Our Call in Every Season

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-14

What were you doing a year ago? What were you thinking, hoping? Did you know that Hillary Clinton would not recover from coming in third in the Iowa caucuses, even though she would come very, very close? Did you think that Barack Obama's victory there was the first of many? Did you know that Mike Huckabee would end up not winning the nomination, even though he did win Iowa?

Did you know that the New England Patriots would actually remain undefeated in the regular season and playoffs, only to lose the Super Bowl?

Did you ever think that the winner of the World Series wouldn't be the Yankees, the Red Sox? Did you EVER think that the two teams that played in the World Series would be the Phillies and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays?

Did you know that Center Moreland would, in late spring, become the final spiritual home of a girl named Aimee, whose mother moved her back from Arizona so that she could pass away among family and friends?

Did you know that there would be friends we would have at the beginning of 2008 that we would lose during the course of the year? That there would be people we know who would be very sick and not die, and there would be others who we would be surprised to lose?

No, and I didn't either.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

Ecclesiastes is one of the oldest books of the Bible. It is generally less read than other books because from a Christian perspective, from a Christo-centric worldview, it's hard to know what to do with it. There is no clear claim of providence, no pre-figuring of Christ as the culmination of divine intervention in human history. Oh, to be sure, God is present in Ecclesiastes, but not Jesus. So Christians in general do not look at it the same way we look at, say, Isaiah, or even the apocalyptic passages in Daniel or Ezekiel.
But I could suggest to you that Ecclesiastes is of great value to all who respect God, Christians included. Though the author (who might be King Solomon, but is also thought to be an author assuming Solomon's persona) writes in a resigned style, almost as if he is speaking during a great dinner with friends, he is what one commentator calls an "Idol buster", smashing in the course of the book the idols of "money, sex, power, position, human wisdom, even our attempts to become righteous." All that is left at the end, according to the author, who names himself Quoheleth, comes in the twelfth chapter, when he writes that we are to "fear God, and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of everyone."

Everything else is vanity. All that we expect from the world, all that we hope, all that we believe. All is smoke.

I recently finished reading David McCullough's biography of John Adams, and while our second President was ambitious to serve and to be of note as a young man, by the time he had served as a member of Congress and been abroad as an ambassador, he was quite happy to stay home for the rest of his life in Quincy, Massachusetts, farming and reading, being a husband to Abigail, and practicing law. His talents kept him being called back into public service, and he was glad to serve, but he had grown out of his young man's ambitions.

What Quoheleth tells us in Ecclesiastes is that God is the one who gives and takes away, and the simplest, best life is one where our gifts and graces are put to God's use, dedicated to God's purpose, rather than taken as gifts that we are given with which to gather wealth, fame or status.

We who gather here are Christians. We declare that Jesus Christ is our personal savior, and that his death on the cross is a choosing to die for us, and that he was redeemed in that act by God by his resurrection. For Jesus, life was indeed a living out of that summation from Ecclesiastes chapter 12, which was to fear God, keep his commandments, and for that to be the whole duty of everyone. His life is a model for us of how a life lived with God at its center will not want for excitement or fulfillment.

So, this coming year, you can count on there being some things that will surprise. There will be world events which will shock us, sadden us, and others that will make us happy. People around us will suffer misfortune. Others will find good fortune. Sometimes they will be the same person. There will be births. There will be deaths. Gas prices will rise and fall. Everything will change, and nothing will, and we will again not be equipped to be able to predict the difference. But if we greet the year without panic, seeing anti-Christs around every corner, but instead seek to serve God, seek him when it is hard and when it is easy, to reach out to the last and the least and the lost, and to lift each other up in prayer and in regard, we will attach ourselves to what is truly eternal and unchanging, and will weather any storm that comes.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. Expect change in the coming year, and hold fast to God and to Christ.

Eulogy for Aimee Dickey

Eulogy/Homily

Aimee L. Dickey, 12, of Scranton , died Friday at Hospice Community Care, Dunmore, after a courageous battle with inoperable brainstem glioma.

Born July 22, 1996 , in Kingston , daughter of Annette Nardelli McKeon, Scranton , and Thomas Dickey, El Mirage , Arizona , she was a seventh-grade student at West Scranton Middle School and a member of Centermoreland United Methodist Church .

Aimee was a special and loving daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece and friend who enjoyed cheerleading, go-kart racing and arts and crafts. She had a special love for her animals. She will be sadly missed by her loving family and friends.

