A Season of Faithful Responses

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11There’s a season for everything and a time for every matter under the heavens: 2 a time for giving birth and a time for dying, a time for planting and a time for uprooting what was planted,3  a time for killing and a time for healing, a time for tearing down and a time for building up, 4 a time for crying and a time for laughing, a time for mourning and a time for dancing, 5 a time for throwing stones and a time for gathering stones, a time for embracing and a time for avoiding embraces, 6 a time for searching and a time for losing, a time for keeping and a time for throwing away, 7 a time for tearing and a time for repairing, a time for keeping silent and a time for speaking, 8 a time for loving and a time for hating, a time for war and a time for peace. 9 What do workers gain from all their hard work? 10 I have observed the task that God has given human beings. 11 God has made everything fitting in its time, but has also placed eternity in their hearts, without enabling them to discover what God has done from beginning to end.

INTRO

Last week we began the first in our three-part “Faithfulness” Sermon series. We began by examining God’s faithfulness toward us. We explored how we like the Israelites tend to hold a negative view of the world and our negativity distorts our view of how God is at work in the world in such a way that sin, slavey and bondage looks or appears to be more comforting in comparison to the challenges of the future. Through it all God remained faithful to the Israelites and God remains faithful to us. For the Israelites and for us, God’s faithfulness requires a response. This week we explore that response through the lens of Ecclesiastes 3.

While some is lost in translation, these verses of Ecclesiastes have a rhyme and rhythm to them. Perhaps they sound like songs or poems. Maybe the verses form a pattern much like our patterns of list making. It is like that grocery list that we check over and over again in a repetition of worry as we make sure everything is listed before we head to the store. To each person the repetition of Ecclesiastes holds a different meaning. The meanings behind the text are as varied as we are politically and socially. For some these verses are about the providence of God - whom they believe divinely orders every aspect of our lives. For others these verses are teaching us to shape our lives around the timing of our adventures. Either we chase after something or we wait because the right season is coming. Regardless of our interpretation or understanding of the text, this morning we are called to lay it all aside, to let it go for the moment, as we approach this text with fresh eyes for seeing and ears for hearing.

Some view this text as as explanation for how time marches and is directed at God’s command. However, as we approach the text, we must make this departure from the interpretation that we have always used. If we read this as a structure with complexity, rather than a simple calendar, we begin to acknowledge a life that is ordered around our human experiences - experiences that are made out of our own free will. To put it another way, Ecclesiastes 3 is not about everything happening on a certain date at a certain time. Nor is it about God placing all things (good and bad) into our lives at set times. Rather, God has set two certainties in our lives: we are born and, at some point, we will die. Everything that happens between those two certainties is up to us. These events or seasons are not pre-destined or marked on a calendar. They are choices that are presented before us. We choose to kill. We choose to build up or tear down. We choose to cry or to laugh; to mourn or to dance; to gather or throw stones, etc. It is up to us to make decisions and choose how we react as we flow through the varying seasons of our lives.

Yet, we must also acknowledge that there is an order to life. One commentator notes “It is good that there is a time to die that stands over and against the time of birth, for to have it any other way would be to admit that there is no order at all but only arbitrary and erratic events” In other words, the events of our lives are not totally random. For every time there is indeed a season. No one lives in complete happiness all the time nor does a person live in complete despair all the time. The listing of the seasons in our text reminds us that there will be good and bad things, moments of pure joy and spaces of pain. And, through it all God is faithfully present, giving us space to live our lives, make our own decisions, and to move through life’s seasons.

One of these seasons that we must examine, is the time for throwing away. Traditionally, we have thought of this time as a bad season. Maybe we view it as a season where we remove the toxicities of life such as harmful people, or we remove ourselves from things that cause us stress. Maybe its viewed as just removing all the “stuff” from our lives. A season of throwing away has been viewed as taking our trash to the dump whereby we remove the dirty, rotting things that no one has any use for anymore. However, this is not what God means for this ongoing season of our lives. It is not a season of removing harmful people or things in our lives, nor is it about taking out the trash. Instead, this season of “throwing away” is about giving those things of value which we have stored up overtime. It should be seen as the unrestrained pouring out of good things on those around us.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus instructs us to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect” (5:48, NRSV). Reading this verse by itself, we would tend to think that we are called to God-like perfection that often leads us to over judgmental behavior. Yet, when we examine this instruction in the context of Ecclesiastes, we begin to understand a different point of view. God has showered us with more blessings than we deserve. What Jesus is advocating for is a striving toward God-like generosity. Where, in our giving of our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness, we might be over generous giving all we can to our communities of faith, to one another, and to those in the surrounding community.

