August 5th, 2007<\/strong><\/p>\n Kevin Derksen<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Text:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Eccl. 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23<\/strong><\/p>\n Luke 12:13-21<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Introduction<\/em><\/p>\n I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a sermon preached on Ecclesiastes before.\u00a0 Sometimes at funerals or weddings or other such occasions we hear the list from chapter 3 about how everything has its season \u2013 ‘a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up…’ – but we don’t hear much else about Ecclesiastes on a regular basis.\u00a0\u00a0 In preparation for this morning I contacted a friend back home in Winnipeg, who happens to be an Old Testament scholar, to see if he could suggest some resources.\u00a0 He was just thrilled when I told him I might be preaching at least in part on Ecclesiastes.\u00a0 ‘I’ve wanted to do that for years’, he said, ‘but I’ve never had the opportunity.’\u00a0 Hmmm, I thought.\u00a0 Lucky me.\u00a0 Sometimes following the lectionary feels like the closest thing the church has to institutionalized gambling – you never know when you’re going to be saddled with the unpreachable text.\u00a0 ‘No, no, no’ said my scholar-friend, ‘Ecclesiastes is a really important book, it really ought to be worked through from the pulpit.’\u00a0 So, here I am this morning, though I’m not at all convinced I’m the right person for the job.\u00a0 On the other hand, if there’s one thing I have discovered this summer it’s that the best way to learn about something you know nothing about is to preach on it.\u00a0 Let this be encouragement to all who get tapped on the shoulder by the preaching team over the next few months.<\/p>\n Ecclesiastes<\/em><\/p>\n So \u2013 Ecclesiastes it is.\u00a0 We’ve heard a few verses already this morning, from chapters one and two, but I think it might be helpful to back up, and try to take a bird’s-eye view on this one.\u00a0 To get a sense for the bigger picture of this book. \u00a0Ecclesiastes is part of the Biblical wisdom tradition that also includes the books of Proverbs, Job and Song of Songs.\u00a0 It has a decidedly different character from these others though.\u00a0 Proverbs, for instance, is committed to the conviction that life makes sense; that there is some semblance of justice and fairness in the world.\u00a0 Righteous living, hard work and the pursuit of wisdom makes for the good life, while evil and foolishness only lead towards sorrow and destruction in the end.\u00a0 From Proverbs 2: ‘For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk blamelessly, guarding the paths of justice and preserving the way of his faithful ones.’<\/em>\u00a0 And further on, ‘Therefore walk in the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the just.\u00a0 For the upright will abide in the land, and the innocent will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.’<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0 Such confidence is not to be found in Ecclesiastes.\u00a0 There is only vanity, and vanity of vanities.\u00a0 Life is like a chasing after the wind.\u00a0 The vanity Ecclesiastes speaks of is the experience of utter futility produced by the indifference of the universe.\u00a0 The book sets off in search of an answer to the big questions of life – why are we here?\u00a0 What is the purpose and the meaning of life?\u00a0 What is the Good or the End towards which we should be striving?\u00a0 But the Teacher of Ecclesiastes can find no good answer to these questions in all his observation and in all his experience.\u00a0 There seems to be no deeper purpose, no fuller meaning.\u00a0 All our toil is futile, and in vain.\u00a0 It doesn’t really matter what we do – whether we are good or bad, wise or foolish – in the end we all get the same treatment.\u00a0 The universe just doesn’t care.\u00a0 We all die, and that’s the end of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now it would be unfair to the Teacher to pass his conclusions off as the ravings of an ignorant and insensitive old codger.\u00a0 He has been involved in a lifelong process of observation and study, and he claims to have tried everything over the course of his life looking for the greatest good, and the true source of fulfillment.\u00a0 All of the usual candidates are put forward, then overturned.\u00a0 Perhaps the deepest meaning of life, he says to himself, is found in the pursuit of wisdom.<\/p>\n ‘So I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.\u00a0 I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.\u00a0 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase in knowledge increase in sorrow’.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Ok, well if not wisdom than what about the good old pleasures of wealth, power and self-indulgence?