Being Rich Towards God
August 5th, 2007
Kevin Derksen
Text:
Eccl. 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23
Luke 12:13-21
Introduction
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a sermon preached on Ecclesiastes before. Sometimes at funerals or weddings or other such occasions we hear the list from chapter 3 about how everything has its season – ‘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. 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. He was just thrilled when I told him I might be preaching at least in part on Ecclesiastes. ‘I’ve wanted to do that for years’, he said, ‘but I’ve never had the opportunity.’ Hmmm, I thought. Lucky me. 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. ‘No, no, no’ said my scholar-friend, ‘Ecclesiastes is a really important book, it really ought to be worked through from the pulpit.’ So, here I am this morning, though I’m not at all convinced I’m the right person for the job. 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. Let this be encouragement to all who get tapped on the shoulder by the preaching team over the next few months.
Ecclesiastes
So – Ecclesiastes it is. 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. To get a sense for the bigger picture of this book. Ecclesiastes is part of the Biblical wisdom tradition that also includes the books of Proverbs, Job and Song of Songs. It has a decidedly different character from these others though. Proverbs, for instance, is committed to the conviction that life makes sense; that there is some semblance of justice and fairness in the world. 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. 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.’ And further on, ‘Therefore walk in the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the just. 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.’
Such confidence is not to be found in Ecclesiastes. There is only vanity, and vanity of vanities. Life is like a chasing after the wind. The vanity Ecclesiastes speaks of is the experience of utter futility produced by the indifference of the universe. The book sets off in search of an answer to the big questions of life – why are we here? What is the purpose and the meaning of life? What is the Good or the End towards which we should be striving? But the Teacher of Ecclesiastes can find no good answer to these questions in all his observation and in all his experience. There seems to be no deeper purpose, no fuller meaning. All our toil is futile, and in vain. 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. The universe just doesn’t care. We all die, and that’s the end of that.
Now it would be unfair to the Teacher to pass his conclusions off as the ravings of an ignorant and insensitive old codger. 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. All of the usual candidates are put forward, then overturned. Perhaps the deepest meaning of life, he says to himself, is found in the pursuit of wisdom.
‘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. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase in knowledge increase in sorrow’.
Ok, well if not wisdom than what about the good old pleasures of wealth, power and self-indulgence?
‘So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. 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. 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.’
The text mentions houses, gardens, pools, slaves, possessions, silver, gold, treasure, concubines. All the ingredients for a life of material and carnal enjoyment are here, the Teacher claims. He threw himself into this life of pleasure-seeking, but it was still not enough. It still did not satisfy the quest for ultimate meaning.
The problem, again, is futility, and especially the futility that comes with mortality and death. There is a certain value to wisdom, the Teacher admits, but it’s cancelled out by the injustice of death, the great equalizer:
‘Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness. Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them. 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. For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been forgotten. 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.’
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
t I must leave it to those who come after me – and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.
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. 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. And 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. I said that this also is vanity.‘ The futility of self-indulgence is matched only by the futility of selfless-ness. The universe just doesn’t care. Righteousness is surely not rewarded in this life, and death claims all of us equally in the end.
There is nothing new under the sun. We are born, we live and we die. This cycle continues over and over. There is no progress, only the boredom and repetition of the same old. Life is vanity, and vanity of vanities. So what does the Teacher of Ecclesiastes suggest? He suggests an end to the search. Give up on the meaning of life, on the quest for ultimate fulfillment. Accept the futility and find what enjoyment you can in each day, knowing that there is nothing more, nothing deeper. ‘I commend enjoyment,’ 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’. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. 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.
A Biblical Book?
This doesn’t really sound like the Bible, does it. In fact, we might be forgiven for wondering why Ecclesiastes is included in the biblical canon at all. God, the central character of the Bible, hardly makes an appearance here. And when God does show up in the Teacher’s reflections, it is to play a decidedly marginal role. There is no doubt that the Teacher ‘believes’ in God – that’s really not the point. 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. 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. God is beyond comprehension, but even more God is not finally knowable at all. 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.
So what is this book doing in the Bible? What purpose can it possibly serve? One response might be that it gives voice to a pretty common human experience. Most of us have faced that pit of despair at one point or another. We look into its endless depths and say ‘why bother? What’s the use?’. These are moments when our own mortality seems very real, and we are struck by the insignificance of our short lives, so quickly forgotten. Moments when it feels like we can’t possibly make a difference, and that we just spend our time scurrying around with busy-work. Moments when the vastness of the universe is equalled only by its utter coldness and its indifference. We long for meaning, for something deeper; for assurances that life is more than a futile chasing after wind. But what if… what if it’s not. Ecclesiastes dares to speak this fear, and to push it out as far as it will go. All there is, is what we can see. Nothing more, nothing less. So enjoy what you can, but don’t expect anything else.