Also surviving are two brothers, Robert McKeon II and wife, Jessica, Pittston; and Travis Dickey and wife, Jennifer, Iowa; three sisters, Jennifer McKeon, Pittston; Jessica Dickey, Louisiana; Sara Seabolt and husband, Eric, Iowa; her maternal grandfather and step-grandmother: Anthony and Rita Nardelli, Scranton; her paternal grandparents, Ken and Shirley Dickey, Arizona; aunts and uncles, Theresa Harrity and husband, Roy, Scranton; Michael Nardelli and wife, Diane, Scranton; Steven Nardelli, New York; Kenlyn Winters and husband, Jerry, Arizona; and Timothy Dickey and wife, Shannon, South Dakota; nieces, nephews and cousins.

She was also preceded in death by her maternal grandmother, Madelyn Nardelli.

Amy liked to flip me off. She found it endlessly amusing, and once she found out that I was not offended by it, she did it a lot. Her mom would be a little offended, but when she would see that I wasn't, she was more OK with it, though I think it still troubled her.

She was a twelve year old girl, and she could very well have had about her the image issues that most twelve year olds, girls and boys, have. I'm sure there were kids at her school that said that she looked weird. She couldn't speak well, which many kids might have found frightening, and they may have covered that fright with insults. I never did hear Aimee talk about that pain, and she was bold as brass about not hiding herself, no matter how she looked, or felt, or whether her trach tube was in or not. She was bold, in a way which in this valley's isn't perhaps accepted, but wonderful nonetheless.

I never knew Aimee when she didn't have cancer. When I first met her, at Dottie Kupstas' house in the spring of 2008, she was already having trouble walking, and her speech was slurred. I never heard Aimee's normal voice. She was diagnosed with her glioma at the end of September 2007, and they had moved back from Arizona in February. I never knew Aimee when she didn't have cancer, but if she didn't fall ill, it is also pretty true that I wouldn't have known her or her family at all.

When a child becomes ill, the questions we all have about death rise up in our throats like shouts, rather than the whispers we normally hear at the death of one who has lived a long time. We want to know why; we want God to explain to us, in great detail, why a child has to suffer. Some of us may even blame God for what happened to Aimee. We may say, in order to make ourselves better, that God needed her back in heaven.

I believe that God is never short of grace, never short of an angel. Giving children cancer is not the work of the Lord. The God who created us, who called us good, and has loved us even when we are not good, is not in the business of causing pain and suffering to his people, and especially not to his children. Aimee's suffering is not the work of the Lord. The Work of the Lord is his constant presence in our lives, though good and bad; through pain, though joy, though life and certainly through illness. His work is in keeping his spark lit within us, until the time when it is clear that it is time to relieve our suffering. Then, like a campfire, God draws the spark back toward himself, and takes it back and makes it part of himself again. Aimee, or the spark that we know as Aimee, is now once again within and a part of God.

For almost all of those who have had near-death experiences, one thing that is in common for most of the stories they have told is that there is a light that shines forth, a warming, comforting, welcoming light. Aimee told Annette, just not too long ago, that she is in that light all the time, and that she was just not ready to walk into it yet. She was just not ready to trade perishability for imperishability. There were things she wanted to do- she wanted to go to school, she wanted to be confirmed, and she wanted go to Harrisburg with Kevin (this is Kevin Murphy, who had just been elected her local Pa State Representative) to speak on behalf of childhood cancer sufferers, and increase the visibility of this group of children. But the time finally came a week and three hours ago, and she has now joined what we, left behind on earth, call the church triumphant. She has gone to a place where her pain is over, her swollen face has returned to its original shape, and her eyes have regained that mischievous glint. The relationships that she had here on earth are now placed in their best light, and she is able to love everyone without reservation, no matter how troubled, mean, abusive or neglectful they may be here on earth. What she sees best, out the window of that dwelling place that God has built just for her, are the sparks that God has placed within each of us, those tiny flames that are his own spirit that resides in everyone's heart.

She was sure, in a way which is specific only to those who are twelve, that there was a God, and that God loved her. She had experienced his love, she had seen his light, and she had about her, even in the midst of the pain, and the embarrassment, and the sheer boredom and frustration she felt at not being able to drive a go kart, or to cheer, or even in the end to speak without signing, the certainly of knowing where she was going next. Let us be assured by her certainty. Let us know, as she did, what's next when our spark is drawn back to the home fire.