Nothing makes sense anymore. Do you ever get to the point
where you think that nothing makes sense anymore? Do you ever get to the point
where you don’t really know what the point of anything is anymore? Ecclesiastes
1:2:
“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is
meaningless.”
This sounds a little familiar doesn’t it? Do we ever wonder
why we invested all of this time and energy into things that seem entirely
irrelevant to today?
Let me show you something: this hat, do we recognize it?
This flag, do we recognize it? When I was a student I was able to go to the
USSR. Young people met from each country. We exchanged greetings and shared
cultural dances, etc. Canada’s cultural dance: I don’t know who made the
selection. My guess is that we were surprised by the concept of a Canadian
national dance because we chose the Hokey Pokey as our national dance.
Hopefully people in Russia don’t still think that is our dance. Shortly after
this the whole USSR dissolved and all of the efforts that were made to
establish peace and understanding between the Soviet East and the Capitalist
West, were meaningless, as were all of the domestic advances of the USSR for
the Soviet Union disappeared from the face of the earth. We in the West were
told that this collapse would usher in an era of peace but, of course, the
opposite was true and even today you just need to turn on the TV to see how
much positive affect student exchanges, perestroika and glasnost had on peace
and understanding. It seems it was…
“Meaningless!
Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is
meaningless.”
But there is much more to this meaninglessness of
Ecclesiastes than an old flag and a hat that I happen to have from a city that
no longer exists in a country that no longer exists.[1]
Verse 3: What do
people gain from all their labours
at which they toil
under the sun?
We've heard the expression and maybe the Hoyt Axton song:
work your fingers to the bone and what do you get? Boney fingers. Or maybe
we've heard Tennessee Ernie Ford's version from an older song? You load 16 tons and what
do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. The city of Detroit went
bankrupt a couple of years ago. The Detroit Free press last year ran articles on
the effect of the city's bankruptcy on pensioners. Some people had to all of a
sudden find private health insurance of almost $1000 a month where it was
covered before.[2] In Canada
pensions that people are working for are not necessarily much more secure. Our
country has talked about raising the retirement age to 67 instead of 65 and
many people my age and younger have lamented that they may never be able to
retire. Hoyt Axton: You work your fingers to the bone what do you get? Boney
fingers. Tennessee Ernie Ford's: You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older
and deeper in debt. Ecclesiastes: What do you gain from all your labour and
toil under the sun?
The clips here are HOYT AXTON and JOHNNY CASH (not Tennessee Ernie Ford)
The clips here are HOYT AXTON and JOHNNY CASH (not Tennessee Ernie Ford)
We've heard the idea that if we work longer and harder we will earn enough to survive or even prosper. We have all heard of the prosperity heresy… that God won't let good hard-working Christians starve; they will all be rich: It is not true. Just like the parable Jesus tells about the man who builds storehouses to invest for his retirement. Luke 12:20: “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ Another music reference for us today. You know the song by Harry F. Chapin, 'Cat's in the Cradle?'
And the cat's in the
cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and
the man in the moon
"When you coming
home, dad?" "I don't know when"
But we'll get
together then
You know we'll have a
good time then
It is a song about a dad who works so hard, presumably for
his family, that he has no time for his child because he is working so much.
His child grows up and then his dad retires and has time for his son but his
son is now too busy for him. Like father like son. The story of the song's
writer is equally as tragic. Harry Chapin realized that he was a workaholic who
desired to spend time with his family as the song says but Harry Chapin also
did not get the chance; he died suddenly at 38 years old before he could
retire, leaving behind his daughter who grew up to be a performer - just like
him.
Hoyt Axton: You work your fingers to the bone what do you
get? Boney fingers. Tennessee Ernie Ford's: You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another
day older and deeper in debt. Ecclesiastes: What do you gain from all your
labour and toil under the sun?
All of this work, all of this toil and nothing ever changes.
Ecclesiastes 1, some more, verses 4-7:
4 Generations come
and generations go,
but the earth remains
forever.
5 The sun rises and
the sun sets,
and hurries back to
where it rises.
6 The wind blows to
the south
and turns to the
north;
round and round it
goes,
ever returning on its
course.
7 All streams flow
into the sea,
yet the sea is never
full.
To the place the
streams come from,
there they return
again.
All our hard work and other efforts and nothing seems to
change. I can remember feeling duped by politicians more than once, voting for
a new person or party believing that when they get in everything will be better
only to have them elected and see everything just continues on the same trajectory
as always. I still vote in every election that I can and I take the time to
research the people, the parties and the issues but there is a reason why less
and less people - especially young people - are voting these days.
Meaningless!
Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is
meaningless.”
Hard work, politics, even big societal changes - we've heard
the expression, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'?
Now Ecclesiastes really is a book that you have to read in
its entirety to grasp its full meaning but we just don't have time to do that
here today. Maybe you could do that at home though. I read it once or twice in
its entirety recently. I think it took about half an hour. The context is very
important because if we just continued to bring out quotes about everything
that is meaningless searching for meaning we may even find apparent
contradictions in this letter. Suffice it to say that a major theme is
Meaningless!
Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is
meaningless.”
But I do want to bring our attention to something that I
find very interesting and maybe even significant. Who wrote this book? In all
probability it was King Solomon or someone at his behest or pretending to be him.[3]
But, who is the teacher that is referred to by the author?
Meaningless!
Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is
meaningless.”
