Weekly Bulletin

….get wisdom, discipline, and good judgment.  The father of godly children has cause for joy.
    What a pleasure to have children who are wise.       Proverbs 23:23-24  (New Living Translation)

 

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.  “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless….”
Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:  Revere God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all humankind.  For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.        Ecclesiastes 1:2 and 12:13,14

 

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!  “Who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been his counselor?  Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?”  For from him and through him and for him are all things.  To him be the glory forever!  Amen.         Romans 11:33-36

 

 Ecclesiastes, the Search for a Meaningful Life

 

In 1986, during the second year Pam and I spent working in United Nations refugee camps in southern Sudan, I became quite ill with a malady that caused very high fevers and severe back pain during the evening and at night.  Despite our sleeping under a mosquito net, and my faithful swallowing of a weekly preventative dose of bitter chloroquine pills, we suspected I had contracted malaria.  I tried taking a curative dose of those pills following the instructions in our medical handbook, but all it did was disrupt my digestive system as well.  After several more nights of little sleep and days of increasing weakness, I went to the “Doctors Without Borders” medical personnel in our small town for a blood test which confirmed I had chloroquine-resistant malaria.  Seeing the test result, the French nurse asked for my body weight, converted it from pounds into kilograms, and looked in her medical book for the amount of quinine I needed to take to be cured.  I went home with a packet of those equally-bitter pills, determined to get well. 

 

I learned that night that the cure was almost as unpleasant as the illness.  One of the effects of large doses of quinine was a constant deafening “roar” in my ears like the sound of a jet taking off, making sleep almost impossible.  After three or four days of that, however, the dangerously high night fevers subsided, so I returned to work, a bit wobbly but glad to be feeling better each day.  Then, a week after I had finished the course of quinine pills, the high fever and back pain returned.  I went back to the clinic and told the nurse what had happened.  She did another blood test, checked me over, and went back to her medical book.  It turned out that she had not done the math correctly when converting my weight into kilograms.  I should have had twice as much quinine over more days than she had first prescribed.  So, I went through the whole ordeal a second, longer time – the fevers, the back pain, the “jet in my head,” sleep deprivation, and feeling like a zombie – but the medicine worked, and I recovered.

 

I was reminded of that experience as I read the first six chapters of Ecclesiastes in this week’s Through the Bible schedule.  In those chapters, the learned, accomplished author despairingly calls “meaningless” (37 times!) nearly all the things most people spend their lifetime pursuing.  I vividly remember lying there in bed in Sudan, hundreds of miles from any modern medical facility, my back aching and my mind fogged by fever, wondering if I would survive.  During those long sleepless nights and semiconscious days, it seemed like all my brain could do was recall all of the bad things I had ever done, or that ever had happened to me.  The longer that went on, the more meaningless it seemed that I had left family, meaningful work, and a relatively comfortable life to drag Pam halfway around the world to live and work with refugees under difficult conditions.  The most meaningless part was that she might have to bury me there and return home alone because of a mosquito bite.

 

About Ecclesiastes      Reference books say that ecclesiastes is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for “the Teacher or Preacher” who calls people to live for God.  In New Testament theology, the Greek term ecclesia means “the Church, the called out ones.”  Until fairly recently, Ecclesiastes was believed by historians to have been written by King Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba who succeeded his father on Israel’s throne.  When he became king, Solomon asked for and received from God a gift of wisdom beyond his human capacities (I Kings 3), and he became renowned as the world’s wisest man.  He is considered the author also of most of the Book of Proverbs and the Song of Songs.  In recent years, some scholars have questioned Solomon’s authorship of Ecclesiastes, but there is no conclusive proof either way, and most still attribute the book to Solomon (1:1). 
             One of my college Old Testament textbooks observes that Solomon probably wrote the Song of Songs as a very young man enthralled by eros, in celebration of romantic and sensual love.  He then wrote Proverbs as a middle-aged king who had carefully observed life’s principles, contradictions, and enigmas, its gains and losses, and offered his wise sayings as practical teaching for dealing with life’s common problems.  The textbook then surmises that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes near the end of his life as he looked back on where he had found true meaning and purpose for living, and on the distractions which human vanity had imposed on that search.  Ecclesiastes seems an appropriate name for the Teacher who began this writing by calling upon people “to be happy and do good” while alive (3:12) and concluded it by calling readers into fellowships who “fear God and obey his commandments” as the whole duty of humankind (12:13).