\u00a0<\/p>\n ‘So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me.\u00a0 Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.\u00a0 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing new to be gained under the sun.’<\/em><\/p>\n The text mentions houses, gardens, pools, slaves, possessions, silver, gold, treasure, concubines.\u00a0 All the ingredients for a life of material and carnal enjoyment are here, the Teacher claims.\u00a0 He threw himself into this life of pleasure-seeking, but it was still not enough.\u00a0 It still did not satisfy the quest for ultimate meaning.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 The problem, again, is futility, and especially the futility that comes with mortality and death.\u00a0 There is a certain value to wisdom, the Teacher admits, but it’s cancelled out by the injustice of death, the great equalizer:<\/p>\n ‘Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.\u00a0 The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness.\u00a0 Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them.\u00a0 Then I said to myself, ‘what happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?’ And I said to myself that this also is vanity.\u00a0 For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been forgotten.\u00a0 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after the wind.’\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Likewise, the great projects of power and pleasure – buildings, treasures, vast collections of possessions: I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing tha \u00a0 If the answer is neither to be found in higher learning nor in lowbrow pleasures, perhaps we should turn to altruism and ethics, the Teacher says, and choose the conscience as the path to ultimate fulfillment.\u00a0 And yet, that doesn’t seem to do the trick either: ‘In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their own righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing. <\/em>\u00a0And again: There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous.\u00a0 I said that this also is vanity.<\/em>‘\u00a0\u00a0 The futility of self-indulgence is matched only by the futility of selfless-ness.\u00a0 The universe just doesn’t care.\u00a0 Righteousness is surely not rewarded in this life, and death claims all of us equally in the end.<\/p>\n \u00a0 There is nothing new under the sun.\u00a0 We are born, we live and we die.\u00a0 This cycle continues over and over.\u00a0 There is no progress, only the boredom and repetition of the same old.\u00a0 Life is vanity, and vanity of vanities.\u00a0 So what does the Teacher of Ecclesiastes suggest?\u00a0 He suggests an end to the search.\u00a0 Give up on the meaning of life, on the quest for ultimate fulfillment.\u00a0 Accept the futility and find what enjoyment you can in each day, knowing that there is nothing more, nothing deeper.\u00a0 ‘I commend enjoyment,’<\/em> he says, ‘for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil through the days of life that God gives them under the sun’.\u00a0 <\/em>Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.\u00a0 This is no longer pleasure in pursuit of fulfillment, but a shadow-pleasure, that enjoys what it can in a vacuum of boredom and futility.\u00a0<\/p>\n A Biblical Book?<\/em><\/p>\n This doesn’t really sound like the Bible, does it.\u00a0 In fact, we might be forgiven for wondering why Ecclesiastes is included in the biblical canon at all.\u00a0 God, the central character of the Bible, hardly makes an appearance here.\u00a0 And when God does show up in the Teacher’s reflections, it is to play a decidedly marginal role.\u00a0 There is no doubt that the Teacher ‘believes’ in God – that’s really not the point.\u00a0 The God Ecclesiastes knows, however, is little more than a first cause: a mysterious force at the beginning with little ongoing interest in the life of creation.\u00a0 When Ecclesiastes does speak of God’s involvement in day to day affairs, it’s only to highlight the absolute mystery of God’s ways.\u00a0 God is beyond comprehension, but even more God is not finally knowable at all.\u00a0 If God is the one behind all the vanity of vanities that is life under the sun, what can we do but shake our heads, take what comes and enjoy what we can.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 So what is this book doing in the Bible?\u00a0 What purpose can it possibly serve?\u00a0 One response\u00a0 might be that it gives voice to a pretty common human experience.\u00a0 Most of us have faced that pit of despair at one point or another.\u00a0 We look into its endless depths and say ‘why bother?\u00a0 What’s the use?’.\u00a0 These are moments when our own mortality seems very real, and we are struck by the insignificance of our short lives, so quickly forgotten.\u00a0 Moments when it feels like we can’t possibly make a difference, and that we just spend our time scurrying around with busy-work.