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.

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[1] Anthony R. Ceresko, Introduction to Old Testament Wisdom:  A Spirituality for Liberation (Maryknoll, New York:  Orbis Books, 1999), pp. 2-3.

[2] Thomas Bolin, “Rival and Resignation:  Girard and Qoheleth on the Divine-Human Relationship.”  Biblica, Vol. 85, p. 245.  Academia.edu.http://www.academia.edu/235449/Rivalry_and_Resignation_Girard_and_Qoheleth_on_the_Divine-Human_Relationship

[3] Professor Timothy Sandoval, “Where Can Wisdom Be Found,” Ecclesiastes Lecture, September 1, 2012.

[4] Professor Timothy Sandoval, “Wisdom’s Worth,” Ecclesiastes Lecture, October 15, 2005.

Sermon for New Year's Day, January 1, 2017, "Life's Essential Questions"

A New Year’s Day BFC 2016

Ecclesiastes 3:1-12

January 1, 2017

          In reflecting about the results of the recent national presidential election, the Rev. Dr. Gary Peluso-Verdad, President of Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tracy’s alma mater, shared a conversation he had with his doctoral adviser some 25 years ago.  In speaking of Peluso-Verdad’s own denomination, the United Methodist Church, his adviser said to him, “Here is my take on the Methodists.  You used to run the show.  You don’t anymore.  No one told you.”  As Peluso-Verdad wrote, there is both an “ouch” and clarity in that statement. 

          In the first half of the 20^th Century, Methodists, the United Church of Christ and several other Protestant denominations occupied the cultural space of what it meant to be mainline.  Presently, the United Methodist Church is 2.2% of the United States population.  In 2014, the United Church of Christ was .4% of the United States population.  Whatever that is, even though I may continue to reference us as a mainline Protestant denomination, that percentage of the population is not “mainline.”  As Peluso-Verdad observes, we need to reframe and in reinterpret our reality.  “[We] participate in a minority expression of Christianity. The majority of persons in this country (and in the world, really) who call themselves Christian believe and practice differently from me and my minority group.”[1]  So we must come to grips with, Peluso-Verdand believes, that our country will never return to a time when progressive Christianity rules the hearts and laws of the land. 

“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, translated as “wind” can also can mean “breath” or “Spirit”, all of these translations 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. 

Wisdom Literature scholar Timothy Sandoval 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.  The Jewish people were the minority.  At no time would their spiritual and religious values carry the day.  Their faith would never rule the hearts and laws of the land.  Under Hellenistic rule, for 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?—the central question of the book of Ecclesiastes.  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]

If 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.  God’s gift, then, 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 through power and wealth is worthless.

          While those in charge and dictating faith and culture to others may be concerned with morality plays, purity codes, and right answers, people of progressive faith across many traditions are more concerned with asking the important and essential questions that countenance the real diversity found in community.  Because we are not concerned with remaining “pure”, those questions can be found wherever we believe struggle, hard work, and faithfulness in seeking wisdom are to be found. 

          As we prepare for the New Year, I would like to put before you questions proposed by the Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, James Ryan, offered at their 2016 commencement ceremonies.  He offers five questions and then a bonus question at the end.  Ryan begins by saying,

 [D]isparities and injustices based on income, wealth and race continue to weaken the fabric of our world, our nation and of our communities. Intolerance and authoritarianism appear, by some measures, on the rise both at home and abroad. Our world seems to be getting hotter and less hospitable, both politically and environmentally, though it was truly heartening to learn that, as of this year, the lovable manatee is no longer an endangered species. Redemption, it seems, is still possible.  By coming to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, you have signaled that your response to societal inequities and injustices is through education. I’m surely biased, but I applaud your choice, as I am convinced that education is the only long-term solution to these long-term problems.  I have seen your passion, your commitment to social justice, and your enormous talents on display all year, and while I am sad to bid you farewell, I take solace in knowing that you are leaving here to make the world a better place.[5]

I share that as a way of saying that maybe Ryan shares some of the values we do as he speaks from a secular pulpit for the commencement of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

        The first question is one Ryan learned well from his own children when they were being asked to do a chore around the house.  They hear from him something like, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, and I’d like you to clean the house?”  They then say, “Wait what?  Clean what?”  Wait what? is actually a great question asking for clarification.  There will be a number of things asking for our personal advocacy and our investment as a church community.  Before we give our support and advocacy, there are many times when we will need to ask for clarification first.  Wait what?

