(I was in Cohocton for the day. This "sermon" was written in the form of a New Testament letter to be read in worship.)
To St. John’s Lutheran Church of Victor, New York.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am thankful to be able to serve as the pastor of our congregation. I feel God has blessed us with the task of sharing the good news of salvation to the people of Victor. Who, while quite wealthy in possessions, tend to be poor in their acknowledgement of the need for grace. It is always difficult to proclaim to “successful people” that their worldly success is actually quite shallow. Success can easily fool people into thinking that they are righteous before God. Successful people tend to think their possessions ensure their value;… and that everyone else thinks they’re valuable people because of all their things. Nevertheless, all are in need of God’s grace, and true success only comes by faithfully living according to God’s will.
It is a sad reality that the more wealth and success a society has the more they turn away from religion. That goes for Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam, and eastern religions as well. The prosperity of North America and Europe today is unparalleled in human history. Never before have humans had life so easy. Never before have people enjoyed such a glut of comfort, entertainment, and luxury. People should be more thankful to God than ever before! But not so.
The Bible is full of stories of people who turn away from God when they become prosperous. The prophets often criticized the greedy kings of Israel. Jesus challenged the scribes and Pharisees who felt themselves righteous because of their prosperity. The rich young man who came to Jesus asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life could not give up his reliance upon his wealth. From Adam and Eve onward, it seems to be a truth that people would rather turn to themselves for fulfillment rather than turning to God.
The book of Ecclesiastes dares to challenge the lie that deeply drives the lives of many people. Ecclesiastes is sometime attributed to King Solomon. This is almost certainly not true. But it is impossible to narrow down who wrote it or when it was written. A fragment of the book exists that carbon dates to 150 B.C. So, it was written sometime before then. That’s all we can say for certain.
Ecclesiastes is perhaps not popular because it dares the challenge many things. In general, we do not like what it has to say. It is almost never read for Sunday worship. Only a portion of Chapter 3 is read occasionally at funerals or weddings. But then it is pulled out of context. When left in its context we realize it is part of a larger writing that dares to question everything. It dares to speak things we don’t want to think about:
What is the purpose of life?
Why is God so often silent?
Why is life so unfair?
Why does God seem so far away?
Why doesn’t God give us clearer instructions for life?
Last week when reading Proverbs we talked about wisdom. The author of Ecclesiastes even questions the point of wisdom. After all, the both the foolish and the wise end up equally dead!
And what is the point of anything and everything that we do? Will it not all deteriorate in time?
If you have great accomplishments and live in wisdom, how do you ensure that your descendants won’t just squander it all?
Ecclesiastes does not preach well to most people in Victor, New York. And yet it dares to speak things that most people in Victor know about but don’t speak. Along those lines, Ecclesiastes asks lots of questions. It gives almost no answers. Or, perhaps it gives answers that we do not want to hear!
The first part of Chapter 3 that we read probably brought to mind the 1965 hit from the Byrds, Turn! Turn! It’s a catchy song. There’s nothing wrong with the song in and of itself. However, it can lead to a misinterpretation of the text. Some people read things like, “a time to weep and a time to laugh,” and, “a time to love and a time to hate,” and they think that’s talking about human time. They think that sometimes it is okay to love and other times it is okay to hate. Or that sometimes will be times to keep silence and other times will be times to speak. That is not what is meant.
Time is God’s time. That means that as time passes there will be times of love and times of hate. There will be times of war and times of peace. There will be times to gather stones and times to cast away stones. All of that is just the movement of time. All of that is within God’s hands. 3:14 says, “I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him.”
This text ultimately calls us to be faith-filled people at all times. A faith-filled person is knows what type the time is and then acts appropriately. But how are we to be faith-filled people? The answers are woven in the text.
