Time to...

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 + Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
James McTyre
Lake Hills Presbyterian Church
September 3, 2006

Labor Day weekend. It’s the time we citizens celebrate the contribution of organized labor and the rights of workers in the United States.

Yeah, right.

In Knoxville, Tennessee, the holiday weekend has one purpose this year, and we all know it has nothing to do with working. This weekend is about playing. Playing football. Playing tailgating – although technically some of us take that too seriously to call it play. Playing at the sale racks at the mall – but again, that’s less “play” and more of a full contact sport. Playing at Boomsday, watching the fireworks, grilling out. Labor day is a weekend to loosen up, and NOT to think about labor. It’s summer’s last time of lightness. So, wear the white shoes one last time before next Easter. Labor day is time to play.

Ecclesiastes tells us that for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. A time for work and a time for play. God has made everything suitable for its time. But after this beautiful poem, the writer asks, “What gain have the workers from their toil?” And then, “I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; “moreover it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” With the words of Ecclesiastes playing in the background, Labor Day takes on religious significance. You see, we aren’t intended to slave away, day after day, without joy, and without a balance of time. Time to work, sure, but also time to enjoy what we’re working for. It’s God’s gift that our labor, whatever it might be, isn’t just an end in itself. God gives purpose to our days. But weekends (such as this) dedicated to play, are God’s gift, too.


“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Whenever I hear that, I think of Jack Nicholson in, “The Shining,” typing reams and reams of this one sentence as his mind unravels. If you ever want a testimony to why you shouldn’t lock yourself into your work, go rent that movie. Especially if you’re the caretaker of a haunted motel. But all work and no play does more than make us dull boys and girls. God has created a variety of time for our lives. All work and no play knocks us out of step. Instead of the poetry of “a time for this and a time for that,” life becomes “a time for work.” And a time for work. And a time for more work. Time to sleep? Maybe. Time to eat? In the car. Time for watching the kids grow up? The world wants us to march along in lockstep; God wants us to waltz. We play the same song day after day. We trip over the rhythms of God’s design.

Keeping step with the rhythms of God’s design isn’t easy. When you look at the list in Ecclesiastes, there’s a lot of stuff we’re supposed to have time for. A time to be born and a time to die – well, those pretty much take care of themselves. But then there’s planting and reaping, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, seeking and losing. (By the way, the Bible got that one backwards. There’s a time for losing, and THEN a time for seeking. Losing takes so little time. Seeking time gets longer every year.) There’s a time for keeping, tearing, sewing, killing, healing, embracing, loving, hating… and throwing away stones. If variety is the spice of life, God intends our lives to be anything but flavorless and dull. But again, what’s written in Ecclesiastes is poetry, not a literal to-do list. If you make it through the day without killing anyone or throwing stones at somebody, I think God would be OK with that. But to live your life as a poetic act takes conscious effort.

I get simultaneously disgusted and amused when I hear myself saying, “I need to make time for that.” Or, “Let’s carve out some time to do that.” As if I have the power to create even a second of time. What I’m really saying when I say silly stuff like that is, “I need to spend less time doing something else.” Now, most of us like to think everything we do is pretty darned important. If it wasn’t important, we wouldn’t spend so much time doing it. So trying to find something to cut out or cut down on isn’t easy. Especially if that something pays the bills. Keeping step with the poetry of God’s design gets harder every year, whether you work inside or outside the home, whether you’re retired, or even if you’re a kid trying to juggle homework, class time and the forty-leven extracurricular activities now required by law. But then, we wouldn’t expect living by God’s design to be as easy as letting the world suck the life out of us. It takes effort to learn God’s dance steps. Today’s scripture says that God wants us to enjoy, to eat and drink and take pleasure in (and from) our toil.

