Week 6 Role of the Liturgical Seasons (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) Sermon For Every Liturgical Season Turn Turn Turn! (I began by playing this musical composition of song verses where I changed the words to popular church songs we know) People look east the time has come. Christmas shopping soon will be done. If one more person steals my parking in their face I will be barking. People look east! Joy to the World, my money s gone, my credit card is maxed! Please no more turkey dinners, For new Years I ll be thinner. Just one nanaimo square, Some fruit cake here and there. More dressing and turkey I don t care. We three kings of Pickering are, bearing re-gifts from Aunties afar, Soaps and perfumes, chocolates and towels. Our shopping s done for years O Lord throughout these 40 days why did I give up smokes? My nerves are shot, I ve got the shakes,
I might give him a poke. Jesus Christ is risen today hallelujah I can eat chocolate all day hallelujah. Where s my smokes? And my facebook? Hallelujah! Sorry for my dirty looks Hallelujah! Morning has broken I m stuck in traffic. That guy behind me is driving too close. Praise with elation the cop just stopped him I off to Timmies for a Dark Roast. So I attempted a bit of musical humor with our liturgical season by playing with well known songs. The idea was to show how easily we can be distracted during the liturgical year but also how the church attempts to distract our distraction. Now tell me if I am wrong but often this is our response to the liturgical season because we allow the world around us to win. (a) The Season of Advent is usually over run with frantic Christmas shopping frayed patience trying to beat someone to that last parking spot at the mall being fed up with secular Christmas music. If I hear Last Christmas I gave you my heart...but the very next day you gave it away or Grandma got run over by a reindeer! I will lose it!!!!!!!
(b) The Season of Christmas is spent focusing on Christmas Eve Service and then by Boxing day we want to toss out the Christmas trees, remove trimmings but only after we have lost total control of our minds and went into the malls again for that last parking space at the boxing day sales. For the next few Sundays we wonder why we are still singing Christmas hymns when Christmas is over and we thank God it is. Dollarama now has Valentines set up. (c) The Season of Lent comes with Dollarama already having Easter stuff in it maybe even before Valentines is done. We see Cadbury Easter egg commercials and displays are set up with the latest assortment of Hollywood movies immortalized in chocolate that we are tempted to buy but not sure where to hide it for seven weeks. We are running from chocolate creatures in our sleep. Oh and do we as Protestants have to give up anything for Lent or is that just the Catholics? And so not sure we give up something but maybe not as drastic as our Catholic friends. And we are not quite sure what to do about this ash thing on Ash Wednesday Do we need to go? And if we leave church with ashes and forget about them what will people think if we go for a Tim s? And then we spend seven weeks going about our business and as we get closer to Easter because for many that becomes the focus
because the pressure is on to get the best chocolates to hide on Easter Sunday and oh are those Mother s day cards already? We need to stop and get the best ones before they are taken. (d) And then comes the Easter season and as daylight comes upon we hear that familiar Easter cry no not Jesus has risen THE EASTER BUNNY CAME!!!!!! And the feeding frenzy begins kids with sugar highs and people who have given up chocolate devour a secret stash of chocolate they had given up but can now eat without guilt. Everyone arrives and a few still have a hint of chocolate on the corner of their mouth. And by Monday morning for many Easter is done but yet we are not sure why when we come back to church for the next 7 weeks they are still saying it is Easter when it was already done. Usually the Easter season has us thinking about cottages and openings and we are filled with these preparations. (e) Then there is this strange Creation time. It comes in September when many are so busy with back to school shopping, taking grads to university, final weeks at the cottage and a trip to Dollarama to look at the Halloween stuff that came out in early August if not sooner. There seems to be a lot of talk about creation during this time too much for
some, puzzling for others and finally for some. It is a new and curious time.but the ladies in the 2 nd row do love my orange shoes for Creation time. Now I am by no means making fun of people I do a lot of these things myself. The world has a way of capturing our attention or distracting us. The Liturgical year is not something created to amuse us but a rhythm, a cadence of holy breathing and connecting to scripture and song and movement which touches our five senses of see, hear, touch, taste and feel. It is a celebration of the Jesus story, his life, death and resurrection and how we are called to live out that story in our lives. The liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and the new Creation time call us into a sacred rhythm. In the reading today from Ecclesiastes we are reminded that the world has many contrasts and contradictions often we are left wondering why we taste these moments of being born and dying, loving and hating, silence and speaking out, war and peace, weeping and laughing, breaking down and building up. It seems there is no logic, no rhyme or reason. Simply it seems we are left to turn, turn, turn in the midst of life s moments and wonder and hold our breath and be asked to trust and believe in something deeper than we are living at that moment.
