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Dr. George Purnell
July 11, 2010
"Gone So Soon"
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11; 2:1-11
One of my favorite authors, Rabbi Harold Kushner has published eleven books at last count, and I have read all but three of them. His first book, and the one he remains best known for, was published in 1981. Entitled When Bad Things Happen to Good People, the book represents Kushner’s search to find meaning out of suffering following the death of his 14 year old son (Aaron) from the extremely rare genetic disease, progeria; a disease where accelerated signs of aging begin in early childhood.
Many of Kushner’s books since that original one have continued to deal with how people can find God in the midst of doubt and suffering. And many of them are expositions on particular books of the Hebrew Bible. When Bad Things Happen to Good People considers suffering in the context of the Job. His book, Who Needs God? helps us understand God in our lives as God is seen in the Psalms. His book, How Good Do We Have to Be? helps us find a new understanding of guilt and forgiveness by looking at the book of Genesis. And Kusner’s book, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, helps us understand our own search for meaning in life by examining the Book of Ecclesiastes. Over the next four weeks I would like to investigate this little known book, which is located between the Proverbs and Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. In this Bible, Ecclesiastes begins on page 614 and ends on 621. Preachers avoid this book. (In the 21 years that I have subscribed to the journal Lectionary Homiletics, I have only found Ecclesiastes as the text chosen to preach from one time.) But after reading When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, I became interested in reading Ecclesiastes, and the more I read the more I found myself in the story. Just this last week I was speaking with a man I have long looked to for guidance. He was born in 1924, fought in World War 2, and later became a distinguished banker and civic leader in Indianapolis. When I talk with him, I try to ask questions about his life and then listen, because it will not be long before his generation is gone from earth, and we won’t be able to learn the lessons that their experience and wisdom have to teach us. As we talked about how hard life was in the 1930’s, he said that he felt blessed to have been alive during this time in history; because these experiences strengthened him, and prepared him to face whatever came in life, confident in the knowledge that challenges present opportunities for learning and growth. And as he reminisced about these early years, he looked away and said: “how can I be 86…how did it go by so fast?” Regardless of our age, we all wonder at times: where has our time gone? The days go by more quickly the older we grow, or at least so it often seems. Some are exciting and some are tedious. Some are filled with achievement and some marked by failures. Some are happy days and some are days of sorrow. But at least occasionally, we wonder: when our days are lived out, will our lives have mattered? Will anyone other than a few people who loved us even know that we lived? I remember to this day something that happened when I was 9 years old. I went with my mom to my dad’s office to pick up some things the day following my father’s funeral. Dad had died suddenly and unexpectedly on Saturday night, and this was Wednesday. Jimmy Cooper was sitting at my dad’s desk, and his name was on the nameplate on the desk where my dad’s had been. I distinctively remember watching the bustle of the office activity that morning in the place my dad had worked. It was as if my dad was not missed. When I was in my late 20’s my life was a train wreck in progress. I was recently divorced. My children lived apart from me. My professional life was on life support. My finances were tenuous at best. I was unstable emotionally and bankrupt spiritually. And I turned to the Bible looking for help. I’m not sure why I did, because I was not involved in church at this time of my life. I probably turned to scripture because I was raised in the church, and early on I was told that the Bible was where the answers to life’s hard questions were to be found. My reaction was not unusual. Many people who are confused turn to the Bible, whether they formerly went to church or not. And Kushner tells us this often makes people who are searching for answers about life more frustrated, because what they find in the Bible are answers to questions they are not asking, so “they feel even worse to discover that something which has been so helpful to so many others” does not speak to them. Kushner contends that if the seeker would read Ecclesiastes, he or she would find a book that asks their questions and gives voice to their doubts and fears and frustrations… Ecclesiastes is the story of a man trying to decide whether life has any meaning. Why work hard, the author begins his book asking. “What do people gain” from all their “toil under the sun,” because one generation passes and another comes along, “but the earth remains for ever.” Quickly, in chapter two, he writes about the futility of working hard and then having to “leave it to those who come after me – and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled…” So, what’s the