Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity
of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil at
which they toil under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation
comes, but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun goes down, and
hurries to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south, and goes
around to the north;
Round and round goes the wind, and on its
circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea, but the sea
is not full;
To the place where the streams flow, there
they continue to flow.
All things are wearisome; more than one
can express;
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, or
the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be, and what
has been done is what will be done;
There is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is
said,“See, this is new”?
It has already been, in the ages before
us.
The people of long ago are not
remembered, nor will there be any remembrance
Of people yet to come by those who come
after them.
Ecclesiastes
1: 1-11
Reflection – I love the book of Ecclesiastes – I
think it is just about my favorite Old Testament book. The O.T. is just such an
intensely human document—this is what often gets missed in the stale debates of
atheism vs. fundamentalist faith. It is a book about human beings—messy, messed
up, weird, confused, mean, kind, stupid, clever human beings. And running all
through this intensely human document and its intense exposure of the human condition
in all its glorious sordidness, is God, a God not fully known, not always
clearly revealed in His goodness and love, a God filtered through the haze and
smoke of millennia of human perfidy, but the God whose holiness and righteousness shines more and more
brightly as the story advances.
The O.T. is so
deeply human, so much a testimony to the human condition in all its puzzlement
and baffled anguish, as well as its little triumphs and sweet joys. And nowhere
is this more clearly seen than in Ecclesiastes. This little piece of wisdom
literature dares to set down, on tablets of stone so to speak, humanity in one
of its darkest moods. That is, it records as Sacred Scripture, as the word of
God among men, the question, ‘So what’s the use of anything, anyway?’
Such a human
question, such a common cry. Why bother? What good is it? We’re all going to
die soon and leave nothing behind, so what is the point of doing anything? This
is the question of Ecclesiastes—vanity of vanities, all is vanity. In Hebrew it
is hevel havalim—breath of breaths,
all is just a puff of air that doesn’t amount to much in the first place and
then vanishes forever in the second place.
And Qoheleth
goes through all the possible goods of life—wealth, wisdom, pleasure,
virtue—and dismisses them each in turn as, basically, a lot of hot air. It is
quite the book, really, in its total rejection of the lasting and real value of
anything we can accomplish or attain in this life. It keeps coming to the same
point: we all die, and all of this is lost, and so what good is it?
And here’s the
part that I love most about the book: it never answers the question. Oh, he
comes to a sort of resolution by the end—just do the best you can with what
you’ve got, and try to be a good person—but that’s hardly an answer. That’s a
makeshift sort of thing: we have to do something, and this seems like the best
thing to do.
The whole O.T.,
in a sense, is a question without an answer. I would say that our entire
humanity, our human experience in itself, is a question without an answer. We
are alternately such wonderful creatures, so filled with immortal longings and
intimations of greatness, capable of profundities of virtue and marvels of
wisdom and beauty. And then in a flicker of an eye it all changes, and we are
vulgar, crass, craven little things, crawling on the face of the earth, doomed
to be wiped out in the passing of an hour of cosmic time. Which is it? Both
seem real, both seem right.
The human
enigma, and nowhere is it confronted more simply and plainly than in
Ecclesiastes, and in another way, in Job. A deeply human question that has no
human answer. Ecclesiastes will not be answered, in fact, nor will Job, until
God Himself comes into the human condition and gives the answer.
The whole O.T.
cries out, in an unified voice, ‘What is this thing called ‘man?’ and finds no
answer, nothing but vanity and empty wind. The New Testament calls out in a
voice that fills the cosmos, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and to
all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives power to become children
of God.’
Amen. Thanks!
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