"'Tis the Seasons"
November 25, 2007: 26th Sunday After Pentecost, Year C
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, senior minister
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.UnitedChurchontheGreen.org
Scripture:
May God take these words
and make from them a holy word for us today.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born,
and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a
time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time
to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones,
and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time
to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear,
and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time
for peace.
Revelation 21:1-6
Then I saw a new heaven and
a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned
for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne
saying: "See, the home of God is among mortals. The Lord will dwell
with them as their God; they will be God's peoples, and God's own
self will be with them; the Lord will wipe every tear from
their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will
be no more, for the first things have passed away." And
the one who was seated on the throne said: "See, I am making all things
new." Also he said: "Write this, for these words are trustworthy
and true." Then he said to me: "It is done! I am the Alpha
and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give
water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."
Friends, God is still
speaking to the world. May our hearts be open to listen and respond.
Amen.
Sermon:
And so the world turns. Thanksgiving
has come and gone, and now at United Church the halls are decked, the
wreaths are hung with care, and, when evening comes, the candle lights
flicker in the windows. It's beautiful. And it drives me nuts, because
it's too early—granted, not a Walgreens kind of Christmas-in-October
early, but early nonetheless. Almost two whole weeks early, in fact,
since all this garland and ribbon went up last Monday and, according
to the church calendar, the Advent season doesn't start until next
Sunday, December 2. I continue to be thankful for the good folks from
Orchestra New England who come in to decorate for us every year prior
to their Colonial Christmas Concert the Saturday after Thanksgiving,
but still, you know, it bugs me.
Many of you have heard me rant,
half-jokingly, in years prior about the need to hold the Advent line
hard against Christmas carols in Sunday worship weeks after they've
invaded our malls and coffee shops and elevators, just on principle.
Well, the principle's the same here.
Our United Church of Christ is a liturgical Christian tradition—that
is, we observe the various seasons and holidays of the church year.
I'd say we're not excessive about it, like Roman Catholics tend
to be, and we're not obsessive about it, like some Episcopalians,
but for the most part, we do try to follow the rhythm of the liturgical
seasons as they flow by, from Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent
and Easter and Pentecost and beyond. And so, when we're forced by
secular circumstances to step outside that current, it chafes a bit.
Now you may ask, and rightly
so, why should we care? Does it really matter whether today is the 26th
Sunday after Pentecost or the 1st Sunday of Advent? After
all, we can worship God anytime, anywhere, right? And besides,
our Puritan forebears in faith forbade the observance of any holy days
other than Sunday, the Lord's Day, alone—not even Christmas. So
does God really care? Or is this one of those ridiculously abstract
churchy questions theologians love to ponder, like how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin? Or yet another outmoded tradition, like
women covering their heads in church, or children being denied communion?
What good is the church calendar, really?
Well, on its own, none. It's
not like the church calendar fell from heaven onto my desk. We made
it up over time. And as you probably know, the church wasn't even
very imaginative about it. Most of the major Christian feast days, Christmas
and Easter and All Saints among them, were conveniently located over
the ruins of older non-Christian holy days with similar themes to facilitate
their adoption. And the calendar still isn't uniform among Christian
traditions today. For instance, for nearly a thousand years now Orthodox
and Western churches have calculated the date of Easter differently,
and our Christmas observances fall nearly two weeks apart.
To the degree that the calendar
is used to promote division among our churches and distraction within
them, it is a nuisance. That's what our Puritan ancestors in New and
Old England believed, and why, following the inspiration of firebrand
street-preachers like Praise-God Barebones—I kid you not, that was
his real name—they moved to ban the celebration of Christmas in England
by act of Parliament in 1642 and of all other non-Sunday holidays in
1645. In the colonies, in New Hampshire, the provincial assembly in
1771 passed a law known as "An Act To Prevent And Punish Disorders
Usually Committed On The Twenty Fifth Day Of December Commonly Called
Christmas-Day The Evening Preceeding & Following Said Day And To
Prevent Other Irregularities Committed At Other Times." Though these
laws themselves didn't stay on the books long, the anti-holiday spirit
in New England endured well into the 19th Century.