point of hard work and saving? He was apparently a man of many talents. In his youth, he set out to get rich and enjoy life. And he succeeded. He drank wine and lived recklessly, because life was short. He “made great works; built houses and planted vineyards” for himself; he made gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees,” again all for himself. He “bought male and female slaves,” and other slaves were born in his house. He had “great possessions of herds and flocks, more than anyone who had been before me in Jerusalem.” He “gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings…singers and concubines and delights of the flesh…” “Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure”…Still, he found that “all was vanity and a chasing after the wind.” The Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde once wrote, “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” He was trying to tell us, Kushner observes, that if we seek meaning and joy in life from success, we will never be satisfied. There will always be the need for one more acquisition, one more conquest, one more victory, one more something... The lives of the rich and famous continue to teach us this truth that Ecclesiastes put forth, namely that no amount of wealth or pleasure or power or comfort can fill this void in our soul. How many times have we watched movie stars or politicians or other celebrities with money and fame and power crash and burn? How many times have we seen their lives cut short by addictions or reckless living? How many times have we watched them squander their reputations and ruin their careers and destroy their marriages by becoming involved in scandals? What can we conclude from our author’s search so far? Ecclesiastes has told us nothing that we didn’t already know. Even if our culture equates money, position and power with success, we know better. We realize that money and comfort are not lasting sources of fulfillment and contentment. We know that status cannot be the real measure of a person’s worth, because it can quickly be gone. And we know that a life devoted to seeking all these things is only an escape from finding and doing something of lasting value with one’s life. One new thing we do learn is that a man whose writings are found in the Old Testament asked the same questions of life that we asking today. So we don’t need to feel either sinful or shallow when we question whether life has any ultimate meaning, and whether faith adds value to our existence. We are conflicted on many levels. We “are children of the modern Western world, shaped by the Bible, the Church, and Greek Culture. We have inherited the Greek love of physical pleasure and the biblical ambivalence toward it,” Kushner reminds us. At the root of our internal discomfort, Kushner writes, lies “one of the fundamental conflicts in the American character.” Although we are 21st century post-modern people, our attitudes are still informed in part by our 17th century Puritan ancestors. On one hand, we love the life we are able to enjoy because of our affluence. We enjoy our creature comforts, our pleasure pursuits, and our leisure time. We keep ourselves cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than we need be, and we have three cars in our garages, all the while championing environmental causes and complaining about America’s addiction oil. We eat too much, and then we diet and go to the gymnasium for penance. We take extravagant vacations, but uncertain that we deserve the break, we take our laptops to stay connected to work. We want the good life, but too much comfort and pleasure makes us feel guilty. We want our life to count, but we are afraid of losing what makes us comfortable and safe today. It is characterized as the modern dilemma, but is as old as Ecclesiastes. Too often we settle for a life that has little disappointment. We try to minimize risk and avoid failure, but in so doing we lose the excitement that comes from trying something we are unsure that we can do, but feel the need to find out if we can. We believe that pain is to be avoided, but in order to avoid feeling pain we must keep people at a distance and relationships on the surface. Pain and disappointment and failures are a part of life. Indeed, these can be “character builders.” They can make us more compassionate people, more tolerant people, and more patient people. They make our lives more authentically human. Ecclesiastes is disappointed in his quest so far. He has come to understand that wealth and pleasure are transient. He is unsure at this point what will give his life lasting value, but he knows these won’t. So, he moves on. He turns next to learning and religion in his search for a life that finally matters. Whether he fares any better with learning and religion than he did with his past life of extravagance and self indulgence will be next week’s sermon topic. Ecclesiastes seems restless in many of the same ways that we do. Maybe to this point in our walk with him the best we can conclude is that life has many important questions that we leave unasked, in part because we fear the answers. Life cannot be lived on the surface forever. Our lives are enriched and deepened when we ask the hard questions of life. We can put them off for awhile, but it is a risk to wait long because life is gone so soon. Amen. |
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