In our ongoing season of throwing away, we are called to practice this extravagant means of being perfect as God is perfect. This natural response to God’s giving is a giving back of a generous portion of all that God has given us. This looks differently in different seasons of our lives. For some of us, we are just beginning to give. Others of us are moving closer to a tithe. Some of us are giving a tithe, returning 10% off the top back as God calls us to and as our ancestors have demonstrated from Abraham on. Others of us are giving beyond a tithe. No matter where we find ourselves in our season of giving, we are called to give. No amount is too small.

This “throwing away” or giving back to God has important roots in our Wesleyan heritage. A faithful response to God throughout the seasons of life is to give what what you can.

Wesley had three rules for our usage of money: 1. To gain/earn all you can without harming yourself or others (this includes your family and protecting your time with them). 2. Save all you can, by living a life of simplicity. One commentator notes “Stewardship has to do with what we are willing to do without as surely as it has to do with what are willing to acquire” Thus, Wesley calls us to live a simplified life, so that we can give more away. 3. Give all you can to those in need. To Wesley giving is rooted in the very nature of God. It is of God’s nature to continually give therefore to love God involves giving of ourselves to others including giving of our financial resources. For Wesley, we were to gain and save all we can so that we can give all we can. For some of us, this is just a small amount. For others of us, we are ready to give a tithe or beyond. For others of us we are working on giving more in one capacity or another. Regardless, we are called to give all we can, or another means of Wesley’s wording, to give until it hurts.

What we must realize is that God’s self-giving acts are not transactional they are relational. Each time God gives or blesses us with something it reveals to us something about the Living God. So we too must be relational in our giving. Wesley, desired that the societies and churches of the Wesleyan movement would deliver their gifts to the poor instead of just sending their gifts. This was intentional…to deliver their gifts meant they had to spend time getting to know those persons being gifted. Instead of just sending gifts to Henderson Settlement like we did at Christmas we should also be intentional about forming relationships with the staff and the community in that area. Maybe we should visit them and begin to create a relationship. Might we go and visit them. Might we get to know the staff and the area. Might we hear stories of how Henderson Settlement has reached the community. Might we form deep and meaningful relationships with Henderson settlement that we might be in mission and ministry WITH them not just to them.

This is the work that Wesley believes we are called to do this work as the body of Christ. That is, in our giving to the church, we are able to give to this kind of work. If we all give until it hurts, or give as God enables us to give, we will be able to move beyond working to keep the doors open and the lights on and truly engage in mission and ministry to the world. John Wesley discusses this writing, “(Money) is an excellent gift of God, answering the noblest ends. In the hands of his children, it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked. It gives to the traveler and the stranger where to lay his head. By it we may supply the place of a husband to the widow, and of a father for the fatherless; we may be a defense for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them that are in pain. It may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame; yea, a lifter up from the gates of death.” Might we give as God calls us to do that we, as a community of faith, may give food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, and truly engage in deeper relationship with God, with one another, and with those who we are in mission and ministry with and to.

Our scriptures this morning, talk about the different seasons of life and the difference choices that we as humans have in this life. It gives Creedence to the experiences of death, hatred, and war but at the conclusion of the list is the word peace. You see, death, hatred and war are profound and universal yet they do not have the first or last word. If we live into the self-giving acts of God and strive to be made perfect in God’s love then death, hatred and war will not have the last word. When we live into this peace, when we strive to be made perfect in love, we begin to allow God’s faithfulness and love to flow in and through us as we respond to God’s faithfulness. Our faithful response to God with our prayers, presence, gifts/tithes/offerings, service, and witness becomes an outpouring of God’s faithfulness to us. When we generously give back from what God has given us to steward, we join God’s kingdom building work on earth…kingdom building work that brings about God’s peace even in the here and now.

This morning we are challenged to examine ourselves as we prepare to respond anew to God’s faithfulness. How is God calling us to begin or grow our giving in this season of living? On the first Sunday, a new pastor stood up to pray before sending out the offering plates. That pastor prayed this prayer, “no matter what we say or do, this is what we think of You. Amen.” You know, there is some truth to this. It’s not the dollar amount that shows what we think of God, but it is the generosity in our giving. We can’t work to build God’s kingdom, we can’t work to serve our neighbors, if we do not reflect God’s generosity toward us in our giving. God has been faithful. God will be faithful. We too must be faithful.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.