It starts with a healthy fear of God. Verse 11 says that God has put a sense of past and future in the minds of humans. We alone of all of God’s creatures have a sense of eternity. We alone of all of God’s creatures can sense God the way we do, and have questions about the meaning of existence. So, God has given us this ability to sense Him, yet God has kept from us full knowledge of what He is actually up to. This is the beginning of the fear of God. It puts us in our place and keeps us from getting arrogant.
Once we have a healthy fear of God, the next step in faithfulness is to trust God. We need to trust that God is indeed good. We need to trust that God cares about us. But what does God caring about us look like? Shouldn’t those who trust God have easy lives and those who do not trust God have miserable lives? Wouldn’t that prove that God is trustworthy? That makes sense. But that is not the way things work. Verses 16 and following talk about injustice in the world. They talk about wickedness being in the place of justice; and even in the place of righteousness there was wickedness. So what does that mean for trusting God? The author of Ecclesiastes answers that God is ultimately the judge of all of this. We (in our humility brought about by the fear of God) trust that God sees and that God knows. And we trust that in God’s time justice will be done.
Once we fear God and trust God, then what? How does that look in our lives? What are we to actually do?
We once again go back to humility and the fear of God. In Verse 14 the author says, “I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, or taken from it.” That means that God and God alone can do anything permanent. We shouldn’t even try. We need to understand that even the greatest of our life’s work will fade away in time. We will be forgotten. Our greatest accomplishments will all be replaced sooner or later.
Perhaps a look at sports stadiums is a good example. We build these great works that cost billions of dollars. We spend years building them. Someone buys the right to name them. And so they are named. Until someone buys the right to change the name. Frontier Field in Rochester becomes Innovative Field. The War Memorial Auditorium becomes Blue Cross Blue Shield Arena. The Auditorium Theatre becomes the West Herr Auditorium Theatre.
How big do we have to build something, how much do we have to spend to make our name permanent? We can’t. Only God does things that endure forever. Part of being a faith-filled person is having the humility to know that even the best of your life’s work is transitory.
So then what? Is it all pointless?
Have you picked up on the irony of Ecclesiastes? It is part of scripture. It is an enduring writing that has been passed on for a few millennium. Yet it is impossible to know who actually wrote these enduring words!
Ecclesiastes tells us what to do with our transitory lives. The final verse of our reading from Ecclesiastes says, “So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot.” And Verse 12 says, “…moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.”
There we have it. Two “four-letter” words: “work” and “toil”. You’d think they’d become swear words. No one likes them. People avoid them as much as possible.
We have the New York State Lottery and all sorts of casinos. They all hold out the promise of gain without work and toil. How successful would they be if the winner got to do more work and toil for less pay?
The idea is absurd. We laugh. Work and toil are for people in prison. They are not for lottery winners! Yet that takes us back to where we began… life in Victor among successful people.
To be sure, the people of Victor know the meaning of words like work and toil. And it is reasonably likely that they have done a share of it. Perhaps friends and family even criticize them for doing it too much! The question is, for what are they toiling? Why are they doing it?
If they are toiling to afford a nice house, send their kids to an expensive college, and have a lot of nice things, then they are toiling in vain. We didn’t read any parts of Ecclesiastes that talk about vanity, but there are many of them. They talk about toiling in vain. Toiling in vain is toiling apart from a relationship with God. Toil that builds a person’s life is toiling with the knowledge and fear of God.
I’m fairly sure most of the population of Victor is toiling in vain. They toil effectively enough to appear successful. But their toils will take them nowhere. They are tired. They are frustrated. They end up in a vicious cycle of toiling for things so they can afford luxuries and entertainment, which they use to escape from their toil!
Work and toil done in faith-filled relationship with God will create a full life. According to Ecclesiastes it is an end unto itself. This is not a flashy message, but it is good news. It is the good news that we know and the good news that we live for.
Whether we are young and energetic, or old and tired, may God fill our days with work and toil that is meaningful. May we be willing to pick up those tasks and perform them well. In that way, whether their effects be short-lived or long-lasting, they will be done for the kingdom of God, which is truly enduring and worthwhile.
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