In America, we know the meaning of time. Our speech is rife with cultural catchphrases expressing our intimate relationship to time. We constantly need more of it. We fear it is running out. We divide our commitments and responsibilities into those that waste time and those that are time well spent. We even speak of "buying" some time, because, after, time is money.

Or is it?

In a society where a life of faith is too often synonymous with an "American life," it behooves us to reflect upon the rhythms that give meaning and purpose to our lives, to consider the very nature of Time itself. Genesis 1:1-2:3 offers a view of Sacred Time that orients the liturgical and practical lives of both Jewish and Christian faith communities. Conversation between these two communities regarding the origin and significance of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day should lead to a shared ethic of Sacred Time reflecting what it means to abide by God's Time in a world which winds its watches to the ticking of political and economic rhythms.

The priestly Creation narrative of Genesis 1:1-2:3 depicts the origin of Time within the creative action of God. In a cycle of deed and blessing, day and night, work and rest, God brings forth the rudimentary elements of existence -- space and time -- ex nihilo, out of nothing. Our reality, and our time, has its ontological grounding in the very will and action of God. The first action of the Creator is to bring forth Light: "God called the Light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day" (1:5). Before there is substance or space, there is Time. The unceasing rhythm of night and day, light and dark, the most basic time frame of human existence, is made holy by its origin in God's creative work. On the sixth day, "God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good" (1:31). Time itself, the first creation, receives God's blessing.

God does not simply bless Time itself but also consecrates a certain rhythm and cycle within it. Genesis 2:2 attests that God, having "completed his work which He had done," rests from labor on the seventh day. Though ostensibly completed on the sixth day, Creation comes to completion in the fullness of Time. This is to say, when God "blesse[s] the seventh day and sanctifie[s] it, because in it He rested" (2:3), God com-pletes the cycle of Time with which Creation was begun. Creation indeed continues on the seventh day. On this day God creates and hallows both the seven-day week and the cycle of work and rest that is to define our observance of it.

Both Judaism and Christianity find the rhythms for their Sacred Time within Genesis 1:1-2:3. Both the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, the fundamental markers of time for Judaism and Chris-tianity respectively, serve to renew and honor God's Time in the midst of the world's itinerary. The historical and theological origins of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day illuminate both the nature of Sacred Time within the two communities as well as the distinctions between Jewish and Christian thought and practice.

By appreciating Genesis 1:1-2:3 as the mutual bedrock of our liturgical rhythms, Christians and Jews may begin to construct a joint ethic of Sacred Time. This ethic arises from our respec-tive callings to live into the rhythms established and hallowed by God as the foundation of Time itself. In a desire for true ecumenism, we will offer one distinct contribution to this ethic from either tradition and join them with a final, unifying theme.

The Sabbath offers an appropriately priestly understanding of this ethic.

Samuel Meier notes that, within Torah, the counting of seven days is not reserved to the weekly Sabbath cycle alone. With-in the priestly tradition, he argues, "the standard purification period with few exceptions is a seven-day period that is inde-pendent of the weekly cycle and the Sabbath."

Examples of these purification periods include those for men-struating women, leprosy quarantine, and contact with a corpse. Seven days, then, represents the shift from impurity to purity. By observing the Sabbath we are participants in God's Sacred Time of renewal and purification. An ethic of Sacred Time, therefore, includes the conviction that, by simply observing and honoring the consecrated time of God, we not only become ritually pure, but we purify the time around us, invoking the presence of God's rhythm within the profane syncopation of human time.

Whereas the Jewish contribution proceeds from a close, priestly reading of Genesis 1:1-2:3, the Christian offering constitutes a radical reinterpretation of it. By proclaiming Christ to have inaugurated a new Creation, the eighth day, Christians "announce that God's creative activity [is] con-tinuing."

An eighth day suggests the possibilities for a ninth and tenth. Christians proclaim both the present reign of Christ and the Kingdom to come, expressing a theologically rich paradox: Christ both perfected and is perfecting Creation. To live in Christian Sacred Time is to be ever vigilant and ever hopeful, aware of your life's holy orientation within the Creative Days of God. To live in Christian Sacred Time is to celebrate in the fullness of Creation through Christ, mourn the continuing brokenness of the world, and strive for wholeness, for that ninth day in which the present and future Kingdoms of God may be one.

At the heart of both these ethics is the resounding declaration that God's reality is not the world's reality. This is the ethical core of a Judeo-Christian ethic of Sacred Time: a life lived in God's time speaks a thundering "No!" to the timetables of this world. No! Time is not money. No! Time is not able to be bought. No! Time is neither running out nor can you attain more of it. This is the purifying action of the Sabbath life, in-dicting the profane rhythms that govern our society. This is the wholeness that eighth day living proclaims. We say "No!" to the rhythms of greed that live and die by the tolling of a bell on Wall Street. We say "No!" to the rhythms of class that do not have time to love the neighbor. We say "No!" to the rhythms of war that seek justification in the past and vindi-cation in the future for the atrocities of the present.

We say "Yes!" to the good Creation of our God, a Creation that begins and ends with Time.

Adam Meredith-Ployd is currently the Director of Youth Ministries at St. Mark United Methodist Church in Atlanta. He completed his $25,000 prize-winning essay last spring as a 22-year-old graduate student at Emory University's Candler School of Theology. Adam is a candidate for ordination in the United Methodist Church and is married to a paralegal advo-cate for the homeless. He plans to pursue a doctorate in historical theology in preparation for teaching and his own ministry. He will be returning to Baltimore to participate in the second ICJS Fellows Conference scheduled for November 2005.