View today's sermon on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P3gbctQ5Og.

November 23, 2025 at Hancock UCC

Rev. John Fiscus – Associate Conference Minister – Maine Conference UCC

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11  New International Version  

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 kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,

 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,

 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,

 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,

 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil?  I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.  He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.    

If I could beseech God for one additional gift in my arsenal it would be having a voice and talent to sing from the pulpit… I do not possess the right voice, and I can go off key and flat at the slightest whim.  My mother did not call me little Johnny one note without cause.  Make no mistake, I will sing hymns loudly and with gusto in church when accompanied by organ, piano and other voices but I cannot and will not offer you a meaningful solo.  I say all of this because at times song lyrics say things in ways that I want to share.  

When you heard the scripture from today I am sure that many of you are thinking I want to sing Turn, turn, turn by the birds. But I read these words from Ecclesiastes and hear the song seasons of love from Broadway Musical, rent. I speak its lyric to you… Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, How do you measure, Measure a year? In daylights? In sunsets? In midnights? In cups of coffee? In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife? In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes How do you measure a year in the life?

Our scripture today invites to think of time not as simply minutes, hours, or days but as swings of events. Birth, death, planting, harvesting, eliminating, healing, destruction, construction, laughter, tears, mourning, dancing, scattering our thoughts, pulling them together, embracing, distancing, searching, keeping, deleting, tearing, repairing, love, hate, war and peace… all cycle through our lives. There is a constant flowing in and out like the tides and the seasons of our year.

On the liturgical calendar this is the last Sunday of the year… Next Sunday Advent begins, and we start the year anew. So let me be early in wishing you all a Happy New Year!  But since we are still on this side of that I want to invite us all into considering laying our last liturgical  season to rest and embrace all that has brought our hearts to this day. 

I can’t help to wonder about our recent past. These last two weeks have felt as though if I were to listen carefully enough I could the earth sigh.  Between the winds and snows and rain Fall fell off the trees and Winter knocked hard on our doors.  We know in this simple observation that the word is turning. So, look back over your shoulder and think about all that flowed before.  I know that our world has seen so much trouble and concern. Many of our worries have touched too close for comfort.  Hunger, violence, unrest and dread could be felt….  Yet there were moments of connection, concern and love that were equally around us should we focus and look for them.  

At the ending of the Ecclesiastes reading I think we should pay close attention to the note offered beyond the clashing dualities presented. The author writes; I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.  God has made everything beautiful in its time. God has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  Over this last year my heart has been very troubled. I see war and hunger, and hatred and division over and over… if you have been carrying it too, perhaps it is the testimony to the truth of our reading that God has laid a burden on the human race.   But this burden was not all that was given us… God has also set eternity in our hearts…

I deeply hold a hope this morning, that there is a time and purpose for everything.  I know in that hope I will, laugh, dance, sing, plant and love… So today at this year end and days before our national day of Thanksgiving I will seek to live knowing that Spring and Summer will come both as calendar events and seasons in my heart.  So I can look backward over my shoulder today and be thankful for the moments of joy and hope. I can be thankful for being among God’s people in dozens of beautiful churches in Maine. I can be thankful that I had time to hear the ocean crash against the rocks up and down our coastline.  I am grateful for all the points of light in our world that refuse to go or be snuffed out.

At the beginning of my sermon, I quoted the lyrics to Season of love from Rent. The lyricist offers that a true measure of life is in love. I would agree to that, but I also would add gratitude and thanksgiving. As I end my time here this morning I want to do so as I often do with a poetic blessing.  I am about to offer Jan Richardson’s Blessing on Gratitude.  Before I do that let me again say how grateful I am that churches like this open their heart to all.  I especially thank you for allowing me to be here today on this threshold to Advent… I am truly blessed…

This Day We Say Grateful A Sending Blessing

It is a strange thing to be so bound and so released

all in the same moment,

to feel the heart open wide

and wider still even as it turns

to take its leave.

On this day, let us say this is simply the way love moves

in its ceaseless spiraling, turning us toward one another,

then sending us into what waits for us with arms open wide to us

in welcome and in hope.

On this day, in this place

where you have poured yourself out, where you have been emptied

and filled and emptied again, may you be aware

more than ever of what your heart has opened to here,

what it has tended and welcomed here,

where it has broken in love and in grief,

where it has given and received blessing in the unfathomable mystery

that moves us,  undoes us, and remakes us  finally for joy.

This day may you know this joy in full measure.

This day may you know this blessing that gathers you in

and sends you forth but will not forget you.

O hear us

as this day we say grace;

this day we say grateful;

this day we say blessing; 

this day we release you in God’s keeping

and hold you in gladness and love.

—Jan Richardson