The Order of Grace

 October 24 2021

Ecclesiastes 11

         One of the things that I really enjoy is finding something on social media that will give me some food for thought because, as most people know there is a lot of mindless nonsense which abounds there. So, needless to say, I was thrilled to find this Facebook page called Mockingbird which has weekly articles about Christian spiritual matters. Now, these articles are not your ordinary fare of Christian reading and, case in point, is an article that they ran this past week. What got my heart racing is that it began by elaborating on the Second Law of Thermodynamics; like I said not your usual stuff. I got excited when I began to read this because I am a big physics nerd; it was one of my favorite classes in school. So, I know what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is all about but what I couldn’t figure out is how it had anything to do with you and I following Jesus. You see, the Second Law of Thermodynamics simply states that unless some outside source intervenes everything goes from order to disorder which explains my house to a ‘T’. As the author of the article stated if you see two pictures one of a beach full of sand and one with a picture of a sandcastle you know the picture of the beach is the before picture and the picture of the sandcastle is the one after someone took time and effort to take the sand and mold and shape the sand into a castle. And once that person leaves the beach that sand castle will eventually go back to being just a big pile of sand. That’s just the way the world works. Order in whatever form takes energy from an outside source to take all of the disorder and make something out of it which when you think about it, explains just why we as people can not get better without some power from the outside, the power that is personal, the power we know as Jesus. Isn’t that interesting that the laws that we depend on to make sense of the world seem to apply to spiritual matters as well. It makes sense when you stop and consider that the whole earth, everything the physical, the spiritual, the seen and the unseen is full of the glory of God. So, just as we know that a pile of Lego’s will just sit there and be a pile of Lego’s until somebody begins to put them together and build something with them so too who we are to be will not happen until we allow God to take us into his hands and let him take the chaos of our life and bring his order into our life.

         Once we understand that on our own we will just continue to bring more chaos into the world without the intervention of God, then we can begin to wonder just what is this order that God is trying to bring about in our life? If we don’t understand just what God is trying to make out of the mess of our life then we might not fully trust him as he seeks to build according to his plan. The author C.S. Lewis once wrote to imagine ourselves as living houses. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first perhaps you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof. But presently He starts knocking the house in a way that hurts. It doesn’t make sense; what on earth is he up to? The explanation, Lewis goes on to tell us, is that God is building something quite different than you thought of. God is building a palace that He intends to come in and live in Himself.  So, C.S. Lewis, is saying what we have been thinking about that it is God who is needed to come into our life and bring order out of our chaos, out of our mess and what he is making is something beyond our imagination because he is building something that he can inhabit, something that goes along with what he is up to in the world.

         So, all of this, I’m sure your thinking, is great but what about Ecclesiastes; are we ever going to get around to our scripture for today? The tie in that this idea that God is the power we need to bring order out of the chaos of our life has with the book of Ecclesiastes is that, as we might recall, Ecclesiastes is a book about wisdom. Wisdom has as its bedrock idea that the world makes sense and if we can figure out how the world is ordered then we can make choices with understanding and knowledge. So, yes, as the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us, there is nothing new under the sun, and this is a good thing because once we figure out the order that God is bringing about then we don’t have to fear that tomorrow something is going to pop up that we can’t make sense of.  This order is what the writer of Ecclesiastes is trying to figure out because everywhere he looked people were involved in a bunch of non-sensical ways of living. They were filling their lives with what amounted to nothing more than trying to grab the wind and stuff it in their pockets. What the writer of Ecclesiastes keeps coming back to time and time again is the experience which he had at the harvest festivals that God required of his people. There, in what was known as the Festival of Booths, God commanded his people to rejoice for seven days because of  the harvest that they had gathered in. They were to rest and feast, eating and drinking recognizing that all that they had gathered in was theirs because of the love of God who makes the sun shine on the evil and the good, who makes the rains come upon both the just and the unjust. God commanded his people in this moment to be people who were overflowing with joy because there in their rest from their labors they were to recognize that all that they had been blessed with was because of the grace of God, God’s favor upon his people that was theirs not because of who they were or what they had done but his grace was simply the very way of God. So, when the writer of Ecclesiastes, writes again and again that the best that people could expect in this life was to eat, drink and rejoice it is not hard to understand that there very possibly was a connection to the celebration of this harvest festival where God’s people experienced the very best that life had to offer.

         As the writer of Ecclesiastes, continued in his journey to figure out the purpose of life, he comes to understand that there in that experience of great joy, something unexpected was also experienced, a life beyond fear. The experience of death is a constant theme that the writer of Ecclesiastes focuses on but he senses that there is something beyond  that end which comes to everyone. In the experience of joy that the writer of Ecclesiastes states is so very important, there he begins to understand that what God desires is for his people to experience in perhaps just a moment, a life beyond fear because this is the existence of God. So, where wisdom literature like the book of Proverbs states that wisdom begins with the fear of God, the writer of Ecclesiastes writes that this is only the beginning of wisdom; the journey of wisdom goes on past this fear and is found in the joy experienced in the favor and welcome of God which is what God’s grace is all about.

         It is this experience of God’s grace, his making his face to shine upon us, this experience empowers us to live in the present moment because it is there in every present moment that our God is present with us. All of this understanding that the writer of Ecclesiastes has figured out is important to what he comes to know is true wisdom. You see, what might not be  evident about the importance of basing our life upon God being present with us in every present moment is that only as we live in the present can we love in the present. This is where God always wants to brings his people to the place where the past is truly past, and where we know that the future is what it has always been, a place that does not yet exist so that we can at last live in the present because only as we live in the present can we be present to one another as God is present with us. This is where God’s grace is supposed to bring us to, to the place where we can live without fear before the presence of God. This is the relationship grace was always meant to have with faith not as some means necessary to achieve personal salvation but rather grace is given to us by God in order to cast out all of our fears so that we might perfectly love as God first perfectly loved us.

         When we unravel all of the ramifications of that simple advice to eat, drink and enjoy, it should come as no surprise that as the writer of Ecclesiastes comes to the end of his writing he states that we are to cast our bread upon the waters, for we will find it after many days. Now, to me this sounds like we are to feed the ducks but the writer of Ecclesiastes, I believe, is stating something more profound because  this saying is firmly connected with the next statement which tells us that we are to give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the earth. What most of us know about giving to others is that it is a lot like tossing bread unto the surface of a pond; once you throw that bread out there good luck trying to get it back.  Bread is used as a representation of a person’s livelihood and when a person gives to someone else they in many ways are giving their very livelihood to them. To the watching world when people give to others it just doesn’t make any sense because, hey, once you give that gift is gone forever; or is it? The writer of Ecclesiastes goes on to tell us that after many days, that bread we watched turn to a soggy mess upon the surface of the pond will be found once again. How in the world can that be so? Well, this line corresponds to the line where the writer states that we do not know what disaster may happen on the earth. What the writer of Ecclesiastes is getting at is life within the order that God is bringing about. The order God seeks for us to live in is an order of grace, that unmerited favor given to us by God. Grace is a gift, a gift not of God’s livelihood but a gift of life itself. God gives his grace so that he might create a world where the life of everyone is ordered by grace. So, yes, we take our livelihood, our daily bread, and we give it away, throwing it out there like throwing bread on the surface of a lake knowing that we may never see it again. But then disaster happens and we find ourselves in need, perhaps even secretly wishing that we now had that bread we so foolishly had given away yet all is not lost because along comes someone else who takes their bread and he gives his bread to you knowing full well he might as well take that loaf in his hand and chuck it in the river as to ever think he will ever get that bread back. This is life that is ordered by grace, a life ordered by giving and showing favor and welcome without concerns of whether that person we give to is worthy to receive our gift. We order our lives by grace because this is the way God has ordered his world, giving life to us not because we ever gave God any reason to believe that we were worth the giving to us any gift at all.And if the world is ordered by grace then a life lived under such an order must be a life of wisdom.

