Introduction
What do Prince Harry, Elon Musk, T.S Eliot, Ashley Judd, Matthew McConaughey, Emma Watson and Hugh Jackman have in common? They all took a gap year.
A gap year is a semester or year of experiential learning, typically taken after high school and prior to career or post-secondary education, in order to deepen one’s practical, professional, and personal awareness. Students will use the year to perhaps study abroad, travel, or maybe work an internship.
There’s actually an organization called Gap Year Association that will help students who want to take a gap year and make the most of it, emphasizing that “a gap year is not a year off, but a year on.”
They further emphasize such when they say, “No two gap years are alike. Intentionally expanding one’s comfort zone, having a cross-cultural experience, and reflecting on one’s experiences are critical components to a quality gap year. Therefore students use the year to travel, experience personal growth and prepare for their future.
Harvard University encourages its admitted students to consider deferring admission and taking a gap year. In recent years twenty percent of its first-year students have taken them up on that offer — roughly three times the number that used to defer.
What all of this means then is that gap year students are living in the meantime. They’re living in-between the end of high school and the beginning of the next phase of life—be it college, work, military service, etc. They’re living between the past from which they have grown from, and the vast future that sets before them. The goal, of course, is that the gap becomes an important and valuable time of growth and becoming. The risk is that it can be squandered away.
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This idea of a gap year, of living in the meantime, can offer some helpful insight for our reading from 2 Corinthians because the Apostle Paul has an interesting take on“life in the meantime.” He certainly had a past from which he grew and became from—a past that included harsh persecution of Christians. But a conversion encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus set him up for a vast future that still resonates today. One could say Paul didn’t just have a “gap year” he had a “gap life.” He writes, “While we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord … we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him” (vv. 6-9).
Paul is living in the meantime— a period of time between now and eternal life with Christ. And he’s telling us we are living in the same kind of meantime—and we have a choice while we are in it. Make it an important and valuable time of growth…or squander it away.
Move 1
Paul is known to have said, to the Philippians, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.”
This is Paul giving awareness that he is in the meantime between his life that was and the eternal life that is to come. Notice his comment about being “pressed between the two.” He knew he was living in the now, even though he preferred the then. But he did not regard his gap life to be an empty life. Quite the contrary: he thought of down time as up time with Christ and— to go back to that gap year concept— that a gap year is not a year off, but a year on. Every year of his Christian life was a “year on” for the Apostle Paul.
Because for Paul there was no time off from being a follower of Christ, from being one who shares and spreads the Good News of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Paul saw life in the meantime as an important time for growth for himself and for others. And he used that growth to embolden himself and increase his passion and commitment to spreading that Good News—in the meantime of a gap year life. Life in the meantime was a life of faith for Paul, lived out intentionally—even when life in the meantime became life in mean times.
Move 2
As we know, Paul’s work and ministry wasn’t always harps and lyres. It wasn’t always miracles and visions of the resurrected Savior. There were some mean times in his life in the meantime. Paul was run out of towns for talking of Jesus. Other Christians were afraid of him—his reputation preceded him— aware of his past persecution of Christ followers and they had doubts about his authenticity. He was shipwrecked and almost died. And this is to say nothing about the arrests, beatings, and imprisonments. Oh, and then there was that whole dying as a martyr to the faith thing.
It was all part of some “mean” times Paul lived within—some hard times, times when nothing was easy and nothing went right.
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I suspect many of us—ok all of us—can relate to living in such mean times. When no matter what, nothing goes right, no matter how good we are. When we are labeled and persecuted for being who we are and believing as we do.
Even when we are trying to share some Good News, when we are trying to help we are rebuffed, maybe rejected—left to watch a painful result that could have been avoided if only the person would have received what we were willing to give. All of it is hard. And it gives us valid reasons to give up, walk away, stop even trying because what’s the point? Oh, and then there is the whole thing about people looking down upon the church and its people today, seeing it and us as irrelevant at best, or judgmental and cruel at worst.
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Paul was persecuted for his beliefs, looked down upon for them, and martyred because of them. He had every reason to give up life in the meantime because of the mean-times he had to endure. But Paul didn’t. And he didn’t because he knew how important life in the meantime—life between realizing who Jesus is and eternal life with Jesus—truly was. And he wasn’t going to squander life in the meantime no matter how mean the times got.
