(Sung) For everything, Turn, turn turn,
there is a season,
Turn, turn turn,
and a time for every purpose under heaven…
When I last had the honor to address you, a couple Sundays back, I was in a bit of a daze, aware that I was perched on the edge of something – that before I saw you again, my life would be altered in momentous ways.
I was not wrong about that.
Each of you knew this also. It was no secret.
Most of you have grandchildren yourselves, and so you couldn’t help smiling knowingly to yourselves, sitting in the pews with the quiet air people who are in on a delightful secret that, God willing, I was about to become an initiate.
There is a certain kind of twinkle in the eye that can say quite a bit all at once. Your eye twinkles were making a whole speech… they were saying:
“A-ha! You may think you know what is about to happen to you, but… Oh no…, this is one of those things that you can’t know about until it happens. And when it happens, then you know about it.
Then you really know about it!
It’s one of those things.
Before leaving New Hampshire, on Wednesday the 8th, I presided at a funeral, up at the Cathedral of the Pines for a local man by the name of Karl Forry. Karl’s father, Reverend David Forry was a local pastor (who occasionally moonlighted in this pulpit back in the day). But despite his job in the public eye, David was not the most popular person in his family. That honor was unanimously bestowed upon his son Karl, who was universally loved. Karl was born with Down Syndrome. He was not an intellectual, but he was a lot of other things. He was uninhibited, trusting, charming, innocent, and downright fun. He worked for many years in the laundry room at Good Shepherd, and then later as a groomer in the stables at Touchstone farm in Temple, NH. All the staff knew when Karl arrived at the farm each day, I am told, because all the horses would walk across the fields to greet him.
The horses knew.
Two legs, or four legs, love is the same.
It is an instinct.
After Karl’s service, I zipped over to Brattleboro to meet Cary for lunch. Isabel’s texts had become steadily more portentous as her due date approached, and the time to dilly dally was dilly well done. My fancy new Electric Vehicle and I were aimed south. It was Philly or bust. I had (as the poet says) miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep. After a quick lunch with my lovely wife, I hit the highway.
There is a time to sit in a recliner, and there is a time to hightail it.
When the hightail-it-time comes, it is time to hit the highway.
The highway may shrug this way and that as it navigates the hills and follows the edges of the great rivers – but as you settle into the trance of the drive, you begin to suspect that this motion – this headlong careening forward – is life itself. The linear illusion of human existence as a moving line is made all the more impressive by the rapid ascent, and uncontested dominance of the GPS, that condenses any purpose we may have in the world into a jittery little triangle on a screen. I’ve heard it said that there was a time when we left one place and arrived at another without the aid of a GPS… but how that was achieved is a mystery to us now…
**
You may not be familiar with the name Qoheleth. It is actually not a name – it is a title, which, in Hebrew means “teacher” or “collector of sayings.” The first verse of the first Chapter of Ecclesiastes, introduces the book as “The words of the Qoheleth…” “the words of the teacher.”
The passage that Liesie read for you is certainly the most famous passage attributed to Qoheleth in the Book of Ecclesiastes.
The fame of this passage is due, at least part, to the song “Turn, Turn, Turn” in which Pete Seeger, the great American Folk singer, put these verses to music
Pete Seeger, though, was drawn to this passage for the same reason that you and I are drawn to it – it has a universal quality that tries valiantly to gather into itself something of the essence of the condition of being human.
The first thing that we notice about this passage, is that it is a kind of list.
The central claim that is being made about each time on this list, is that there is a “time” for that thing.
to plant
to dance
to laugh
to build
to heal
For each of us – you and I, and everyone else who has ever lived and ever will live – there are going to be “times” in our lives when we will experience these things.
We can all identify with the truth of this.
But there is a problem with this passage. Qoheleth simply can’t include everything. What about the time, for example, when the power goes out and the ice cream in your freezer melts. There is a time for that. There is also that great moment after you have toiled up to the top of the hill on a bicycle, and you start speeding down the other side and you feel all free with the wind in your hair. There is definitely a time for that too!
But Qoheleth doesn’t mention these times. Well, you have to give him a break! He couldn’t list everything!
Still, I would have loved it if he included the going downhill on the bike thing…
The way Qoheleth manages this problem is by making each phrase in the list contain two items. These two items are related to each other – they are opposites.