         Now, if we have doubts about such an interpretation we need only to look at a parable Jesus told which is found at the beginning of the sixteenth chapter of the gospel of Luke. There we hear Jesus tell his disciples about a rich man who had a manager  and charges were brought to this rich man that his manager was wasting his possessions. So, the rich man sent for the manager and he asked him, “what is this I hear about you? Turn in your account of your management, for you can no longer be my manager. Upon hearing this the manager said to himself, “What am I going to do? I am not strong enough to dig and I am too ashamed to beg. What I will do then when I am removed from management is to make so people will receive me into their homes. So, summoning his masters debtors, the manager spoke to each, one by one,. He asked the first debtor, “How much do you owe? The debtor said,”A hundred measures of oil.” The manager told him to sit down quickly and write fifty measures of oil instead. Then the manager asked another debtor how much did he owe. The debtor told him that he owed one hundred bushels of wheat. The manager told him to write eighty bushels instead. The rich man, Jesus said, commended the manager for his wisdom. So, what is the point of this rather confusing story? Well, first we cannot forget that Jesus tells this story directly after having told the story of the Prodigal Son. In that story we hear of the grace of the Father who welcomes home a son who did not deserve the gift of hospitality that his Father offers to him. The prodigal son’s brother upon discovering out about this gift his Father has offered his wayward brother refuses to obey his Father’s command to come into the house and celebrate and the Father offers grace to the older brother just as he had done to the younger brother. So, Jesus here is speaking to the reality that God orders his world by grace. Jesus then follows the story of the gracious Father with this story of what is often called the dishonest manager however this title comes out of a misunderstanding as to how business was conducted in the Middle East. The manager in the story was the middle man who represented the rich man. The rich man owned a great deal of land of which people would give a portion of their harvest to the rich man in order to farm his land. The manager would take the amount that was owed to the rich man and to that number he would add his amount for his work as the go between. So, what has happened is that the manager has been found to have squandered his wealth. This is exactly how Jesus described what had happened to the younger son in his story of the prodigal son and it tells us that these two stories are connected. So, just as the youngest son when he had squandered his money decided to trust in the grace of his Heavenly Father so now the manager when he has been found to have squandered his money also decided to put his hope in grace. He decides to bet his future upon the favor or welcome of others, that they might share their livelihood with him. How does he hope to make such a thing happen? The manager decided to first be gracious to those who owed money to the rich man. When the manager told the first debtor to go and erase the hundred barrels of oil and in its place write fifty barrels instead what he is revealing is that what was owed to the rich man was fifty barrels of oil; the other fifty barrels is what the manager would usually take as his cut. The same thing happened when he met with the second debtor when the manager told him that instead of the usual bill of one hundred bushels of wheat he instead was to write eighty bushels. Eighty bushels is what was owed to the rich man and the manager added twenty bushels as his own shipping and handling fee. You see, what the manager was doing was giving up what was his rightful money he needed to live on today so that through his gracious gift to the debtors he might have friends for the future. This is a life ordered by grace. The manager offered a gift first in hopes that his gift might affect the hearts of those he had given the gift to so that when he found himself homeless they would welcome him into their homes. His gracious gift to the debtors could be seen much like the writer of Ecclesiastes described it as throwing bread upon the water because there was no certainty that those who had received his gift would respond in like manner. The eldest son in the story of the prodigal son remained unmoved by his Fathers favor and welcome even though the eldest son in his defiance of his Father deserved to be punished. Even so, Jesus tells us this story of the gracious manager to give us a picture of the wisdom of a life ordered by grace. This is the wisdom that the writer of Ecclesiastes also at last had come to, this is when life at last makes sense. As Jesus goes on to conclude his parable of the gracious manager, Jesus tells us that we are to use our unrighteous wealth, wealth we so easily worship, and use that which God has so graciously given us to make friends. This makes sense because what God has done was to take that which was the richest gift, the gift of his own dear Son and he gave this gift so that we who were his enemies might be transformed into his friends. This is the wisdom of the cross; this is the wisdom of grace. To God be the glory! Amen!

 

 

 

The Guarantee of God

 October 17 2021

Ecclesiastes 9

         So, there you are all comfy on the couch, your eyes are heavy and you feel yourself slowly drifting off into the state of an afternoon nap when just as you are almost asleep you are jarred awake by the ringing of your phone. You do your best to jump from the couch, your heart is racing, you go in search of where you last laid the phone and you answer it only to hear, “We want to talk to you about your extended warranty…” Isn’t that infuriating! I always want to ask them if that extended warranty will cover my 2001 Buick just to see if that warranty can be extended for twenty years. These extended warranty phone calls have become a cultural phenomenon with memes about it showing up everywhere. Since we are getting close to Halloween there’s a meme warning parents to check the Halloween candy because as the parent opens up the candy bar they find a slip of paper tucked inside with the message, “We have been trying to reach you concerning your extended warranty.”

         Now, as much as these extended warranty phone calls drive us crazy, there is certain case to be made that somebody somewhere just might be interested in extending their warranty. I mean, sometimes a warranty is a good thing if it will cover the cost of repairs for when your car suddenly decides today is a good day to die. A warranty is much like a guarantee that gives us hope that if something goes wrong in a certain amount of days we are assured we can get our money back. We could also say that warranties and guarantees are also like insurance where we pay in month after month so that somewhere down the road we’re covered when something goes wrong. What warranties, guarantees and insurance all help us do then is deal with an uncertain future where are car might suddenly decide to not work or where a tree might decide to one day fall over on your house. We all try to look for ways that we can cushion the blow of unforeseen events that are waiting for us in some, not so distant, future.

         The future, then, is something that people have always tried to deal with, always trying to find ways of dealing with the unexpected happenings that are sure to make us respond, “I didn’t see that coming”. In the ninth chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, the writer is giving us a critique of a prominent way the people of God tried to handle the vast unknown of their future and he states what should be an obvious flaw. He begins by telling us that the deeds of the righteous and the wise are in the hand of God. We need to hold on to these two descriptions of people, the righteous and the wise, because as we will discover it is these two kinds of people whose view of life is going to be found wanting. This the writer begins to unfold as he continues to tell us that it is the same for all, the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and to the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and to him who does not sacrifice. So, here what the writer is elaborating on is the fact that no ones future is determined by what they are doing in the present. The person who believes themselves to be righteous, a good person who keeps their nose clean and is faithful to offer God all the required sacrifices  has no more certainty about their future than the person who everyone knows is just a wicked evil person, who cares nothing about a pure heart nor about giving what is rightfully God’s. This goes against the commonly held view which is called karma where people get what’s coming to them. In the United States, over thirty percent of the population believes that if you do something wrong today then watch out, tomorrow that wrong will catch up with you. The writer of Ecclesiastes, who spent much time watching people concluded that there is no such thing as karma as much as we would like to believe that such a thing exists. The reason we want to hang on to such a belief, I suppose, is that for us who are trying to do good today we hope that that good will find us out tomorrow. It just seems fair and right but in all actuality such a system just doesn’t exist. As the writer of Ecclesiastes continues in the ninth chapter, as it happens to the good person so it happens to the sinner, To the writer this seems like a great evil and if we had to be honest we would agree with him that what we do today really has no bearing whatsoever on what will happen to us tomorrow. We have to consider what affect this uncertainty has on people to grasp what the writer means when he states the hearts of the children of men are full of evil. This fact of life that no matter the good or evil people might do today they both still face the same future tomorrow, this causes people to lose faith in the goodness of God. It wears on people to see bad things happen to good people and even worse it troubles people to see evil people living the high life. In the end, we begin to wonder about God and why life seems to be so unfair. This is the root of evil, this doubt in the goodness of God because if God is not good then just what is there that we can call good?

