What time is it? This is the controlling question that I looked up today. And I’ve come armed for bear this morning. I have about eight pages of notes right there. I’ve got two books. I might read the entire books to you this morning. Or not. But I’ve really enjoyed this week preparing my time to be with you. I think this is incredibly important, this obscure passage of scripture. So, I have some things I’d like to share, and I want to do it a little differently this morning. Since I am armed for bear, my watch says it’s about, even though I’m talking about time this morning, my watch says it’s about 9:52. I’m going to muse with you. I choose that word intentionally. A muse is a source of inspiration. I’ve got some sources of inspiration that I’d like to share with you this morning and I’d like to muse with you – m-u-s-e. That means I’m offering the opportunity for my message time this morning to turn this place into a museum because that’s what a museum is. It’s a collection of muses. It’s a collection of inspirations. And how long are we going to do that? I’m going to go, let’s see, around 15 minutes. OK, the final call is going to be at 10 after. Kristen, do you have a watch? Kristen didn’t know that I’m doing this, but she does now. At 10 after, raise your hand and then I’m going to wind it up. Fair enough? OK. That’s our social contract this morning.

Here’s what my favorite Bible commentator says about this odd parable. This tree cannot produce fruit. This is a parable. This didn’t happen. Parables are stories about things that never happened but always are. It’s a parable. And the background is that things are getting late. This is Chapter 13 in Luke. This is Lent. We’re in the third week of Lent. And as much as we’d like to not think about it, we all know how this story goes. The end is nigh. Things are getting serious. And it’s make-it-or-break-it time. It’s time for everybody to push in their chips. And so, that’s what this parable is about. This tree is not producing fruit. Chop it down. No, let’s give it one more chance. My favorite Bible commentator says this, quote – “The lesson of the fig tree is a challenge to live each day as a gift from God.” There’s that cliche again. And it’s true. “The lesson of the fig tree is a challenge to live each day as a gift from God. Live each day in such a way that you will have no fear of giving an account of how you have used God’s gift.” What if our evangelical brothers and sisters are right? Maybe they are. Maybe someday we all wind up in front of the judge and the judge says, “Well, here is the evidence. Here is how you’ve lived your life.” How would each one of us fare? That’s what this is about. Each day is a gift and it might be later than we think. Living each day as a gift.

Here’s muse number one. Some of these I’ve shared with you before, I believe that we’ll share it again. My late, great friend, Spiro Goumus, his parents came over from Greece. He was born in Akron, Ohio. He was a member of my church in Akron. And he, now his living spirit, he is one of the best friends I’ve ever had. And my life changed forever the day I called him on his cell phone. This was a long time ago. This was the early 2000s. And Spiro worked for the restaurant supply business in Summit County, and he spent his days during the week, Monday through Friday, he was driving around. He was either in Pennsylvania, Ohio or Michigan. And he worked in high-end restaurant supply, and he went to high-end restaurants in those three states. And I’d decided I would call him. We were going to try to get together for lunch at some point. And I was in my office. Do you remember landline telephones? Anybody remember those? I was on my landline telephone in my office. I can still see it as clear as day, and I dialed Spiro’s cell phone number. I didn’t know if he was in Pennsylvania, Ohio or Michigan, and I called him up. Phone rings. He picked it up. “Hello? Spiro, this is Jay. How are you?” “I’m great. How are you?” I didn’t know where he was, I was curious. “What state are you in?” I needed some sort of visual. I said, “Hey, Spiro, I’m doing good. How are you?” I said, “Where are you?” And he said, “I’m in my body. Where are you?” (Laughter.)

This is the kind of guy he was. He lived his life like God. The past, the present and the future are all one thing for Spiro. It’s a hard thing to find, but you know when you feel it. I’ve been trying it out lately. It makes a difference in the way you look at things. It gives you perspective, it does for me. “Where are you?” “I don’t know, where are you?” There was a little bit of an indictment there. I hung up the phone and I thought, “Where am I? Where am I? Maybe I need to ground myself in God a little bit better, Reverend Groat.” I’m in me. That’s muse number one. What time is it? What time? It’s always the same answer.

Here’s muse number two. This passage of scripture, I’m not going to read it all. I’m going to read the first few verses. This is my watch. I’ve also got a watch here. This is one watch I’ve got, here’s another one. This is a copy of a passage of scripture. Years ago, I put it on a copier, and I blew it up to about 120 percent so I could read it without my glasses. It’s always in my briefcase. On my good days, when I don’t chop down the tree, the fig tree, and I decide to give the tree another chance, on my good days, on my good days when I’m like St. Augustine, and I’m living my life where past and present and future are all the same thing – and by the way, when you do that, all of the guilt and all of the sin that lives in the past, it has less power over you. I know that I’m the only one here that has any guilt and any sin, so you have no idea what I’m talking about now, right? But all of that stuff in the past, when we try to realize the past, present, future being one, that stuff has much less of a pull, much less power. But here, when I want to know what time it is, this is the best watch that I own, and I get it out. When I ask the question, “What time is it,” I read these words. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up.” Of course that’s Ecclesiastes 3. It’s the way to keep track of time. What time is it today for you? Is it time to cower in our closets and shut the door and be afraid? Or is it time to get out and to find our way not only to speak out, but to live, live in courage and in grace? When we encounter corrupt politicians and racism, then we find the courage somehow. We want to make a difference for good. We want to light a candle and not just curse the darkness. That’s muse number two.

