Do you remember as a child how we played "hide ‘n seek"? If you were "It" you hid your eyes, counted by fives to a hundred and warned, "Ready or not, here I come." Everyone else had to hide behind a bush or a fence and if you hid yourself well you would not have to be the seeker next time. Lots of fun, especially if it was getting dark.

Jesus says children show us truth about the kingdom of heaven. How can "hide’n seek" help us to see some truth about God’s kingdom? Jesus tells his parable about the wedding celebration. Ten young women wait to welcome the bridegroom, who waits and waits, to surprise them, and they have to be ready when he suddenly appears. Middle of the night and all ten fall asleep. Suddenly he’s coming. Are they ready? Five have plenty of oil in their lamps; five do not have enough oil. "Give us some of your oil, they beg." "No, the other five answer, for then we will be short. Go buy some oil for yourself. They go. The bridegroom arrives. The five wise ones have their lights ready and go into the celebration. The five unprepared ones, foolish ones, return with their oil, but it is too late, the door is shut. They loose out, because they are unprepared. Jesus’ lesson is this: ready or not, God is coming unto us, bringing joy and celebration, like the wedding in a small, otherwise drab village, like the wedding feast when Jesus turns water into wine.

But we need to be ready. God’s coming. We can do nothing to slow down, speed up or delay God coming unto us in Jesus, but we can be foolish and unprepared or we can be wise, faithful, alert and be prepared.

After Jesus descends into heaven, his disciples gaze upward with open mouths and hear this word, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." (Acts 1:9-11) And so the early Christians expect Jesus to return soon, the second advent of Jesus.

Our confession of faith, The Apostles’ Creed, affirms "he ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." Why does the second advent of Jesus get so much attention? Partly because Jesus and early Christianity adopted the Jewish Apocalyptic worldview, which says the world is ending soon and God’s Messiah will judge the world. And especially because God’s work of salvation is incomplete until Christ’s final judgment dispatches all evil once and for all and Christ’s rule establishes justice and peace forever more. And so in this time of the church we live in between Christ’s first advent, his cross and resurrection and ascension, and Christ’s second Advent when Christ will bring to fulfillment his promised reign over all. Finally, at last, the end of history will come, the climax toward which all history has been leading. The end, at last. The eschaton will be here, and eschatology is our study of how and when God will finally get this work done.

But this concept of the end comes to us in two words for time, two different words with two different meanings in the Greek language. One word is chronos or calendar time and end means a date as we think of time on our calendar. But the other word is kairos, not end as calendar time, but end as completion, fulfillment, culmination, finality in the sense of maturity. Jesus works with both words, chronos and kairos. Jesus sees chronological time as created, limited, not eternal. But Jesus also works with kairos, God’s eternal spirit breaking into calendar time and working salvation here and now, not waiting for us to grow old. Jesus balances these two meanings of the end. When Jesus thinks calendar, we get futuristic end or eschaton. When Jesus thinks Spiritual communion as in John’s Gospel, we get kairos time, or already realized salvation. Jesus balances these two concepts of salvation as God gift—salvation already here with us, and salvation growing within us leading to a bright future for us.

When Jesus says, "Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing, teaching…for I am with you always, to the close of the age," he balances present fulfillment with future end of the age. Not one or the other, but both together. We don’t need to wait to the chronological end to meet Jesus, for Jesus promises to meet us in our mission here and now. Jesus says, "Today the spirit of God is upon me and God’s promises in scripture are fulfilled right now. God’s Kingdom is arriving in me and in all I do for you." (Luke 4:18-21) "In Jesus the fullness of God dwells" (Col. 1:15-20). "At the right time (kairos), Jesus died for the ungodly "(Romans 5:6). "But when the fullness of time (kairos) had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts…" (Galatians 4:4-6). Jesus has come unto us; Jesus is coming unto to us today when we hear, repent, are born anew from above; and Jesus is going to come to wrap up his Kingdom once and for all. But however long chronological time continues or does not continue, Jesus is always working his fulfillment in and among us, and promises to be with us (kairos time).

This need to hold these two definitions of the end in balance has always caused us Christians to scratch our heads and wonder at the mysteries of God. Look how the Apostle Paul wrestles with this tension. When Paul encounters the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he enters kairos time. He is never the same again. He becomes a new person in the Spirit of Christ (kairos time). His name changes from Saul to Paul. But he grows throughout his life also to become the new person Christ promises unto him when he will rise from the dead (chronos time), just like Christ has risen from the dead.

When Paul writes to the Christians in Thessalonica, he tries to help them cope with this experience of time both as chronos and as kairos. They are upset, expecting Christ to return in glory on the clouds of heaven very soon. Some are growing old and dying and Christ does not return. This delay worries them. What is wrong? Paul does some basic teaching. Don’t worry, do not grieve, sisters and brothers, about those who have died. Do not grieve as others do who have no hope. For we believe that if Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.

