only celibates can be good Christians.” He assumes that most Christians will marry, and he tells them that their marrying must be complete, including the physical side. There is no hint of an ascetical treatment of sex. He does not say that a Christian must not buy and sell, engage in the world of business and commerce. There is no ascetic renunciation of property; if Paul expects you to buy and sell, he surely does not expect you to do so every time at a loss. He does not say that Christians will neither weep nor rejoice, but live in a super-Stoic apathy. On the contrary, he tells you to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice in a warm-hearted universal sympathy. He does not say that Christians should withdraw from the world. But he does say, and this is what we must try to understand, that a Christian will do all these things (marry, buy, sell, weep, rejoice, live in the world) “as if you were not doing them at all.” He will handle these things, but with so light a touch that he will scarcely be aware of doing so.
Now there is a difficulty in these verses, and it will be both honest and profitable, honesty is always the best policy in dealing with the Bible, to have a good look at it before we go further. Paul says, the time is shortened. Many early Christians, perhaps Paul himself, thought that the world would not last long. Of course the New Testament committed itself to this belief; it is not to be discarded like an out of date old Moore’s Almanac. But people did think in this way, and for them the attitude Paul commends is obvious enough. If the whole shape and schema of things is on the way out, it is not very sensible to immerse yourself in it too deeply. Better to keep out and avoid the darker kinds of implications. But we live 1900 years after Paul. We cannot think on these lines. How does this attitude apply to us? It is still true that the time is always limited.
THE TIME IS ALWAYS LIMITED
In an essay on mystery and horror stories, Dorothy Sayers, who was not only one of the best ever writers of detective stories (you have seen Lord Peter Wimsey recently on TV), but also a very considerable theologian, recalls an inscription on a sundial. If this (she says) doesn’t give you the creeps nothing will. It read, “it’s later than you think.” It always is. There is always less time than you think. Forgive me if I illustrate this from my own kind of job. We have just finished a university term, and the next will be the last in the year, with examinations at the end of it. A good deal of work will be done by people trying desperately hard to catch up on work that ought to have been done and could have been done one or two years ago. We all know how it is. You come up from school with the experience of three whole years ahead of you; so much to do, so many things to enjoy, so much time for them all. But there isn’t. Time is limited; and it’s later than you think.
This is true of life as a whole. May I have permission to illustrate by reminiscence and reflection? When I came to Durham twenty-eight years ago. I did not feel committed to university life. Certainly, it attracted me, but I did not wish to turn my back on circuit work. I would have a change, perhaps after a few years go back to a circuit. But here I am. You only live once. You cannot have two careers. You can only do one worthwhile job at a time and most worthwhile jobs take a lifetime to learn. The time is limited. It is later than you think.
If the passing stream of time exerts this kind of pressure on the individual, it exerts it also on the Church. How long will our opportunities last? How long, for example, shall we enjoy the favored position we have in British society? You cannot take it for granted; and if the Church is not prepared and equipped spiritually, mentally, materially to act now, tomorrow if may be too late. But I must hurry back to the main thread of what I am saying. Time is pressing and that of course is just the point. It is precisely because time presses that Paul urges us to do all the things we do—buying, selling, marrying, weeping, rejoicing—as if we did them not. What is the meaning of this?
AS IF NOT?
Let me remind you that Paul is not saying “do not”—do not marry, buy, sell, weep, rejoice. He is saying do, but as if you were not doing. I will give you two clues as to what he means. Elsewhere in this letter Paul says, “all things are lawful for me; but I shall not let myself fall into the power of any of them.” Here is the first clue. God has given us—most of us—a rich wealth of possibilities. There is human love to enjoy, loving and being loved. There is the realm of things, things that can be bought and sold in the process of which we increase our wealth and multiply our resources. There is the world—so full (if I may quote another source) “of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings”: the exercise of the body, the exercise of the mind. God put human beings into the world and said, “subdue and rule it, make it yours, enjoy your gifts.” But the trouble comes when a human being becomes so devoted to the exercise of his gifts that he becomes their slave. He no longer rules his environment, his environment rules him. This is the real fault of a permissive society. How many a young man and a young woman thought that sex would be fun, and went on and on until they found themselves the slaves of it, always having to seek for some new twist, some new position to stimulate and titillate? How many a person thought a bit of drugs would be fun, and found himself the slave of a habit he could not control? How many a person, how many a church member, set out to get himself a comfortable life by buying and selling so as to make money, and in the end found himself the slave of the money he had made? The horror of permissiveness is that it ends in bondage.
The second clue takes us further because it is positive. “Where your treasure is,” says Jesus, “there will your heart be also.” Watch therefore where you lay up your treasure. You wouldn’t trust a bank which you knew was going out of business in a few years’ time. Well, marriage is ended by death, and the profits you make by buying and selling is even less secure. Marry, yes, and enjoy the love of a good man or a good woman. Buy and sell like a wise man, not a fool. Laugh when you can, and enjoy a good cry when you must. But do all these things as if you did them not.
I am not demeaning this sermon or the office of preaching by turning it into an appeal for cash. I am saying that if you get the pattern of Christian living and the pattern of Christian responsibility right, there will be no serious problem about cash. See all your activities, all your resources in the light of God who is the only safeguard of your treasures. They will not mean less to you, they will mean more. Marriage will mean more if you learn from the New Testament that it signifies a relationship that can never be perfectly realized between you and your wife but only between Christ and the Church. Laughter will be brighter and cleaner, and tears will be wholesome and less bitter when you laugh and cry not only with your neighbors but with God. And the world is far richer when you know that it is God’s world from beginning to end. All this is reason enough for Paul’s as if not. Can we go further by asking specifically, why?
WHY?
Why should we live like this? Here I have to come back to what I said at the beginning and have repeated from time to time—the fashion of this world is passing away. The time is limited. It doesn’t really matter when the world ends. As far as I am concerned it will end one day, sooner maybe, or later. I don’t know. But it will end. There is another world, beyond the bounds of time and space, and it presses upon this world, and I must learn to love and use my resources, of money, of talent, of human affection, in the light of that world. For here is the vital thing. Paul is not merely looking at the busy world of people and things and pronouncing a mournful “sic transit gloria mundi.” He might have done. It would be true enough.
Far-called our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire:Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! (R. Kipling)
