I have this sort of occupational hazard, I suppose, where I like to make lists. If I get bored at a meeting – and I’m so grateful that you as a congregation don’t put a lot of meetings on my to-do list, I’m eternally grateful for that. In my past, the churches that I served, way too many meetings. Sometimes when I would get bored, I’d get out a piece of scratch paper, and I think when people thought I was paying attention and making notes, I would make lists. This week I decided to list my top five favorite Old Testament stories. I said to myself, “Jay, don’t think about it, just put it down on the paper, what comes to mind, just do it.” Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, they came. Number five, not necessarily in order, but Daniel and the lion’s den. I love that story, love it. Number four – the whole story of Joseph, and in particular the story of Joseph being sold by his brothers and thrown into a pit. I love that story, love it. Number three – Genesis 2, the second creation account where God reaches down into the mud. It’s really what it says. It forms humanity, the earth, the very earth, the wet earth. Number two – David and Goliath. I love that story. David and the slaying and the smooth stones. And number one, it started happening for me, I suppose, about two-thirds of the way through what is, so far, my career. It came from doing funerals. Ecclesiastes 3 is such a gift to me. I want it to be a gift to you. As I invite you to think about seasons and timing and the passing of time, I think one of the gifts of Ecclesiastes 3 is that it invites us to look at life at 35,000 feet. I think it’s good every day to get up there at 35,000 feet and take a look at things. I think it’s good. You’ve got to come back down in your life and I think it’s good to get up there and get some perspective.

So, as I mentioned, in the northern hemisphere, the autumn equinox happened last Monday at 2:19 p.m. The sun crossed the celestial equator. The day and night are approximately equal length. So now we are in autumn. Autumn is a word that etymologically means, quote, passing of the year. It means both passing of the year and, quote, increase. Until the 14th century – it was a long time ago – until the 14th century this time of year that we are in was referred to as what? Not autumn, but what? Anybody want to guess? Harvest. It was referred to as harvest. But in the passing of time more people were moving from farms into towns, so over the decades and the centuries harvest became autumn. I think we can learn from autumn. We can gather wisdom during autumn. Autumn can help us live in our rapidly changing world. The main Old Testament books are Job, Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Today we look at the wisdom offered by the beginning of Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes.

As I mentioned, quite possibly my favorite passage in the Old Testament is “time passes.” Ecclesiastes is a word that means either preacher or teacher. I’m convinced that it’s a little bit of both. It’s a combination of preacher and teacher. And it was and it is a baffling book for a lot of people who study these things. The book deals with the part of life that can be seen as absurd and meaningless. From the beginning, back then, people that we usually refer to as the church fathers – they were men – when the church fathers were putting together the canon, which is the Bible as we know it today, serious efforts were made by many of those church fathers to exclude Ecclesiastes from the list of sacred books. Ecclesiastes is probably, perhaps, the only book in the Bible that blatantly says – this is my paraphrase, ready? It turns out we don’t get to know everything. Ecclesiastes is big on that. It turns out we don’t get to know everything, and it turns out that much of life isn’t making choices based on known outcomes. Much of life is about the mystery of timing and going on faith.

One of my teachers in my past says that this is what Ecclesiastes is about. There are four components to Ecclesiastes. One, Ecclesiastes says a lot of human experience is absurd, incomprehensible, paradoxical and contradictory. We can drive ourselves crazy sometimes trying to figure out why certain things happen. Number two – life is toil. Life is work. Life is hard to understand. Life is full of difficult choices. Number three – ah, but there is hope. Ecclesiastes says, with the help of wisdom, the person can find happiness amid the toil. And four, Ecclesiastes talks about the thing that we probably least want to think about and that is this. The first step to wisdom is being utterly realistic about the inevitable fate of our death. Ecclesiastes invites us to go up to 35,000 feet, and as we look at our lives Ecclesiastes says to be aware of your own mortality. Autumn in Ecclesiastes can teach us about many things. Autumn can be a time for us to grow in wisdom.

OK, I know I’m not alone in this. My yard right now in Westerville – front, back, sides – is full of leaves. My life changed when I read the article that said it’s a good thing to mow your leaves. Are you aware of this? If you aren’t, hear this – it’s actually a good thing to mow the leaves in your yard. It’s good for your yard. I’ll never have to rake again! My yard is full of leaves. I literally watched the leaves fall as I sat by the window with my laptop, putting together this message. With God as my witness, I was like, “Look at that. Look at those leaves falling.” I thought, “Those trees are really smart. I thought, “Those trees are very Ecclesiastes.” The trees know that life is about timing. Autumn trees teach us the grace and the necessity of releasing what is no longer serving us. Trees during autumn shed their leaves to conserve energy and prepare for the cold of winter. The trees can teach us the wisdom of letting go, of outdated beliefs, habits or attachments that weigh us down.