Now, listen to what Paul says: "This we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words." Are you listening closely, carefully? Here Paul describes what has become known as the rapture, using images he learned from his Jewish Apocalyptic upbringing. And Paul himself fully expects to be alive when this rapture occurs. But if we listen carefully, Paul is not disappointed that this chronos time does not literally happen, for Paul is affirming kairos time, for those who have died and for those who are alive, and kairos time is eternal and everlasting, not to be reduced to calendar time. As Paul assures us in Romans, "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, (nor the rapture occurring on schedule, or delayed, or transformed in God’s providence), nor anything else in all creation, (and chronological time is a part of God’s good creation), nothing in all creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Kairos time trumps chronos time.)

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul puts it this way, "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Kairos time, Emmanuel, God himself here with us, breaks into and transforms chronos time, and so Christ Jesus who is the same, in his life, death, and resurrection, now and forever, Christ Jesus holds authority over all calendar or chronos time as long as this age shall continue.

This same apostle, of course, recalls his own kairos time, described in the Book of Acts, chapter nine, when the risen Christ appears to him on the road to Damascus and his name gets changed from Saul to Paul, and his own resurrection from old life unto new life becomes a present reality, growing day by day as he works out his own salvation with fear and trembling.

Most of us, if you are like me, have our kairos time with God more gradually and quietly, growing from our baptism day by day throughout our life, until God calls us away from this the church militant unto the church triumphant. And in our resurrection life with Christ we leave behind or put in perspective this chronos time and live life anew in kairos time as we receive our new spiritual bodies or selves and, as the catechism teaches, we are blessed and enabled to enjoy God forever.

If you read popular books like Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth or Tim Lahaye’s best-seller Left Behind series, what you get is a sensationalized, literal version of the rapture, tribulation, and thousand-year reign of Christ that forces kairos time into the limitations of chronos time. By minimizing kairos and maximizing chronos this pre-millennial school of interpretation distorts the experience of salvation as God’s gift and paints God as an angry judge who hunts down guilty humans with vengance. As Dick Neelly reminds us, God is not out to get anyone. And the biggest mistake pre-millennial eschatology makes is to turn the second coming of Jesus into the great judgment event, as if God has not already judged us all and saved us in the Kairos event of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

In other words, the Christ who is coming unto us in the future, in chronos time, is the very same Christ who has already come unto us in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem and who is coming unto us every day when we receive him and welcome him into our hearts and minds and lives as our Lord and Savior. When Jesus comes again unto us on the clouds of heaven, he will not be a different Christ, not a new Jesus. He will not do work then he has not already accomplished. He will be the same Jesus Christ whom we have already met or not met, and Jesus says all he wants us to do is to get ready, to be prepared.

And Jesus teaches us how to be prepared. If we call out to Jesus and expect Jesus to honor us because we say the right words, pronounce his name correctly, profess correct doctrine, or produce some other merit that qualifies for his favor, he will say he does not know us. But he draws us closely unto himself when we do the will of our Father in heaven. Not when we talk the talk, but when we walk the walk of discipleship.

And how shall we love God our heavenly Father, whom we have not seen, unless in his name we learn how to love his own family, sisters and brothers whom we have seen? Jesus says to us, when you show your love, my love, unto the least of these who are members of my family, you show your love unto me. Who are the least? Jesus says the least ones are the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and in prison, speaking of our human condition physically, socially and spiritually. When we love these least ones, we shall hear Jesus say to us, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

"Where two or three of you are gathered together in my name," Jesus assures us, there am I in the midst of your." Not, I will be there sometime in the future, but I am already with you. Our English language uses the same word "you" whether we mean one person or many people. Greek language, the language of the New Testament, uses very different words if "you" is singular or if "you" is plural. Be sure, when Jesus talks like this to us, teaching us how to prepare ourselves, Jesus always uses the plural "you."

On these cool fall evenings, perhaps like me you love to start up a fire in your fireplace, to warm your heart and your home. Some evening try this little experiment. After your fire has been burning an hour or so and it’s blazing and brightening and warming your home, take your tongs and pull an ember out and rest it alone on the hearth. How long will it stay aflame? Maybe a few moments. Left alone, it will soon die out. Take your tongs and place the ember back with the other burning embers and once again that lonely, dying ember rekindles itself and contributes to the leaping, crackling flames.

Are we prepared for this lesson? Bring your gifts of yourself, of your time, your talents, of your money, of your love, of your worship, of your service unto me, invites our Lord. Come unto me and take my burden upon you and learn of me. Take my yoke upon you, and see how I shall bless you, meeting you in kairos time. Be prepared, Jesus teaches us. In the words of our Geneva Choir’s anthem, "Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, the time is drawing nigh. Children, don’t get weary ‘til your work is done. Christian journey soon be over, the time is drawing nigh."