I had always just assumed that this teacher (or preacher
depending on your translation) was the author of the book or another person -
but I no longer think this to be the case necessarily. I looked at the Hebrew
for this text a little bit: Qohelet. This word that we translate as 'teacher'
is quite interesting. The Hebrew word Qohelet is in its feminine form. A small
number of scholars then can argue that the teacher of Ecclesiastes is a woman.
One problem for this is simply that masculine pronouns and language are used
consistently throughout. I think it is likely that the author was indeed male
(which matters not) but I think that when the text refers to the teacher that
the text is not referring to a specific person. I think the text is referring
to Wisdom herself. We know the name ‘Sophia’ is Latin for Wisdom. The Hebrew
word for ‘Wisdom’ in its feminine form is found here as in other Wisdom
literature, even in our Bible; in the book of Proverbs for example Wisdom is
personified as a woman.[4]
All of this I tell you simply because I found it interesting while I was doing
my research. It really doesn’t matter whether the teacher is Solomon himself, a
man or a woman or whether, consistent with other Wisdom literature, the teacher
is Wisdom herself but I found it interesting and I thought that you might as
well. If the teacher is Wisdom it doesn’t change the meaning of the text but I
think it does make it a little more clear that indeed this passage still speaks
to us today. However, in the end the whole discussion about who the teacher
really is…
Meaningless!
Meaningless!”
says Wisdom.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is
meaningless.”
This book does go through many things that one considers
meaningless: study, work, moral perfectionism/over-righteousness,
wickedness/foolishness, life, death, envy, fame, freedom, happiness,
hopelessness, talk, fellowship, and even wisdom itself.
When I was a teenager or even a young adult I read this book
as if it was written by a high school or university student. Looking for the
poignancy in apparent contradictions, my favourite verses at that time came
from Chapter 7:16-18:
Do not be
over-righteous,
neither be over-wise—
why destroy yourself?
Do not be
over-wicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your
time?
It is good to grasp
the one
and not let go of the
other.
Whoever fears God will follow each extreme (or avoid them
both).
I have spent some time in the past few weeks reading and
studying this again and now I read it as a middle aged person who is not
tempted to be caught up in the novelty of paradox as much as I am to be swept
away by the apathy of experience. Many people try to sum up this book with the
cliché that life is meaningless without God but I think that this book says
much more than that. I think the book points out quite clearly that even with
God in our lives these meaningless events occur. Even if you are a Christian
you can lead your life as a health nut, only eating the appropriate amount of
organic health food and still die of cancer. You can be an athlete who works
out and exercises appropriately and still have a heart attack. You can study 15
years in University and spend all your money doing so and still not get a
degree or you might get that degree but then not be able to find any work so
that all that time and money you spent was indeed meaningless. You might be
like that fellow in Luke’s parable that we mentioned earlier who is really good
with his money and saves up for his retirement only to die before he is able to
retire. You might work harder than anyone else in your job and never get a
promotion. You may volunteer for a million years and never get a paid position.
Life is like this. Life is not roses and puppies. You will have good times and
you will have bad times. Whether you have money and health, or study hard and
work hard or whether you don’t won’t affect that (cf. also James 4:13-17). You
cannot inoculate yourself from trouble; you can not vaccinate yourself against
hard times. I think this is the message of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes 9:11:
The race is not to
the swift or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to
the wise
or wealth to the
brilliant or favour to the learned;
but time and chance
happen to them all.
This is important. You cannot be vaccinated against bad
times; you cannot be inoculated against life. Trying to do so, trying to solve
all of life's problems on our own won't work.
It doesn't matter how rich or poor, smart or dumb, pretty or pretty ugly
you might be, time and circumstance happens to us all. What we can do is seek
to learn and have the joy of the Lord in all of our circumstances (Phil 4:4-8).
We cannot ever fully prevent the tragedies of life from happening. Life
happens. But when the tragedies do occur we can turn to the Lord who promises
He will never leave us nor forsake us (Dt 31:6, Heb 13:5). As the Teacher tells
us to conclude this book:
Now all has been
heard;
here is the
conclusion of the matter:
Fear (Respect) God
and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty
of all mankind.
And as we do that, as we seek the Lord and trust in Him,
everything will be okay - even when it isn't.
Let us pray.
Let us pray.
[1] Cf. Tewoldernedhin Habtu, Africa Bible Commentary, (Nairobi,
Kenya: Word Alive Publishers, 2010), 814, ‘What’s the Point? 1:1-2:6’ about the
still prevelant Afican perpective of a
transient people on a on a not as temporary earth.
[2] Cf. Susan
Tompor, 'Even 5 years later, retirees feel the effects of Detroit's bankruptcy'
(Detroit Free Press Published 6:00 a.m. ET July 18, 2018 | Updated 3:34 p.m. ET
July 18, 2018):
https://www.freep.com/story/money/personal-finance/susan-tompor/2018/07/18/detroit-bankruptcy-retirees-pension/759446002/
[3] Cf. also J.
Stafford Wright, The Expositor's Bible
Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Ecclesiastes/Introduction to
Ecclesiastes/Authorship of Ecclesiastes, Book Version: 4.0.2
[4] Cf. W.
Sibley Towner, The Book of Ecclesiastes,
(NIB V: Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1997) 268, 280. If the teacher/preacher here
is not ‘Wisdom’ then it puts the book of Ecclesiasts in an unique situation as
Wisdom, though a major theme would never make a cameo as one personified.
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