         You see, what may not be obvious to us is what the writer of Ecclesiastes is doing is sizing up a common belief of God’s people that runs throughout scripture. It is this belief that those who are righteous or the wise will be rewarded with a blessed future where God will keep them from suffering. Suffering is reserved for the wicked, for those who have not done what God requires.  The beginnings of such thinking is found with the story of Cain in the fourth chapter of Genesis where Cain desired that God guarantee a good harvest and he was willing to give a portion of his grain to seal the deal. You see, the problem with this thinking is found out here, right at the beginning because what Cain wanted to give for this God guarantee was the bare minimum necessary to convince God to ensure a good future filled with an abundant harvest. You see, such an understanding that our righteousness today can determine our future tomorrow will always end in let’s make a deal. Just how much is the God guarantee going to cost me? God doesn’t want to make deals with us, that’s why he rejected Cain’s offering. No, what he wanted was a sincere relationship with those who loved him.

         This thinking that the righteous will have a great future and the wicked will suffer is also found in the book of Deuteronomy where in the twentieth chapter there is listed the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience. Yet in spite of what is written here, when we read the seventy-third Psalm we hear the writer of this Psalm state that he was envious of the arrogant when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. The wicked had no hunger pangs, their bodies were fat and sleek. These wicked had no concerns and they were not stricken like the rest of mankind. Their pride they wore like a necklace; their violence covered them like their clothes. They spoke with malice and they threatened people with oppression. Their mouths were set against the heavens and yet in spite of this they continually increased in riches. So, what about this idea that God was going to bless the righteous and bring curses upon those who were disobedient? Despite of what people observed concerning the prospering of the wicked they still clung to this idea that if they did what God required he would still hold up his end of the bargain and ensure a great future for the obedient. What you ended up with is people who went through the motions, doing what was required to get God to guarantee their future but living in the present as if being the people of God meant you could do as you please. This is the situation found in the seventh chapter of Jeremiah where the people thought that since they were faithful to worship correctly as God told them then their future was going to be great and glorious yet as God pointed out what were they going to do about the oppression that was happening to the visitors to their land, to those without husbands and fathers, to the innocent bystanders, the oppression that was happening in the here and now, The people of Israel were so caught up in wanting a future without suffering that they paid no attention to those who were suffering right before them in the present. They could ignore this suffering because according to their mindset their suffering must have been theirs to bear because of some wickedness in their past that they now had to pay for in the present. Are you beginning to see how warped such thinking can make people?

         So, as you follow this thinking through the Bible we can understand why Jesus was such a threat to the establishment who still believed that if they were good righteous people following the Law to perfection then it just figured that their future would be blessed by God. Their righteousness was the key to a future victory over their enemies the Romans. What they didn’t need was some Rabbi wannabe mucking up the works hanging out with sinners and stating that the ones who were blessed by God were not the rich but the poor, not the people of pleasure but the sad and mournful people, not those who gave the orders but those willing to follow, not for those satisfied with their righteousness but blessedness was for those who hungered and thirsted for life to be right, these were the real blessed people of God. Can you see how this thinking threatened those who were living under the assumption that it was the righteous who were guaranteed a great and glorious future? They clung to this idea even though there in their own scriptures was written in the book of Ecclesiastes that such an idea had no merit whatsoever. And the reason why this idea would not die was again just as the writer of Ecclesiastes understood it so well, that if the future was the same for everyone, for the righteous and the wicked, then what does this say about God? As the writer describes it in the seventh chapter of his writings, there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in evil doing. So, if this is the way things are what can we conclude we should do with our life? The answer the writer gives is that perhaps we shouldn’t be overly righteous nor should we be overly wise. I mean, why should one try so hard to be good when being good does not seem to have any real benefit? The writer then goes on to tell us that he tested this idea by wisdom but such thinking he concluded was that these ideas were far from being wise.

         So, how did the writer make sense of what he had observed? The answer he always comes back to is that we are to eat our bread with joy and drink with a merry heart for God approves of us. This seems a little simplistic doesn’t it? Yet, if we stop to consider what the writer is implying it begins to be clear that his point is this: stop being concerned with the future and instead live in the present. As we learned last week, the experience of joy is our recognition of grace, the undeserved favor or welcome of God. The writer of Ecclesiastes came to understand that in this experience of joy, an experience that God expected during the various festivals where his people gathered in their harvest, in this experience they were to come to an understanding that all that they had was theirs because of the undeserved love of God, his favor given to them not because of who they were but given to them because of who God is. When the mind suddenly becomes aware that God in his grace desires us to experience life in a new way, a life where fear gives way to favor, then hearts are set free to overflow with joy. The writer of Ecclesiastes knew in a vague sort of way that what God wanted his people to experience was what the life of God was like, a life absent of any fear even if for a moment. So, instead of God securing our future what he does instead is to set us free from fear so that we might enjoy the present. The present is the very realm of God for as he spoke his name to Moses in the third chapter of Exodus, our God is to be known as “I am who I am”. God is not known as the “I was” nor is he to be known as the “I will be”. No, our God is the “I Am”, the ever present God. So, the guarantee our God gives to us is not the guarantee of a blessed future in exchange for our righteous or wise living but instead God guarantees that he will be ever present with us. This is what Jesus understood so well for as he explained to his disciples on the night of his death, they, his good friends, would all be scattered each to their own homes, leaving Jesus to fend for himself but not to worry, Jesus went on, because his Heavenly Father was with him. Jesus who represents us as perfect man knew what is true for all of us, no matter what the circumstances, God is ever present with us. As the writer of Ecclesiastes continues in the ninth chapter, those who are joined with the living have hope. Through this experience of eating and rejoicing, one was to come to the realization that it was God, his grace and his love which was the source of their life, the very origin of their life. To this then we must add that our God is the God who is ever present with us which means that we are united to God because God has chosen to be faithful to us. It is that God is united to us through his faithfulness that we have hope. This makes all the difference when facing a future where death is always a possibility. As the writer explains, the living are aware of their death. Those who are dead, those who have not realized that God is their very life will also never realize that God remembers those who have been united to him. So, our lives mean something because the God who gives us life, the one we realize is always with us through his faithfulness, this God will not forget us when we die. Here in the writings of the Old Testament are the first inklings of the resurrection, the living hope given to us that God does not forget those who are united to him. This is why the living have a living hope.

