So Neil just mentioned to you all that Ecclesiastes is his favourite book of the bible. He told me this a few weeks back. On the final week of the minor prophet’s series (which we all know Neil really enjoyed) I mentioned to him that Stella would be preaching on Ecclesiastes, and he told me then that it was his favourite book. Jay, who was with us, also said she really liked it and Stella mentioned last week it was her favourite book and so I thought we better give more than just one week to it.
I do want to get to a new testament epistle before Advent starts, as is our tradition here, so it will just be last week and this week but if you too love Ecclesiastes and want to spend more time with it, the Thursday night bible study, is studying it and I am sure they would be happy to have anyone join them (even if just for this book).
Anyway, let’s pray, Your word, living God, is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. We thank you that this light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not (and will not) overcome it.
Before delving into today’s reading, I would like to thank Stella for her reflections last week. As most people know Stella is my mother, so for those of you who appreciate my preaching you can now see where I got it from.
Another thing Stella has always modelled to me is to question things, to listen to and value different ideas and experiences, to be comfortable with grey areas and both/and thinking. There is a not a lot of that in the world right now but there is a lot of that in Ecclesiastes and so that is what I will be reflecting on that this morning.
Stella mentioned last week, falling upon the opening lines of Ecclesiastes, “Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless,” with enormous relief.
I have to admit this is not my experience. I do value the point, she raised, that the author of Ecclesiastes is calling into question so many of the things we construct our sense of identity and meaning on, things such as our work, our knowledge, our wealth and our so called “hero projects” In view of eternity these things probably are ultimately meaningless and Ecclesiastes and last week’s sermon was a good reminder to a perfectionist like me, who often does place way too much of my identity and sense of worth in these things, of the need to let go a little. But I struggle with the idea that all is meaningless.
Clearly for some people it is not a struggle but a comfort. For some coming across the verse, “Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, in the Bible, feels as Stella put it, “like someone finally articulating what felt more truthful and, in that truthfulness, lay some hope.” I love that.
But for me in a world in which so many people (particularly many young people) really are struggling to believe their life has any meaning and purpose at all I need to hold that truth, “that life is meaningless with another Biblical truth that life is also infinitely precious and significant.
I have said this a number of times, but the Christian faith is mysterious and wild and so does require us to hold a number of paradoxes so this is not new. Paradoxes such as the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God and that we are also deeply broken and capable of perpetrating such evil against each other and our world.
Or that God is both immanent and transcendent. That is God is so completely beyond and above creation and us, and yet also present within in creation and infinitely close to us.
Or the goodness and love of the cross alongside the horror of it.
I read yet another article in the New York Times, this week, about why our societies are so divided. This particular article believes it is because of binary thinking. This kind of thinking simplifies complex situations and concepts by reducing them to only two opposing perspectives. In every situation there is a winner and a loser, a right way and a wrong way. People (or nations) are either perpetrators or victims, good or bad.
This is not the kind of world, nor the kind of thinking, we mostly find in the Bible, especially Ecclesiastes.
Another paradox is that God’s word, that comes to us through the Scriptures, and through Christ, is universally true across time and place and yet deeply rooted in a particular time and place. And what is said to one person might be very different to what is said to another.
Jesus in the presence of the Pharisees says,
“I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind”
but in the presence of the crowds he says,
“I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world but to save it.”
He tells his disciples on the road to Jerusalem to take up their cross and follow him but to those who are weary and heavy burdened he says,
“come to me and I will give you rest. . . for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
It seems Jesus knew what different people needed to hear.
I find hope in the passionate cries of the minor prophets for justice. I need to hear the Bible name the evil in the world and proclaim that God will indeed deal with it. Whereas others it seems find the prophets very hard work and judgey.
Stella finds hope in Ecclesiastes, she needs to hear that whereas others find it kind of depressing or a bit of a sellout.
Ecclesiastes is a book that is wrestling with a lot of the rest of the Bible. The very fact that Ecclesiastes is in the biblical canon and forms part of our Sacred Scriptures I think shows us that for God this wrestling is Holy.
