Those neighbors were farmers locked in the cycle of nature. Canaanite worship was, by our standards, obsessed with fertility. When our Jewish ancestors settled in Canaan, they brought with them not only a different God, but a different sense of time. Their God was not a prisoner of nature but had interrupted history and set it on a new course. Delivering a people from slavery, leading them across the desert and giving the Law from the top of a thundering mountain, the God of Israel gave time a new meaning.
Christian belief affirms an even more startling departure from the cyclical turn of pagan time.
Our God entered human history in a new way as one of our own kind, the human Jesus. Broken in death on Calvary, Jesus rose on Easter morning, and the world has never been the same. Ever since his resurrection, his followers have conceived history in terms never before heard on earth. Living in the final age makes us a kind of time travelers. At Eucharist we step back into an event which has rent the fabric of time like a worn-out shirt.