There
Is a Time
October 27, 2013
BMC- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 & the story of Esther
Introduction:
Navigating Time
So
I serve on the Ohio Conference Credentialing Ministry Team and we had a meeting
this week on Wednesday. We were meeting
at Gilead Mennonite Church. Has anyone
ever been there? {Pause for hands} Well
I think I have, but it was back in college and I remembered it being in the
middle of nowhere. I didn’t really remember the way and so I needed to get
directions.
I
went online to MapQuest, put in the address and asked for directions. I looked over the route briefly and felt
pretty confident that I understood where it was taking me so I printed the
directions and put them in my folder.
Wednesday morning I got in the car and started driving. Most of the route was very familiar so I
wasn’t watching the directions very closely until I got to the end.
As
I got off of I-71 at state route 95, the directions told me to turn right and
then I realized that the destination it was taking me to was simply “Chesterville.” It did not include the street address of the
church. No problem, right? I also had a
GPS in the van with me and I had left myself some extra time. So I stopped at a BP gas station, pulled out
the GPS and began entering the address.
I
entered Chesterville and then went to enter the road name, only it wouldn’t
accept the road that I had to enter. So
it turned out that my GPS wasn’t going to help me either. But I was parked at a gas station and that’s
where you go for directions, right? So I
went in and asked the attendant how to get to the church.
Unfortunately,
she was new to the area and had no idea of how to get to Gilead Mennonite or to
the road that it is on. She directed me
instead to some maps that they had; but none of them were local enough for my
needs. So I went back out to the car,
pulled out the GPS, entered the town again, chose one of the road options
listed and entered the street number. I
thought, “Maybe the road has two names.”
What did I have to loose, right?
This
took me into the heart of Chesterville, a small town like West Liberty. But it did not get me to the church. As I drove through town, I came to the post
office and thought to myself, “Certainly the post office will know where the
church is because they deliver mail there, right?” So I parked my van and went in.
It
was a post office that is smaller than ours, built in a renovated old
house. I asked the lady at the counter
for directions to the road I needed or to the church. She apologized that she couldn’t help me, but
she wasn’t from the area. Instead, she
directed me to a small town grocery store across the street. One of those you find in an old downtown
building.
So
I crossed the street, went into the grocery store and asked the man at the
counter if he could help me get to the church or the road that I was looking
for. Without any difficulty, he told me
to go out to the light and take a right.
Go up to the top of the hill where there would be a sign for the church
and to take a left. The church would be
on my left just a little ways down. And
it was.
So
I guess the moral of this story is that when mapquest, GPS, BP, and USPS fail
you; go to your local grocer for directions.
But in the midst of this, it also occurred to me that we live in
changing times. In the first place, we
have these technological marvels of going to the Internet or to a GPS to get
directions. But perhaps even more
significant is that our old methods of going to the gas station for directions
no longer work. And the people at the
post office are not necessarily rooted in our community anymore either. It’s as if the map of our landscape is
shifting and at times we find ourselves struggling to navigate the times that
we are in.
New
Intersections
We
see this even in the ways that our roads are structured, don’t we? For instance while there are variations out
there, a very common way to navigate the intersection of two cross roads in
which one of the roads is an interstate, is to use a cloverleaf interchange[1]. {Slide 2} This is pretty familiar to us
right? You have your onramps that loop
around in the center to form a clover shape and your extended ramps that form a
diamond around the outside. We know how
to navigate this, don’t we?
But
in Columbus this week, the first diverging diamond interchange in Ohio
opened. {Slide 3} It is at the
intersection of I-270 and Roberts Road.
Notice that the green traffic and the yellow traffic trade sides of the
road as they cross I-270. With the help
of stoplights on Roberts Road, this allows a continuous flow of traffic on and
off of the interstate. At first glance,
we may not understand how to navigate this.
And it may even create a degree of anxiety within us as we try to
imagine how we would make it through without an accident when traffic ends up
driving on the “wrong side” of the road.
But
then there are proposals for even more innovative interchanges like the Pinavia
interchange[2]. {Slide
4} I’m not sure if any of these have been built yet; but the concept is similar
to the circle in Urbana or the roundabouts in Europe, only for high-speed
traffic. Here’s a video to help you
envision the way in which traffic navigates this interchange. {Play Video}[3]
It’s
a different way to navigate in our time.
The Pinavia interchange is said to have no conflict points and fewer
levels or bridges than most interchanges.
It also leaves the center space available for development in a way that
traditional interchanges do not allow for.
And yet, if we were to be driving along and come to such and interchange
unexpectedly, we might find ourselves uneasy about knowing how to navigate
it. It is unfamiliar and new territory
to us. The times are changing. The landscape around us and the maps that we
use to navigate them are in flux. How do
we navigate the times in which we find ourselves?