         You see, this hope we have which is the consequence of our rejoicing is a gift from God that is not dependent on our righteousness or our perceived wisdom. Our hope is a result of grace, the grace recognized in our joy, a grace of God’s unmerited favor whose love is poured out on the good and evil alike, showered upon the just and unjust. The circumstances we might face in the future are no indicator of our present perception of where we might think we are with God. The wicked may prosper, the righteous may suffer yet no matter what God remains faithful to those who have experienced his grace and acknowledged his grace with joy. It is not the suffering which indicates to a watching world that we are united with the living God but rather it is how this God, who is united with us, transforms how we react to our suffering. Paul was criticized by rival preachers that he could not be an apostle of Jesus because his life was filled with suffering. These rival preachers held to the continuing theme refuted by the writer of Ecclesiastes which believed that because of their righteousness they would have a future free from hurt and pain. Paul who suffered mightily could not possibly be right with God because God surely would have kept this suffering from happening. Yet, Paul knew how very twisted was their thinking because the suffering he endured was  the means which proved how wrong his skeptics were. It was there, in the midst of his hurt and his pain, that the ever faithful God who was united with him was quite evident. Paul writes in the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians, ‘We have this treasure in clay jars to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not us. We are afflicted in every way; but we are not crushed. We are perplexed; but we are not driven to despair. We are persecuted; but we are not forsaken. We are struck down; but we are not destroyed.  We are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus might be manifested in us.” This is why James could write in the first few lines of his letter that we are to count it all joy when we face our trials because it is there in the darkness of our future that the light of God’s grace is so easily seen. God doesn’t guarantee a future of bliss but rather what God does guarantee is that whatever our future does hold, he will be our power and strength through it all. To his honor and glory! Amen.

         

The Security of Joy

 October 10 2021

Ecclesiastes 5:10-20, 6:1-12

         It goes without saying that the Bible is a book of surprises. Perhaps one of the things that most surprises people when they begin to study scriptures is that they speak volumes about wealth. Now, this catches people off guard, I guess, because most people don’t consider that money or riches belongs in a book which is supposed to be about spiritual matters. So it takes some doing to come to an understanding that wealth very much indeed has spiritual implications. For those people who like their life to be parceled out in neat little compartments, this creates some hardship because just which box do our finances belong? You know, you have your secular stuff over here in this box and the spiritual stuff over there in this box and it would make sense for money and wealth to go over there in the secular box but the Bible seems to indicate otherwise.

         This difficulty of understanding wealth as a spiritual matter is seen anytime the subject is brought up in church because there are quite a few people who think the church only speaks about money because they need money to run the church. You see, when people believe that the church only speaks about finances in this way they are revealing that there can’t possibly be some other reason why the church might bring up the subject, like the fact that the Bible quite clearly makes no bones about wealth and what we treasure being quite definitely issues of our spirit. How else do you explain what Jesus says in the sixth chapter of Matthew where he teaches us that where are treasure is, there are hearts will be also. Our hearts are the seat of our emotion and will, our inner guidance system, the sum total of which makes up the spiritual side of ourselves.

         So, yes, wealth and finances are a spiritual subject, believe it or not and the reason why this subject comes up is for the very fact that God loves us and wants the very best for each of us. The Bible doesn’t speak about money so that the church has amble funds to run its programs. Finances aren’t part of what we talk about just so we as pastors can be tour guides on some kind of guilt trip. No, the reason why the Bible says anything at all about wealth is that God loves us better than we can love ourselves and he loves us enough to want us to not settle for anything less than the very best life he has created us for.

         You see, I know how good church going folk are when the subject of wealth and money comes up. I served Stewardship Committees too many times to count. That’s why I knew that before I dive into what the writer of Ecclesiastes has to say about wealth I had to first speak to how people think about their finances being brought up in church. I hope that when we understand that what is written about concerning money in the scriptures that we will understand that it is there because there is a God who loves us who knows we need to hear what is being said and we will lean in to learn about the spiritual side of finances.

         The first bit of wisdom that the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us is that the one who loves money will not be satisfied with money nor will the one who loves wealth with his income. When goods increase, they increase who eat them and what advantage has their owner but to see them with their eyes? When I read about the one who loves money I can’t but help but hear what Paul tells Timothy in the sixth chapter of his first letter to him that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Now, we have to be careful when we read this to hear Paul correctly, that it isn’t money, in and of itself, that is the problem. No, the problem, Paul tells us, is the desire to be rich because this desire only leads to other desires, harmful  and senseless desires which plunge people into ruin and destruction. Its amazing that what Paul is teaching Timothy here is the very same teaching as the writer of Ecclesiastes that the love of money will not be satisfied with money and the riches that they have kept are only going to be a source of hurt for those who keep them. As the writer of Ecclesiastes goes on, he further states that what is the point of such pursuits of wealth because as we came into this world, in this same way we will go out; there will be nothing from our work that we have done here that we will be able to carry in our hands. When we consider such an ending, just what is the point for such people to spend their lives stressed out, being sick and angry? Do you see how our attitude toward our finances really is a spiritual subject?

         The writer of Ecclesiastes being a person who is trying to figure out just why so much of life doesn’t make sense, ponders as to why it is that there are people who are so obsessed about money that they can never have enough even when they know that they can take none of what they have when they go. To the writer of Ecclesiastes, it was a grave evil that here was someone who had been seemingly blessed by God to have abundance beyond belief but surprisingly enough they found no enjoyment in what they had been given. I mean, isn’t this a tragedy when you see people and they seem to have everything going for them but they are the most miserable people on Earth? How can we explain such a life? Well, the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that if a person has a beautiful family and a long and healthy life but his soul is not satisfied with life and the good things he has been given then, you know, in a way, it would have been better off if he had never had been born. So, we begin to pick up on a theme running through this section of Ecclesiastes, of people who love their wealth and are never satisfied and how those who have been blessed with abundance but have no joy and the answer to both of these peculiar states of being is that they are in the same manner of being as the person who in spite of his good fortune, just can’t get no satisfaction.

         Here again, Paul is right there with the writer of Ecclesiastes because that warning to Timothy that the love of money is the root of all evil begins with Paul warning Timothy of those who were using their godliness, their supposed devotion to God as a means to create financial gain. I’m sure glad that we have eliminated such people in the last two thousand years, aren’t you. Well, all kidding aside, these people who professed to be devout worshippers of God had missed the point of their devotion because as Paul tells Timothy where there is the greatest gain, the largest profit, we might say, is when our devotion to God is united with contentment, when our devotion to God leads us to a satisfaction with the life God has blessed us with because just as the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote thousands of years before him, Paul explains that we brought nothing into this world and we take nothing out of this world when we go. It is this understanding, that one day, we know not when, our life will cease to be, and all our toys will have to go back in the box, this is the very reason for the desire we have to store up treasures. You can watch the squirrels this time of year being busy gathering up all the nuts which have fallen. These are their treasure which they instinctively know that they will need to survive the winter until spring arrives once again. They too are never satisfied because they too do not know just how much is enough. Even so, we unlike the squirrels and every other animal on the planet, we were created for something different, within us, the writer of Ecclesiastes explains, God has placed eternity in our hearts. We are the creation of God which has been created to hear the voice of the eternal God and this is the time when God is testing us to see if we are those created in the image of God or are we like all the rest of the beasts, just those who listen to the voice of our desires. If we have chosen to listen to the voice of God, if we have made listening to God our way of life which is a way of understanding what godliness is, then it just follows that we need to be satisfied, contented with the provision of God. This is what Paul tells Timothy and it is exactly what the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us. At the end of the fifth chapter, the writer of Ecclesiastes writes that what he has seen to be good and fitting is to eat, drink and find enjoyment in the work that God has us to do for the few days of our life . Everyone to whom God has given wealth, and possessions and power are to enjoy them, to accept their lot, to rejoice in their work because all of this is a gift from God. 