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
Each phrase creates a circle of meaning. You cannot acknowledge the truth of the first half of the phrase
a time to weep,
without being compelled to acknowledge the second part of the phrase:
and a time to laugh;
Unlike the GPS – which takes you in a straight line from point A to point B – the logic of this passage has you turning in circles.
I didn’t get to Izzie’s place in North Philly until quite late. It was October 8th, and although the final stages of pregnancy can be very unpredictable, we were both aware that her due date was the next day – October 9th.
She was about as pregnant as it is possible to be.
And her discomfort, when I arrived that night, was not just because she was big with child…
She was also starting to feel cramps.
She gave me a meaningful look and said:
“Something is happening!”
With her permission I placed my hand on her protruding belly in hopes of feeling Kobi move around. I was not disappointed…
“What was that?” I asked, in hushed wonder.
“That was his foot,” she said. “He moves around a lot.
While Qoheleth’s circles of meaning create undeniable truths:
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
These are not easy truths. They are complex truths. We are drawn to them, and at the same time they are thorns in our sides.
I am thankful that there will be times when my life is blessed by love.
But I am pained by the idea that hate will also show up and poison my life.
I am thankful that there will be times when my life is blessed by peace.
I am pained by the idea that war will also show up and poison my life.
Sitting with my daughter, late at night, I was literally sitting within the spell created by one of Qoheleth’s circles:
A time to be born, a time to die.
I had come from a funeral, and I was now feeling my grandson kicking in my daughter’s womb.
The awareness of this – the pure, almost ruthless humanity being played out in and around me, left me breathless.
**
I wanted to stay in Philly and help out, but I could not. The next morning, I took them out for breakfast, and prepared to leave. If Isabel was going to go into labor – which it seemed like she was – she and her husband James would have navigate it together – that is the way it is supposed to be… and anyway, I was expected in Virginia.
I was travelling from one funeral to another. My duty, when I got to Virginia, would be to eulogize my step Father-in-law, John Via, who died in mid September.
A time to be born, a time to die.
The truth is, too much happened for one sermon. We have not gotten even close to the main attraction. He may need to wait for another day. Thankfully I have all of Advent to talk about newborns!
We have already contrasted them with our GPS world – considered how, instead of steadily looking in one direction along an artificial line, Qoheleth gives us a wider peripheral vision – one that sees this way and sees that way.
But this wider perspective also has its challenges.
What if you need to get somewhere?
Qoheleth’s world view is realistic – it acknowledges love and hate, peace and war, planting and harvest…. but it doesn’t give you anything absolute to depend on. After his famous list is spoken, Qoheleth acknowledges this problem:
What gain have the workers from their toil? he asks.
God, he says has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet [we] cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
On this Stewardship Sunday, I submit to you that, as people of faith, we must have our eyes open to Qoheleth’s wider vision – his insistence that, in our lives we not only experience love – we will also know hate. That we will not only know peace – we will also experience hatred.
We live within these circles of meaning.
All those who took to the streets this weekend, understood this truth – that love must struggle against the reality of hate.
But as people of faith, God has given us something else with which to understand the world – that is if we need to make decisions that actually get us somewhere.
Jesus gave us this gift.
We have each other.
Christianity, as Paul writes in 2nd Timothy, comes alive in community:
continue in what you have learned Paul writes.
…proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching.
As people of faith, when we are confronted with the hard realities of life, Qohelelth does not let us bury our head in the sand. He insists that we keep our eyes open.
As people of faith, though, Jesus gave us each other. We have our life together, which allows us to act – to convince, rebuke, and encourage
Encourage!
For the last month we have been considering this idea – that we encourage each other in our faith.
Our faith is life and death –
Not in the sense that we ussually use this term – as a way to get away from death into life…
Our faith acknowledges both life and death.
But in this acknowledgement, we are also given the greatest gifts.
The gift of each other.
The gift of God’s love.
On this Stewardship Sunday, we encourage each other.
We encourage each other to see the world in all its complexity…
And to live into it together.
in community.
Let us join together, again this year, as we have done each year…
Together as people of faith, believing in God’s love, and our faith community, to help get us somewhere.
Amen.