Year C NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENECOST (PROPER 13) AUGUST 5, 2001
Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12-14; 2:18-23
Title: “Why bother?”
Written probably about three centuries before Christ, the Book of Ecclesiastes marks an advance over the doctrine of divine retribution. Simplistically put, that doctrine stated that God rewarded good behavior and punished wrongdoing. Because that doctrine did not square with the facts of life, wrongdoers prospered as much as do-gooders and vice versa, the doctrine forced thinking people to amend it or extend it. Tracing the doctrine’s development, particularly through the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament: Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes and certain Psalms, leads to the doctrine of eternal life in the New Testament. The teaching found in this work is just about the last step along the way. It is devastating critique of the doctrine of divine retribution in this life, namely, that it does not square with the facts, that evil prospers as well as good, and that the good are punished as well as the bad, forced a change in thinking. Even though many of the author’s contemporary thinkers believed in some notion of an afterlife, where justice is finally done and the good rewarded and the evil punished, the author steadfastly holds to his “this is the only life or form of life there is” philosophy. Despite his admission that neither he nor any other human could solve life’s conundrums, there is still meaning to be found amidst so much meaninglessness translated in this work as “vanity,” Hebrew hebel. If Job asked the question, “What is the meaning of suffering and why do the innocent suffer if God is just?” this author asks, “What is the meaning of life and what sense does any of it make for either the just or the unjust?”
“Ecclesiastes” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Qoheleth.” It is a word difficult to translate. It seems to be not a personal name but a title or epithet for the author. It means something like “One who calls the assembly” or “gathers the assembly,” coming from the Hebrew root q-h-l, for “assemble, gather.” Jerome and Luther translate it as “Preacher,” a good term because the work is a sort of homily, although a very structured one, more like a written treatise than an oratorical composition. The author sees good behavior as certainly preferable to bad behavior, but as ending up no different. Both good and bad die and that is the end of it. So, what is the point of it? His answer, in a nutshell, is enjoyment. Enjoy the present moment, one’s “lot” in life, and gather all the gusto you can. God’s wants you to enjoy your time on earth to the fullest extent possible. He does not want you to figure out the mysteries of the universe or life. You cannot anyway. But he does want you to enjoy life in the context of doing good, not bad. In this sense the author stands with those who, even today, advocate doing what you feel like and only that, and “if it feels good it is good, so do it” philosophy. He stands in that camp, but he has a different message. By “good” he means “God’s good” as God revealed it, not “human good” as humans feel it. If humans cannot figure out the meaning of life, how could they possibly be the determiners and deciders of what is good? Thus his point is that all else but God’s good is “vanity,” the meaning of which he shall elucidate throughout his work.
In verses Chapter one verse two, all things are vanity, this is the motto of the whole book, stated here and at the end 12:8. The word in Hebrew, hebel, “vanity,” has the numerical value of thirty-seven and is used thirty-seven times. The whole book is a numerical composition, divided into two parts 2:1-6:9 and 6: 10- 11:6, each consisting of 93 verses, flanked by a prologue of 18 verses and an 18 verse epilogue, yielding 111 verses per part. In the strange world of numerology the numbers, 18, 93, 111, 186, and 222, are all related to the number 37. The Hebrew word hebel means “breath” or “vapor.” We would say “steam” or “hot air.” It refers to anything transient, ephemeral, unsubstantial, pointless, meaningless, without worth, merit, or value, not to be believed in, anything that is a sham. In a word, “guilty on all counts of being empty” even when its gauge reads “full” or “half-full.” The author has pondered life and all its activities and found it all to come up short of any ultimate or even long-lasting satisfying meaning. It matters not whether an activity be good or bad, both are ultimately meaningless in so far as neither makes a substantial difference in the great scheme of things. One has only to look at the monotonous repetition of nature to grasp the truth that there is “nothing new under the sun 1:9,” Everything has been done before and will be done again. Only the characters change; the script stays the same. “If the fool’s lot is to befall me, that is, death, why should I be wise? Where is the profit for me? For neither will there be an abiding remembrance, for in the days to come both the good and the bad, the wise and the foolish, will have been forgotten. How is it that the wise man dies as well as the fool! 2:15-16.”