Eccl
3:1-8
- Everything Has a Time
Enter
the words of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, a rather familiar passage to many of us and
one that has been popularized in songs like “Turn, Turn, Turn” by Pete
Seeger. The author of Ecclesiates,
sometimes referred to as the teacher, tells us…
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every
activity under the heavens:
2 a time to
be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
The
times around us are changing and yet we are assured that there is a time for
everything. There always has been. The core of what we experience is timeless. Humanity has been experiencing different
times for millennia. In this way, these
words may bring us comfort. As the teacher declares in other portions of the
text, there is nothing new under the sun.
There
is a time for war. There is a time for
peace. These two separate times each
exist. We should not be surprised by
them though we should bear in mind that the passage is descriptive not
prescriptive. By this I mean to say that
the passage describes the realities of these various times, but it is not
calling us to equally engage or create both realities. It is not calling us to kill or to be at war,
but rather naming that in our experience, these times exist.
Knowing that each of
these times exist thus invites us to move beyond fighting the times we are
in. There is often little that we can do
to change the times. Instead this knowledge
invites us to discern the time we are in and to navigate it by choosing to
respond to the times as God would have us.
b.
David, Solomon & the
Proverbs
We
see this within the life of the King Solomon and his father King David. After all, it was David who first had the
idea of building a temple for the God of Israel. David was going to build the temple, but God
said to him that because of his violent ways he would not be the one to build
God’s temple. Rather, it would be his
son, Solomon, whom God would allow to build the temple. David’s time was a time to tear down, to
solidify the Israelite hold on their land.
Solomon’s time was a time to build, to build the temple to God.
And “Discernment of
appropriate timing is a hallmark of wisdom and calls to mind certain biblical
Proverbs, such as 15:23: “To make an apt answer is a joy to anyone, and a word
in season [lit., in its time], how
good it is!” Similarly, Proverbs 25:11 (NIV): “A word aptly spoken is like
apples of gold in settings of silver” (in both cases, cf. Eccl 3:7b). As with some other aspects of traditional
wisdom, the Teacher challenges excessive confidence in the human ability to
discern the times as well as to act advantageously if the times are discerned. By showing the limits of human ability, he seeks
to equip people to live more appropriately,”[4] to
live in the times as God would have us.
- Cross Times
And
yet often, it doesn’t seem as simple as discerning the time as if we are in a
static reality. Certainly it is true
that there are particular times in which we live and there are times for each
of these realities, and yet I wonder if it is always as simple as only existing
in one of these times. I wonder if the
teacher is really suggesting as I have always thought that these times must be
mutually exclusive. After all he uses
the word “and” not the word “or.” Could
it be that there are times of overlap?
Could there be cross times in which there are aspects of each time
happening concurrently? Like the opening
sentence of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, could it be the
best of times and the worst of times at the same time?
After
all we are in a time in which the world around us is changing at a faster pace
than ever before. It is a time of change
in our communication patterns such that people like Richard Jensen suggest all
of humanity in our entire history has only gone through a transition like this
once before. The last time this happened
was when we shifted from a primarily oral/aural culture to one that is print
based.
Moreover,
it seems to me that we may at times have differences of opinion about what time
we are in. One may think it is one time
while another believes it to be a different time. This only complicates our discernment of what
God is calling us to do in the midst of the time we are living. What does this mean for how we navigate the
times? If it is not as simple as determining the time that we are in, pulling
out the correct map, and following the directions, what are we to do?
Hadassah
Hadassah was born a Jew in a time of exile for her people. They were not living in the Promised Land,
but rather in a foreign land under a foreign king. She came of age in a time of great
uncertainty for her people. The threat
of extermination was real.
Hadassah was raised
by her cousin who adopted her as his own daughter after her parent’s
passing. Around the time that she came
of age, the foreign king was seeking a new queen. His method for finding this new queen was to
collect young maidens and bring them into the royal palace to be part of his
harem. After sending them through an
involved process of beauty treatments and preparation, he would spend one night
with each of them. After that night if
the young maiden had made a strong enough impression on him that he could ask
for her by name, she would be the next queen.
This was the time in which Hadassah came of age and Hadassah was taken
into the king’s harem.
While in the harem,
Hadassah caught the attention of the King’s eunuch who was in charge of the
women. He gave her all that she needed
and advanced her to the best spot in the harem.
After a year of going through these beautification treatments, it was
time for Hadassah to go before the king.
The king loved Hadassah more than any of the other maidens and made her queen.