So, again, what good is the
church calendar, really? And again, I say: on its own, none—none at
all. But like all the other trappings of our faith—the water in the
font, the bread and cup on the table, the candles, this entire meeting
house, in fact—the liturgical calendar is intended not as an end in
itself, but as a tool to help us focus our attention on our relationship
with God. Our puritan ancestors didn't need to keep the calendar so
much because the entire society of their New England "City on a Hill"
was designed to support their faith. In our own more pluralistic day,
that's not a project we can or want to undertake. So we the props
can be helpful.
This meeting house—this font,
this table, this pulpit—do not make this a holy place. But they are
signs of God's holy presence already with us in space, in this particular
place, yes, and in all the particular places of our everyday human lives.
In the same way, the liturgical calendar does not bring God to us, as
though the holy should appear according to our timetable. Rather, it
brings us to an awareness of God's presence already with us in time,
both in the revolving cycles of the natural world and in the evolving
rhythms of our human lives, the seasons of our experience from birth
to dying
It's more than just a matter
of remembering, of remembering events that happened thousands of years
ago. Our faith is not an on-going memorial for our dead founder, with
sightseeing stops along the way Sunday by Sunday and a tour guide announcing,
"Now if you'll look off the right side of the bus, you can just
see the stable where Jesus was born. Next up we're headed on to Jerusalem
and the temple where he was circumcised." Instead, by moving with
purpose from one Sunday to the next, from Advent to Lent, through to
Holy Week, Easter, and on to Pentecost, we rehearse the journey of Christ
from the cradle to the cross, to the tomb and beyond, and so remind
ourselves that God's Holy Spirit is with us every step of the way
along our own life's journeys.
And we need reminding, because,
as the saying goes, no one can step in the same river twice. The river
flows on, and so do we do. And so our perspective on God and our experience
of God necessarily changes, as well. Our childhood Sunday school faith
isn't likely to fit as well as we grow into the questions of adolescence.
Our teenage church camp enthusiasm or rebel rejection may feel inadequate
as we confront the peculiar challenges of maturing into a broader world
view in our twenties and thirties. Heady intellectualism or aloof agnosticism
may not be up to complications of our middle years or the lessons of
diminishment and loss in later life.
But "for everything there
is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven," and so Sunday
by Sunday we repeat the great story cycles of our faith—of God's
graceful choice of the people of Israel and their subsequent falling
away, exile, and redemption, and of Christ's nativity, ministry, crucifixion,
and resurrection. We offer them to one another as a series of windows
from our ever-changing lives onto the life of the Spirit, the Holy One
who is always ready to meet us here and now, wherever and whenever we
are.
This week, I invite you to
imagine your own spiritual timeline. When have you felt the presence
of the Holy in your life? Not just in the traditional liturgical sense
or traditional church settings—like I said, all these are merely tools
to help train us to recognize God at work in the everyday. But when
have you felt your life falling into step with the life of the Spirit
for a season, or maybe just a moment? A year with a church youth group
that was particularly meaningful? In your struggle to overcome an addiction?
Your experience of pregnancy and childbirth? Coming out? Some particular
worship service that caught you up for just one holy moment?
Sometimes it's easier to
recognize such experiences in retrospect. I look back at my journey
from college to seminary and ordination to serving with you here today
and marvel at the ways God has been with me at every turn on that twisty
road, guiding and goading me on deeper into life. In a same-but-different
way, I have sensed the gifts of the Spirit in the seasons that I have
spent in psychotherapy pursuing a healthier, more integrated sense of
self. And there have been so many other moments—gifts of music, friendship,
love, awe. What are yours?
In the end, of course, one
week this way or that doesn't make a whole lot of difference. As believers
in the way of Christ, we trust that God is guiding all creation toward
a future when we won't need these props to find God. As St. John imagined,
in that day of days, the Lord will dwell with us as our God, and we
will be God's peoples, and God's own self with be with us. The Lord
will wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more; mourning
and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things, the trappings
of our lives in time, will have passed away as we greet the One who
is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, face to face.
But till then, while life lasts
and time matters, God, who is good and faithful and full of grace, bends
to meet us here, now even among these artificial garlands, these ribbons
and bows. Jesus beams up at us from a plywood manger and looks down
on us with pity from an imitation cross. The resurrected Christ walks
among us once more in an Easter garden of potted plants. We hear the
rushing wind of the Spirit in a child's whirligig pinwheel. And we
thank God for each and every gift of grace given in God's good time,
and ours.