         As we read through the book of Ecclesiastes, it becomes pretty evident that joy is a crucial part of our finding contentment in this world. We aren’t just to eat and drink what God has given us, no, we are to do so with joy. So, we have to figure out just what is meant by this idea of joy? Perhaps the best definition is found in the word in the Greek that is translated as joy. This word as you study it is found to have the same root as the word grace so that to be joyful means that we have a recognition of grace. Grace is the favor or welcome of God and we grasp this connection between joy and grace in the parable Jesus told of the servants who had received talents from their master. To the servants who returned with double the amount of talents that they were given they received from their master the commendation, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your master.” Joy is experienced when we enter into the welcome given to us by God. This is a key discovery that the writer of Ecclesiastes had come to. Yes, as he states in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, we cannot figure out what God has done from beginning to end, and that what God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it nor can anything be taken from what God has done, this is why people are to fear God. As we learn in the ninth chapter of Proverbs, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom but what the writer of Ecclesiastes figured out is that, the fear of God is just that, the beginning. Through his experience of joy, the writer of Ecclesiastes began to understand that while there is much we cannot begin to understand about God, what we can know is that God loves and welcomes us into his presence. This we know to be true because it is God who gives us all that we need for life. The writer of Ecclesiastes went further in his thought process and concluded that in a moment of joy we experience a moment of life beyond fear, beyond even the fear of God when in that moment we experience the very favor of God. In giving this experience what God is doing is giving us a taste of his life, an existence absent of fear. This is what is in this very profound statement of the writer of Ecclesiastes where he writes that we will not remember the days of our life because God will keep us occupied with joy in our heart. No longer then does one have to be constantly focused on death or be consumed by the fear of death because in our experience of joy we are overwhelmed by the favor and welcome of God. Once again this truth discovered by the writer of Ecclesiastes is echoed in Paul’s instructions to Timothy when he tells him at the end of the sixth chapter of his first letter, that Timothy was to charge the rich of this age to not be arrogant nor were they to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches  but instead they were to set their hopes on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. What we have then is to be thought of as being a gift from God and it has been given to us that we might know that he does so in order that we might enter into his favor and welcome and by dwelling upon that experience of joy we will find that we no longer are gripped by the fear of death.

         You see, with this understanding of life then this is how we can find the abundant riches that are ours when our godliness, our devotion and worship of God is united with contentment with what God has provided us. This being contented is not something that is an easy state of mind for any of us to achieve. The world we live in depends on us being discontented so that we will crave the latest and greatest new objects for us to desire. So it should come as no surprise to us when we read in the fourth chapter of his letter to the Philippians, Paul admits that he had to learn, in whatever situation, to be content. We often read these words of Paul and forget that this means that at one time he was a very discontented person, the person who is described to us in the previous chapter of Philippians. There Paul tells us of how he had lived a life seeking to find confidence in what his own strength could do. He was the best of the best when it came to being one of God’s people, he was a Pharisee, a person who lived according to the strictest standards of purity, so that as measured by the law his righteousness was without question. He was on fire for God, willing to persecute the church to prove his devotion. All of this he felt was a profitable way for him to live right up until the day that Paul had an encounter with Jesus, with the one who is the embodiment of God’s grace, the one who welcomed Paul despite the unworthiness of Paul to be given such a gift. In the light of this grace which had overwhelmed Paul, what he once thought to be worth so much to him he came to see all of it as a loss, worthless, being nothing more to him than the muck which stuck to the bottom of his shoe. What he came to know as being the greatest riches was the grace and favor he had received as a gift from his Lord Jesus Christ. It is no wonder that Paul could encourage the church at Philippi to rejoice and if they didn’t get the message he again states that they were to rejoice. This from a man who was waiting execution at the hands of the Romans. He could encourage people to rejoice because he knew what it meant to be in want and he knew what it was like to experience abundance. In any and every circumstance, Paul had learned the secret of facing plenty and the secret to being hungry, to experience the whole realm of human experience, that of having more than enough and also that of being in need. Here is what Paul had learned: he could go through all that he had experienced because of the power he had through the one who strengthened him. This one who was his power is Jesus, God in the flesh, the God of all grace and favor who gave all Paul needed so that Paul could find a contentment, a peace which was beyond all human understanding, no matter what circumstances that Paul had found himself in. This is the power of God’s grace, his magnificent favor, which when we recognize it is the source of our great joy. In this joy, as the writer of Ecclesiastes came to know, we have an experience of a life beyond our fears which is the source of our contentment. This is why the writer of Ecclesiastes knew that it was a great tragedy for a person to have received gift after gift from God only to end up never being satisfied because these gifts were God’s way of demonstrating his love and his grace from which one could find enjoyment that was greater than their fears. 

         Paul tells Timothy in his first letter to him that if we have the simplest necessities, food and clothing, nothing more was needed to be content. When we hear these words of Paul it is not hard to hear the echos of the words of Jesus from the sixth chapter of Matthew where he tells his disciples, “Therefore do not be anxious, we might say discontented, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ Or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the people of this world search after these things and your Heavenly Father knows you need them all. Instead seek first the kingdom of God, seek his righteousness and to this godliness, God will provide everything you need so that you might be satisfied. In this way, as the writer of Ecclesiastes teaches us, we will not be so obsessed with cares and worries that plague the days of our life because God instead will keep us occupied with the joy that fills our hearts. To his honor and glory. Amen!

Judgment and Joy

 October 3 2021

Ecclesiastes 3:16-22, 4:1-16, 5:1-9

         With the changing of the seasons, the arrival of fall with its clear cool mornings, I find myself, for some reason, reminiscing about going to church when I was a kid. I guess it was in the fall, more than any other time, with the entering into a new Sunday School level with, of course, a new Sunday School teacher that is the source of these memories that I have. Another thing I remember is that as my family all walked into church through the main entrance doors that on the one side of it was a framed plaque that held pictures of all the new families that had just recently joined the church. There they were, all these happy smiling families staring at us from the Polaroid pictures that were taken on that day when they had gathered up at the front of the church and they promised to be faithful and loyal members of the church. Now, I have no idea why I even paid attention to those pictures and those families, maybe it was that anytime people would get up in front of the church and make promises, I just assumed that was a pretty big deal.Yet what I noticed is that after awhile those people in those pictures which hung in the entryways became harder and harder to spot on any given Sunday morning. I remember thinking that it seemed rather odd that they would go through all the bother to do what needed to be done so that they could proudly call themselves a member of the church but in a few short months the only sign that they had done so was their picture hanging in the church entrance. Somehow, I just knew that something as serious as professing ones faith in Jesus Christ and pledging to be a faithful member of his body, the church had to be more than just saying a few scripted words in front of the congregation.

