A Hard Season

Sermon

In Japanese culture there is a term called mono no aware, which might be translated “the bittersweet transience of life.” It captures the idea that things are more meaningful, more beautiful because they will not last forever. The Japanese person might point to the trees adorned with cherry blossoms and acknowledge their fleeting beauty, more gorgeous because soon the wind will carry the blossoms away. Mary Oliver captured this sense in one of her poems.

“To live in this world/you must be able/to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it/against your bones knowing/your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

It’s a rather Buddhist sort of thought but I think most human beings, whatever their religious bent, understand the feeling. For me, this text from Ecclesiastes resonates with mono no aware. Weeping will not last forever; neither will laughing. Silence will be broken, and speaking will end. War will not last forever; neither will peace. Alas.

Everything has its season, and one season morphs into another. We’re living that right now as summer fades into memory and the rains begin and the leaves fall and the days grow shorter. There are seasons we love and there are seasons we endure, and whether we love them or endure them, we know that whatever season we’re in will not be forever.

It has been a hard season for what Gregg calls the Big C Church, for Christendom. Last week I was interviewed by a student at Grant High School for their magazine. He was writing an article about progressive churches in Portland, but as we talked, he was much more interested in the decline of the church. In North America, all denominations are getting smaller. Whatever meaning the church once had no longer holds for some. Here at Westminster, we have seen longtime folks slip out the back door. A time to grow, and a time to shrink, and still, a hard season.

And it has been a hard season because it has been a time for war. The destruction in Ukraine goes on, and the Ukrainian people and their army are facing another bitter winter with the threat of no power and no heat. The destruction in Gaza is unbearable. The death of so many innocents simply cannot be justified. I fear this season of war will last long beyond the standard quarter of a year. I fear more death will come, and no one in power will be as interested in waging peace as they are in waging war.

It has been a hard season of loss. In the past year we have had so very many deaths in the congregation – people we barely knew and people who were utterly beloved to us. A man whose name had been unknown to us died in the stairwell along 17th Avenue, and his death still haunts some of us. It has been a hard season of grief as we let go of those we love.

The writer of Ecclesiastes does not provide us with much solace in all of this, unless there is solace in knowing that all these changing seasons are simply part of the human condition. And perhaps we might take some comfort in living out mono no aware and hold on to what is beautiful or good while we can.

One must always consider the source of any wisdom we receive. The writer of Ecclesiastes, called Qohelet or The Teacher, has a unique voice in the Hebrew scriptures. As one commentator noted, “Here is the most real of the realists of the sacred writers. Here is the Hebrew writer least comfortable with conventional wisdom, and the most willing to challenge unexamined assumptions.” (W. Sibley Towner, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, p. 267-8)

The Teacher is not going to mince words with us, although he does seem to omit words about God, at least in these eight verses we just heard. Were we to continue along in chapter three, we would learn how God fits into these seasons.

“11[God] has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; 13moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. 14I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. 15That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.”

The Teacher is not offering us quick comfort, but if we sit with his words, I think we find a different kind of solace. Everything changes and nothing is constant except the presence of God.
We find solace in knowing that every human being that has ever lived will experience what The Teacher has put to poetry: birth and death, love and hate, war and peace. The comfort is that we are not alone is what we are going through – someone else has gone through it, is going through it, or will go through it. And we find a sort of call in these words – a call to empathy – to be kind to others because, as the meme goes, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

But sometimes we find ourselves not comforted but disrupted by life, by all these things we feel at the same time. It is a paradox – to grieve our beloved’s death and to be grateful for their life. I have been so deeply saddened by the conflict in Gaza and Israel, and my niece is getting married in two weeks and I rejoice for her and her fiancé. Maybe that’s the hardest thing – to have this cognitive dissonance of everything happening at the same time so we’re laughing and crying and raging and dancing all at once.

Carl Jung observed that, “The paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions…only paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.” There is a fullness of life; it is full of things that wound us and full of things that heal us. The good news is that life is full of so much but mostly it is filled with God. And there is the question for the faithful: where is God, and how does God connect with us in all these times, all these seasons.

Through changing seasons, God is there. In the middle of a paradox, God is there. In grief God weeps with us and in joy God dances with us. As the writer of Isaiah says, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever. Or as Jesus says at the end of Matthew’s gospel, “Remember, I am with you always.”

`Recently I came across a clip of a conversation between late night host Stephen Colbert and newsman Anderson Cooper. If you don’t know, Stephen Colbert is a devout Roman Catholic, and when he was ten, his father and two of his brothers died in an airplane crash. When Anderson Cooper was ten, his father died of cancer, and when he was 21, his only brother died by suicide. The topic of their conversation was grief.

Stephen Colbert had spoken earlier, and Anderson Cooper responded in this way. “Stephen’s words blew my mind, and I’ve been thinking about them ever since. Can we really learn to love the things we most wish had never happened? Can I love the death of my brother and father? My mother? Can I love the sadness of it? Can I see those things, those deaths as gifts? I mean, it’s asking a lot, isn’t it?”

This is what Colbert said. “It’s a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. But if you are grateful for your life, then you have to be grateful for all of it. And so, at a young age. I suffered something, so that by the time I was in serious relationships in my life – with friends or with my wife or with my children – …I have some understanding that everybody is suffering and however imperfectly, I acknowledge their suffering and connect with them and …love them in a deep way that makes you grateful for the fact that you have suffered so that you can know that about other people. I want to be the most human I can be, and that involves acknowledging and ultimately being grateful for the things that I wish didn’t happen because they gave me a gift.” (https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/all-there-is-with-anderson-cooper/episodes/ae2f9ebb-1bc6-4d47-b0f0-af17008dcd0c )

Today is our All Saints observance, and in a few moments, we will name aloud those saints in our lives were gifts to us, who have gone on to God. There’s a paradox in that, acknowledging the reality of death even as we hold on to the promise of life after death. It is a paradox to wish something had never happened and to see that thing as a gift. It is a paradox to grieve and rejoice.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
To God be the glory.