Red Bison Faith: Akbaakuxshé: Wisdom Series 8, Ecclesiastes, "When Buzz Lightyear knows he is a toy, he becomes something more"

Friday, November 19, 2021

Wisdom Series 8, Ecclesiastes, "When Buzz Lightyear knows he is a toy, he becomes something more"

B Wisdom 8 2021

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13; 4:7-12

October 24, 2021

This Scripture verse we have before us . . . from the number of times I’ve preached on this Scripture verse at funerals, to the Byrds song, “Turn, turn, turn”, to one of the bands of my age, Kansas, singing, “Dust in the Wind”, these verses, Ecclesiastes 3:1-13, should be some of the most familiar in our culture. I remember wondering why people chose these verses as a comfort early in my ministry. But then I remembered that the first words out of my mouth during a counseling session usually are, “What you are experiencing is normal” or “What you are going through, it simply stinks.”

I know what you’re thinking. All of that seminary training, workshops, seminars, and 20 years of ordained ministry experience and this is what we get? It’s normal? It simply stinks?

Yeah, I know. But I think sometimes what we need to hear is that we are not off our rocker, that what we are going through is a common life experience. Where we are on the road is where we should be—sometimes whining and complaining when all of life’s rules change, sometimes ranting and railing at God when it feels like we’re the only one pulling our weight in covenantal, familial relationships or friendships, sometimes going through deep depression over a significant loss in our life, sometimes refusing to forgive and forget when we see no willingness to change or apologize. We need to know we are just being human, going through the season appointed to us.

This passage from Ecclesiastes is classic Wisdom Literature in that it does not tell us how life should be or how we should be in it, how to be more moral or a better person, but shares with us how life is in all its ambiguity, paradox, and complexity. Another characteristic of Wisdom Literature is that it begins with the human experience rather than relate the demands of the Divine or describe the miraculous, the mystical, or the heavenly realm.[1]

New Testament scholars are just beginning to point out that gospels like Matthew edited some of Jesus’s original teaching with a strong moral overlay. Originally, Jesus may have been teaching his followers that they should be wise to the way the world is, not how they “should be” in the world. For example, Jesus teaches when people are picked up by the plantation owner at various times of the day and all paid at the same amount, the moral overlay tells us we “should” stop complaining because we worked more, longer hours, and were paid the same amount. Jesus may have been sharing that the plantation owner is in charge and can pay any darn thing he well wants to, regardless of how fundamentally unfair that may be. Jesus is sharing that this is the unjust life for a Palestinian sharecropper. This is what we face, day to day, this fundamental unfairness. Not a “should.” This is the way of the world. So be wise to it. We know that the author of Matthew is probably the one moralizing because this teaching appears in a gospel that was not included in the Bible. In that version, the teaching appears without the moralizing found in the Gospel of Matthew.

Another example. When Jesus is asked, “And who is my neighbor?” he does not offer some mystical, deep, retelling of the Law, he tells a story. He tells a story about what life is like while walking along the dangerous Jericho Pass.

“For everything there is a season,” Qoheleth, the one said to be the author of Ecclesiastes, writes. Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth repeats a proverb that has generally been translated as, “All is vanity and a chasing after the wind.” Catholic scholar, Father Thomas Bolin, noticed, however, that the Hebrew word used for this passage ruach can mean “wind” but also can mean “breath” or “Spirit”, all a reference to God’s presence and activity.[2] Bolin argues that the repeated phrase, better translated is, “All is human, transitory, fleeting, but strives for permanence or Divinity.” In that pursuit to capture permanence or Divinity, Bolin believes the author of Ecclesiastes is saying, life can be meaningless. Better to recognize our mortality, our humanity, our impermanence.

I have long told Tracy that this is the storyline behind the great animated “Toy Story” movies. Buzz Lightyear struggles, must check his own vanity at the door, when he believes he is not a toy but truly a space hero, “To infinity and beyond!” Buzz becomes unglued when he realizes his lasers don’t stun, his space wings do not help him fly, and that the other toys do not honor his space commander rank. When Buzz finally accepts that he is a toy, who can offer is gifts to the wider community, he seems to transcend who he is as a toy. His laser may not stun others but it can create a temporary blindness, his space wings may not elevate him into space but they do help him glide and float when he is lofted into the air, and Buzz is not really a leader by rank or office but finds leadership in his friendship with his toy colleague, Woody. I know. That’s why my son and daughter hate going to the movies with me. I see Scriptural stories everywhere.

