It's December once again and time for a new church year.  Advent begins today, a four week period to help us prepare for Christ's coming.  While most only think of His first coming, the original intent of Advent was His second coming.  However we see it, it's time to end one Church Year and start another.  The time to plant has come and gone and so, too, has the time for uprooting.  Time marches on, a fraction of a second quicker each year, according to Einstein, and I feel it just as you do.  So it's time to begin again, to begin a new church year, and by the looks of the Park Meadows parking lot, to begin a new season of shopping.

          In Shakespeare's comedy, "As You Like It", the character Jacques philosophizes, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players:  They have their exits and their entrances;  And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages."  His seven stages of life could more easily be understood by the four seasons of the calendar.  Spring is the time of our birth, amazing discovery, rapid growth and change.  Summer is the productive time of vocation and family, of decision and direction, of work and weariness.  Fall is our time of gentle relaxing, of empty nests and falling leaves and sunny days before the cold comes.  Winter in the human life is a time of rest and reflection, a time of quietness and snow on the roof before the final rest comes.

          What season of life are you in?  What season would you like to be in?  Sir Thomas More of England was Chancellor for King Henry VIII in 1529 during the time of Martin Luther.  He soon fell out of favor when he opposed the King's divorce to Catherine of Aragon.  His standing up for his principles earned him the name, "A Man for All Seasons."  Jesus Christ is that plus more.  He is our Man for All Seasons of life.  He is there for us in every season of life, no matter what our age or circumstance.  He lives forever as the Son of Man, reigning in heaven, hearing our prayers, interceding for us before our Heavenly Father, and daily forgiving us as Savior of the world.  He is our Man for All Seasons no matter what season of life we are in.

          A few years ago Christian teachers posed the question, WWJD, "What Would Jesus Do?"  This question was posed to help give people a moral compass.  If they could understand what Jesus would do in a given situation, it would hopefully help them make the right decision.  A few weeks ago I heard environmentalists posing the WWJD question differently.  "What Would Jesus Drive?" they asked, hoping to make the point He'd never drive a hated SUV which is currently being blamed for every destructive thing imaginable.

          Now yesterday a Denver Post writer asked WWJB - "What Would Jesus Buy?" - for Christmas, of course.  The writer's list of what he was sure Jesus would prefer included goats or camels to produce food in the Sahara Desert, or a sewing machine to help a Ugandan family make its living, or a monthly stipend to keep an AIDS orphan alive.  Suddenly Jesus is being enlisted as an authority for most everything except what He came for, to save the world from sin.  Our Lord must chuckle at His new-found status, especially when many of those same people oppose the rest of what He said, and ignore His followers being murdered around the world by fanatics of other religions.  But then Jesus has always been a useful tool for those who want to use His words for their own selfish purposes.

          I've not preached often on Ecclesiastes, but then few pastors have.  The Preacher (or Teacher), the name given its author, says over and again that everything is vanity and senseless.  There are few hymns based on Ecclesiastes and you'll find Chapter 3 quoted more often in secular press than in the sacred.  About thirty years ago a musical group, The Byrds, made popular their song, "Turn, Turn, Turn", but its primary purpose was to oppose the war in Viet Nam.  Again it shows the Bible is a handy tool of persuasion when it agrees with your point of view.

          But despite the lyrical beauty of these first eight verses, other parts of Ecclesiastes 3 are upsetting.  Verses 12-13, for instance, "I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.  That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his work."  Who among us would send one of our children off to college with the words, "Just remember, Johnny, that the best thing you can do is eat, drink, and be merry!  Have fun while you can!"

          And that's not the most bothersome verse in chapter 3.  The sentiment that rattles me most comes in verse 18 when the Preacher compares the fate of people to that of animals.  "We all have the same breath in our lungs," he wrote.  Hey, I don't much care for those words, because I believe my life is worth more than cats and birds!  There are few questions more delicate than, "What happens after we die?" and when I ask that question, I don't expect the Bible to respond by saying, "Who knows?" like it does here.  If we want an uncertain shrug of the shoulders on that question we'd turn on Oprah.  But we turn to the Bible for clarity, and Ecclesiastes isn't always very clear.