Silhouettes
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. We have to be well acquainted with the pit before our deliverance will make much sense. One commentator I read remarked that when he teaches the Bible, he doesn’t begin with Creation, but with Ecclesiastes. 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. Another way of saying this is that Ecclesiastes provides us with a silhouette of the gospel by the void of its absence. Ecclesiastes is striking as much for what is absent as what is present. There is no talk of love. There is no talk of a God who has revealed himself and who continues to be involved in the lives of his creatures. The absence of all of this leaves a dark gaping void in Ecclesiastes – a silhouette that points towards something else.
The thing to remember about silhouettes though, is that they do get the shape right. What makes Ecclesiastes so interesting is that it does, in fact, get so much right. Enter the parable Jesus tells about the rich fool in Luke 12. This could have been lifted right out of Ecclesiastes: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘what should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 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. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 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. None of these things can be guarded against the thief of death, which makes all the toils of life come to naught. Such accumulation is nothing short of vanity, of futility. Not only will the rich man never enjoy the fruits of his holdings, somebody else will! Perhaps someone who didn’t even put the work in.
It’s important to notice that the rich man in Jesus’ parable is not corrupt, nor is he truly even lusting after wealth. His abundance comes from the produce of his own fields, which he has cared for and managed. His fault lies not in a single-minded pursuit of wealth at any cost: according to the story, his land simply produced abundantly. 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. ‘You fool!’, says Jesus and Ecclesiastes both. Everything under the sun is vanity – you will die and all your toil will be futile.
Crossroads
In his quest for the ultimate meaning of life, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes was right on every count. Is it wisdom? No. The pleasures of wealth and power? No. Being a good person? No. Given the options the Teacher comes up with, his conclusions are right on the mone
y. The problem is that he has overlooked the decisive option. 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. There is no hope for an intersection: no hope for revelation, no hope for relationship. Our world is simply what we can see under the sun, and there is no hope for anything new.
The rest of the Bible, however, can hardly constrain itself in response to this question, this challenge from Ecclesiastes. ‘Ah,’ it says, ‘but there is something new under the sun! Every day there is something new!’ 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. This something new is the possibility of real relationship, of ongoing communion. It is the coming of love – that to which the explorations of the Teacher are finally blind. The shape of the silhouette cast by Ecclesiastes now comes into focus: it’s a crossroads, the entrance of God into our world. The void of this absence speaks to us loudly, proclaiming the utter vanity and futility of life without God. But if we look again, the shape of this silhouette is also the shape of the cross. This is a silhouette of the gospel of Jesus Christ; God-become-flesh. The incarnation is the ultimate ‘new thing’ under the sun. Christ breaks into the futility of Ecclesiastes as the decisive coming of love, the most full revelation of God. In Christ communion is restored between God and his creatures. 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.
Richness Toward God
At the end of the parable of the rich fool, Jesus tells his listeners: ‘So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God.’ 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. ‘Be on your guard against all kinds of greed,‘ Jesus says, ‘for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions’. He could have added that life does not consist in the accumulation of knowledge, or even the accumulation of good deeds. All this is vanity, futility, a chasing after wind. 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.
Jesus describes this as living with a certain richness toward God. I like this image. The contrast is not between a model of wealth and a model of scarcity. The void in Ecclesiastes isn’t an appreciation for frugality. In all of his wealth, what the Teacher is missing out on is true abundance, true extravagence. God’s presence overflows into creation, intersecting at crossroads that dot an infinite landscape. 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. Abundance can never be contained. As soon as we try to hold onto it, it ceases to be abundance. Suddenly it becomes a scarce commodity whose loss we fear. This is the lesson of the manna God sent from heaven to feed the Israelites as they wandered in the desert. True abundance is celebrated, but never grasped. The richness of God’s provision calls forth praise, and it calls forth a return of richness to God in faith and confidence. 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’ – this is the truest poverty. And how well the Teacher of Ecclesiastes knew it.
TUMC is a community blessed with richness, and with a true abundance of God’s grace. Pam and I have certainly experienced that this summer. 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. God’s presence saturates in abundance. Live in its excess. Do the work that must be done – the work of planning, searching, and I do hope not too long from now the work of hiring. But know that richness is yours already, and that it ever calls forth a return in kind to God.
And as for us, we ask for your prayers as well, as we move into places of newness ourselves. Prayers that the richness of this place will meet us in the new communities to which we will entrust ourselves. 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.’