As we continue our look at the third
chapter of Ecclesiastes, we’re going to take up one that’s a little easier to
understand. It’s not something that strikes us as wrong, such as there
being a time to hate, and it’s not something that goes against our societal
values, like there being a time to give up. Today we’re going to look at
the section that says there is a time to keep and a time to throw away.
Now, I say it’s easier to understand
because we all know that the time comes when we have to throw things away.
In fact, this is the time of year we tend to do that sort of thing.
We call it “spring cleaning”. We go through our stuff and see what
we don’t need any more. That’s why this is the time of year for things
like city-wide rummage sales and city-wide clean-up days. We all know
that there’s a time to keep, and there’s a time to throw away.
At least, we know it in theory.
If you’re like me, though, you sometimes have trouble putting that theory
into practice. Any of you who’ve been in my office know that.
If you’ve been in the car I usually drive, you know that, too. I
really don’t like to throw things away. I’m not ready for an episode of
“Hoarders” yet--yet--but I do tend to keep too much stuff that I really
should throw away.
But we need to throw things away
sometimes, because things change. Technology changes. Styles
change. I can remember when leisure suits were the in thing. How
many of you still have a leisure suit? I won’t ask for a show of hands,
because if you have one you probably don’t want to admit it anyway. Most
of us don’t have them any more. We realized that there was a time to
throw them away.
But you know, I don’t know that the
author of Ecclesiastes was just talking about stuff when he said there’s a time
to keep and a time to throw away. Stuff may have been included, but I
think he may have been talking about other things, too. Things like
ideas. Things like opinions. Things like preferences. Things
like the way we’ve always done things. There is a time to keep those
things. But there also is a time to throw them away.
It’s not necessarily because the old things are always wrong.
It’s that things change. Things that were right for one time are
not necessarily right for another time. Look at TV comedy. The top
comedies of the 1960s were The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, and the Andy
Griffith show. They don’t make shows like that now because things have
changed. Now, the top comedies are shows like The Big Bang Theory and
Modern Family. Are the new shows better than the old shows? Not
necessarily. Are they worse? Not necessarily. It just depends
on what you like.
It’s the same with music. For most of us, our favorite music
is the music we grew up with. For me, again, that’s music of the 1960s
and 70s. My favorites are people like Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, and
Simon & Garfunkel. And you young people have no idea what I’m
talking about. People don’t make music like that now because things
have changed. Today it’s folks like John Legend and Justin Timberlake and One
Direction. Is today’s music better? Not necessarily. Is it
worse? Not necessarily. It just depends on what you like.
It’s okay to like the old stuff. It’s okay to like the new
stuff, too. We’re talking about preferences here. When you’re
talking about what you prefer, what you like, there is no such thing as right
or wrong. Take music as the example. If you like one kind of music
and I like another, I cannot prove that my kind is better than yours and you
cannot prove that your kind is better than mine. Again, it’s just what we
like.
And that’s why I like the story from Matthew we read today.
Jesus says you cannot pour new wine into old wineskins. If you do
that, the skin will break, the wine will run out, and you won’t have either the
wine or the skin. What you do, instead, is keep the old wine in the old
wineskin, put new wine in a new wineskin, and both are preserved.
Jesus does not say that the new wine is better. He does not
say that the new wineskin is better, either. He also does not say that
the old wine or the old wineskin is better. What he says is that the old
wineskin is appropriate for the old wine, and the new wineskin is appropriate
for the new wine. There’s room for both. And there should be room
for both.
But you know, the only way we can find out if we like something
new is to try it. And sometimes, the only way we can make room in our
lives to try things is to throw away some of the old things in our lives.
If we have container after container after container of old wineskins
holding old wine, we won’t have any room for new wine. We’ll never know
if that new wine is any good or not. Sometimes we need to throw away some
of the old wineskins--not all of them, but some--to make room for some new
ones.
We can miss out on a lot of good stuff in life by holding on so
hard to the old that we never make room for the new. I love my old music,
but I listen to the current pop station and the current country station, too,
because I don’t want to miss out. Sometimes I hear something I don’t
like, but sometimes I hear something I do like. If I did not throw out
some of the time I used to dedicate to listening to old music, I’d never have
any room for new music.
That’s why we do a contemporary Christian song every week.
We had to throw out one of the traditional songs in order to make room
for it. I’m sure some people like that and some people don’t, and that’s
okay, because again, we’re talking about preferences. But if we had not
made room for that song, we’d never have known if we liked it or not. If
we don’t throw things away sometimes, we never have room for anything new.
See, trying something new is not the
same as saying the old is bad. It’s just saying that times change, and we
have to change with them.
About a month ago, we started a prayer emphasis on the unchurched
children of this community. We’re asking God to help us find ways to
reach those children. I don’t know exactly where that’s going to go, but
I know it’s probably going to mean that we’ll need to try some new things.
To make room for those new things, we may have to throw away some of the
things we’ve been doing.
Now, that does not mean the things we’ve doing are bad. It
does not mean they’re wrong. It also does not mean that we have to
completely change everything we’ve been doing. After all, there’s a time
to throw away, but there’s also a time to keep. I’m not saying we should
completely throw out everything and start all over from scratch. But
times change, and some of our methods need to change, too.
There’s a time to keep and a time to
throw away. That’s true in our personal lives. It’s also true in
the life of the church. And the trick, in both cases, is knowing which is
which. The trick is knowing what to keep and what to throw away.
And in the church, the measuring
stick for that is the Bible. Because the Bible is God’s message to us.
God is both the God of the old and the God of the new. God’s
message, that message of God’s love and God’s forgiveness and God’s
righteousness and all the other things that are God, does not change.
The way we share that message may
change. It always has. You know, at one time, the use of a church
organ was considered controversial, because at one time a church organ was a
new innovation. At one time, Sunday school as a place of religious
instruction was a new innovation, too. We think these things have been
around forever, but they have not been. They came about because people
recognized a need for things to change.
The way we share God’s message will
always change. The way we do things now is different from the way we did
them fifty years ago. They way we’ll do things fifty years from now will
be different from the way we do them now. But what does not change is God’s
message to us.
We worship an unchanging God. As the letter to the Hebrews
says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Our
salvation comes from our belief in God and our faith in Jesus Christ as our
Savior. Those things do not change and they never will change.
There is a time to keep and a time to throw away. As this
church moves forward, we will make changes, just as the church has always done.
We will throw some things away, just as the church has always done.
But we’ll keep some things, too, just as the church has always done.
And among the things we’ll keep are our dedication to serve the one holy,
righteous, perfect God and to believe in the divine Son Jesus Christ as our
Savior.
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