Changing Seasons

Intro - Me/ Mr. Rodgers

Mr Rogers,

a journalist named Tim Madigan Was talking to Mr Rogers once about the death of his dearly beloved brother.

Tim says, “if this is where a good life leads, I wonder why we bother to be good.”

Mr Rogers avoids the temptation to respond with Easy answers or quick fixes. And instead, after a pause, just responds to Tim saying, “I can understand how you might feel that way sometimes.”

Fred went on to say, “with grief, there is inevitably some times of anger. And you know, God can take our anger. “

Then perhaps more importantly, he said “we pray and continue to do our work counting on God's grace to give each of us enough light to take the next step of the journey.”

Mr. Rogers lived at a time of incredibly personal and societal change.

Yet, throughout all this change, Mr Rogers seems to exemplify for us an image of what it means to live in the present

This is a time in our culture where we so often get obsessed with the future or with the past

The changing of seasons in the school year

The ongoing emergence out of the end of a global pandemic

You see we have season that are built into our church calendar and seasons that are built into our own calendars that are supposed to have emotions associated with them

We make plans to prepare our hearts for many seasons that we don’t really know what they will be like until them come

Yet we try so desperately to plan and to craft what the future will look like all while God is trying to meet us in the present.

Ecclesiastes

To get a better sense of what is happening in our passage today, we have to look at ecclesiastes as a whole.

basic message - hevel, hevel, everything is utterly hevel.” hevel - vapor or smoke - life is temporary or fleeting

Ecclesiastes 1:2 (NRSV)

2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

This word, vanity, or sometimes meaningfulness actually comes from the image of smoke or vapor.

That right when we try to grasp something or find meaning in it, it seems to slip away from us.

Ecclesiastes as a whole is about deconstructing all of the ways that people think that We might think we find meaning and purpose in our lives.

at its core ecclesiastes is about our desire to know the things that are God's responsibility to know.

Eternity is not for us to know

We are beings that are made with a desire to understand eternity, a curiosity about it in fact, and yet we will never get there

We are made by an eternal God

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent

enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of

saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us."

- Prophets of a future not our own

A number of psalms speak very similarly about just how short our lives here are compared to eternity

There is a sense of surrender that happens for us when we wake up each day prepared to be present in the moment

We wake up each day not knowing what it holds

We make plans but we never really know if they come true or not

God who understands eternity fully, who lives in eternity fully, reaches out to us who live finite lives

It is only ever in the present that we experience God

We are called to ignore the incomprehensible past, and lay aside the uncompromised future, to experience an unexpected God in the present.

This passage starts with saying that there is a time for everything, and many of the things aren’t the good things

What do you mean there is a time to kill?

Throw stones?

For war?

These are things that I don’t really want to imagine and yet they exist.

Then he says “He has made everything suitable (beautiful) for its time”

It isn’t that God has allowed for these things to happen or enabled these things to happen

It is that in the midst of all things God is there with us

That in every present moment we are given a different and new opportunity to find God

We very well might miss an opportunity to be faithful disciples if we are too distracted by the future

We very well might miss an opportunity to experience God’s love if we are held up by the past

God is working to make this moment beautiful, who am I to stand in the way of that

The place that this passage ends is not in saying that all seasons are good, and not in saying that all season are necessary it is saying that in all seasons we are called to that particular season

Or another way to say that is perhaps that even this season, God is with us.

The hope that we have is that we might come to a place where we understand that only God understands our future, and that God is offering us only this present moment

When tomorrow comes we will have several moments to be present with God then, but we are offered this moment now to breath and experience the presence of God

We are not meant to understand the whole time line, we are meant to exist in this season

To embrace as Mr. Rodgers did this present and sacred moment with whatever change it brings with it.

To trust God with our future

There's something subtle in the text that I didn't catch the first time, or the first couple of times reading it.

And it is the order.

Ecclesiastes 3:6–8 NRSV

6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; 7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

The passages set up in a way that the last line, if it were following the pattern. It would be a time for peace and then a time for war.

But instead, the author reverses just this order and none of the other ones.

This is reflected too in the Hebrew.

but it serves as a subtle nod that the first thing is new life life or birth and the very last thing is peace.

That even though we are called to be with God in this present moment, And even though we are called to let go of the future and all that it holds, that we are reassured once again, that it all will build to a world peace.

Or as Mr Rogers says, “The connections we make in the course of a life. Maybe that's what heaven is.”

Prayer

Introduce “Lord in Your Mercy...” “hear our prayer”

Introduction

God you make all things new you make all things beautiful in their own time.

We confess that we so often don’t know what a day will bring. We wake up not knowing if this will be for us a day of celebration or a day of lament only you do. As we enter into each new day we give up control. We give up control of being in charge of all of the details. We give up control of our future, and we ask that in every moment that we would be faithful to you. Help us to worship you and to see you in this present moment. We know that so often the present moment is all that we know for sure. We remember the joys and the pains that the last year brought us, and with your spirit we walk boldly into this day. Help us to remain grounded in the now that we may experience your grace in your love in each new moment.

O’ Lord we lift up to you in prayer those that are grieving the loses of loved ones

We pray for those siting on hospital beds, surgery rooms, and in Doctors offices facing set back in health

We pray for those facing isolation and loneliness, for after all we are made with a desire for community

We pray for those struggling with addictions, that they may find not only sobriety but also connection with you and with others.

We pray for the church universal and for our United Methodist Church in an ongoing season of discernment

Lord God pour your spirit out on us.

AMEN

‌