          The first eight verses set the stage for this chapter by focusing our minds on time.  The first of those couplets, "a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot," are a reflection of the way life goes.  There are moments when you will cry your eyes out and other times when you will laugh your head off.  But these verses are more than observation.  They are a call for us to figure out which time it is.  Not disdaining those of you who don't wear watches, the wise one always knows what time it is.

          It's not just that there's a war and a time between wars called peace.  Wisdom calls us to figure out what is worth fighting for, and when it's time to stand up and fight or when it's time to just let certain things slide.  It's not only that there's a time to be talking and a time to be quiet.  It's a time for us to discern when we're better off being quiet as opposed to just filling the air with more words.  There are times when a word will really help, and there are other times when no matter what you say, talking will make matters worse.  Wisdom can tell the difference.

          Human beings are finite, limited creatures.  The time between the delivery room and the cemetery is important.  What will we do with the life we've been given?  The Preacher's answer seems to be that we enjoy ourselves, that we find work that's meaningful and also puts bread and wine on our tables.  And then, for heaven's sake, enjoy the bread and wine!

          It sounds so hedonistic, "Do what you can with what you've got while you've got it."  But think - if everything comes from God, then these things come from God, too.  So indulge a little and laugh a little.  But keep your priorities straight and try being satisfied with what you have.

          The question the Preacher seems to be wrestling with is this:  Is there anything special about humanity?  Curiously, today there are some people who are more interested in wondering how to make computers more human than they are in figuring out what it means for us to be human.  Right now MIT scientists are attempting to create android robots that could some day be called human in nature.  They're asking questions like, "Will there come a point in developing a robot when it would be unethical to turn it off?  When does a robot gain its own right to life?"  Asking that of a robot when we haven't yet answered the question of what makes us human!

          Ironically some of the same people who worry about the ethics of unplugging a robot will avoid talking about the ethics of life.  The Preacher knows that and yet senses that there is something else bigger than being human.  It centers on something calling "eternity."  We humans live in time, and we're defined by its limits.  But from the midst of time we have a sense of the eternal.  We have inklings of something more, bigger.  Now and again we catch the sounds of something that goes beyond our watches, or day timers or palm pilots.  Ecclesiastes faces us with a stark reality.  Time will not stop and one day we will die - there are no two ways around it:  death for each of us will either be the end or the beginning.

          Ecclesiastes 3 is not just about the passing of time or the "turn, turn, turn" of life's cycles.  It is about wisdom, about wisely discerning the time and how we are to react to the different occasions that come our way.  One such occasion is death, but even then, we sense this is not the end of the story.  Even grief is God's gift to us.  The tears we shed over death are God's way of reminding us that this does not have to be the end of everything.  In Jesus Christ, it's all just beginning.

          In the past I've spoken of a pastor friend of mine, Dave Prust, who died of cancer about 20 years ago.  His leukemia took him fast, but he preached as long as he could because it was his calling to do so.  Dave preached because his work mattered and because God had set eternity into his heart.  Neither he nor his work is going to evaporate.  The work of the Preacher never does.

          We still cannot fathom what God has done for us.  We cannot fathom His love that moved Him to send His only Son into the world to save us.  We cannot fathom the height nor the depth of a love that forgives such miserable sinners as we are.  When tragedy comes, there are no sugar-coated sayings that make life all better.  But we are called to go on in faith, trusting God for all good things, enjoying what we have while we have it, and giving thanks to God who gives us life down here and life up there.

          With eternity set in our hearts, we are also called to begin again, to move forward in life, listening for that eternal melody from God's far country, singing along as best we can as we hear God's life-affirming Gospel, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)   There's a time for everything, and there's an eternity for everyone.  Give thanks to God that because of His Son Jesus believers have a place in it.  Amen.

Copyright © 2002 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.