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Turning of the Year!

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“Turning of the Year!”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (3:1) – December 31, 2023

            Time has a funny way of getting away from us, doesn’t it? Time can be rushing by while you and I are sitting, watching, on a treadmill or a big hamster wheel. Time is elastic, sometimes stretching out, tedious while we are waiting, other times jam-packed with events and decisions and happenings all on top of each other!

            Many people take stock at the end of the year, looking back, looking ahead. My husband Kevin noticed a local newspaper at a restaurant we went to for lunch yesterday. The sports page had a preview for 2024, showing some positive news: up-and-coming sports players to watch and look forward to! That is certainly one way of looking at the turning of the year!

            The Scripture reading for today (for tomorrow, really – for New Year’s Day) comes from the Hebrew Scriptures book called Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes does not have riveting stories like Genesis or 1 or 2 Samuel. It does not have uplifting or emotional songs like the book of Psalms, or stirring prophecy like Isaiah. What this book does have is a poignant, soul-stirring view on time, on life, on death, and on wisdom, right here in chapter 3.

            People can get bogged down with the basic message of Ecclesiastes. In short, an overview of the whole book has the Teacher (some call him the Preacher) telling his readers that life is short, everything passes away and goes back to God, and he gives the advice to live life to the fullest while you can. Grab all the gusto you can! Seize the day! Carpe diem!

            A secondary message found in this short book is to strive after wisdom. I can imagine young people hearing the first, overarching message of Ecclesiastes and doing exactly that – living life to the fullest while they can! Except, young people often do not consider wisdom. Sometimes older folks do not consider wisdom, either!

Wisdom is front and center here in chapter 3. We see life – and humanity – laid out for us, in all its nitty gritty manner, warts and all.

We can look at this reading from three different perspectives, This is helpful when interpreting this famous passage from Ecclesiastes 3. “In order to appreciate the wisdom of what “the Teacher” presents, we do well to see it from an outside location for a positive perspective, the inside for a negative perspective and up-above for an ultimate perspective.” [1]

            If we view this reading from the outside, just taking the words “as is,” everything looks pretty good, pretty safe. Remember the folk song from the 1960s by the Byrds? Turn, Turn, Turn. The words to the song read exactly like today’s Scripture reading. Yes, there are different times for different experiences in our lives. That plain truth is self-evident. The same fire that melts butter also boils a hard-boiled egg. The same wind that puts out a match will fan flames into a strong blaze. There is a time for everything, for every activity under heaven.

            Except – we are not to go through life blindly or carelessly. Just as the Teacher says to us, we “acknowledge the wisdom of these different times. We challenge the assumption that if we are spiritual enough, we ought to be happy all the time, realizing instead if we’ve lost someone—to divorce or Alzheimer’s or a miscarriage –it is the right time to weep.  We acknowledge there is a time to scatter stones (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”). And a time to hate (cancer, human trafficking, hypocrisy.)” [2]

            We need to consider the inside story next. That’s the negative part, isn’t it? Looking at these words from the inside, and considering the context, the “why” and the “how come?” We run right into sadness and pain, the core and substance of life. We all know that life is not always rosy! Life has negative aspects, depressing happenings, and sad situations.

Sometimes these situations come up again and again. This boils down to the conclusion that actor Jim Carrey gave in an interview: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” [3]Does striving after the unreachable, beating the air, running as fast as you can with no chance of ever catching a break, sound familiar? “What do we gain from any of this? What profit?” At the end of the day, the Teacher calls every tick of our clock, every activity under the sun meaningless.            

            Sounds pretty hopeless, and the Teacher says humanity can do very little! But, do not despair! We come to the third view, the view from up above – God’s viewpoint! We read v. 10: “I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. [And then this shining ray of hope] Yet God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart.”  

            God indeed has the last word. God can make a way through. God opens a window in the skies, in the everlasting cloudy day of sorrow the writer of Ecclesiastes paints for us. God does indeed make everything beautiful in its time! Everything is in God’s time.

            Which brings us back to where we started, with time. Our human concept of time. “We human beings are in time, we’re defined by its limits. But from the midst of time, we have a sense for eternity. We have inklings of something more. We hear echoes from a far country.” [4] I suspect even the writer of Ecclesiastes heard this inkling of eternity, too.

            With wisdom, we come to understand that time is not just what happens around us! “Time is something to which we pay wise attention so that we can know how to act in various seasons of life. Ecclesiastes 3 is not just about the passing of time or the “turn, turn, turn” of life’s cycles. It is also about wisdom, about a wise discerning of time and of how we are to react to the different occasions that come our way.” [5] Yes, there is a time for everything. And yes, there is an eternity for everyone – for you, for me, made beautiful in the human heart.

