"It's time..."

“It’s time…”

Ecclesiates 3:1-8

This morning, I would like to amplify a few of the things that I mentioned in the children’s time on Christmas Eve.  My hope is that in doing so, we can spend a few moments looking forward to the year before us with a sense of acceptance and maybe even a sense of direction.  There are so many unknowns and so many things over which we have no control.  This morning, we need to do a little inventory of what we do know and of the choices we can make.

Let’s start here.  The fundamental human dilemma is that we know that there is so much that we don’t know.  We spend a lot of energy worrying about what’s next—today, tomorrow, or ten years from now.  Even if we just look at today and what we think is going to happen, there are almost always surprises—some pleasant, some unpleasant—by the end of the day.  We think to ourselves, “Wow!  I did not see that coming!” Over and over again, we wake up thinking we know what’s on the agenda.  Over and over again, we’re wrong.

Maybe we make a list, with the intention of making sure that the things on the list get done.  Honestly, as someone who loves a good list just as much as the next guy, it actually is very satisfying to check those boxes.  The list also accounts for our tendency to get distracted and forget a few items.  Most of the things on the list are not that hard to make happen, as long as my goals are realistic.  The bottom line is that it is good to remind ourselves that we have agency, that we do get to choose to do some things, that for as much flux as there may be in a day, we do get to set some priorities.    It’s nice to get to the end of a day and be able to think, “Well, that wasn’t exactly what I planned but it was in the zip code.”

Let’s make the obvious point next.  So, if it is almost impossible to know what is going to happen today—if we are terrible at predicting the future—then why in the world to we spend so much time worrying about tomorrow, or next month, or next year?  Of course, we have to plan for things—weddings, vacations, financial matters, logistics—but those plans almost always change.  And when we finally get to the things that we put so much energy into anticipating, they are, more often than not, different than we envisioned them.

So, to make the point clear, as humans, we know that there is a future and, if we are honest with ourselves, we really don’t know what that future holds in store for us.  To be honest, we really don’t know if we will be there for that future.  If you take such thoughts and mix them all together in our heart and our mind at 3:00 in the morning while we lie in bed, we can grow incredibly uncomfortable.  What’s going to happen?  Really, who knows?

That discomfort—that fundamental insecurity—underlies a lot of things we human beings do.  Some people get very anxious and develop hard and fast routines and habits that make things feel safer.  Some people find a sense of control by closing themselves off from the chaos of the world and creating a very small world—a sort of terrarium—in which they can feel secure.  Some people turn their discomfort into anger and scramble for more power:  “I’m going to force the things that I want to happen to take place.  Something’s wrong and, come hell or high water, I’m going to make this right!”  Some people look for a scapegoat—someone, anyone to blame.  Some people have plastic surgery so that it will at least look like they have not aged or changed until, after a few surgeries, even the people who’ve known them forever can’t even recognize them.

While those people are finding ways to shrink the world, other people look for big picture answers—something or someone that can make the discomfort and insecurity go away.  I would suggest three things that people do in the hopes of making those feelings disappear.  First, in the broadest sense, a lot of people sink their identity into an institution.  I feel secure because I work for this company or I graduated from this college or university or I cheer for this team.  I belong and belonging means that I’m not alone.  I belong and that can’t be taken away.  I belong and therefore, whatever else may happen to me, I will endure because what I am a part of something that will endure.  Honestly, good things come when people care about something beyond themselves.  However, it is a rough day when we realize that the institution that has mattered so much to us really doesn’t care as much about us as we thought.  The main thing that these institutions do, though, is soothe and reassure us by providing some stability.

The two other things that people turn to aren’t about being briefly soothed and reassured when we feel insecure.  The other two things are about the promise that those feelings can go away, altogether.  The first of those two things is politics.

I remember when I was in college and I read Karl Marx for the first time.  (I’m sure that this placed me on someone’s list somewhere as a suspect!) As an ideology, it was pretty appealing:  “From each according to their ability.  To each according to their need.”  That sounded less greedy than the system in which I lived.  (After all, as a 19 year old on a scholarship who had a place to sleep and three meals a day and no bills, why wouldn’t I be an expert?). If you read carefully, there was an amazing promise:  that eventually, when the State had done it’s job, it would just whither away!  We wouldn’t need a government at all any more.