Ecclesiastes particularly takes on Proverbs which is also attributed to King Solomon. Proverbs is a book that is all about the value of pursuing wisdom, hard work and right living,
“Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth”
Or
“Wisdom will reward you with a crown of honor and glory. Son, listen to me. Do what I say, and you will live a long time. I am teaching you about wisdom and guiding you on the right path.”
Ecclesiastes calls all that into question. In today’s reading from chapter 9 it says,
“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift (clearly he had not heard Taylor whose recent album funnily enough is a little Ecclesiastes-ish, in it Taylor muses on the value and meaning of the life of a showgirl) nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful, but time and chance happen to them all.”
And yet at the same time, it seems that preacher has not given up on all those things completely. Today’s reading also has this little vignette of the poor wise man who delivered his city from a great king. And he says,
The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouting of a ruler among fools.
Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one bungler destroys much good.
And then in verses 7-10,
7 Go, eat your bread with enjoyment and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has long ago approved what you do. 8 Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. 9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
It seems the preacher still glimpses the meaning and importance of the simple, ordinary things of life – a good meal (even one we don’t take a picture of), a joyful and righteous life (what white garments and oil symbolise), loving one’s spouse, taking joy and pleasure in your life together and a job well done. Meaning does not come from what the work is – but the spirit in which it is done.
I wonder what we are supposed to do with all that. Some might say that the Bible contradicts itself so it cannot be trusted. I think rather that it is wide and deep enough to speak to our different life stages, circumstances and experiences across the ages. It’s willingness to hold paradoxes makes its trustworthy.
But it does mean we need to be discerning. When those of us who are privileged interpret the message for those who are not and vice versa it can lead to a warping of the Biblical message.
Perhaps you might think this morning, about what you need to take from today’s passage. Do you tend to seek meaning and self-worth in work, money, how many followers you have on Instagram? Do you judge yourself and others on worldly achievements? Is this burden to you? Do you need to be reminded that seeking these things is like seeking the wind? Is that freeing? A relief?
Or have you become cynical and complacent? Thinking nothing matters any way so why bother, why not just spend all day on social media or another distraction of you choice? Are you burdened by the idea that everything you do is for nothing?
Do you struggle to see God in the mundane? In the muck and mess of my regular, “unspectacular” life?
Stella mentioned Ecclesiastes is not regularly preached in in Christian churches. Ecclesiastes actually only appears in the 3-year lectionary once. So she is right.
However, the Jewish calendar reflects on the book each year during the festival of Sukkot. The festival of Sukkot is the harvest festival and is the most joyous of the Jewish festivals. And in fact Sukkot was celebrated this year from Oct 6th to 13th. Something I did not know when I asked Stella to preach last week, I was just trying to coincide it with school holidays and Nina being here.
Sukkot focuses on fulfilment, accomplishment, ripening and the gift of rest to enjoy the fruits of one’s labour.
And yet they read Ecclesiastes.
I think there is deep wisdom in this pairing. It neither denies that sense of despair and doom we all have at times nor the great joy and beauty of life and harvests and a job well done. Somehow it holds the two together.
I have said this before but I think doing this is one of the great calls of the Christian life and why the life of faith is best lived with others.
In any church community there will be those experiencing great joy, healing and blessing and yet there will be those experiencing despair, illness and in mourning. Some will be feeling God’s presence and others His absence. When we have to hold our experience with the experience of others it shields us from both triumphalism and total hopelessness. When we sing some of you love the songs of joy and praise that speak of God’s power and glory. But these will leave others cold. They will fall with enormous relief into the times of silence and the quieter songs that dare to lament and to ask God questions. Let us have the grace to make room for both.
Let me finish with someone we have not heard from, for a long time, you know who she is because I have quoted this a few times before,
So here’s the great challenge to the Christian life, the great challenge to the Church: can we speak glory to agony, and agony to glory? Can we hold the mountain and the valley in faithful tension with each other — denying neither, embracing both? Can we do this hard work out of love and compassion for each other, so that no one among us — not the joyous one, not the anguished one, not the beloved one, not the broken one — is ever abandoned or forgotten?
