To every Gathering there is a Season

One Sunday near the beginning of September is usually designated ‘Rally Day’ at Salvation Army places of worship in this country. Presumably that’s because it marks the day when all good soldiers ‘rally’ round the flag again after (sometimes) long absences over the summer months.

At Yorkminster Citadel we now call this day ‘Gathering’ Sunday. It’s less militaristic, which I’m all for, but the new title is also that of a  2002 horror movie (starring, incidentally, Ioan Gruffudd of Hornblower fame). The day itself was not at all like the movie, however. For me, it was much more scary.

The most terrifying part of it was having lunch together as a church ‘family’ after the morning service. As I get older I find myself seeking out the company of just a few companionable folks who know me well and whose intimacy I can trust. I used to like meeting people; now, given the choice, I take a pass on any social event that will bring me into the company of strangers. It’s not that I’ve become anti-social or a misogynist, it’s just that I am old-fashioned enough to want people to think well of me and enjoy being with me, and to care if they don’t but not enough to want to work at it any more. As well as essential laziness, it may also be a way to protect my ego from being hurt. While my ego is still big, it is not as bloated as it once was. When it bursts nowadays it doesn’t make quite such a mess. All the same, I still try to avoid the pricks that might penetrate its membrane.

Revenons à nos moutons. ‘Gathering’ Sunday marks the beginning of a new season for the musical groups at our church. There are seasons in team sports, fashion, car sales, book marketing and greengrocery, and, it seems, in our church life. Strange as it may seem, however, ‘Gathering’ Sunday and the start of our new season may be traced back to Holy Writ, as you will see.

So what book in the Bible is called ‘Gathering’? Ecclesiastes is the Greek translation (used in the Septuagint) of the Hebrew word Qohelet (root: to gather). Although the Greek word originally described a secular gathering, in the new Testament it is used to denote ‘church’, which is why anything ‘ecclesiastical’ nowadays has to do with the church. (And why église is the French word for ‘church’.) Jerome thought that the title ‘preacher’ was more suitable, and gave it such a name in his Latin Bible.

I do enjoy reading Ecclesiastes, even though it was a bit overused at school assemblies when I was a boy (‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard’ gets up your nose after a while). The third chapter of Ecclesiastes is probably the best known passage from this book, and a chunk of it is faithfully reproduced in the words of Pete Seeger’s wonderful peace anthem ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’, with the addition of a ‘peace’ ending. It’s worth a visit to YouTube to hear it sung by the Byrds, or Judy Collins and Pete Seeger himself.

I liked ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’, but the song I loved far more in the early sixties was ‘The Green Leaves of Summer’, from the 1960 John Wayne epic movie ‘The Alamo’. Paul Francis Webster penned the lyrics, also based on Ecclesiastes three, but more loosely. As soon as I saw the movie I rushed out to buy a 45 of Tiomkin’s music, which I still have somewhere in the basement. Listen for the nice tierce de Picardie at the end, making the word ‘home’ so inviting after the minor modality, even gentle sombreness, of this lullaby to those about to die:

Although Webster’s words in the last stanza are preparing the young men at the Alamo for death in the next day’s battle, they have a certain appeal for an older man who has learned to recognise the seasons of life, and to go along with them if not totally embrace them:

A time just for plantin’, a time just for ploughin’.
A time just for livin’, a place for to die.
‘Twas so good to be young then, to be close to the earth,
Now the green leaves of summer are callin’ me home.

This is what the preacher said in his best Jacobean English:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

So why not a season for going to church? Well, that’s a topic for another blog.