 

Meaningless Wisdom?     Solomon first takes on his own greatest asset (1:12-18), the gift of “a discerning heart” he received from the Lord as he began his reign over Israel.  He acknowledged that his wisdom allowed him to see and understand people’s shortsighted, self-serving pursuit of temporary happiness, something he called “chasing after the wind.”  When that wisdom was not or could not be applied to help rescue people from such futile endeavors, it brought Solomon more sorrow and grief than he had before he gained godly wisdom.  A New Testament temporary example of that for me is Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem during his triumphal entry (Luke 19:41-44) – but Jesus acted upon his knowledge to sacrificially offer the rescue people needed, if they’d accept it.

 

Meaningless Pleasures?     Next, Solomon reflected on people’s pursuit of pleasure in the search for meaning (2:1-16).  He pondered the pleasure of laughter, but he quickly saw that when it is not spontaneous, but rather forced, or vulgar, or induced by wine, or gained at the expense of others, it is not from God.  He considered the pleasure of his great accomplishments, his great leisure, provisions, and entertainments, and his great power that afforded him a harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines from all over the known world.  In wisdom, he had to admit that none of those things gave meaning to his life because they were all earthbound, all for himself.  He reached Old Testament agreement with Paul’s instruction in Colossians 3:1,2 to “set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God; set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

 

Meaningless Work?     Solomon did not doubt the necessity of work for human survival.  His wisdom, however, caused him to question the toll it took on people who labored at work which dishonored the Lord or resulted in harm, or work they did not enjoy — mainly to keep up with or get ahead of their neighbors, or to amass wealth to leave to their children (2:20-23, 3:22, 4:4).  Paul in Colossians 3:23 said that whatever one does should be done in the name of Christ, with thankfulness to God.  If our work cannot be done that way, Solomon would say it is meaningless, and we probably should find a new job.

 

Meaningless Wealth?      Ecclesiastes 5:8ff lets us know that the human race hasn’t changed much in some ways during all the centuries since Solomon lived.  He saw oppression and greed in Israelite society, with the powerful exploiting the labor of the powerless to increase their holdings even more.  He observed that whoever loves money never has enough and is never satisfied, and he pointed out that the hoarding of wealth harms its owner as well as the poor.  Solomon also would remind us of 1929, that wealth can quickly evaporate through misfortune.  We live at a time in the wealthiest nation in history when the top 1% of the people hold well over 33% of the wealth, while the bottom 50% of the people hold less than 3% of it.  According to the experts who monitor that, the gap is widening, not narrowing.  Solomon would call that meaningless and advise movement towards generosity and the common good.  Jesus would remind us not to store up treasures on earth, but to store up treasures in heaven by loving one another and sharing freely what we have received with those who need help.

 

Meaningful Lives     In the final six chapters of the Book, Solomon reverts to the form of writing seen in Proverbs.  He gives sound advice and instruction about living wisely, quietly, and moderately.  He wrote of the wisdom of respecting legitimate authority and recognizing the equality of all people in God’s eyes.  He counseled his people to work diligently and to trust the Lord to honor their work with his watchful care and provision.  He urged people to start when young to worship, befriend, and serve the Lord in order to live meaningfully. 
             Solomon closed this Book of wisdom with these words:  Revere God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all humankind.  For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. (12:13,14)  He had written in Ecclesiastes 3:10,11 that God has laid the burden on people of seeing that “he has made everything beautiful in its time, and has also set eternity in their hearts.” Solomon clearly yearned for something or Someone beyond himself to teach him what life in all its complexities meant.  His simple closing suggests that he was on the right track. 
             To live meaningfully, we must know and worship life’s Source in humble reverence.  All our actions, words, relationships, and choices must be obedient to his Way and carried out in Christlike sacrificial love.  And our lives must be lived with eternal perspective.  If our earthly “wisdom,” pleasures, work, or wealth fail Solomon’s simple “test” of reverence, loving obedience, and eternal acceptability, he would tell us we will not find meaning or genuine life in the Spirit until we’ve allowed the Lord to make some adjustments.  As we honor the fathers and ministering men in our lives on this Father’s Day, may you find deep meaning in giving your Heavenly Father joy by worshiping him with humble reverence, loving obedience, and eternal hope.  Happy Father’s Day.  Amen.

 

 

 Queries for Worship-Sharing and Reflection

 

1)  What in your life do you find deeply meaningful?  What makes it meaningful to you?

2)  How can we turn seemingly meaningless things in life into meaningful experiences of God’s goodness and love?

3)  What about life in the world in 2025 strikes you as meaningless?

4)  Why do you think Solomon did not experience his wisdom, wealth, or pleasures as meaningful?