         I guess what made me bring up those memories of my church life as a kid was that as I studied the book of Ecclesiastes I came across the writers advice that we should watch our words that we speak before God. There was the seriousness I sensed was missing from those who made promises of faithfulness only to forget them as time went by. Yet what can’t be also forgotten is that this passage from Ecclesiastes gives us the reason for this seriousness which is that we are to be people of integrity, people who, if they make a vow to pay that they will indeed pay up when the time comes. This integrity is also echoed in the teachings of Jesus who in the Sermon on the Mount taught his disciples that they were not to take an oath at all, “either by heaven, for heaven is the throne of God, nor by earth because earth is the footstool of God nor by Jerusalem for Jerusalem is the city of the great king. Do not take an oath by your head because you cannot make one hair black or white. Let what you say be simply, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more comes from evil.” What Jesus is getting at is that, just like the writer of Ecclesiastes pointed out, is that we are to be a person who will do what they said they are going to do or else just come right out and say that you have no intention of doing something, this is far better than saying one thing and doing another. 

         Now, this teaching from Ecclesiastes is obviously an important teaching but we have to wonder just why is it found here, in this section of Ecclesiastes. To figure out the reason as to what does the writer of Ecclesiastes want us to take away from our scripture reading for today, we have to remember just what his writing is focused on. The writer as we might recall is trying to figure out the answer to the question, “What does a person gain from all the work that they do all of the years that they are busy with that work here on earth?” This word gain is one that speaks about the real value that we have when we take our experience and we subtract the costs involved with that experience, and then figure out just what do we have left over. The writer of Ecclesiastes found that the pursuit of happiness came about at a the cost of great effort that in the end, after all that effort was subtracted all that was left was nothing, there was nothing of any real value to be had from a life that had as its goal the pursuit of happiness. Even the life lived by wisdom was also found by the writer of Ecclesiastes to be an empty venture because in the end in didn’t matter if one lived by wisdom or if one lived by sheer foolishness, in the end all would die. All that a wise person had accomplished could, in the end, end up being used by a person who was foolish so what was the point of trying to spend ones life in the pursuit of wisdom. 

         After the writers endless searching for an answer what he concluded is that there was nothing better that a person to do than to eat, and drink and find enjoyment in the work they had been given by God. Now, this was not a novel discovery on the writers part because this eating, drinking and enjoying oneself was the very purpose for the feasts that God had demanded be a part of the life of his people. At the end of their harvests, at the culmination of their hard work, God commanded his people to take the week off and eat and drink and enjoy themselves. The reasoning was that in this time of rest they were to come to the understanding that God had blessed them. It was not their effort but rather it was the very love of God that they had experienced through the work that they had done. God in his love had made the sun to shine upon them and it was God who had caused the rain to fall, this is the reason that they now could rest and rejoice. This period of rest was time for God’s people to reflect upon this love of God and with grateful hearts, rejoice. This, I believe, is what the writer of Ecclesiastes is pointing to when he concludes that there is nothing better for us to do than to eat, drink and find enjoyment in our work. This is an attitude of contentment, one where we find our hearts are at peace no longer restless but at last, finding their rest in God and the certainty of his love.

         This conclusion that the writer of Ecclesiastes has come to, that we are to eat, drink and enjoy ourselves is as we find out is, as we go through his writing, the very heartbeat of what he desires us to know. This phrase is repeated at least five different times throughout the book of Ecclesiastes which means that its importance cannot be underestimated. Where the writer of Ecclesiastes finds that the rest of the worlds activities are nothing but futility and absurdity, eating, drinking and enjoying the work that God has given a person, this is what makes sense. Here in the third, fourth and fifth chapters of Ecclesiastes then, the writer begins to explain just what difference it makes to live with this sense of contentment in our hearts. The third chapter begins with one of the best known sections of Ecclesiastes, which states that for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. Now, we get so overwhelmed by the writers profound words that we forget just why exactly the writer wrote these words in the first place. The purpose of pointing out that the world is marked by seasons and times is that as we heard in our scripture, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter. So, the writer is saying just as there is a time to be born and a time to die, in the same way there will be a time when we act and there will be a time when those same actions will be judged by God. The writer is stating this fact to get the attention of those whose actions reflect that they have no concerns about God’s judgment because they look around and see that in this world it sure appears that anything goes. But, the writer of Ecclesiastes points out, there are seasons and times for everything and just because it appears as if that there is no judgment now does not mean that there will not be a judgement, later. In this time, the writer tells us, God is testing the children of man to see if they are beasts, mere animals or are they indeed those in whom God has placed eternity in their hearts. This means are they  people willing to hear and obey the eternal word of God or will they instead listen only to the voice of their desires wanting only to have what is needed for survival, what looks pleasing to their eyes or what is needed to provide some sense of security. Yet as important as the writer knew that it was that we were more than beasts, more than just animals who follow our base desires, the problem, once again, was that, in the end, both beasts and people die. With this being our lot, the writer once again must conclude that the best one can hope for is to simply rejoice in the work that they have been given to do. Even so, the writer wonders, what is to be done for all those who are oppressed. The connection to what the writer has previously written can be heard in the hundred and third Psalm, the sixth verse which states that the Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. So, yes, God is going to bring about righteousness and justice for all those oppressed however it is hard to see the evil done to the weak and the poor until that season comes. As the writer of Ecclesiastes ponders this state of things he suddenly has this insight that what motivates all the toil and skill in work comes from a person’s envy of their neighbor. So how do we define envy? Well, envy is a feeling of discontentment or resentment based on someone else’s possessions, abilities, or status. Now, when we understand the full meaning of what it means to be envious of someone else it isn’t hard to see just how polar opposite this is from what the writer of Ecclesiastes believes that we should be, that we are to eat and be joyful in the work that God has given us to do. This is what the writer is getting at when he states that better is one handful with quietness than two handfuls that has come through a striving to have what someone else has. The writer goes on to tell of the sad state of affairs of a person so caught up in his envy that he works frantically so that he never ceases to work, striving to always have more, never stopping to ask just who it was that he was working so hard for and just why he was depriving himself of enjoyment. What a person gains, what they have in real value when they are driven by their discontent, their envy, is absolutely nothing because in the end they find themselves all alone with no one to even be there when they fall down. One cannot but help to hear the warning of Jesus found in the twelfth chapter of Luke who told his disciples to be on guard against all covetousness, this desire to always want more and more because life does not consist of the abundance of ones possessions. Then Jesus told them a parable saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentiful and he thought to himself, “What shall I do for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, “I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.” I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat , drink and be merry. But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, these things you have prepared, whose will they be?  This is exactly the point of the writer of Ecclesiastes, that when your life is driven by envy, by this discontent that comes when one compares themselves with what others have the result is a frenzied life of accumulation which in the end is no life at all.

         The answer to the madness that is caused by the envy of what another one has, according to the writer, is to see that the real treasure is not what the other person has but it is rather the other person themselves. As the writer puts it, two are better than one because together they have a good profit for their work. So, where discontent only leads one to always want more until one is caught up in the never ending task of working to acquire more, contentment , this eating, drinking and enjoying what one has been blessed with by God, this leads one to value the importance of the more we have when we have life  together. This is the ground of the righteousness of God and what must be understood is that only as we rest in the provision of God, only as we receive all we have from the hand of God with gratitude, only then can we see others not as those who we are to compare ourselves with but instead we will see others as those with whom life is given a greater value with them than apart from them. You see, our envy which comes from our discontentment and resentment over what another person has will lead us to eventually covet what another person has and it is this craving for what another person has which leads us to stop seeing people as those whom God loves and instead to see them as objects, as something which stands in the way of what we desire. When we turn people into objects then this is when we begin to believe that we are superior to them. Righteousness is lost when we in some way believe ourselves to be above another person because the basis of all righteousness is that we are all equal in the eyes of God. This equality is what is found in our work when we experience the blessing of God, the love of God who makes the sun shine on the evil and the good and who makes the rain fall on the just and unjust alike. As God so loves us equally then we are to see others as those loved by God just as we are, not objects who stand in the way of what we crave but people whose life is sustained by God just as our life is. This then is how we differ from the animals, that we know the God who gives us life and calls us through the word he speaks to love just as he loves us. The difference it makes in our life then is not how we die but rather how we live, not in some frenzied state where our discontent fuels us to always want more to the exclusion of everything else but rather in our contentment with what God has blessed us with where we realize that what is of real value in this life is a life lived with others in mutual love.