            The Teacher says, listen up! Be wise, and take heart. God is able, God is over all, and God loves us all. Whether in 2023, or 2024, and into eternity. Alleluia, amen.

@chaplaineliza

(Suggestion: visit me at my other blogs: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and  A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!

[1] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/lora-copley/ecclesiastes-31-11/

[2] Ibid.

[3]  Reader’s Digest, March 2006

[4] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2014-12-15/ecclesiastes-31-13-2/

[5] Ibid.

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A Time for New Things

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“A Time for New Things”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 (3:11) – January 1, 2023

            Today is a fresh new year, a brand new calendar, new experiences each and every day. What bright opportunities are ahead of each of us! Just imagine – today is a time for new things, just as our Scripture reading this morning states.

            Today’s Scripture reading from Ecclesiastes talks a great deal about time. All different kinds of time, and lots of ways of marking time, too. “Time feels different to children who have known so little of it. For them years last forever. They are just beginning to sort out the difference between how long a time period feels and the fact that an hour is always 60 minutes long no matter how it feels.” [1]  

            Yet, many of us here have seen the passage of time, and many years go by on the calendar. Many people know that days, months and years can slip by oh, so quickly. When a child is 5 or 6 years old, it can seem like forever before the Christmas holiday finally arrives! But, when someone turns 75 or 86 years of age, the Christmases and the holidays seem to come faster and faster. Time surrounds each of us, here in this world, in this place and time.

            As we reflect upon this Scripture reading for today, we can also reflect upon what exactly the author of Ecclesiastes meant. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…” That can mean we ought to be serious and anxious about each little factor, or each tiny decision each of us makes.

Sure, some can go too far, and have a totally fatalistic point of view of life. That is the way some Bible scholars view the author of Ecclesiastes, who often says that everything is absolutely fated and predetermined. Many scholars view the author of Ecclesiastes as the aged King Solomon, and the writing in Ecclesiastes is mostly jaded, disheartened and questioning. Nothing is worth doing, no innovation, no creativity; no one can change anything ever. What a hopeless, helpless point of view. This view takes away free will, human decision, and the possibility of change. Why do anything, ever again?

            But, that way of serious, somber thinking can be really negative. Seconds turn into minutes, hours, days and months. Before we know it, sometimes we can look back at the passage of many days, many existences with sadness and regret.

            As we look through this clear choice each of us has on the New Year’s Day, we can certainly wonder about our personal choices. And, these choices sound like this Scripture reading, too. “A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”  

            We can add “a time to be positive, and a time to be negative, a time to look forward, and a time to look back over our shoulders.” These additions are fully in keeping with the author’s intent, I think. Yet, each of us must think about what each of us is going to do with these words, choices and intentions. Each individual needs to weigh this decision in their own mind. And, what is the Godly decision?

            Another way to reflect upon this fresh, new decision is to consider what has happened to each of us in the past twelve months, and find within an eagerness, looking forward to the future. Again, we can view this new year as a new path in the pristine snow, ready for each of us to walk upon. We can track a fresh path where none has been before!

            Bible commentator Christine Valters Painter tells us that “the human desire [is] for renewal and new beginnings. St. Benedict in his Rule for monasteries writes ‘always we begin again.’  This impulse is the heart of what makes anticipation of the New Year kindle all of our longings for a richer way of being in the world.  There is something so very hopeful to me in this fundamental impulse.” [2]

            Remember, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer tells us repeatedly, we are Christians, together. A congregation is a group of believers gathered together for friendship, fellowship, and most of all, to worship together. We all come together to worship as a group of believers. We all come together to find commonality in this renewal and new beginning each January 1st. And, we all can find comfort, camaraderie and fellowship in the common coming-together as a family of faith.

             Yes, this new calendar page is an opportunity to begin again as individuals. Plus, January 1st is another opportunity to come together as a congregation and find a more hopeful, a richer way of being in the world.

            Just as the concept of time is foundational to each one of us, with this concentration of time so central, so this Scripture reading tells us that God has set eternity in humanity’s heart. Verses 11 and 12: “yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.”

            What a sentiment! And, what a wonderful way to decide to look at life. As we all begin again this first day of 2023, let us listen to the writer of Ecclesiastes. God has set a foundational sense of time in our human hearts, and God has set for us a task. There is nothing better for us than to be happy and to do good while we live. God has given us this precious gift: a God-given gift of time, and a God-given gift of being happy.

So go – do that. Be well, and be happy.

@chaplaineliza

(Suggestion: visit me at my other blogs: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and  A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!

[1] http://worshipingwithchildren.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-years-day-years-b-c.html

[2] http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/New-Year-New-Beginnings