Muse number three. We can learn something, of course, from other faiths and other religions. We can learn something. We can learn things, for example, from the Buddhists. I want to revisit one that I’ve shared with you before, I want to share it again on this day when I’m sharing muses. If I were filming this as a movie, I’d film these scenes and then I’d fade to black and there’d be no transition. Then I’d fade it in again and there’d be another one. The way this works is about half of you would be like, “What the heck is this guy trying to do?” And then the other half would be like, “Oh, I get it. No transition. We’re going from muse to muse to muse. So here it is, muse number three. The Buddha is sitting under the bodhi tree and he’s radiating enlightenment. We as Christians would say he’s at one with God, he’s at one with the Christ. The Buddhists said he is radiating enlightenment. The Taoists would say he’s at one with the Tao. A man walks by and senses the Buddha radiating enlightenment. He says, “Oh my goodness,” and he approaches the Buddha. He says, “You’re radiating enlightenment. Are you a god?” And the Buddha says, “No, I’m not a god.” The second man comes along and says, “Oh my goodness, look at this enlightenment. Are you an angel?” And the Buddha says, “No, I’m not an angel.” And finally, the third man, you know these things always happen in threes. The third man comes along, and he had overheard what’s happening and said, “You’re radiating enlightenment. You’re not a god. You’re not an angel. What are you?” And the Buddha says, “I’m awake. I’m not asleep. I’m awake.” “Where are you?” “I’m in my body. Where are you?”

And then finally, the last muse. Christine, I know you’re going to do your job looking at my watch. Paul Tillich, the greatest Protestant theologian who ever walked the face of the earth in the 20th century – one of his famous sermons/essays is called “The Eternal Now.” Isn’t that a wonderful concept? The eternal now. Tillich wrote this, this is about halfway through the essay. He writes this, quote, Paul Tillich – “The riddle of the present is the deepest of all riddles of all time.” He calls it the riddle of the present. “Again, there is no answer except from that which comprises all time and lies beyond it, the eternal. Whenever we say now or today, we stop the flux of time for us.” Say now, say today. Tillich says when we do that, we stop the flux of time. By the way, that’s the answer. You probably figured that out. When anybody ever asks us, what time is it, we smile and say, “It’s now.” It’s always now. It’s always now. Tillich – “We accept the present and we do not care that it is gone in the moment that we accept it. We live in it, and it is renewed for us in every new present. This is possible because every moment of time reaches into the eternal. It is the eternal that stops the flux of time for us. It is the eternal now which provides for us a temporal now. We live so long as it is still today in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews. Not everybody, and nobody all the time, is aware of this eternal now and the temporal now. But sometimes it breaks powerfully into our consciousness and gives us the certainty of the eternal, of a dimension of time which cuts into time and gives us our time.”

OK, Kristen, I relieve you, because it’s time. This is my last thing. There is a highway on the border in between … I didn’t expect to feel this way. There’s a highway on the border between North Carolina and Tennessee that in the past 15 years or so has become holy ground for me and my family. Maybe you’ve been there. No matter what time of the day or night you’re there, there’s hardly any cars. It’s amazing, and it’s an interstate highway. It’s Interstate 26, and the stretch that we ride on runs between just north of Johnson City, Tennessee, to just south of Asheville, North Carolina, where my in-laws live, where my late mother-in-law, Joanne, used to live and where Ron, my father-in-law, still lives. It’s Interstate 26 and you get in your car and let’s say you’re driving south, and you’ve left Johnson City, and I’m going to be very scientific like an engineer here. As you enter into this stretch of land, your car is going like this. (Holds hand up vertically.) What is that, 90 percent? Whatever it is, it’s really steep. You’re going up. You’re going up and up and up and up. I looked it up this week just to be sure. You get to the top and it’s called Sam’s Gap. It’s part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Appalachian Trail cuts right there. There’s a turnoff and you can turn off and hike the Appalachian Trail up there if you want to, you can get on and off there. It’s 3,800 feet when you get to the top elevation. Tennessee and North Carolina are there. A couple of years ago it was just Vicki and me and we were driving, and we got to that part of Interstate 26 and the weather was such that when you got to the top it was foggy. You couldn’t really see very much, and you had to slow down, and that’s what happened. I turned to Vicki, and she’s used to these things being married to me, she’s used to these things happening. We’re driving in this fog, and you have to slow down. You rely on your eyes, but you have to rely on more. You’re relying on your instinct, and you’re in another dimension. I turned to Vicki, and I said, “Of course, you know what’s happening here, right?” And she said, “Of course I do. We’re in the eternal now.” She didn’t really say that, but in my dreams she did. But we really were in that fog, and I turned to her, and now looking back I realize that that’s what the eternal now is like. It can be like that for us right now, it’s like we’re in this invisible fog. It’s a different dimension. We can move in and out of it and we can slow down, and we can rely on our eyes, but we can rely on something deeper inside of us. Don’t chop that fig tree down just yet. Give us some more time. What time is it? And I’ll stop now. Thank you for letting me share my muses, and I’ll stop. There’s only one condition. I’m not going to stop until you give me the answer. You ready? What time is it? (Congregation says “now.”) Amen.