Sacred Time
A meditation on eternal life
One of the benefits of participating in an ancient religious tradition is the perspective and encouragement provided by our spiritual ancestors. They are present with us, sharing their insight and experience. This is because sacred time is different from secular time. Secular time, the time we normally inhabit, is linear – it flows in one direction. And it is sequential; dare I say, one damn thing after another. Causality is experienced as a sequence of events.
Sacred time is not like this. Sacred time is radial, flowing in all directions at once: past, present, and future; through all the dimensions of reality. In sacred time, causality is experienced as synchronous. The effect of events is immediate, unmediated. I suspect that many people have this experience of sacred time.
In my own life, there have been two occasions in which I consciously inhabited sacred time. The first was about 15 years ago, during a session with my spiritual director at the time. She invited me to offer my fear to God in silent prayer. I was in the midst of vocational transition, anxious about the future and some public criticism I was receiving as an out gay cleric. As we sat together in the gathering quiet, I became aware that people were praying for me; many people, people whom I didn’t know. As the quiet deepened, I realized that people had been praying for me my whole life, even before I was born; and that they continued to pray for me. I was, always had been, and always would be carried on this stream of mercy. I wept with gratitude for this anointing.
There is a lovely passage in St. Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy, in which Paul assures him that he is praying for him daily, remembering Timothy’s tears and desiring to console him. He reminds Timothy that the faith present in his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois, now lives in him. “For this reason,” Paul continues, “ I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”[1] The faith of our ancestors lives in us, empowering our own gifts for service. We can draw upon the same spirit that is in them.
On another occasion, about three years ago, I was participating in a colleague group studying the Sacred Ground curriculum. We were exploring the theme of intergenerational trauma in our culture and our families as it relates to racism. In one session, we were invited to imagine one or more of our ancestors from the distant past, and what they wished to say to us.
In my prayer, I realized that they had been waiting for me to do this work so that they could be healed from the trauma they had experienced. My healing was intrinsic to their salvation. I was the one for whom they had been “waiting,” though, in truth, the effect for them was immediate in sacred time. The stream of mercy flows both ways. I wonder if this is what St. Paul had in mind in his mysterious reference to people “who receive baptism on behalf of the dead?” Our faith lives in our ancestors, healing their memories so that “God will be all in all.”[2]
One of my favorite images of sacred time is the Transfiguration, in which Moses and Elijah appear on Mount Tabor with Jesus, who is arrayed in resurrection light. How can this be? The Resurrection happens after the Transfiguration, and Moses and Elijah died long before the time of Jesus. This is true from the perspective of secular time. But from the perspective of sacred time, it is all now. This is the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
Eternal life, then, is not life “after” death. It is not going to heaven when you die. It is not a quantitative experience of time as endless repetition. It is a qualitative experience of life, as abundant, as fulfilled. It is here, now, in sacred time.
In Christian tradition, the observance of the liturgical year as sacred time, intersecting and interpreting secular time, is meant to draw us into eternal life. The central sacramental acts of Christian worship, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, are a participation in the eternal life of the Risen Christ, a unitive experience in which all of reality is united in the rich, complex differentiation of life. To know this as an existential reality is eternal life.
When we know this, we no longer fear death and we are no longer under the illusion that we are somehow separate from reality, alienated and alone (the condition known as “sin”). The salvation wrought by Jesus’ death and resurrection is just this overcoming of sin and death. It frees us to embrace eternal life and to share its fruits with the world through sacrificial love and service.
This is why St. Paul goes on to exhort Timothy,
“Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”[3] I Timothy 1:3-10
Jesus became one with us in secular time, so that we can become one with him in sacred time; so that we may share eternal life with him. Our “holy calling” is to share eternal life with others through lives of sacrificial love.
“Since God's children share flesh and blood, Jesus himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”[4]
We can draw on the grace and power of Jesus to sustain us in our own experience of testing, because in sacred time he always is with us. Free from the power of sin and death, we can transmit the stream of mercy flowing from eternal life into daily life, sanctifying all time until God is all in all.
[1] II Timothy 1:1-7.
[2] I Corinthians 15:20-29.
[3] II Timothy 1:7-10.
[4] Hebrews 2:14-18.