About this time,
the king promoted an Agagite to a position above all the other officials in his
government. Along with this came the
requirement that all would bow down to the Agagite as he passed by. But one man would not, Hadassah’s cousin, a Jew. When the Agagite learned of his refusal to
bow before him, the Agagite became enraged and he decided to destroy all the
Jews throughout the whole kingdom.
When the time came,
the Agagite approached the king. He told
him of the threat that this people who do not bow down, who do not follow the
royal decrees, are to the kingdom. He
requested that the king make a decree for the Jews to be destroyed. The king gave the Agagite his signet ring to
make the decree. And a decree was sent
out far and wide in the kingdom that at the appointed time, the officials
throughout the land destroy, kill and annihilate all Jews, young and old, women
and children, in one day.
When the Jews
learned of this decree, they like Hadassah’s cousin, tore their clothes and put
on sack cloth and ashes. “In every
province, wherever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great
mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting.” Hadassah too was concerned though no one in
the palace knew that she was also a Jew.
Her cousin sent
word to Hadassah instructing her to go before the king and speak on behalf of
her people that they might be saved. But
Hadassah replied that it’s not that simple.
No one goes before the king without being summoned or they will be put
to death, unless he extends his scepter to her.
And it had been some time, thirty days, since she had been summoned
before the king.
But her cousin
insisted, saying that if Hadassah remained silent at a time like this that she
and her father’s family would perish even though a way for her people may be
found. He said, “Who knows? Perhaps you
have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Then Hadassah who was also known as Esther,
replied to her cousin, Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa,
and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night
or day. I and my maids will also fast as
you do. After that I will go to the king,
though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.”
Well, Esther did go
before the king. The king extended his
scepter and spared Esther. After a few
banquets, she revealed herself as a Jew to the king and revealed the Agagite’s
plot to have her and her people killed.
The Jews were spared and Haaman, the Agagite, was hung. Esther had come to be queen for such a time
as this. There was a time and Esther
navigated through that time. And it
seems to me that she did this through being rooted in her context, dependant on
God through prayer and maintaining hope in the presence of God regardless of
the circumstances.
The Lessons
a. Rooted in our
Context
She was rooted in
her context. As we discern the time that
we are in and how it is that God is calling us to navigate our time, it seems
to me that we can be intentional about remaining in and growing more rooted in
our context. As I was trying to find
Gilead Mennonite so that I could get to my meeting, it was the grocer who was
rooted in his context who was able to help me navigate. Likewise, Esther and Mordecai, though they
were outside of their natural context had become rooted where they were. As such, they were more able to navigate the
time which they were in.
b. Dependence on
God through prayer
It also seems to me
that a piece of discerning our time and navigating it involves dependence on
God through prayer. Seeking the guidance
of the Holy Spirit in our time may be akin to navigating by a GPS that won’t
fail us. When it is working, one of the
benefits of the GPS over Mapquest is that it adjusts with us or “recalculates”
when we make a wrong turn or take an unexpected detour. Though the book of Esther never names God
once, she is intentional about her call to prayer and fasting as she prepared
to go before the king. She is depending
on God.
c. Hope in the
Reign of God
And it seems to me
that in the midst of the times in which we find ourselves whether they be times
of war or peace, tearing down or building up, planting or uprooting, we can
maintain hope in the reign of God. The reign
of God is present today as Jesus declared in Luke 17 and will come to
completion in a time yet to come. Like
Mordecai regardless of the times in which we find ourselves, we can place our
hope in the reign of God. We can trust
in the knowledge of the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ through His death and
resurrection.
Conclusion:
There is a time for everything and though the times may
be in flux, our role is not to change the times but rather to discern the times
and to live into them faithfully as God directs us. As the landscape around us changes and our
old ways of navigating no longer effectively guide us, we may take on new ways
of navigating. As new interchanges are
built, we may engage with our times and seek the Lord’s leading in creative
ways.
Administrative Council has begun to use the Liturgy of
Discernment to guide our meetings. This
approach invites us to open ourselves up to God’s leading and to bring our
business into a state of prayerful engagement.
Likewise, our annual business meeting this year took a different approach. It included the business we needed to attend
to but also invited us into worshipful engagement with scripture and one
another. We took time not only to do our
business but also to consider how God is inviting us to move forward in the
year ahead, to navigate the time.
As we consider the words of Ecclesiastes and the story of
Esther, what are the times that we are in?
How is God leading us to navigate the changing landscape around us? How might we continue to discern these
realities through rootedness in our context, prayerful dependence on the Holy
Spirit, and hope in the reign of God?
Take a moment to consider this for yourself. {Pause} {Pray
inviting discernment of our time and our path}
Amen
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