"It's time..."

“It’s time…”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Last week, I tried to make the case that Jesus wasn’t just “biding his time” for his first thirty years.  I think he was experiencing the things that make life meaninful, that make life worth living, that make the world worth loving.  I suspect he knew the joy like we did of having playmates as a child.  He had loving parents.  He had brothers and sisters, who no doubt fought with one another and teased each other and loved each other.  He learned what it meant to be a person of faith because being a part of a community of faith was a built in part of his life.  He knew the joy of being creative and feeling competent and accomplishing things in his work.  For the first thirty years, Jesus was immersed in the world in which and for which he would die.

It seems certain, too, that Jesus would have seen things that disturbed him.  He would have seen how that one kid in Nazareth got picked on all the time.  He would have watched as people barely made it out of the synagogue on the sabbath before they started mistreating each other.  He would have seen folks who got sick—people he cared about—and watched those people die. He knew heartbreak.  We all know that the world can be completely worth loving and still feel like a broken mess at the same time.  I think Jesus knew that, too.  Empathy rises when we recognize that life is really hard sometimes.  At the least, we don’t want to make life any harder for anyone .  Knowing how hard life can be, Jesus would one day declare:  “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

We have to be able, ourselves, to spend time on both of these sides of life.  There are great days.  The weather is beautiful and it feels like a pure gift.  The flowers are blooming and signalling spring.  Just the right song comes on the radio and you start grooving in your seat…and your family isn’t there to make fun of you!  (However, the guy in the car next to you is staring at you and slowly shaking his head.) Your beloved friend shows up for you.  All your kids are happy.  You realize that you have what you need, that you are blessed with more love than you deserve, and there is meaning to be lived that day.  Life is good!

Just as often, to be honest, life isn’t that great.  The wind chill is 32 below.  Even your dog doesn’t want to go out.  You haven’t seen the sun in 5 days.  Flowers are just a vague memory in a world that is completely black and white and grey.  You practically send up a flair and yell, “Is there anyone out there?” All you get back is “crickets.”  You start to go down the “pity hole,” thinking you deserve better stuff, thinking you deserve more love, thinking, “God, where the heck are you now?”  You can barely remember that feeling of wholeness and well-being that seemed like a given before.

The truth is that life is “all of the above,” but, good lord, it is terribly hard to accept that truth.  We keep thinking to ourselves, “This must be my fault.  I must have done something to bring this on.”  Or, we think to ourselves, “This must be that person’s fault.  I’m stuck living downstream of their choices.”  Or, in a really desperate moment—a moment of despair—we think, “It’s God who is doing this to me. I’m cursed.”  We keep saying to ourselves, “This is wrong.  This is wrong.  This is wrong.”

So, we decide to get really organized, to be really vigilant, to be so “good” that good will just have to come our way.  We try so hard.  And the people who love us so much watch us with such care and feel so helpless.  Finally, reluctantly, we realize that life will not be manipulated or controled or edited.  Certainly, we do get some choices and those choices can make things better or worse.  However, no one gets a pass.  No one gets to skip the hard parts, the heartbreaking parts, the parts that make no sense.

This is wisdom—being able to look at life and realize that, sooner or later, you’re probably going to take the full tour.  The question is how much energy are you going to waste acting as if living “challenge free” is an option?  How much precious time are you going to waste being mad?  How long are you going to wait before you do the hard work of accepting “what is?” What if even the hard moments are worth living? 

This is the wisdom of Ecclesiastes.  There is a time for everything.  There are moments when you should absolutely dance.  There are other moments when dancing is entirely out of the question.  It’s a horrifying thought but there might be a time to kill—not necessarily always to defend yourself, but maybe to protect the defenseless.  There is most definitely a time to laugh but, to be honest, I’ve also been caught laughing when I had no business laughing.  We’d love to pick and choose and say, “Well, I’d never do that or I’ll always do this.”  Instead, Ecclesiastes reminds us, “When it’s time weep, weep for all your worth.  When it’s time to laugh, laugh until your sides ache.” 

It’s so easy to look at life as if we are some sort of umpire, calling “balls” and “strikes.”  “This is good so I’m in.  That’s bad so I’m out.”  Or maybe, we’re convinced we’re the batter, and life is like batting practice:  “You know, I really like the ball just a couple of inches higher and a smidge outside.”   The truth is that we have to be the batter who stands at the plate, determined to not just stand there and strike out with the bat on my shoulder.  “I don’t have to hit it out of the park but I do need to swing the bat.”

