Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, November 1, 2026
Good morning. Lately, I've been thinking about snakes. So, if you need to leave now, I'll give you a minute. I've been thinking about snakes, not least because I'm having a rodent problem at my house. And my boyfriend very lovingly replaced my dishwasher this week because a rat — sorry — had chewed through the cord and the tubing. Sorry. But I've been thinking about snakes because of this whole skin-shedding process. All snakes, they shed their skin regularly. Small snakes about every two to four weeks. And as they grow into adults, it becomes two to three months and then about two to three times a year. What's really fascinating is that right before a snake sheds its skin, its eyes get really cloudy, blurry, the vision is impaired, and they just can't see very well because the old skin that's ready to come off is making it hard to have clear eyes. The process of shedding, it actually begins with their eyes. And you don't have to look at the YouTube videos. I'll tell you what happens. But a snake kind of scoots its head against the ground or a rock, and the skin begins to come off from the eyes down. And then it kind of — I won't do it — but it scooches itself out of the old skin and slithers away renewed. I have been so captivated by the fact that shedding the skin starts with fresh eyes. Maybe you know something about skin shedding, about the need to shake off what isn't serving you and find new clarity.
Last year, I had what I kept calling a skin-shedding year. I ended a long relationship. I had a season-ending injury that has prevented me from playing competitive ultimate Frisbee. I bought a house and moved into it. And on my birthday in December, you all told me that I'd be head honcho as the first female senior minister here. Zora Neale Hurston writes that there are years that ask questions and there are years that answer. And last year gave me a lot of answers to what needed to end and what needed to begin in my life. This blurry vision that I had about what would come next, it began to subside. I was trading in my old skin for something new. But what do you call the chapter after that chapter? Because it was still pretty uncomfortable, this new skin. It came with a lot of anxiety and dread. As I was scooching my way out of the blurriness, I began to ask, who even am I without Frisbee? Who even am I without a partner? And then later last year, who am I with a new one? Who am I as a church leader? I started the year with panic, wondering what I would become in this new skin. And honestly, y'all, I tried to resist the change. I spent a summer in Bryson City as a church intern. And the pastor at that church was a Olympic kayaker, retired Olympic kayaker. He told me that when kayaks turn upside down, a lot of people have a tendency to want to stand up in the current. He said, "But you actually need to put your legs up and let the water take you." And this year I have felt myself trying to stand up in the water to resist what's happening, which is change.
I don't want to believe that there's a season for everything and a time for every purpose under heaven. I only want the good stuff. But there is. There is a season of heartbreak, and there's a season of finding love again. There is a season of joy at moving into a new home, and there's a season of facing the unwelcome rodents in that home. There is a season to play travel ultimate Frisbee, and there is a season to step back from it altogether. A season of following someone else's lead, and a season of showing up authentically as a new leader. And the author of Ecclesiastes knew something about the seasons of life. W. Sibley Towner writes that here is the most real of the realists of the sacred writers of our text. This writer doesn't shy away from the hard parts of life. This writer names that there's death and there's hate and there is even war. But instead of shying away, this writer covers 28 experiences that all human beings see or experience or face. In these seven verses — maybe you noticed it — there's 14 antithetical pairings. About these verses, Towner goes on to write, "The wise person's task is to know when the right time has come and to move visibly with whatever invisible program there may be." To move visibly with whatever invisible program there may be. In other words, I think there is an invisible program at work in my life, and maybe yours. And I call that program God's will. I believe it is happening in tandem with a God who is present with us, but who doesn't give or take away, simply walks with us through these seasons. And all we have to do is surrender to it. Easy to say, but harder to do. And as the author Wendell Berry wrote, saying, "Thy will be done," might be the hardest part of any prayer. Surrender is not easy.
How do we accept that there's a time to weep for what or who has been lost, and then there's a time to laugh, maybe unexpectedly, months down the road at a memory of that person? There's a time to keep silent in shock of all the terrors of the world, and then there is a time to speak at the hope of a better one. There is a time to embrace a child or a loved one or a grandson. And then there are times to refrain from embracing, like a unexpected pandemic.
I wish desperately that life did not hold both. But I have learned, mostly from following Jesus, that there are a thousand crucifixions and resurrections in this life, and that none of us get out scot-free, not even our Savior. I think of Don Schlitz's song "The Gambler." For those of you who didn't get a chance to meet him, he was a beloved member here who passed away this year, a prophetic songwriter, and he wrote "The Gambler," which Gabe is going to sing. You don't want me to sing it. And it reminds me of Ecclesiastes. It really does. Don writes, "You got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them, know when to walk away and know when to run." But there is a season for shedding skin and a season for living into new skin. There is a time to hold your cards close to your chest, and there is a time to let them go. A time to throw away stones, a time to gather stones together, a time to mourn, a time to dance, a time to seek, a time to lose. If snakes shed their skin a few times a year, then I think we are something to marvel at, because we shed millions of skin cells a day and we just can't see it. Which means we are always becoming, which means God is always doing a new thing. But life, it is both beautiful and brutal. And as the author Glennon Doyle says, we might as well call it brutiful.
And it's hard to accept this beautiful life. But the most real of the realest of the wisdom writers tells us that there is a time to be born, there is a time to die. And today we don't cower from this truth. We actually honor it, and we name it, and we hold space for it. We honor that baby Lizzy and baby Ellis were born. And we honor that — we honor the death of Judy and Sandra and Beth and Dawn and all those names on your heart right now. It reminds me of a poem that Mark Nepo wrote called "Adrift." Excuse me. He wrote, "Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch. As this ache makes me look for those I've lost, I look for them in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. And in the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we've lost face each other. And it is there that I'm adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful."
The author of Ecclesiastes frames this passage with the two seasons of life that bracket something miraculous: birth and peace. Meaning that death and war do not have the first or the final word. I don't know about you, but I believe the final word is love itself, risen to offer us a hope eternal where, as the hymn we just sang says, where all our labors can rest, where there breaks a still more glorious day, and where all are one in Christ Jesus, whose name is forever blessed.
Amen.