         All of this then brings us to the writers thoughts of what we are to do when we enter into the house of the Lord. The writer tells us that it is better to draw near to listen than it is to offer the sacrifice of fools. This is a really obscure saying but this whole section concerns speaking and doing. The reason why we are to watch what we say is that we must make sure that what we say we are going to do and what we do are the same thing. Yet with a little thought this too can be seen to be an outgrowth of our resting, our eating and drinking and rejoicing because all of this we realize is the result not only of the love of God but also the faithfulness of God. As the writer states, whatever God does endures forever. So, as God has been faithful to us we in like manner are to be faithful to God. As we rest contented in what God has always provided for us, we can make promises and keep those promises because God in his faithfulness creates faithfulness in us.

         So, what these festivals that God commanded his people to observe were to do is to create an environment whereby God’s people would enter into a life of contentment, understanding that in their work they had experienced the love and faithfulness of God. In this awareness then, they were to understand that as God’s love extended to all so should their love reach out to the love of all. As God had been faithful they too were to return his faithfulness to them with faith in him. When we begin to see how this works we can get at what the writer is saying when he writes about a province where there is oppression of the poor and violations of justice and righteousness. It is in this place where the high official is watched over by an official higher than him and that official also has an official who is yet higher than them. Everyone it seems is answering to someone but no one is answering to God. The writer then goes on to say that there is much gain, something of great value in this that a king is committed to cultivated fields. Why is this so important for a king to be concerned about farmland? A king remembering the fields where his food comes from will remember that it is God who sends the sun and the rain to create the harvest, a harvest he was to receive and be contented with joy. In remembering this love of God he will also become aware that as God has blessed him, the king, God has also blessed the very least person, God’s love extends equally to all. In this way, the king would remember that all the people under his care were to be loved equally just as God had loved them equally. He was to know that these people were not objects that stood in the way of his desires but rather they were those he was to watch over and care for as they may also watch over and care for him. You see, all of this grows out of the environment that God places us in, a place where we rest in his love and in our unity together, we rejoice! Amen!

         

Resting and Rejoicing

 September 26 2021

Ecclesiastes 2

         This past week was our local county fair and every year when it rolls around I am reminded of a former life when I was a pig farmer. As a pig farmer I was part of a county wide organization called Pork Producers which was made up of people like me who raised pigs whether professionally or for 4-H. Every year at the fair the Pork Producers have an eat stand where they sell pork burgers and ham sandwiches to promote the eating of pork and to raise money for anything the group might want to do like give scholarships to aspiring pork producers. Now, when I was a pork producer I was, of course, self-employed and as I once heard it said, the two most overrated things in this world are natural childbirth and being self employed. When you’re self employed bringing home a pay check means that everything depends on your income exceeding your expenses; only when the bottom line was a positive number would there be anything to show for your work.This positive number is what is known as a profit or gain and when it’s a negative number, of course, that is known as a loss. What becomes evident as one is self employed is that there are so many variables that are out of one’s control that can determine whether you end up with a profit or loss. It doesn’t really matter how hard you work, or how smart you are at making decisions because it is those things one can’t control that mess with the best laid plans. So, those pigs that once smelled like money in the end they just smelled. Yet while I didn’t know it at the time, God had greater plans for me and my life and I came to realize a better life working with God.

         As we continue in our study of Ecclesiastes, this idea of profit or gain is something that we find to be an important subject for the writer of this strange book. In the third sentence of the first chapter he asks this question, “What does a person gain through all the work that they do day after day, year after year?” That is a great question, don’t you think. It is much like what was need when I was self employed where I had to ask just what would be left over when I deducted my expenses, what it cost me from what I had received. This is what the writer of Ecclesiastes wants to know, just what is the real value for all the effort that we put forth every day, day after day, year after year? Just what is left over after you take what you receive and subtract all of the effort that you have put forth? The writer of Ecclesiastes uses the phrase, “chasing after the wind”, as a way to sum up just what life seems to be sometimes, a lot of effort, a lot of chasing after elusive goals, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and in the end all you have left is a handful of wind. You see, if we are honest with ourselves what our writer has written thousands of years ago is just as relevant today as it was then.

         The word that the writer of Ecclesiastes uses for gain in this third verse of the first chapter, is a Hebrew word, “yitron”. This is a word that comes to us from the world of business and while it can be translated as gain or profit it is better translated as being something of real value. It is this understanding that helps us figure out the purpose that the writer of Ecclesiastes has for writing this book. He wants to discover after much searching just what is left over after everything that is impermanent, or unprofitable or disadvantageous has been swept away. The reason why the writer of Ecclesiastes is wrestling with just what it is that gives meaning to life is that as he sees it, every where he looks, he sees nothing but futility, and absurdity. The whole world seems to be filled with people who have stopped listening to the voice of reason so that every where a person looks there is just one display of nonsense after another. The writer knows that something has gone wrong with this good world that God has created because a good God had to have created a good world, a right world where everything is all as it should be. So, in between the reality that the writer sees and the faith that he holds on to, the writer is holding out a question as to just why is there such disparity between the two. The writer then is much like us as we sit and watch the world go round and wonder just why is everything such a mess when we know that there is a great and wonderful God who has created it, a God who loved it enough to give his only Son to save it.

