The mood of the Book of Ecclesiastes (literally the "Book of the Teacher") is despairing. What a way to start back after vacation! But ... do not fear: despair is not the whole of the story.
"The Teacher" purports to be King Solomon, son and heir of King David, living in the 9th century BCE in the upbeat heyday of the kingdom. Probably because from where and when he is really living, that seems like "the good old days."
The book actually dates from the 4th century BCE -- a time of spiritual and moral decay for Israel after centuries of curruption, defeat by their enemies, exile in a foreign land, and the eventual return of some of the exiles to what was left of their once-proud kingdom. At a time like this, how can any honest teacher not feel and communicate despair. The lesson of history, both political and personal, is that everything we do, accomplish, learn, work for, and achieve is "vanity" ("hebel" in Hebrew, which means "transitory and insatisfactory, fleeting and transient like the wind).
But just as he looks to the past for a sense of better times, there are also clear signs -- for any with ears to hear and eyes to see, of hope and the presence of the glory of God in the present.
In the Good News
Version of the Bible, part of the reading is translated this way:
What is it all worth –
all you spend your time trying
to do all your life?
You work and worry your way
through life, and in the end,
it gets left to someone else to
do with it as they will
and who’s to know what that
will be?
And to worry about it is
useless – like chasing after the wind.
And that’s the
Good News version!
Barb McMullen and
I were talking about this, this week. Kind
of. She saw my car at the church and
stopped in to leave her summer offering.
She knew she wouldn’t be here today and didn’t want to let the summer go
by without doing her part to help us get through. And one of the things we ended up chatting
about was all the stuff we inherit and accumulate from our parents and our
children, how at first we hang on to everything, and then over time bit by bit
let a lot of it go, pass things on to others, or just dispose of it –
Rubbermaid binsful of old photos and big bags of keepsakes that we send the way
of all flesh, to the dump.
We can’t keep
everything, and not everything is worth keeping forever. We want to remember and hold on to what’s
important; it just takes time and a little distance to sort out what’s eternal
and will never be lost, from what’s transient, temporary and disposable.
I think of when
my dad died. In his life he was always fixing, maintaining and
improving what was around him – in the house he provided us as a family, in the
apartment he and my mom moved into in the end, in the apartments of others in
their building. It could be as big a job
as turning an unfinished attic into comfortable and roomy bedrooms for us kids
or helping his daughter and son-in-law stain their deck, or as small as
installing an extra shelf in a closet in an apartment of a woman down the
hall. All his life he happily seized on
any chance to help someone out in a tangible, practical way.
And when he died and I first saw his body – lifeless,
my first thought was, “Is that all? Is
that all it is?” I thought he would
always be there building and making things for others. But now already with each passing minute all
he did and all he was, was fading into the past. Already I could sense him and all he did
being lifted and carried away in the winds of time.
But then the second thought was that, yes,
that is
all there is – in a more positive sense. That his constant attention to another’s need
and his willingness to do what he could to meet it, is all there is to life –
at least to a good life, a life that survives the mere passing of time. Even though the things he made will break
down, in time will also need to be fixed or improved, and in the end be thrown
away, the underlying love for others that was expressed in what he did, will
never die or be lost. It will and it
does survive.
Because unlike stuff that gets swept away in
the winds of time, his attention to the needs of his neighbours was how he
became an instrument of the good will of God, and a channel in his time and in
his way of the one wind – the one Spirit, of God always wanting to be breathed
into the world in some way. And how can
that ever be lost?
Henri Nouwen has
written:
[We
spend much of our lives, it seems, preparing for] questions that never will be
asked. It seems as if we are getting
ourselves ready for the question “How much did you earn during your lifetime?”
or “How many friends did you make?” or “How much progress did you make in your
career?” or “How much influence did you have on people?” or “How many
conversions did you make?”
Were any of these to be the question Christ
will ask when he comes again in glory [or we come to the gate of Heaven], many
of us could approach the judgment day with great confidence. But nobody is going to hear any of these
questions. The question we all are going
to face is the question we are least prepared for. It is: “What have you done for the least of
mine?” As long as there are strangers;
hungry, naked, and sick people; prisoners, refugees, and slaves; people who are
handicapped physically, mentally, or emotionally; people without work, a home,
or a piece of land, there will be that haunting question from the throne of
judgment: “What have you done for the least of mine?”
How much money we amass, how many friends we
make, how successful we are in our career, and how many people look up to us,
in the end will all disappear and be swept away in the winds of time. What lasts and what counts is the ways we care
for the stranger, help the poor and the hungry, sit with those who are
imprisoned and disabled, and reach out to love those who are in need and who
are different from us. Because this how we
become channels of the wind and the Spirit of God being breathed into and through
our time.
And it might be something big. God’s desire to be with “the least of these” might
lead us to to create programs, support projects, build institutions and
agencies. And it might be something
small, the simplest thing, the merest gesture, the most common kind of kindness.
This year as vacation approached I was
worried. I wanted vacation to be
meaningful and memorable for both Japhia and I.
I wanted us to plan something we would remember after it was over, and
make it “a real vacation.”
And we had only week planned at a cottage –
which was great. But the rest -- the
other three weeks, were just going to be at home and I worried that with nothing special
planned, it would just come and go like an empty wind, with nothing left after to
show for it.
But
you know what happened? One of the best
parts of our vacation happened during those three weeks at home. During those weeks there was a stretch of
about a week when each and every day for five or six days in a row, Japhia and
I made a little trip to our neighbourhood Metro just to pick up a few little
things for dinner that evening. And each
and every time we were there we ended up in the check-out line of a cashier
named Val – not my sister Val, but another Val just as warm and personable. So day by day and bit by bit we had the most
delightful week-long conversation with her about vacation – ours at the moment
and hers coming up, about grandchildren – her one and our seven, and other
little tidbits of personal and family stuff.
We didn’t plan it. It started by accident; the first two days Val’s
line was the shortest. But after that,
when we became aware of what was happening, it was by choice we stood in her
line no matter how long the line or the time required.
Because, you see,
we have known Val as a cashier at the Metro for a few years, but a couple of
years ago one night we ran into her in the ER.
We were there on one of our visits with Japhia’s gastroparesis and she
was there with her married son. That
meeting deepened our connection and our awareness of what we each were dealing
with in life. So for one week this
summer when we had a chance to deepen it even more, we happily did.
And it was
wonderful. For us, for her, and I think for
a few other cashiers who noticed what was happening. The store was the same, the shopping was the
same, the groceries were the same, the prices were the same, we were all the
same people. But somehow it and we were
also all new, more real and vital than before, with a deepened spirit of community
and caring.
We can, and often
do, just blow through this world, doing and building and making and amassing
what we can, and then blow out if it like an empty wind. But we can also choose, in big and little
ways, to be opened to others around us, to be attentive to their needs, and to
let ourselves become channels instead of the one good wind – the Spirit of the
loving God, always wanting to be breathed into the world of our time.
And then we ended our sermon time with this little exercise:
- create groups of 2 or 3 in the congregation
- in the groups, each person take a turn saying to the other(s) in the group (looking at them as you say it): "I am glad ... you are here"
- still in the separate groups, all the group members say together (while looking at one another): "When we are opened to others ... we are a body of Christ"
- all the groups say together: "We can be part ... of the flow of God's Spirit in our time
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