Simon and Garfunkle (and I know some of you have no idea who they are) told us, “Slow down; you move too fast. You got to make the morning last.” Ah, youth. I hope everyone’s feeling groovy now. Art and Paul sang that song at least one, maybe two generations ago, depending on how you count. 1966. In 2006, people grumble because it takes so long to download songs. Many, many generations ago, around 26 AD, in the land of Israel, getting people to slow down and stop moving too fast was a problem, too. We envision the lives of people in Jesus’ day being simple and easy. But people are people. Back then, they probably complained about the long lines at the watering hole and camels that wouldn’t start and kids who took too long getting dressed. The rabbis and priests realized there was a huge disconnect between peoples’ lives on the Sabbath and the other six days of the week. The people were just too busy. They forgot about God and charged off doing their own things just as much as we do. So the rabbis came up with a solution. If people are too busy doing other stuff to think about God, make the other stuff holy, so you have to think about God. And so the rabbis came up with huge numbers of laws about how to wash your pots and pans, how to do this and how to do that. It’s not a bad idea.

When you’re preparing food, do you really think about all it involves? If the food we eat is a gift from the earth, and if the earth is a gift from God, and if the family you’re cooking supper for is made up of children of God – then, yes, washing your pots and pans can be a religious act. Peeling the skin off a chicken can be a yucky act of prayer. Chopping an onion can be an emotional experience. Apply the laws of cleanliness to all of life and simply washing your hands brings you closer to God. Not a bad idea at all. If the laws can teach you to dance to God’s rhythms, then good. But – if the rabbis start demanding you march in lockstep to their rules, if you’re not allowed to be friends with people who don’t follow the same rules, then something’s wrong. The holiness of the cleanliness laws has been adulterated into just another set of rules and pressures that keep people from slowing down and feeling groovy.

The rabbis – the Pharisees – noticed that Jesus’ disciples didn’t wash their hands (the right way) before they ate. These were hungry guys who lived in tents. They may not have washed their hands at all. The Pharisees blew their whistles and threw a flag and asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” It’s hard for us to understand, but this was a really big deal. The Pharisees saw the disciples as breaking step with the march of tradition. But more, the disciples were letting the ways of the world pollute their faith, literally. The disciples ate with dirty hands, that had touched dirty utensils, patted dirty camels, handled dirty money, maybe even touched dirty people. This was a religious crisis.

Jesus saw a teaching moment, and broke into a sermon. He called the crowd together and said, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” Evil intentions are what keep people away from God. It’s not dirty hands that defile us, but dirty hearts, dirty minds, dirty intentions. Jesus escalates the religious crisis instead of calming it.

Time. The beat of time. This past week, in so many news retrospectives on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, people were talking a lot about time. I saw an interview with one old, New Orleans musician, who talked about how Katrina just knocked out all the rhythms of life. Getting water, getting groceries, cleaning muck out of your home or your business – these are what’s important now. All the other stuff is lost in time. I think what Jesus was talking about – what the Pharisees were trying to make people do – what Ecclesiastes preached about – was cleaning the muck out of your life. It’s not that there isn’t enough time. It’s that we let our time become so adulterated, so mucked-up, that even the good things get lost in the storm. Instead of a time to sew and a time to reap, a time to laugh and a time to cry, all our time gets so mixed up together that we’re not consciously doing anything. We’re trying to juggle everything. Multitasking. And it doesn’t work. It’s a religious crisis. And it’s escalating in a bad way. If you’re trying to move to God’s rhythms, you can’t march, waltz, tango, Watusi, and Hustle all at the same time. God has set up the world so there’s a time to march, and a time to waltz, and even a time to do The Hustle, Lord help us. The problem isn’t that we don’t slow down we move too fast; the problem is that we’re no longer conscious of how cleaning the pots and pans might be a religious act. Planting a garden might be a faithful prayer. Driving to soccer practice might be a family value. The times of our lives might be holy, if we focus our hearts and minds on the holiness of our time.

Whether it’s in your mind or in print, you probably have a list of things you have to do, beginning this afternoon, and running through the week to come. How are these things holy? What do they contribute to your life with God? Whether it’s preparing a meal or writing a report, can these things, one at a time, bring you into richer harmony with God? Can they help you dance to God’s rhythms? Growing closer to God takes time. Whatever you have to do in the next twenty-four hours, do it consciously on behalf of God. Wash your hands, your heart, and your mind clean. Not with water, but with the Holy Spirit. So that even if your hands are dirty, what you put your hands to will preach God. All the time. Working. Playing. Even doing nothing at all. Your time is a holy gift. Make how you spend your time holy, too.