\u00a0 Moments when the vastness of the universe is equalled only by its utter coldness and its indifference.\u00a0 We long for meaning, for something deeper; for assurances that life is more than a futile chasing after wind.\u00a0 But what if… what if it’s not.\u00a0 Ecclesiastes dares to speak this fear, and to push it out as far as it will go.\u00a0 All there is, is what we can see.\u00a0 Nothing more, nothing less.\u00a0 So enjoy what you can, but don’t expect anything else.\u00a0<\/p>\n Silhouettes<\/em><\/p>\n And so some have suggested that Ecclesiastes poses the crucial challenge; that in fact, Ecclesiastes asks the question to which the rest of the Bible is an answer.\u00a0 We have to be well acquainted with the pit before our deliverance will make much sense.\u00a0 One commentator I read remarked that when he teaches the Bible, he doesn’t begin with Creation, but with Ecclesiastes.\u00a0 The story of God’s intimate love-affair with humanity is best framed by an account of the world in which God sits stoically on the sidelines and watches.\u00a0 Another way of saying this is that Ecclesiastes provides us with a silhouette of the gospel by the void of its absence.\u00a0 Ecclesiastes is striking as much for what is absent as what is present.\u00a0 There is no talk of love.\u00a0 There is no talk of a God who has revealed himself and who continues to be involved in the lives of his creatures.\u00a0 The absence of all of this leaves a dark gaping void in Ecclesiastes \u2013 a silhouette that points towards something else.<\/p>\n \u00a0 The thing to remember about silhouettes though, is that they do get the shape right.\u00a0 What makes Ecclesiastes so interesting is that it does, in fact, get so much right.\u00a0 Enter the parable Jesus tells about the rich fool in Luke 12.\u00a0 This could have been lifted right out of Ecclesiastes: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly.\u00a0 And he thought to himself, ‘what should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’\u00a0 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.\u00a0 And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’\u00a0 But God said to him, ‘You fool!\u00a0 This very night your life is being demanded of you.\u00a0 And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’\u00a0 <\/em>As the Teacher of Ecclesiastes has already warned us, wealth, power and the security of personal holdings are all futile as attempts to lay claim to the good life.\u00a0 None of these things can be guarded against the thief of death, which makes all the toils of life come to naught.\u00a0 Such accumulation is nothing short of vanity, of futility.\u00a0 Not only will the rich man never enjoy the fruits of his holdings, somebody else will!\u00a0 Perhaps someone who didn’t even put the work in.<\/p>\n \u00a0 It’s important to notice that the rich man in Jesus’ parable is not corrupt, nor is he truly even lusting after wealth.\u00a0 His abundance comes from the produce of his own fields, which he has cared for and managed.\u00a0 His fault lies not in a single-minded pursuit of wealth at any cost: according to the story, his land simply produced abundantly.\u00a0 His fault is only in assuming that by the fruits of his own labours, by his own toil under the sun, he could now enjoy the fullness of life.\u00a0 ‘You fool!’, says Jesus and Ecclesiastes both.\u00a0 Everything under the sun is vanity \u2013 you will die and all your toil will be futile.<\/p>\n Crossroads<\/em><\/p>\n In his quest for the ultimate meaning of life, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes was right on every count.\u00a0 Is it wisdom?\u00a0 No. The pleasures of wealth and power?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Being a good person?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Given the options the Teacher comes up with, his conclusions are right on the mone \u00a0 The rest of the Bible, however, can hardly constrain itself in response to this question, this challenge from Ecclesiastes.\u00a0 ‘Ah,’ it says, ‘but there is<\/em> something new under the sun!\u00a0 Every day there is something new!’\u00a0 God’s road intersects with our road at an infinite number of points along the way, bringing something new, something more than a chasing after wind.\u00a0 This something new is the possibility of real relationship, of ongoing communion.\u00a0 It is the coming of love \u2013 that to which the explorations of the Teacher are finally blind.\u00a0 The shape of the silhouette cast by Ecclesiastes now comes into focus: it’s a crossroads, the entrance of God into our world.\u00a0 The void of this absence speaks to us loudly, proclaiming the utter vanity and futility of life without God.\u00a0 But if we look again, the shape of this silhouette is also the shape of the cross.\u00a0 This is a silhouette of the gospel of Jesus Christ; God-become-flesh.\u00a0 The incarnation is the ultimate ‘new thing’ under the sun.