Ecclesiastes says things that some people don’t want to hear. This is why some did not want to include it as part of the Bible at all. In the same way – alright, I’m going to try to dig a little deeper here – in the same way I think so many of us, myself included, in what I’m calling the progressive wing of Christianity, that’s us, I think there are things that we don’t want to face, and I think it makes us feel hamstrung about how to react to what is happening in our democracy today. If Jesus did anything at all, he courageously spoke truth to power, and it had a lot to do with why he was crucified. Who today is willing to be crucified? Raise your hand. Don’t raise your hand, even if you are, because my point here is my hand is not going up. I wish I was there, but maybe I can get a little closer. As the leaves wisely shed that which would weigh them down during winter, so you and I can begin with telling the truth to ourselves, so that we can get over the shock and find ways to courageously react to what is happening in our country. I’m going to dig a little deeper.

At Charlie Kirk’s funeral, his wife offered a response of a godly love – I know you’ve probably read about this – and said that she forgives the man who shot and killed her husband. Moments later, our president responded with saying he hates anyone that he perceives as enemies. I’m just repeating it. He said it. He said, “I am full of hate.” We can put the shock behind us during this fall and find ways to react with courage, grace and justice. Autumn can also serve as a profound teacher of the reality of impermanence, reminding us that change is the only constant in life. We watch leaves transition from vibrant greens to rich ambers and reds before finally succumbing to the ground. This exemplifies the transient nature of all things. All things. Everything changes, everything ends, and something new begins.

One of my mentors loved to say the following, and you hear me say it. In fact, Charlotte put it on the bulletin board downstairs. She didn’t know I was going to say this. My mentor said, “Always remember that today is an unrepeatable miracle.” We will never have this day again, even though it looks like just another day. If we believe that, we are living an illusion. This illusion is seductive, and we should resist it. Today is an unrepeatable miracle, and if we are lucky, profoundly lucky, tomorrow we will get another one. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to rake leaves. And, unfortunately, a time to shovel snow.

I have a problem. I have a problem with a post-traumatic stress disorder. It has to do with the fact that for 13 years, my family and I lived in a lake effect snowbelt in northeast Ohio. Thirteen years. Speaking of hate, there were many winters up there and I hated winter. We lived 12 minutes from my church, which was in downtown Akron. Consistently, the church would get two inches, and we’d get five. It drove me nuts. There was one February in particular when it snowed every day. I kept track on my calendar. It snowed every day. We got two to three inches of snow every day for a month. I’d be out there shoveling and using my little snowblower. I’d be looking to the sky and I’d be shaking my fist at God like Job. Why? Why? I was such a fool. I had such lack of perspective.

Ecclesiastes and autumn teach me wisdom because autumn is also a time of harvest and a time of preparation. Harvest is a time of farmers and gardeners, reaping the fruits of their labor, and expressing gratitude for the abundance that surrounds us. Harvest is a time when we can do the hard work of seeing each day truly as a day which is an unrepeatable miracle. And autumn is a time of preparation for the cold and the barrenness of winter. As I mentioned, I sit at the front window at my house and I watch – here’s another thing I watch – I watch the squirrels all day, every day, digging holes in my yard. Sometimes I fantasize about getting a .22 and going out there and shooting them. I’m not proud of this. So, the other day I went out, finally, and I talked to them. I said to the squirrels, “What are you doing?” One of them looked at me funny and said, “What do you think I’m doing? I am preparing for winter. It’s nice out here now, so I’m using this time to prepare for winter when these nuts and acorns won’t be lying around like this.” The squirrel continued. He said, “You know, you can do the same thing now, you can do the same thing. When it’s nice outside you can prepare yourself, Groat. Through prayer and reading and using your imagination and attaining proper perspective for those windy, cold winter days that are coming, that during those days, instead of cursing the cold and snow, you can remember that each day is an unbelievable miracle because of family, friends, church, health, a warm house, a refrigerator full of food and a democratic country that is worth fighting for.” F. Scott Fitzgerald said it. Ready? I liked it so I printed it in your bulletin at the top. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” Amen? Amen.