In case anybody's curious, here is the code I used to get this to
work:

statusCounter is an AtomicInteger.
Basically, if the id matches the counter, the message will be reset.
If the message has been changed before the TimerTask is fired off,
though, the message will not be cleared leaving it to a later message.

I use an Observer pattern (hence the notification) to update any
status bars/tooltips/etc (hence,
this.notify(MainModel.UPDATE_STATUS) ).

Works pretty well.  Thanks again for your help.

    public void setStatusMessage(String statusMessage, long time) {
        this.statusMessage = statusMessage;
        this.notify(MainModel.UPDATE_STATUS);
        final int id = statusCounter.incrementAndGet();

        if (time != 0) {
            TimerTask task = new TimerTask() {
                /**
                * @see java.util.TimerTask#run()
                */
                @Override
                public void run() {
                    if (statusCounter.compareAndSet(id, 0)) {
                        clearStatusMessage();
                    }
                }
            };

            timer.schedule(task, time);
        }
    }