        The second question is, “I wonder . . .?” followed by the words “why” or “if.”  This is a way of remaining curious about the world moving toward action.  We might ask, “I wonder why we see so many Native American people who are part of the chronic inebriate community.  And I wonder if there is something we could do about that?”  I wonder . . . ?

        The third question is, “Couldn’t we at least . . .?”  Couldn’t we at least? is a way of getting unstuck and moving us forward toward consensus.  We are not sure where we will finish, or how to strategize going forward, but couldn’t we at least do this to get started?  Couldn’t we at least . .  ,?”

        The fourth question is, “How can I help?”  If community life is really where we find meaning, we won’t always be the ones who lead or set direction.  By asking “how” we can help, we admit that we might need direction ourselves.  We learn from others, and we fulfill a very human impulse to lend a hand.  How can I help?

        The fifth question is, “What truly matters?”  On this first day of the new year, we might ask this question as a way of holding ourselves accountable by adding two words, “What truly matters . . . to me?”  This question helps us to get to the heart of the matter, to cut through the chaff, to ask what is at the core of our beliefs and convictions.  What truly matters?

        “’Wait, what’ is at the root of all understanding. ‘I wonder’ is at the heart of all curiosity. ‘Couldn’t we at least’ is the beginning of all progress. ‘How can I help’ is at the base of all good relationships. And ‘what really matters’ gets [us] to the heart of life.[6] 

        If you regularly answer these questions, Ryan believes, you will be in great position to answer his bonus question, a question from a poem he found on the back of a bulletin at a funeral service for one of his dearest and closest friends.  Raymond Carver wrote a poem called, “Late Fragment” and it begins with, “And did you get what you wanted out of life, even so?” 

        “The ‘even so’ part of this, to [Dean Ryan], captures perfectly the recognition of the pain and disappointment that inevitably make up a full life, but also the hope that life, even so, offers the possibility of joy and contentment.”[7]

        And did you get what you wanted out of life, even so?  Carver’s short poem ends: “’I did./And what did you want?/To call myself beloved. To feel beloved on the earth.’”  Carver here not only means dearly loved but cherished and respected.[8]

        Wait, what?  I wonder . . .?  Couldn’t we at least?  How can I help?  What truly matters?  And did you get what you want out of life, even so?  For this new year, I think that is a good start for a progressive, thinking, compassionate faith community that is no longer what we might call mainline.  What other questions help us to be faithful?  What other questions might you include as a church that seeks to make meaning as the minority expression of Christianity?  One of them might be to ask, “How do we create a community ecosystem that helps both newcomers and long-time members to know themselves as beloved?”  For our oldest wisdom from a book like Ecclesiastes teaches us that meaning is found in life, not just a puff of breath, when we create solidarity, partnership, and community. 

For the most part, our Jewish ancestors lived and made meaning at a time when their faith was a minority expression.  As a Jew, himself, Christ had to find a way and a path as a minority expression in ancient Rome.  May we be faithful as he was so that we all might know ourselves to be beloved on this earth.  Amen.

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[1] Dr. Gary Peluso-Verdad, “From Mainline to Minority,” Phillips Seminary, December 16, 2016.  http://ptstulsa.edu/MainlinetoMinority.

[2] Thomas Bolin, “Rival and Resignation:  Girard and Qoheleth on the Divine-Human Relationship.”  Biblica, Vol. 85, p. 245.  Academia.edu.http://www.academia.edu/235449/Rivalry_and_Resignation_Girard_and_Qoheleth_on_the_Divine-Human_Relationship

[3] Dr. Timothy J. Sandoval, “Where Can Wisdom Be Found,” Ecclesiastes Lecture, Byron, IL, September 1, 2012.  Tim was formerly on faculty at Chicago Theological Seminary and now teaches at Brite Divinity School in Texas

[4] Dr. Timothy J. Sandoval, “Wisdom’s Worth,” Ecclesiastes Lecture, Champaign, IL, October 15, 2005.

[5]James Ryan, “Good Questions,” Harvard Graduate School of Education, May 26, 2016.  http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/16/05/good-questions.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.