Move 3
We are living life in the meantime—life between realizing who Jesus is and eternal life with Jesus. Next week, we will celebrate ten students being birthed into life in the meantime when we celebrate their baptisms.
But we are also living in some “mean-times”—times that are…well I’ll spare you the anecdotal evidence because we all know it. But like a student taking a gap year, and like the Apostle Paul, we still have a choice within this life in the meantime and life in these mean times. We get to choose how we will spend it.
So how will we spend it? Will we see its value and importance as a chance to grow and help others grow too—no matter how old we get?
Or will we squander it? Will we let the “mean-times”, and the feelings they produce in us, hold all the power and keep us from living as Christ calls us? Will we let the mean times give us reason to make excuses as to why we should just throw up our hands, hang our heads, and give up?
How will we spend life in the “mean” meantime? We know how Paul spent it. We know how Christ calls us to spend it. So what choice will we make?
Conclusion
No doubt there are some students who will fritter away a gap year, using it as an excuse to be lazy. Most, however, have a plan, just like the Apostle Paul did as well. Paul was clear about the work and ministry of his gap life, of his “life in the meantime.” In the meantime, while awaiting eternal life with Christ, he knew he had work and ministry to do because there were people who needed him to fulfill his work and ministry.
Paul saw his work and ministry and life as that of an ambassador advocating for reconciliation—explicitly calling himself an “ambassador.” His work and ministry, while living in the meantime, was to urge people to be reconciled to God by sharing with them the hope for new life that came through the love of Christ offered to all people—whether they would listen to him, or whether they were running him out of town. Paul walked by faith. That was how he lived life in the meantime, and in the mean times. And that’s how we are called to live too. The fundamental truth to which we must cling to is that God has a purpose for us, and God is working out that purpose.
In our text, he reveals how we live life in the meantime and in the mean times, doing so in verses 6 and 7: “So we are always confident.” And how are we always confident? “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
For the Apostle Paul, it is always about faith. Faith that no matter what—no matter how mean the meantime got—living out one’s faith is the faithful way of life.
Living out our beliefs and core values; acting with love, kindness, and acceptance; not perpetuating sins like hate and bigotry with deafening silence but rather speaking truth to power while standing with those who are targets of incomprehensible meanness.
We walk by faith, confidently, in the mean meantime because that is our work and ministry. And there are no excuse not to.
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Like a gap year for a student—the choice is our in how we will spend our time in the meantime. Will we make the most of it? Or squander it away? Amen.
Pastoral Prayer June 20, 2021
Loving God, we come to you in gratitude for your love, which is always present to us, gratitude for your grace which always abounds, gratitude for your breath which always empowers us to new life.
In the stillness of these moments, we remember with thanksgiving the times in our lives when your love, grace, and breath has enabled us to rise to our better selves and become what you would have us be to fulfill the work and ministry you call us to do in this meantime we are in.
And we thank you for the gift of your Son, who came that we might know what perfect love looks like, who came to give life through grace and the assurance that this meantime is but a time until we are with you for eternity.
Gracious God, evidence of your compassionate love is always present to us. It comes in a stranger’s unexpected kindness, in a caregiver’s patience, in a gentle word of encouragement, in generosity of heart, time and wallet, in the beauty of a sunrise breaking through the nighttime.
In the midst of a world dominated by self-interest, power and greed, your example teaches us that mercy can triumph over judgment, acts of peacemaking can restore relationships between individuals, tribes and nations; that hope can foster self-respect and respect for others, and that transformation of heart, mind, and soul is possible through the redemptive work of your Spirit.
Let us never lose sight of these truths, and help us embrace them by confessing to you, and seeking your forgiveness when we have acted in anger rather than love; when our patience has been short and our behavior has been childish and surly.
Forgive us for the occasions when we have been the source of meanness in the lives of others.
Make as abundantly aware that we are all in this meantime together, and that the best way through is to live and love as your Son showed. For in doing so, we set ourselves on a path of doing, and fulfilling, the work and ministry you have called us to.
May you now listen to the prayers we give to you in this time of Holy Silence.
All this we pray in the name of Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who taught us to pray saying, “Our Creator…”