In chapter two verse twenty-one, to another…he must leave his property: It is clear by this point in his work that this thoughtful author sees many riddles, puzzles, enigmas and ironies in life. This is but one of them: a man works, accumulates wealth, dies and cannot take it with him; it goes to another he knows not who. For the author even wisdom, reached after reflection, is a pain because it reveals life’s unsolvable questions. Painfully, if slowly, the wise man comes to know how little he knows and how little difference the acquisition of that knowledge makes or even means. At death, not only does wealth go to another, but knowledge and wisdom, unless passed on to another, evaporate. There is that word e-vapor-ate, Hebrew hebel, again.)
In chapter two verse twenty-two, what profit: This is the basic question the author asks, the “what’s the use?” question, the “what difference does it make?” question, the Latin “Cui bono?” question. The Hebrew simply asks “What does a man have, Hebrew hawa, in the sense of “have to show for.” The root, an older form of haya, “to be, become,” signifies existence, example, of a tree trunk, being at rest where it falls and so can be translated as “befalls.” It also has the meaning of development and thus “profit” is a good translation. Besides here and at 11:3 there are only two other instances of this verb in the Old Testament Genesis 27:29; Isaiah 16:4. However, Hebrew hawa remained the standard form of the verb “to be” in biblical Aramaic. The author asks about the point of it all. Implied in the answer is not that there is no point at all. God knows the point but humans cannot know. Thus, humans must content themselves to do as God says and not insist on understanding everything before doing so.
In verse twenty-three, all his days sorrow and grief are his occupation: The author’s honest evaluation of life, work, and any other activity is that it is agitation and aggravation more than it is rest and relaxation. And for what purpose, point, or profit? A person spends an entire lifetime working, accumulating wealth and dies. His or her accumulation is left for another to inherit, possess, enjoy, maybe destroy and then leave it, in turn, to another. These others did not work for what they get. “Where is the justice in all that?” asks the author. The only thing he sees is “vanity.” It is not the toil itself that is left to another, but its fruits and benefits. A fool is just as likely to inherit his wealth as a wise person, even if it be a son. His answer throughout the book will be to find enjoyment in the performance of good work rather than its outcome or reward: enjoyment in eating, simple pleasures, daily joys, entering fully into the present moment.
Qoheleth has done us all a great service in giving a name to a very common human experience. He calls it “vanity.” We might better translate his Hebrew term, hebel, as “meaninglessness.” All humans experience it. It is hidden behind just about everything we do and experience. All of us ask his question and ask it rather routinely. It comes out in “What’s the use?” or “What’s the point?” or “Why bother?” Qoheleth has put a name to this experience and we thank him for it.
We do not need to ponder the rare experiences of life, such as the example he gives in this text, namely, the pointlessness of toiling one’s whole life to accumulate wealth and the necessity to leave it behind at death for someone else to enjoy and possibly squander. We will find the experience every time we do the rather routine things in life- like washing dishes for the millionth time or mowing the lawn for the thousandth time or running the vacuum cleaner or washing the car or windows just before an unexpected downpour. We find it in every meal we cook, every load of laundry, every trip to the supermarket, every monthly payment of bills and a thousand other things. We try to but cannot squelch the inevitable question that wants to announce itself in every one of these activities: What’s the use? What’s the point in doing this yet again?
The dishes will get dirty again. So will the windows and the car. The grass will grow in no time and the made beds will get unmade in a few short hours. Why do all these things if they get undone in such short a time? Isn’t all this activity simply busy work, pointless and meaningless? One does not have to have a philosophic bent nor be a chronic complainer to experience what the sacred writer is talking about.
His answer is profoundly true. His answer is that we should enjoy the doing rather than look for meaning in the “done,” in the deed, in the result. It’s a profoundly true answer and also a profoundly dangerous one. If we misunderstand his answer it can lead to a rather hedonistic life and he certainly does not mean that. Yet, many people hit upon the hedonistic answer, say things like “You only go around once so grab all the gusto you can” or “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” They live in the present moment and that is something the author is recommending. However, they miss his point.
The hedonist would agree with Qoheleth that those folks who believe that the point and purpose of life is to accumulate as much stuff as they can, accumulate it by working hard and storing it up, not enjoying life but only hoarding life’s products including “collecting” friends and hoarding “loved” ones, are doomed to be woefully disappointed in the end, at the end of their life. To turn life into an accumulation game, accumulating goods, honors, titles, achievements, degrees, etc. is to profoundly miss the point of life and be disappointed in it and especially at its end. Such folks seem to behave in such a way that they are in a contest with everyone else to collect as much “stuff” as possible to see who wins in the end, who has the most “stuff,” only to find that there is no prize for the winner or runners-up. They have to leave it to someone else! Now that’s pointless! That’s meaningless! Qoheleth is right on target.