Inconveniently, enough, I was also taking a Soviet history course at the same time.  (Were you alive when there was a Soviet Union?). This Marxist inspired state, like every Marxist inspired state, showed how hard it was for a state to account for everyone’s needs.  Perhaps even more importantly, it demonstrated that the state had not gotten the memo when it came to the whole “withering away” concept.  No one had any rights.  No one had any property.  Oligarchs and bureaucrats and leaders who were miraculously “elected” with 91 percent of the vote ruled the day.  It’s not that Marx had bad ideas it’s that those ideas are always going to be mutated and shaped by the needs and the greed of powerful people whose primary interest will be staying in power.

Here’s the hard pill to swallow:  the same thing is true for our system.  I love our American ideals, our constitution, our notion of a limited government of the people and by the people and for the people.  I love the notion of the balance of powers where the executive branch and the legislative branch and the judicial branch all keep each other in check.  I love voting and elections, even though, mostly if I vote for you, you are going to lose!

In this country, we don’t expect the state to whither away.  We expect that it will strike a balance between helping us and leaving us alone to live our lives.  We expect that through the free discourse of ideas, we will come to good solutions.  We expect that leaders will come and go and that the best will rise to the top.  We expect to be the greatest nation the world has ever known and claim to already be that nation, even though our health care, as one example ranks first in the industrialized world for scientific innovation and last in the world for quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and the ability to lead long, healthy, and productive lives.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my flawed nation and care deeply about the challenges before us.  However, the last thing that I expect is for my country to save me.  We are an imperfect union trying to become incrementally less imperfect but we are fighting upstream against the tide of money that seeks to sway votes, and politicians who consider it more important to hold onto power than to make decisions that might shorten their careers.

As Americans, we pay lip service to loving our country but what we really love is falling in love with presidents.  Or, if it’s not our turn to worship the president, then we love blaming the president for all of our wrongs.  So, you take the pool of people who are narcissistic enough to believe that they are actually capable of leading this nation and then mix in the adoration of the millions of people who voted for them, and you end up with something toxic.  We have a history of growing leaders who are less interested in serving than they are in being served and who expect, in the end, to get “paid,” one way or another.  This is almost always true, regardless of which side of the aisle the leader comes from.  In the end, every nation promises to take care of its citizens’ needs but ends up focused on the needs of the richest and most powerful.

Here’s the thing.  Everything that I’ve said about the state is true of the church, too.  Powerful men (they are almost always powerful men) are interested in holding onto power, whether they wear a suit with a blue tie or a red tie or they wear a clerical robe.  Maybe they start out with their hearts in exactly the right place but they get distracted and corrupted by the “perks,” whatever those perks might be.  People treat them as if they are saviors and eventually that’s who they agree to be—until the stories of abuse or misuse or flat out neglect emerge.  This is why the institutional church is failing. 

Here’s the thing, when anyone tells you that one day, everything is going to be great and you won’t feel anxious any more and you won’t have a worry in the world, run!  No one has that kind of control.  Whether you are hearing about a “pie in the sky” political plan or being promised a “wait ‘till you get to heaven” plan, those are the shiny objects that powerful people dangle before us to keep us complacent and hypnotized.  And, if someone tries to sell you a hybrid of the two—“God has chosen this person to save us,” run even faster!

That’s what takes us back to the manger.  Strip away centuries of theological disagreements, institutional competition, power mongering and abuse and what you are left with is a child in a feed trough in a barn.  Of all the things that God could have done, God sent the world a baby to do what babies do:  to show us that there is a love inside of us that is deeper than we ever could have imagined.  We look into that baby’s eyes and we feel the peace that we’ve been seeking all along.  This is the love that God wants us to live.  What if this life isn’t about accumulating power or money?  What if this life isn’t about trying to make your life so safe and secure that the scary world can’t reach you? What if the point of this life is to love your way through it, no matter how insecure and anxious you may feel?  What if the reason Jesus came into this world is to teach us to ask one simple question:  “So, what’s the next loving things to do?”

Ecclesiastes is very honest.  Life will be “all of the above.”There will be a time for everything. We don’t get to live the moments we like and opt out of the moments we would rather not loose.  The present is all we have.  We have to stand in this moment—good, bad, or indifferent—and make the choices that are ours to make. We need to learn to ask ourselves, “Okay, what does it mean to tell the truth lovingly?  What does it mean to be listen, lovingly?  What does it mean to do whatever is next in the most loving way that I can?”  When we do this, we will discover the peace that fills us when we are doing what we were put on this earth to do.