So, life is all of the above.  We’re meant to live the whole “kit and kaboodle.”  However, Ecclesiastes and I disagree about his notion that every little thing that happens to you is God’s will.  I don’t think that everything that comes our way is stamped, “Approved by God!”  Corporations relase cancer causing chemicals into the environment and good people die of cancer.  Is that God’s will?  A child is fighting to survive in an abusive home.  Is that God’s will?  The food in this world goes disproprtionately to those who already have food.  Is that God’s will? A lot of people think that whatever happens is God’s design, that God will never give us more than we can handle.  I disagree.  I don’t think God looks at anyone and thinks, “Cancer would be perfect for them…”

I don’t believe in a God who makes bad things happen. I believe in a God who weeps with us, who goes through the hard things with us, who sees us “whiff” at life’s latest pitch and whispers, “Good swing!”  I believe in a God who inspires smart, caring people to be doctors and nurses and research scientists.  I believe in a God who nudges my family and my friends and, sometimes, even strangers, to see my pain and respond with compassion.  I believe in the God who works through a well-timed casserole, a simple thank you note, or the most basic question of all, “How can I help?”

I’m sure that if the writer of Ecclesisastes and I had dinner and chose to have this discussion, things would get heated (because, of course, there is a time to argue and there are things worth arguing about!).  The writer would look me in the eye and say, “Your God isn’t big enough!  Any God who is not in charge of everything is hardly a God, at all.” Then he’d lean in really close, change his voice to a whisper and say to me, “Here’s the other thing…how are you going to “sell” God to people if you can’t promise them that life will be all good if they are good?”  “Not a bad point,” I’d say, “It is a hard sell.”

Then, I’d thank him for taking us on the first really important step in this life—getting to the point of realizing that even though “life is all of the above,” the only way to really live is to go “all in,” ourselves.  Yes, at times, we will suffer.  Even worse, sometimes, the people we love will suffer, too.  Yes, we will have to deal with things that seem patently unfair and we willl have to do things that we never thought we would do.  And where will God be in all those different moments?  God will be right there with us, not guarenteeing outcomes but answering our prayers for strength, for energy, for patience.  When it is time to weep, God will weep with us.  When it is time to die, God will greet us with open arms.  God is a loving God, a compassionate God, a God who understands how hard this life can be.  And here’s the truth, love beats contoling power every time, hands down.

I believe with all my heart that this is the truth that Jesus emodied.  This is the “way” that he lived.  This is what he meant when he said, in so many different ways, “You should try living this way, too.”  When people live this way together, you catch glimpses of the kingdom of God, of how life would be if it was they way that God wanted it to be. This is the way we are meant to live, no matter what is going on, “Okay…this is what’s next.  What then is the next loving thing to do?”

I imagine Jesus getting up early on his last day of his life in Nazareth.  He held the cup in his hand, the one that fit just right, and savored a final sip of water, because no water ever tastes as great as the water you grew up drinking.  He washed his hands and his face and dried himself with favorite towel.  He peeked in to the other room and saw his mother sleeping and smiled at how he loved her and how she loved him.  He grabbed a delicious piece of bread and tossed one more in his pocket for the road. And as he unlatched the front door, he remembered the day when he had made that door and hung it, just right.

There were so many things he was going to miss:  his family and friends; all the folks in his hometown, that one particular bird that insisted on signing its heart out every morning.  He was going to miss the smell of the wood that he cut and the smooth feel of the wood as he ran his hand across it.  Basically, he was going to miss every earthly thing that he had ever loved.

What he knew, though, was that the world needed some good news.  Things aren’t the way they should be.  Things are not the way that God intended for them to be.  The poor aren’t poor because they deserve to be poor.  The sick aren’t sick because they are getting what they deserve.  No, the poor are poor because we haven’t been bothered enough to change things.  The sick are just sick.  Instead of blaming them, let’s try loving them and see if that takes the edge off things.  

It’s time. It’s time to say “goodbye” to the place he loved.  It’s time to start something new.  It’s time to show whoever he meets what it means to love one another.  It’s time to etch this question in people’s hearts:  “What’s the next loving thing to do?”

Jesus looked around Nazareth one last time, knowing that if he ever came home, it would never be home again.  Still, he knew…he just knew… “It’s time to go.  It’s time to go find John.”