Both the hedonist and the true believer enjoy the sheer and mere “doing” of anything. Both get into the present moment and find joy is just doing whatever. The difference is that the hedonist does whatever for self; the true believer does whatever in God’s presence, knowing that the worthwhileness of the results are in God’s estimation. The believer sees work as really a form of playing in God’s presence, like a child plays in a parent’s presence, using play tools and play rules, imitating parental serious behavior. The believer knows that God does the serious work. His children just play at imitating him. All the work we do is really playing with God’s possessions, imitating him in bringing order out of chaos, but knowing he will do so whether we imitate him or not. He wants us to enjoy every moment, every activity, in the sheer doing and being. The hedonists merely “plays acts,” pretends to live life, but underneath is desperate, experiencing the chaos of life and emotions without knowing how to bring order to it by imitating God’s behavior.
Since humans “cannot take it with you,” why bother accumulating it in the first place?
No matter how large our deeds, they do not effect the fundamental structure of the universe.
Possessions and accomplishments produce anxiety, a feeling that ruins whatever profit there may be because of the fear of losing them, even though worthless in themselves.
The truly wise person would not want to take his or her possessions into eternity in any event.
Vanity: Genesis describes the situation before creation as one of a great void, or abyss. The sacred author does not go as far as did later thinkers and call it “nothingness.” He is content with passing on the myth as he received it and pictures the “matter” of the universe existing in a state of chaos before God spoke his word into it and brought order to the chaos. Qoheleth is also content to call the experience of the absence of order “meaning,” “sense” “emptiness” rather than “nothingness,” but they amount to the same thing. All these terms- chaos, emptiness, nothingness, meaninglessness- put a name to something we sense in every experience of our lives. If we are not conscious of, even vaguely or presumptively conscious of, God and his word, of interpretation, of meaning, present in every experience of our lives we will encounter this emptiness, the void before creation. Anything we do or attempt to do in the absence, or emptiness, of awareness of God’s presence, is done in the void and is meaningless. Consequently, we behave in less than human ways because it empties us of meaning and purpose.
Playing in God’s Presence: The Book of Wisdom describes creation in terms of personified Wisdom playing and delighting in the presence of God, fashioning and designing, molding and helping produce God’s creation. It also depicts God delighting in Wisdom, his crafty daughter, as she plays and creates in his presence. This is the way the sacred author of Ecclesiastes sees all human beings. We are only playing here on earth. We are in the childhood of our existence and so all is really “vanity,” an unnecessary even if at times delightful silliness. To this picture the New Testament adds the idea that we will not enter into adulthood until we physically die. Eternity is adulthood and time is childhood. The author’s point is that God does not want us to spend all our time, even most of it, studying the meaning of life. He wants us to enjoy life by living it like a child. How can we actually enjoy doing dishes, floors, meals, diapers, beds? By being aware that as God sees our lives we are simply playing in his presence, using his “serious” possessions to try to imitate his behavior, wearing his “shoes,” repeating his pet phrases and ways of saying things, dressing up like him, living in miniature houses and riding, sailing, flying in “toys” he lets us make ourselves. Of course, God expects us to keep his house in order. So we make the beds, dust, scrub clean, etc. We keep the books and everything else in order and when we take them out to play we put them back where they belong. So, we do not take our “toys” with us because we will not need them anymore. But, while we are here we will take delight and find delight in the mere and sheer doing of things, knowing that we are doing a poor imitation of our heavenly Parent, but that it makes him smile and sometimes laugh. Ecclesiastes seems on the surface to be a rather pessimistic book. Certainly, several of the existential philosophers of the 60s and 70s thought so and thought they were imitating and expounding on that pessimism when they, like Sartre and Albert Camus wrote their works and plays. However, Ecclesiastes turns out, after “playing” with the author’s words, to be a rather optimistic work or play. It tells us that we need not be smart to have fun in God’s universe. We need not spend our lives in serious study or in serious pursuits all the time. We can play even when the hedonist might think it to be work, like cooking and cleaning. In the midst of those daily tasks, drudgery to those who live in the void, we recall how we look to God and, like a child, we say, “God, look at me. I’m busy too, just like you.” Then, we hear him laugh, really “imagine,” like a child, hearing him laugh and all of a sudden the senseless makes sense and the meaningless has meaning. The warmth of his smile comes over us and we laugh too, at ourselves. Amen.
