|
Dr. George A. Purnell
July 25, 2010
“Eat Your Melon, and Make Your Painting, and Give Thanks”
Ecclesiastes 9: 7-12
Ecclesiastes is the story of a man trying to find something that will cause him to believe that when his life is over, his memory will endure. We have been following him on this journey, sensing his cynicism and experiencing his frustrations along the way.
Thus far, Ecclesiastes has found little of permanent worth ‘under the sun.’
So, what’s next? If even religion fails our author, where can he turn for answers? In today’s passage, we read that he has decided to live in the moment, rather than look for something that lasts forever.
“Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun…Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in the grave, to which you are going.”
Ecclesiastes has examined the evidence and decided that we waste life by worrying about the fact that nothing lasts forever. Since we can’t know what happens beyond the grave, we must savor the moments we have under the sun, because while the moments of our lives do not last, the joys they contain do. They fade with time, but they are not erased when the moment is past.
Think back over your life…There are moments that remain forever young.
When I began this sermon series, I said that a book by Rabbi Harold Kushner entitled When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough was the source of my motivation to preach a series from the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, as well as the source of many of my insights into that book. Kushner writes:
“The author of Ecclesiastes spent most of his life looking for the Grand Solution, the Big Answer to the Big Question, only to learn after wasting many years trying to find the Big Answer to the problem of living is like trying to eat one Big Meal so that you will never have to worry about being hungry again.”
What Ecclesiastes discovers, Kushner continues, is this: “There is no Answer, but there are answers: love and the joy of working, and the simple pleasures of food and fresh clothes, the little things that tend to get lost in the search for the Grand Solution to life…”
There is no answer, but there are answers. “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love…Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might…”
A few weeks ago I watched a movie on DVD that my son Dustin had given me for Christmas a few years back. Dustin knows that my favorite actor is Jack Nicholson, so he often buys me movies he stars in as gifts. Entitled About Schmidt, this movie is about a man, a very ordinary man named Warren Schmidt.
In the movie’s opening scene, Schmidt is sitting at his desk watching the clock tick its final few seconds to the hour of five o’clock. He is dressed in suit and tie, his office door is closed, the bookshelves are empty, his briefcase is at his feet, and he is staring at the clock. The second it hits the hour, Warren Schmidt stands up, straightens his tie, pulls his suit jacket down, picks up his briefcase, takes a last look at his office, and goes out, closing the door behind him. He is now officially retired.
From that opening scene, we go to the retirement dinner that same (Friday) night. A long time colleague named Ray stands up at the dinner and makes a speech. “Warren,” Ray says, “none of this…the dinner, the gifts, the pension…means a thing. What really means something, Warren, is the knowledge that you devoted your life to something meaningful, to being productive and working for a fine company, to raising a family…to being respected by your community and having lasting friendships…At the end of his career, the man who can look back and say ‘I did my job’ can retire in glory.”
This movie is the story of a man who struggles to believe that his life as an actuary with Woodmen of the World Life in Omaha, Nebraska did in fact mean something. His first few days in retirement find him not knowing what to do. He responds to a television commercial for an organization called Child Reach, and signs up to send $22 per month to sponsor a child in Tanzania.
When Warren comes home one day from running errands, he finds his wife dead on the floor. She had died from a cerebral hemorrhage. Now he was retired and widowed almost simultaneously. He is estranged from his only child, a daughter (Jeannie) who lives in Denver and is getting married to a man Warren does not approve of. He becomes isolated, and about the only communication he has with the world is through his correspondence with Ndugu, the child he is sponsoring.
Writing to this boy is therapeutic for Warren. In his first letter to Ndugu, Warren writes to tell the boy that he is 66 years old and recently retired as an actuary at Woodmen of the World Life. He tells the boy that he once had bigger dreams.
“When I was a kid, I used to think that destiny had tagged me to be a great man. Not Henry Ford or Walt Disney, but somebody, you know, semi-important. I got a degree in business and statistics and was planning on starting my own business and build it into a big corporation…watch it go public, you know, maybe make the Fortune 500…I was going to be one of those guys you read about. But, somehow, it didn’t work out that way. You gotta remember, I had a topnotch job at Woodmen and a family to support…I couldn’t have put their security at risk”
Like Warren Schmidt, I remember daydreaming that I would be someone important when I grew up. I did not day dream about being a United Methodist minister in southern Indiana. My dreams were bigger.
I am increasingly coming to understand in my role as a pastor that it is not the fear of death that haunts people. Instead, it is the fear of having lived without ever knowing whether your life mattered to anyone other than a few people who knew you. And one way to not be forgotten is to become larger than life…famous…important…
But of course, most of us do not start up Fortune 500 companies or get elected to high public office. Most of us do not play the violin like Josh Bell or sing like Sylvia McNair or play football with the precision and proficiency of Peyton Manning.
Instead, most of us are ordinary people. Our lives will find their meaning in doing what God has given us to do…in enjoying life with the husband or wife we love…in the simple pleasures of eating and visiting with neighbors…
When someone dies and I am to officiate at the funeral or memorial service, I spend time gathering information about the deceased from those who knew him or her intimately. I talk with the deceased’s children and spouse and siblings and long time friends. I want to discover more than the resume of organizations belonged to and boards served on and schools attended and awards received. These merit mention, but they are not the really important things that I want to remember about the person in the eulogy.
What I probe for are those characteristics that made the person who he or she had been. How he or she would smile kindly at someone who was clearly distraught in elevator at a hospital, when it would have been easy to stare at the floor or look straight ahead silently. How they were patient with young people who were noisy in church and with aged people who were slow to react to a traffic signal. How they tutored at risk teens…
The last word spoken about someone on earth needs to help others see them as who they were when no one was looking. The truest portrait of anyone’s life is not comprised of a few great things accomplished, but, instead by the countless thousands of little things done daily throughout a lifetime; not for recognition, but because this was their nature.
Ecclesiastes tells us that we will never be comfortable until we realize that who we are is special enough, and that we will live on as we lived daily. Acts of kindness live on and reach across time, as do acts less worthy of our nature.
Warren Schmidt came home after his daughter’s wedding inconsolable. From his perspective at the moment, his life had been a complete failure. He wrote to his foster son in Tanzania, and said:
“Dear Ndugu…When I was out in Denver, I tried to do the right thing. I tried to convince Jeannie that she was making a big mistake. But I failed. Now she is married to that nincompoop and there is nothing I can do about it. I am a failure. There is no getting around it. Relatively soon, I will die…and once I am dead, and everyone who knows me is dead too, it will be as though I never existed. What difference has my life made to anyone? None that I can think of. None at all…”
He opened the mail that had come while he was away, and in it was the first letter he had ever received from the organization. It read:
Dear Mister Warren Schmidt. My name is Sister Nadine, of the order of the sisters of ‘the secret heart.’ I work in a small village near the town of Embeya in Tanzania. One of the children I care for is little Ndugu Umbu, the boy you sponsor. Ndugu is a very intelligent boy and very loving. He is an orphan. Recently he needed medical attention for an infection of the eye, but he is better now. He loves to eat melon and to paint. Ndugu receives all your letters. He thinks of you everyday and he wants much for your happiness. Ndugu is only 6 years old and cannot read or write. But he has made for you a painting. He hopes that you will like his painting. Yours sincerely, sister Nadine.
Tears poured down his cheeks and fell onto the letter and his body shook. In this moment of grief and loneliness, he opened a letter to discover that he had made a difference. Amen.
|
||||
 |
||||