THE DAUGHTER OF TIME January 12, 2014, the Baptism of the Lord Matthew 3: 13-17 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: Truth with a capital T often comes to be known only with time. God of eternity, the other side of time, for whom an age is but a flash, lead us now and always deeper into your truth. Grant us the deep wisdom that comes only in time, over time, in your good time. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen. I am a great fan of murder mysteries. The British do them especially well, and one of the best but least-known English writers of detective novels was as woman named Josephine Tey. Her second-best (in my opinion) mystery was a 1951 book entitled The Daughter of Time. That title is a turn on aphorism that can be traced back at least to Francis Bacon, the 17 th Century philosopher and essayist. Bacon had said, wisely, truth is the daughter of time. Tey s novel is an unusual murder mystery because the murder actually two murders that the detective investigates occurred some 500 years earlier. And they were real murders. In 1483, Prince Edward V, the young contested heir to the throne of England, and his little brother were murdered in the Tower of London. Suspicion fell then, and has fallen since, on their uncle, King Richard III, who had assumed the throne earlier in the year. Two centuries later, Shakespeare wrote his famous play about these events and cast Richard as one of the all-time monsters of history. Along with Twelfth Night, Richard III is currently something of a surprise Broadway hit staged by the Globe repertory with an all-male cast. In recent years however, scholars have questioned Richard's presumed guilt. Miss Tey closely examined the evidence in the intriguing context of a detective novel. Her detective, by the way, does all of his detecting from the hospital bed to which he s confined. Her book argues persuasively persuasively enough to convince - 1 -
me that Richard III was probably not the murderer of the little princes in the Tower. Miss Tey says that 500 years of mistaken history have vilified an innocent man. The point is that truth is the daughter of time, sometimes lots of time. In this case, 500 years of time. The truth, you see, is often painfully slow in coming. You and I however, live in an age that wants to know everything right now. We live in a Google world that honestly believes in immediately attainable knowledge about everything. In an instant information world like ours, people find the idea that truth is the daughter of time to be enormously frustrating. We want truth, but we want it now! Today is the Sunday that the church celebrates as the Baptism of the Lord. We remember the story of Jesus baptism, the story that Sophie read a moment ago, but more than that, we recall our own baptisms. Most years at Brick we celebrate the baptism of children as we did today. Baptism marks the beginning of the Christian journey. When children are baptized, parents and sponsors make some radical promises. We, the church, make sweeping promises. We promise to guide and nurture them by word and deed, by love and prayer. We promise to encourage them to know and follow Christ. So the question is this, How exactly do we do this? How do we do this as parents, godparents, grandparents, as Sunday School teachers, as the church? Well, at the very least, we need to remember that it takes time. There s a plethora of information an internet search away. Our kids go to fine schools that make them little fountains of information. But to guide and nurture our children, we need to remember much of that kind of information internet and textbook information is truth with a little t. You can t Google What does it all mean? or What is the good and the right? Actually, you can, but the answers are trite. At my brother-in-law s New Year s Eve party, I asked Siri, that know-it-all lady who lives in my iphone, What is the meaning of life? Her answer was the kind of wisdom they print on coffee mugs. You know, Read books, walk on the beach, relax. Not wrong, but not deep. - 2 -
Big T truth, as opposed to merest information, often comes slowly. It comes mostly in and through the living of life. It comes in and through living life with a soul open wide to the whispers and shadows and subtle intimations of Truth with a capital T. Deep truth is formed over time in the heart that lives and loves. It grows over time in the heart that suffers and serves. It amasses over time in the heart that waits and watches. Capital T truth, deep wisdom, is formed in us, hour upon hour, day upon day, year upon year, by the Spirit of God whittling at our souls with the sharp little knife of experience. We who are parents or teachers, we who are pastors or mentors, we who are uncles and godparents face this daunting awareness: the children we care about will not learn about the deep things of life through information. They must learn it through living itself. We cannot save them from experience. Indeed, we should not save them from experience. We cannot save them from the disappointments. Indeed, we should not save them from disappointment. We cannot save them from sorrow. Indeed, as much as we long to, it would be wrong to save them from every sorrow. As fathers and mothers, as teachers and mentors, as the church, we tell them what we have come, over time, to understand. We share the Truth we have come to value. We surround them with love. We tell them of the love of God. Most importantly, we live the Truth as we have come to know it so that they might see how that Truth works in us. But in the end, we cannot live their lives for them. We cannot learn for them. We cannot protect them from all the hard learning that life sometimes brings. Truth is the daughter of time. So we trust that, in time, over time, through time, the faithfulness of parents, the good witness of teachers and mentors, the stubborn integrity of the church will indeed bear fruit. We trust that with time, in time, over time, through time, the seeds we planted will flower: a gracious word spoken, a well-timed smile, a needed embrace, a deserved reprimand, an act of moral integrity, - 3 -
a self-sacrifice seen, an old family story told, a bedtime prayer prayed over and over, an admonishment deserved. They call it nurturing for good reason. Like a gardener, each of us who would touch the lives of the young is called to be dogged in the dirt of living always waiting, watching, and trusting that God will give the growth, in time. Let me send you off with an enigmatic story that has long haunted me. The German philosopher, Gotthold Lessing, wrote a novelette he called Nathan der Weise, Nathan the Wise. Much abridged, Lessing s tale goes something like this: There was once an extraordinarily wise old man named Nathan. Nathan s long life had brought him prosperity, contentment and the respect of all who knew him. Nathan possessed a ring, a ring that had been given to him by his father. And his father had gotten it from his father, and down through the generations there had come a family story that said this was no ordinary ring. It was a ring that would bring to whomever wore it exceptional wisdom in all things, wisdom from matters of business to those of love. But Nathan had three sons, each of whom he loved dearly and equally. This was both his joy and his dilemma. He could not decide which son to give the ring to when the time came. So as old Nathan lay on his death bed, be called his jeweler to him and he gave the jeweler the ring, a ring which had not left his finger since his father had given it to him. He instructed the jeweler to fabricate two exact duplicates of the ring, precise duplicates down to the scratches and wear marks. When the jeweler returned, Nathan took the three rings, the original and the two duplicates, and shook them in his cupped hands so that even he did not know which was which. He then called his sons to his bedside one by one, and told each of them the story of the ring that had been given to him by his father who had it from his father, the ring that brought the wearer such great wisdom. He gave a ring to - 4 -
each son and one by one, he charged each of them to tell no one about the ring, especially not to tell his brothers. But brothers being brothers, they soon learned that each of them had been given a ring that was supposed to be unique. The three vexed sons went to their father s bedside. They confronted him with the three rings and pleaded with him to know which of the three rings was the true ring. Their old father looked at them and sighed. He said that he no longer knew which was the true ring, but then he assured them that time would tell. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. - 5 -