“All is human striving for the Divine.” Better to accept our humanity, that there is a season to all of life.

Professor Timothy Sandoval, Wisdom Literature scholar, believes that Qoheleth wrote this text to indict an economic system that had people toiling for greater and greater wealth believing that they could capture God in a bottle. Inordinate chasing after gain, excessive work to obtain more, all of this leads to a futile and deterministic life. Professor Sandoval said this is a direct criticism of the Hellenistic Empire and the meaningless lives and values they dictated to the Jewish people. There is no freedom and meaning in such lives, such values, such pursuits, Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes says.[3]

So where can wisdom be found? If God is not to be captured in a bottle and that is meaningless, what does give life meaning? We get a clue what Ecclesiastes is all about when we translate the author’s name. Qoheleth means “the gatherer” or “the assembler”, the “one who brings together community.” If Qoheleth were translated into Greek, it would be the word from the New Testament we commonly translate as “church.”[4]

As we read into Chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes today, Qoheleth, the gatherer, suggests that God’s gift to us is to eat, drink, and find pleasure in our work or to see good in our work. For ancient peoples, eating and drinking were common social or communal activities. So God’s gift is the thoroughly human activity of social and community life and seeing good in our life's work. We learn that what is of real value is human partnership, community, and solidarity. Chasing after Divinity as a pursuit of power and wealth is worthless, fleeting, a puff of breath.

Later in Chapter 4, Qoheleth talks about a life that is pointless: a life without family, friends, neighbors, companions. Life utterly alone is pointless. But to have others, to live in community, brings meaning because community provides capacity to pick us up when we fall, to keep each other warm, to put up resistance when we come against those who would do us violence. Qoholeth's name is now explicitly stated in teaching: community brings life.

We live in a culture that has us hedging our bets against power and wealth, right? It is the flip side of keeping up with the Joneses. It’s, “We’re not as bad as the Joneses.” As long as I’m not doing it more than some people, I know, I have my priorities straight. Maybe it is not the most expensive sports car we have, like him, or maybe not the biggest flat panel TV like her, or I mean, come on, the Illini season tickets I have are in the horseshoe and the Illini stink. All of our chasing is good, it is the other person who doesn’t have their priorities straight. We sometimes fail to ask, “What am I really knocking myself out for? What good is it?”

This passage from Ecclesiastes seems to suggest that we all will go through these common life experiences, they are part of the human condition: love, hate, war, peace. But are we allowing the culture to dictate the season for all of these common life experiences? Why are we doing what we do? Do our actions suggest that we seek after power and wealth to validate or capture the Divine within ourselves? And, if so, do we hear God calling us back to the human in loving partnerships, mutual communities, and the struggle for solidarity?

Sometimes, rather than immerse ourselves in these human activities, we opt to get a little fix now and then. We join with other parents to help out with the local school musical. We come together and eat guacamole as Aaron Rodgers once again torches my beloved Bears and screams out at the fans that he “owns us.” Or we come together for the art class, the student government group, or the exercise session. Maybe there is that great restaurant or bar we’ll all go to see a few of our neighbors. We get a little community fix. But when we stay long enough with folk to recognize our differences or end up in arguments, we break rank. Why would we end up in all these different denominations if people hadn’t broken rank through years when one group in the church decided that the other group was just all wrong when it came to church organ music, the order of the church potluck, or some other high falootin’ theological point at the end of a pin?

I’ll have to say that this church is living out a dream of what I think it means to be the Beloved Community. There are always things that we can work on, but I think we do hard work in an ongoing basis to be human. We recognize the humanity of migrant workers in the southwest Michigan area through our care packages and donations. We look out after people who have not been at church recently, seniors and shut-ins, to let them know they are included in the wider Body of Christ. We have important discussions and reflection on issues like migration and climate change. We met just recently to talk about how we might provide education and presence for the young girls who are a part of our community of faith.

Our divinity is found in our humanity. We say, at Pilgrim Congregational UCC, that life is not found in these vain pursuits of wealth and power but in the real partnerships, diverse community, and strong solidarity we show for one another. In living out our common humanity, we become God’s Beloved Community and we are Divine. Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins! Let us continue the meaningful work God has given to us. Thanks be to God. Amen.