I don’t know about you, but though I have many responsibilities and tasks to perform, here and elsewhere, there are times when I am not ready to do certain things, or at least not prepared to do them well. The time has to be right, again not before I can perform a task (sometimes you have to go ahead and get the thing done), but the time has to be right before I can do the thing right. We all know how this works. I can’t be overly tired and be expected to be smart and witty. Sometimes we have to wait until the right age or until we’ve achieved a certain level of experience. For example, we don’t want our children to get married when they are too young; we don’t want people voting until they have reached some predetermined age of discretion. Even the US Constitution precludes anyone under age 35 from being elected President. Some kids, indeed some very smart kids, perform horribly in college and may even drop out. But when they return at a later date, older and also wiser, prepared and focused, they often actually excel.

There are times when the time just has to be the right time. Paul says as much in our second reading from Galatians: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son.” We get the same idea from our gospel reading that features Simeon and Anna, both of whom as Luke tells us, were waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Simeon, Luke tells us, “was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel”; and Anna, a prophet who worshiped every day in the temple with fasting and prayer, praised God and spoke about the child “to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

The fullness of time, as Paul is using the phrase, refers, I think, to the entire history and tradition of Israel that had to reach a certain point before its Messiah could be comprehended or received, before Israel’s Messiah could be the world’s Messiah. When Paul talks about the fullness of time, what he has in mind is the history of the people God chose to be his own, who in their tumult and suffering, their wandering and exile, their law, their kings and prophets, their hymns and liturgies, their hopes and laments and expectations, pointed forward to the fulfillment of the God of Israel’s word and promise, pointed to the consummation and completion of God’s creation, pointed to the life and salvation of an Israel at peace, pointed to a time of universal justice, to that time when (as had been promised to Abraham, by him) all the families and tribes and nations of the earth would find blessing. That consummation and completion and blessing could come only when the time was right. And so it did. It came as a baby born in Bethlehem. It came when from the cross Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). It came when the women at the tomb were told by two men in dazzling clothes, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.” Israel is the indispensible context for Jesus, without which history and tradition Jesus makes absolutely no sense at all. Indeed, if, as we confess in the creed about Jesus that “through him all things were made,” and who “for us and for our salvation came down from heaven,” then his history as an Israelite is the indispensible context of creation and its redemption, and thus the indispensible context of human history as such in its striving and hoping, the indispensible context for its reception of God’s gift of life and peace and salvation in Jesus Christ, which God extends now beyond Israel to all nations and to each and every person created in the image of God.

We can say the same thing in a different way. The fullness of time comes whenever we hear the Word of God proclaimed in its purity and truth, the word announced not only by the apostles but also by Israel’s sages and prophets. The fullness of time comes when, as Paul says, we are “buried with him by baptism into death, so that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). The fullness of times comes whenever we accept the risen Lord’s invitation to dine with him and with all his saints at his great and abundant banquet table, which, as the church proclaims, is but a foretaste of the feast to come.

Paul also tells us that when God sent his Son in the fullness of time, he came as one born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law. What does this mean? One modern commentator [Barth] explains it this way: That Christ came under the law means that “he stepped into the heart of the inevitable conflict between the faithfulness of God and the unfaithfulness of [human beings]. He bore it in himself to the bitter end. He took part in it from both sides. He endured it from both sides. He was not only the God who is offended by [us human beings]. He was also the man whom God threatens with death, who falls a victim to death in face of God’s judgment. If he really entered into solidarity with us—and that is just what he did do—it meant necessarily that he took upon himself, in likeness to us, the “flesh of sin” (Romans 8:3). He shared in the status, constitution and situation of [sinful humanity] in which [the human being] resists God and cannot stand before him but must die.”

The fullness of time, in other words, the time of salvation, comes, ironically, precisely at the point of death, Israel’s death in particular, the same Israel whom God promised would be a great nation to which all other nations of the earth would find blessing. Israel’s death would mean death for all. The end of Israel also would mean the repudiation of God’s promise. In the fullness of time, however, the death Israel feared and was constantly threatened with, the death that would be the end of humanity, the death that would prove God’s powerlessness, has been overcome. Israel was constantly on the verge of extinction. The fullness of time came, therefore, at the very point when the prospect of Israel’s death finally is put behind her. And since the life and blessing of all nations is wrapped up in Israel’s life, Israel’s rescue from death now means life for all. The fullness of time comes when, in the resurrection of Israel’s crucified Messiah, hell is crushed underfoot and all the dead are raised in Christ. The fullness of time comes as sin, death, and the power of the devil are banished in him forever.

But what is our reaction to this? Usually it is to assume that none of what I’ve just said applies to me, that it is all either ancient history or a powerful myth. We note that the Bible tells a strange story of a peculiarly harassed people and relates a sentimental tale about the power of love that does me no harm to hear once in awhile. It’s perfectly OK for those who like that sort of thing, even if it isn’t for me. I can take it or leave it. Take it or leave it? In that story is the plot of our own lives, a story of our own destiny that is being played out every day and in world history whether we acknowledge this fact—and it is a fact—or not.

Each of us faces a critical moment as we are brought to the brink of oblivion and the stark reality of the death of our hopes and dreams, and the end of what we have achieved—you’ve probably been watching your financial statements shrink and shrivel. Indeed, our lives are constantly hanging in the balance. Blessed are those who realize that each day we live and prosper only by the grace of God, that we not only owe our existence to the God of Israel, but that in Israel’s Messiah lies our hope for the future and our destiny as the people chosen in Christ and from eternity to be God’s own. The fullness of time is now.

-Amen-