\u00a0 Christ breaks into the futility of Ecclesiastes as the decisive coming of love, the most full revelation of God.\u00a0 In Christ communion is restored between God and his creatures.\u00a0 The Teacher’s path has been crossed by a love that infuses it with an extravagence of depth and meaning he could hardly have hoped for, and sadly never found.\u00a0<\/p>\n Richness Toward God<\/em><\/p>\n At the end of the parable of the rich fool, Jesus tells his listeners:\u00a0 ‘So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God.’<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 For those of us who live in the light of the full gospel, seeing more than the outline of a silhouette, the lessons of Ecclesiastes must be learned anew, and learned well.\u00a0 ‘Be on your guard against all kinds of greed,<\/em>‘ Jesus says, ‘for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions’.<\/em>\u00a0 He could have added that life does not consist in the accumulation of knowledge, or even the accumulation of good deeds.\u00a0 All this is vanity, futility, a chasing after wind.\u00a0 Life consists in a vibrancy of communion with our Creator, through which the divine love can be shared with all who walk upon the earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 <\/em>Jesus describes this as living with a certain richness toward God.\u00a0 I like this image.\u00a0 The contrast is not between a model of wealth and a model of scarcity.\u00a0 The void in Ecclesiastes isn’t an appreciation for frugality.\u00a0 In all of his wealth, what the Teacher is missing out on is true abundance, true extravagence.\u00a0 God’s presence overflows into creation, intersecting at crossroads that dot an infinite landscape.\u00a0 And so it is that the rich fool of Jesus’ parable is condemned for the building of bigger sheds to hold the abundance of his produce.\u00a0 Abundance can never be contained.\u00a0 As soon as we try to hold onto it, it ceases to be abundance.\u00a0 Suddenly it becomes a scarce commodity whose loss we fear.\u00a0 This is the lesson of the manna God sent from heaven to feed the Israelites as they wandered in the desert.\u00a0 True abundance is celebrated, but never grasped.\u00a0 The richness of God’s provision calls forth praise, and it calls forth a return of richness to God in faith and confidence.\u00a0 The desire to secure one’s future, to say to one’s soul ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry’ \u2013 this is the truest poverty.\u00a0 And how well the Teacher of Ecclesiastes knew it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 TUMC is a community blessed with richness, and with a true abundance of God’s grace.\u00a0 Pam and I have certainly experienced that this summer.\u00a0 And at the end of our short time here, our prayer for this congregation is that this richness be ever more received in the openness by which alone it can be sustained.\u00a0 God’s presence saturates in abundance.\u00a0 Live in its excess.\u00a0 Do the work that must be done \u2013 the work of planning, searching, and I do hope not too long from now the work of hiring.\u00a0 But know that richness is yours already, and that it ever calls forth a return in kind to God.<\/p>\n \u00a0 And as for us, we ask for your prayers as well, as we move into places of newness ourselves.\u00a0 Prayers that the richness of this place will meet us in the new communities to which we will entrust ourselves.\u00a0 And prayer for fortitude as we begin another round of school in September, especially given the words of Ecclesiastes in its final verses: ‘Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness to the flesh.’<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Being Rich Towards God August 5th, 2007 Kevin Derksen \u00a0 Text:\u00a0\u00a0 Eccl. 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23 Luke 12:13-21 \u00a0 Introduction I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a sermon preached on Ecclesiastes before.\u00a0 Sometimes at funerals or weddings or other such occasions we hear the list from chapter 3 about how everything has its season \u2013 ‘a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up…’ – but we don’t hear much…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-a-worship-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nt I must leave it to those who come after me – and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish?\u00a0 Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun.\u00a0 This also is vanity.<\/em><\/p>\n
\ny.\u00a0 The problem is that he has overlooked the decisive option.\u00a0 For the Teacher of Ecclesiastes, the road that God is on, and the road that we human beings are on under the sun, form two strictly parallel lines across time.\u00a0 There is no hope for an intersection: no hope for revelation, no hope for relationship.\u00a0 Our world is simply what we can see under the sun, and there is no hope for anything new.\u00a0<\/p>\n