I, the Teacher, when
king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search
out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy
business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw
all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and
a chasing after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and
what is lacking cannot be counted. I said to myself, “I have
acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before
me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.”
And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I
perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much
wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase
sorrow.
(Ecclesiastes 1:12-18)
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Ecclesiastes is one of the most
fascinating books in the Bible, in my opinion. I love it because it's
very down to earth. Tradition has it that it was written by Solomon,
and of course tradition also has it that Solomon was a very wise man.
So the thing that intrigues me about Ecclesiastes is how fatalistic –
and even sometimes how negative – it seems. As you read through it
you seem to find an attitude of “stuff happens,” and “woe is
me.” Or even “woe to us all.” It’s as if Solomon believes
that things are never going to get any better. Even in this passage
we read this morning, at the very beginning of the book, you find the
words “it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings
to be busy with.” Honestly, there are times in this book that
Solomon sounds downright depressed about his lot in life. Solomon –
who possessed great wealth, who inherited the throne of his father
David, who was God’s chosen instrument for building the great
temple in Jerusalem – spends much of the twelve chapters of this
book sounding depressed. As Christians, we’re probably not as
familiar with the Old Testament as we should be – but Solomon’s
is a name we know. In that sense he’s a towering figure. And here
he is – downcast and seemingly ready to give up. What gives?
Well, first, I’m going to be
honest with you - we’re not entirely sure that Solomon wrote the
book. In fact, many people think he didn’t write it. The author
only identifies himself as “The Teacher,” after all. It could
have been Solomon. As a man renowned for wisdom, being called “The
Teacher” would make sense, and we know from later in the book that
The Teacher was a man of great wealth – and Solomon was a man of
great wealth. But we can’t be sure. I’m going to refer to the
author as Solomon, based on the old tradition, but whether it’s
Solomon or not, I think the book is still relevant.
I suppose that I like Ecclesiastes
because of Solomon’s honesty, and because he’s very easy to
relate to here. Let’s be honest – how many of us haven’t had
those days when we’ve got out of bed in the morning and for one
reason or another realize pretty early on that we probably should
have stayed in bed. How many of us don’t have days when we feel
like throwing our hands up and saying “what’s the point of it
all?” That’s where Solomon was on that long ago day when he wrote
this book. It’s a very honest piece of writing. He’s not
portraying himself as any sort of spiritual giant. He’s cynical.
Based on this book, someone once described him as the “pre-Thomas
Thomas.” You know – good old Doubting Thomas from the Gospel of
John? The one who just couldn’t believe that Jesus had been raised
from the dead. “Show me; let me touch him. Otherwise – what’s
the point?” Sometimes in speaking with colleagues I’ve jokingly
talked about the evolution of clergy. We start out as idealists,
believing we’re going to change the church; we become realists,
understanding that the church isn’t going to change; and we end up
as cynics, wondering why we even bother trying! From time to time I
suspect that we all get a little bit cynical about things, which is
probably why I think there are some valuable lessons to learn from
this book that we don’t really speak about all that often.
Mainly, I suspect that this book
appeals to me because in spite of its connection with a man who has
always been seen as the epitome of wisdom, it reminds us of the
limitations of wisdom; the limitations of knowledge. We know a lot of
things, but sometimes the more we know the farther we seem to get
from God and from the attitude that should characterize a person of
faith. And if real wisdom is the knowledge of God, then sometimes we
think we know so much that we don’t realize how far we are from
really knowing God. As Dorothy said to the Scarecrow in the Wizard of
Oz, “How can you talk if you don’t have a brain?” And as the
Scarecrow replied, “Well, some people without brains do an awful
lot of talking, don't they?'” Is anyone here going to argue that?
So I wanted to reflect just for a few minutes on wisdom, and its
place in faith.
Solomon’s choice
of words and basic attitude might take a while to get used to, but
once you really listen to him, you realize that he just might be on
to something. He has tried and tried and tried again to figure out
his life through reason and wisdom, and it seems almost as if God got
pushed out of the equation. Solomon seems to believe that God is
either strangely absent or coldly uncaring, and in the end he can’t
make sense of things this way, and so he finds himself frustrated –
and that’s understandable. Ecclesiastes becomes his way of venting
his frustration or of documenting his struggle with faith and God.
After being a lifelong bachelor, C.S. Lewis fell in love and got
married at the age of 58. She died of cancer just four years later.
Lewis was devastated, his faith was shaken, and he was angry with God
for bringing this woman into his life only to leave him bereft soon
after. Lewis wrote a little book called “A Grief Observed” to
document his journey from absolute despair to renewed faith, with all
of his struggles and questions and doubts laid bare, in the hope of
helping others in the same situation. I think Ecclesiastes is
Solomon’s “A Grief Observed.” His circumstances were different,
but he’s also documenting and trying to work through the questions
and doubts he has about faith and how meaningless life can sometimes
seem, and – like Lewis - perhaps he airs his frustration to help
those who have the same doubts and questions and are also thinking of
life as meaningless. Ecclesiastes is Solomon making the faith real
and raw, and it reminds us that even the most faithful among us have
inevitable times of questions and doubts and despair. Maybe the most
shocking thing that Solomon grasps is that wisdom wasn’t enough for
him; knowledge wasn’t enough for him. There had to be more. Knowing
about God had failed him; perhaps Ecclesiastes is the start of
Solomon realizing that he had to do more than know about God, and he
had to actually begin to know God before God could really make a
difference in his life.
I suspect that
maybe Solomon is trying to challenge those who read his words to
engage in a deeper spiritual quest. Scratching the surface isn’t
enough. Just knowing that God is there isn’t enough. Just believing
in God isn’t enough. Knowing all the doctrine isn’t enough. Being
able to recite creeds and prayers isn’t enough. Memorizing
Scripture isn’t enough. None of that is enough. Neither is trying
to figure out the world and the universe and the mystery of creation
and how everything works. None of that is enough either, because
we’ll never be able to completely master the world, to fully
explain the mysteries of life, or even really to justify their own
existence. And so, we’re left with a choice: we can choose to
become selfish and cynical, or we can choose to reach out to God.
When we turn to God, we don’t turn our back on the world, and when
we seek to understand the world more fully, we don’t turn our backs
on God - we just look at the world with new eyes and trust that there
is a God who can explain the mysteries of the world and the mysteries
of life and the mysteries of our own existence. And when we start to
do that we start to actually know God rather than just knowing about
God. Then, we’re in a position to work our way through those
spiritual down times and realize that life, indeed does have a
God-given purpose and meaning.
I referred earlier
to the exchange between Dorothy and the Scarecrow in “The Wizard Of
Oz.” I want to leave you with another scene from another movie –
this one the 1951 movie version of Chrles Dickens’ “A Christmas
Carol.” On Christmas morning, after Scrooge wakes up as a changed
man, he dances around the room in front of his housekeeper Mrs.
Dilber and cries out in delirious joy, “I don’t know anything. I
never did know anything. But now I know that I don’t know
anything.” Real wisdom is about the knowing God, and that’s the
real beginning of wisdom – to understand that all the knowledge of
God we think we have doesn’t mean a thing. Wisdom fails us if we
think that knowing lots about God is the same as knowing God. That’s
just human wisdom. Real wisdom helps us to be constantly embarking on
the quest to know God more fully every single day.
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