In our Christian faith, the Liturgical year was a help early on when people were poor and had no access to education and so church festivals and the cycle of the church year helped teach people about the Jesus story and how God was present in our human story often using all our senses. The church also began to use different colors for the paraments in front of the pulpit and communion table. And so according to the season we would see darker blue, white or gold, purple, green and red. These colours are meant to catch our eyes to alert us to a change in season. Back in NB in one of my churches we attached a flag pole outside the church and flew liturgical colours to let visitor s curiosity be peaked and to let parishioners know we were in a different season. Our common lectionary follows a specific cycle of readings over a three year period to tell the story for that particular season. We might also have points in our church where we set up a special seasonal environment to help tell the story artistically. We engage the artists, musicians, proclaimers, dancers, bakers to help touch our senses and open us up to the story of the season in new ways. And one of the important things I keep saying is that we are not telling people to shut out the world and the secular celebrations I am not saying ignore Santa or the Easter Bunny or back to school
times or Valentine s day. I have no energy for signs that say put Christ back in Christmas. Instead I embrace the church s liturgical season as a way of distracting us from the worldly distractions. It is a time to step back from the craziness or as the kids would say the cray-cray of the world and find the church s rhythm. And so what do the church s liturgical seasons do to help? Well like this! In the midst of Gift buying and Christmas baking and parties and secular Christmas songs the church invites us to sing ancient melodies invoking the child to be born once more in our midst, to fill us with a new perspective on how to birth that story in a world where hatred and war wants to distract us from love and peace. And as we carry that fresh Christmas tree to the curb, the church asks us not to be so quick and sit and listen a couple more weeks to stories of how we can bring the story of the birth of Jesus beyond the curb into the streets and into the way we live relationships at work and at home. And the season of Lent calls us to look at lives and see what we hold onto that does not allow us to grow as Christians. It is not about letting go of chocolate but letting go of attitudes and habits that prevent growth as a disciple. What needs to go so God s love can grow? In a world that sees people crucified in so
many ways, carrying their cross alone dare we pick up one side of the cross and walk with them. And how do we move from indifference to the Holy week story to seeing it as our story. To people around the table, washing one another s feet in service daily, to give hope as we struggle with heavy crosses. And then the season of Easter which carries on for 50 days breaking open stories of how the early Christians and disciples did not give up but embraced the Spirit and grew in numbers as they shared their faith. And the season asks us how do we live our discipleship? In secret, on our sleeves, quietly each day. And the new Season of Creation Time begs us look at how we treat the earth created by God for us with such great love. Do we continue to be indifferent or are we willing to listen to what small steps we can make to bring life back to Creation and be part of the Climate change discussion. Our church year also offers us ordinary moments to eat and drink at God s table, to be splashed with the waters of baptism, to feel the touch of oil and hands of prayer on our heads. It reminds us God is sitting with us, embracing us, holding our hand, wrapping an arm around us. The liturgical season taps us on the shoulder and repeatedly says TURN TURN TURN around and look and listen to God s
presence calling us. It can be in the most earth shattering way or in a gentle whisper so listen and turn around and be distracted from our distraction. God is here the Jesus story is here waiting to touch us anew when we need it the most. And to finish my sermon on this warm summer morning God wants our attention in a new way.so let s go outside the Liturgical season and sing together Silent Night!