Guest Preacher: Rev. Dr. Judith McKinlay
Vanity of vanities – all is vanity. Shall we just go home now?! It is, of course, the opening and the cue for the biblical book we know as Ecclesiastes. “Vanity” has changed in meaning since the King James Version. But is it any better to say all is ephemeral – all as elusive as a breath, a whiff, a puff - or all is absurd -incomprehensible?
So what’s a book like this doing in the bible, you might well say?! The early rabbis warned – read this & you might end up a heretic!!
But here it is - with this constant refrain all is ephemeral- all is elusive, - in our bible. Have you read it lately?
The writer, known as Qohelet, which may or may not mean “the teacher,” writes as if he’s king Solomon: “ I, ... when king over Israel… , applied my mind to seek and search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven” (1:12). Somewhat ambitious!
But - a rather big ‘but’ - “I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is ephemeral and a chasing after wind … those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.”
Not altogether encouraging. Don’t listen if you are about to sit an exam!
So what Qohelet is doing, is seeing, observing & considering the world. AS someone says, it’s “the book of the Look” (to quote).[1]
What does Qohelet see? Contradiction upon contradiction – the wise have eyes in their heads but fools walk in darkness, Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them. Then I said to myself, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also, why then have I been so very wise. And I said to myself this also is absurd (2:14-15). Moreover I have seen righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evil doing. Do not be too righteous and do not act too wise, why should you destroy yourself! (7: 15-16).
Should we just be fools? But the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot (7:6), Dead flies makes the perfumer’s ointment give off a foul odour, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honour (10:1).
You can understand this writer being considered a pessimist and sceptic!
And wisdom? He has a small story: There was a little city with few people in it. A great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. So I said, “Wisdom is better than might; yet the poor man’s wisdom is despised. Being Qohelet, he doesn’t leave it there but follows, wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one bungler destroys much good (9:14-18).
What else does he see? The tears of the oppressed, but there is none to comfort them (4:1) - a world where money preoccupies everyone (10:19). Most probably the world of high rates of taxation enforced by Persia
Are you making some connections? – bad business ventures & collapsing finance companies - schools providing breakfast, because parents have nothing in their hands? Profit margins and money put before people – a society with the rich, and the very clearly not rich.
So is Qohelet pessimistic or simply realistic? All this, he says, I have tested by wisdom. I said, I will be wise, but that is beyond me. All that happens is inaccessible and utterly unfathomable (7:23-24).
So what to do? Just accept it? Although he does include the call cast your bread upon the waters … give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you don’t know what misfortune will occur on earth (11:1-2). Be generous – there may be a benefit – just may be.
Where is God in all of this? God is the creator – having made everything appropriate in its time (3:11), and is to be revered, but – Qohelet’s “but,” God is in heaven, humans are on earth (5:2) – the divide is clear. Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything (11:5)
Yet– doesn’t there have to be a “yet” in all this?!– we can enjoy food and wine, & marriage – even work (5:20) & this is God’s gift. Jewish tradition reads Ecclesiastes during the season of Sukkot, when families build small temporary shelters, recalling the 40 years in the wilderness.[3] A season when friends and family are invited in to eat our bread in gladness and drink our wine with joy, as God has long ago approved (9:7). A time, as Rabbi Kushner writes, “to enjoy happiness with those we love – a time … to make the most of [it]” the life” we have,[4] albeit death is hovering.
So this is it? Accepting absurdities, with a bit of enjoyment thrown in! Were the rabbis right – should this book not be in the bible?
And why would I choose to use Qohelet this morning? If your spirituality is one of warm relationship with God, you’re probably finding Qohelet bleak - if you’re committed to issues of social justice, you’re probably finding Qohelet quietist.
It is one voice among the many– but a voice that speaks to those who do find the meaning of life deeply mysterious, and accept that – a voice that speaks to those who constantly see the contradictions and accept life is like this. A voice that speaks to those whose spirituality is intellectually austere. But it is a spirituality – held with honesty and integrity. It is a faithful spirituality - and biblical.
At the end, comes the call: fear God and keep God’s commandments, for that is the whole duty of everyone (12: 13). Really? From Qohelet? Or is this tacked on to make the book conform a little more? Does that matter? The point is that read as a whole, that is the call, fear God and keep God’s commandments, “[e]ven if everything is absurd.” To quote the Jewish Qohelet scholar Michael Fox:
We may stumble around bruised and bewildered. We may see the meaning of life crumble if we stare at it too carefully. But we can still do what we are supposed to do. And we know what this is, even if we are ignorant of its consequences. That is no small thing.[5]
We, who are Christian, have the Gospel commandments – we agree, that is no small thing.
Have I answered why I chose Qohelet? Perhaps not entirely. Two more reasons. Firstly, his work is part of a long international tradition – international in the Ancient Near Eastern sense. He is working on a wide map. He never uses the Israelite name for God – what our Bibles translate as Lord. He simply writes God. Qohelet is writing on a wide map. It is an outward looking theology - & it is a theology – not closed off, not inward looking, not insular.
What he is also doing is challenging some long-held assumptions of that tradition, as Job had done before him. He’s constantly saying “yes, but,” and the “but” comes from his own observations – his own experience. He keeps saying I have looked and seen and this just isn’t so!
At the same time he remains part of this tradition. As Walter Brueggemann and his co-authors write: “Faith of the kind the wisdom teachers practice is never settled but is endlessly rethought, because lived experience finally is the grist of faith ... They refused to settle, because they knew that after the lived experience of today, there would be tomorrow with its own insistent questions … ”[6]
Do we say amen to that? I think many of us would, and many of us have. Knox has a strong thinking and rethinking tradition, though we might not have linked this back to Qohelet.
Rethinking, challenging, daring to state the contradictions, daring to be honest, when life made no sense to him, but daring this with a faithful integrity. That is Qohelet.
The book ends with the observation that of making many books there is no end (12:12). I, personally, am grateful for this one. Can we say thanks be to God? I think so.
[1] Mark Sneed, “(Dis)closure in Qohelet: Qohelet Deconstructed,” JSOT 27.1 (2002): 115-126 (122).
[2] See Choon Leong Seow, “Theology When Everything is Out of Control,” Interpretation 55.3 (2001): 237-249.
[4] Harold S. Kushner, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough (London: Pan Books, 1986), 190.
[5] Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and A Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 145.
[6] Bruce C. Birch et al., A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), 413, 415.
No comments:
Post a Comment