         So, to find the answers to this mystery of all this futility and absurdity that the writer has observed he states in the thirteenth verse of the first chapter that he would apply his heart to seek out  and to search by wisdom all that is done under heaven. And then he further states that it is an unhappy business that God has given the people of the earth to be busy with. This is the writers statement of purpose, to go on a quest to figure out this mess that we find ourselves in. Why is it that the business that God has us be busy with is as the writer describes it, an unhappy business? This is what must be kept in mind when in the first few lines of the second chapter the writer states that he said in his heart that he was going to do an experiment and see if he was really intentional about the pursuit of happiness, about doing all he could to enjoy himself, if this might set him free from the nonsense and futility that the world seemed to be in the grip of. The relevance of what he seeks is echoed in our Declaration of Independence where we are told that we are created with these unalienable rights, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So, yes, we are people who live in a country where we hold fast to this right to pursue our happiness but to what end? We would do well to listen to the writer of Ecclesiastes when he tells us of laughter, “It is mad” and of pleasure, or a better translation might be happiness, “What use is it?” The writer speaks from experience because he worked really hard at being happy.  He tried to cheer himself up with wine, he tells us, and he tried hard to be as foolish as possible. He then goes on to say that he pursued happiness by building and creating great works, a fine home, a beautiful garden. He had his own park with fruit trees that had little pools of water, you know, the ones that have the goldfish in them. He had a large staff to take care of the house and the grounds and a gourmet chef to prepare the finest cuisine. He amassed a huge investment portfolio having so much money he thought about having his own rocket ship with his name emblazoned across the side of it. As he tells it, everything he wanted he got, he was the epitome of self-indulgence. His pleasure, his happiness, this quite naturally is what would be his reward for his work. He sounds like a great all American kind of guy doesn’t he? I mean he has worked hard in order that he can play hard, isn’t this what life is supposed to be about? But, and there’s always a but, the writer goes on to tell us the findings of his experiment stating, that he had considered all that his hands had done, the work that he had expended in order to be intentional about his happiness and he concluded that the bottom line was that it was all a bunch of nonsense, it was all futility and absurdity. That sounds kind of strange to us doesn’t it as people who hold out the pursuit of happiness as a God given right only to find that if we go down that path what we will find is that in the end it was all a bunch of nonsense. The reason why the writer of Ecclesiastes comes to this conclusion is that there was nothing to be gained by pursuing happiness. In other words, when you subtracted the work involved and what had to be expended to achieve the goal of being happy from what was actually received, the real value of what was left was a big goose egg, zero, nothing at all. And if we want to just write the writer of Ecclesiastes off as some pessimistic Old Testament kill-joy then perhaps we would do well to heed the words of Jesus who at the end of the eighth chapter of the gospel of Mark tells us, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? For what can a person give in return for their life? Here again in these words of Jesus we hear the same wisdom that we hear from the writer of Ecclesiastes, that our life is our most precious gift and we must be wise in what we are willing to exchange that gift for. I once heard it said that everything that we can be passionate about in this world all are things that can consume us so that the more passionate we become about something, the more it drives us to have more of it, the less human we become. God is the only one that when we become more and more passionate about him, the more and more human that we become. This I believe is the sentiment that the writer of Ecclesiastes and Jesus are attempting to get through to us.

         So, just pursuing happiness is not the answer to this unhappy business that God has us be busy with. If a direct assault on happiness is not the answer then what else might we try to find an answer to what plagues us? The writer of Ecclesiastes turns to a subject he is most familiar with, the love of wisdom. Surely wisdom will provide the comfort for which the writer seeks from the futility that is everywhere he looks. There was definitely more gain, more value, in being wise than in being foolish, that much is abundantly clear. As the writer sees it the wise is living with his eyes wide open but the fool is just stumbling about in the dark. So, yes, there is an advantage to being wise. But as the writer thought more about it there is just one problem with being wise and that is that death comes for the wise person just as it comes for the foolish person. This also is abundantly clear. Wisdom will give you a better life but it has no answer for ones impending death. This conclusion was a crushing blow for the writer who knew how wonderful it was for him to be a person who treasured wisdom. Now, just so we’re clear, it was not the pursuit of wisdom that was absurd or futile or nonsensical; no, the source of the futility was that death was the great equalizer. It didn’t matter if one made wise decisions or was a person marked by their stupidity, the end was the same for each of them and it is this tragedy that is the root of all absurdity. The writer came to understand that all that he had worked for in the end was going to be left to someone and that someone might be someone who was wise but that someone might also be someone who wasn’t too bright. It didn’t matter, either way some person who walked in the ways of wisdom or if they were a person who didn’t give a lick about wisdom, either way somebody was going to be the proud owner of all the writer had worked for; this is what was so nonsensical. Once again the writer of Ecclesiastes brings up this idea of gain or profit because he asks the question, “What does a person gain from all the work they do, from all the effort they put forth for all the years of their life? His sentiment is the same as the wisdom that states that there are no U-Hauls hooked to hearses. You know, you can’t take it with you and if you can’t take it with you then why get excited about expending so much effort? As the writer concludes, if you want to work that hard for nothing, then your days will be filled with sorrow and your heart will never be at rest; what a sad state of affairs!

         At last after experimenting with the pursuit of happiness and the gain of wisdom, the writer of Ecclesiastes sets forth what he has learned through applying his heart as to why the busyness God has us be busy with is such an unhappy business. He states, “There is nothing better for a person than he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in their work. This is from the hand of God for apart from him who can eat or have enjoyment? Now, what the writer is saying here about eating and enjoying ones self is very reminiscent of the various feasts that God commanded of the people of Israel. In the sixteenth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, we hear God through Moses command his people that they were to keep the feast of Booths when they had gathered in the produce from the thrashing floor and the wine press. They were to rejoice in this feast, and everyone was to be included, their sons and daughters, male and female servants, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widows. They were to feast and celebrate for seven days at the place where God would choose, because the Lord their God had blessed them in all their produce and in all the works of their hands, so that they would be all together joyful. This is much the same as what is written in the fourteenth chapter of Deuteronomy where we also read that the people of Israel were to tithe all the yield of their seed that came from their fields year by year. Before the Lord, in a place where he would choose to make his name dwell, the people were to eat the tithe of their grain and of their wine and of their oil and the firstborn of their herds and flocks so that they might learn to be in awe of God. They were to eat before the Lord and rejoice. Here in these festivals the people would be eating, drinking and they would be all together joyful. The purpose of these festivals was a rest after the harvest, a time to push the pause button to reflect on just how God once again had blessed them richly. They were to see that their abundance was a material representation of the love that their God had for them for as Jesus taught, our Heavenly Father makes the sun rise on the evil and the good and he sends rain on the just and the unjust. Here in these festivals the fact of our heavenly Fathers love was acknowledged. The abundance of their harvest was not because of who the people of Israel were but instead the abundance happened because of who God is, that he is a God who loves everyone equally and who shows that love in very practical and material ways.  In these festivals then what was being celebrated was this great love of God and the people gave thanks to God with grateful hearts. You see, God understood that we as people, we need to step out of the relentless march of time periodically to rest, to reflect and to rejoice.  It is these pauses, these Sabbath times, these times of rest, that are needed for us to escape from the futility in order for us to remember that all we have comes from the God who loves us. Through our work we are blessed because it is there that we experience God’s love for us and in that love our hearts at last find rest which is just opposite when we believe that our work is merely, as the writer puts it, “our work”.

         As the writer of Ecclesiastes goes on to say, the one who pleases God, God gives knowledge, wisdom and joy. This makes us wonder just what does it mean for us to please God? The answer is found in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews that it is impossible to please God without faith. It is faith then that pleases God. Earlier in the book of Hebrews we also learn that having faith in God is the same as entering into the Sabbath rest that God desires us to live in where are hearts are at rest because we have come to trust in the provision of God’s love. It is to those who have come to trust God, to find their rest in him, these are those to whom God gives knowledge, wisdom and joy. These are gifts to be received not rewards for our labors. No, what we are told in the fourth chapter of Hebrews is that what we are to strive for, what we are to seek after is the rest that God holds out for us to live in because when we live in that rest then we will discover that there we will at last understand the order of God’s good creation and find our hearts filled with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. This is what the writer of Ecclesiastes had come to figure out and it rings with the same teaching of Jesus found in the sixteenth chapter of the gospel of John where he tells us that if we would only ask he would but give us joy, a joy that will fill us to overflowing. This is why Jesus went to the cross and shed his blood for us to set us free from the slavery of sin, sin that has its roots in the works of our flesh. Jesus arose three days later, so that through his resurrection we at last might be set free from fear so that we might experience the Sabbath rest of faith that God desires us to live in for it is there and there alone that we will find knowledge, wisdom and joy just as the writer of Ecclesiastes knew so well! Amen!