- Sermon - Mickey Anders

"Trivial Pursuits"

By Dr. Mickey Anders

First Christian Church

Pikeville, Kentucky

July 11, 2004

For extra credit one teacher asked her eleventh grade students, "How many gargoyles are there on the Cathedral of Notre Dame?" I'm not sure what the answer was, but one can help but ask, "Who cares?"

Some educators ridicule such trivial questions and suggest that teachers should be busy asking questions that matter rather than questions that entertain. Educator Jamie McKenzie wrote an article suggesting that there are many more important and more intriguing questions about gargoyles, like these:

McKenzie says that schools often engage students in collecting answers, in accumulating information when they should be turning students' attention to essential questions. Essential questions require that students spend time pondering the meaning and importance of information.Essential questions are questions that resonate within our hearts and our souls. Essential questions are at the heart of a search for Truth.

He goes on to suggest that students should spend their time transforming information into meaning - finding meaning, creating meaning, extending meaning, reading between the lines, working with clues, and building theories.

The greatest novels, the greatest plays, the greatest songs and the greatest paintings all explore essential questions in some manner. Schools should devote more time to essential questions and less time to trivial pursuit. (1)

The book of Ecclesiastes is an existential book in the middle of the Bible, which reminds us to avoid the trivial pursuits of life and to remember the essential questions. This is a book that has many critics, but it also has many fans, especially among skeptics, people with a dark vision of reality, and recovering alcoholics. But many people find this book baffling and wrongheaded.

All of us know a few of the verses from this book, if nothing more than the famous song written by Pete Seeger and made popular during the 60s by the Byrds:

But now that we are reading through the Bible together, we are reading the whole of the book, and I hope that we will learn to appreciate it. I think it is one of the best books in the Bible. It is perhaps the most modern book in the Bible, in that it speaks to the needs of the modern mind. We need to hear what the writer has to say, even though it is not a message we may want to hear.

The writer of Ecclesiastes is often referred to as "the preacher" or "the teacher." Whichever he really is, he is preeminently a realist. Here is a writer who is not at all comfortable with the platitudes of religion or even with conventional wisdom. He has no use at all for a muddied piety or unexamined assumptions.

The New Interpreters Bible says that "Ecclesiastes is best viewed as a notebook of ideas by a philosopher/theologian about the downside and upside of life."

The central message comes in the second verse, which is also repeated in the last chapter, "Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity." Even this great line is not completely clear in its meaning.

The New Interpreters Bible concludes, "The Hebrew term describes something that is without merit, an unreliable, probably useless thing."

You can tell this is a dark and mysterious book when the author takes a serious look at life and concludes, "All is vanity! All is utterly vain! Everything is empty! Nothing is worthwhile. All is meaningless."

But I want to suggest that we look closer at this book and its real meaning. Most of us are willing to gloss over some of the realities which this writer squarely faces. He takes a hard look life and sees chance and death, and he doesn't instantly look away.

One of my favorite sections comes from chapter 9 verse 11 and 12:"Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them."

This is a great balance for us just after reading through Proverbs, where we found assurance after assurance that if we pursue wisdom all will go well with us. Proverbs 2 puts things in simple black and white: "For the upright will abide in the land, and the innocent will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it" (Proverbs 2:21-22)

The conventional wisdom said if you obey God, then things will go well with you. You will have wealth, family, and long life. And if you disobey God, you can expect judgment and disaster. Faith was viewed almost as an insurance policy. Many people still hold their faith that way.

But the writer of Ecclesiastes looked frankly at the world and saw shades of gray. He saw that the wise person and the foolish person both died and were soon forgotten. Then he had the nerve to ask, "What is the meaning of life if we all die anyway?"

Furthermore, he acknowledged the reality of chance. Many devout Christians simply do not believe in chance. They are convinced that everything happens for a reason and everything is according to God's plan. But Ecclesiastes looked around and saw that "the race is not (always) to the swift, the battle does not always go to the strong," and concluded "time and chance happen to them all."

I love the reality of that view. The simple fact of life is that bad things happen even to good people. Take a quick look at television and the music industry and you will quickly see that sometimes immense wealth goes to very foolish people. And sometimes a very good man gets cancer and suffers mercilessly. The writer of Ecclesiastes looks at such circumstances and doesn't try to gloss over them.

Along with many existentialist philosophers this preacher sees many reasons for despair.

He sees the ceaseless round of things. He says, "A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns." (1:4-6). He sees life as an endless treadmill, and in fact, doesn't it often seem just that way? Many people ask with Ecclesiastes, "What's the point of bothering with anything if life is an endless treadmill?"

The preacher looks to wisdom, which was so highly valued in the book of Proverbs. But he concludes, "So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly; for what can the one do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done." (2:12). He says, "I… applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind" (1:13-14).

He pursues pleasure with a vengeance and finds it empty. He looked to government and found that while some are virtuous, others are filled with injustice. He concludes that there is too much violence and too many victims.

And the final equalizer of all life is death. At this point in Israel's history there was very little understanding of an afterlife. He concludes, "They came from their mother’s womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came; they shall take nothing for their toil, which they may carry away with their hands. This also is a grievous ill: just as they came, so shall they go; and what gain do they have from toiling for the wind?"

He reminds us that there is a way of looking at this world with a jaundiced eye. This writer was not the last to make such conclusions about life.

But this writer has more to say. He sprinkles throughout the book glimpses of sunlight casting a bright line through the dark clouds.

He encourages us to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. He says, "There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?" (2:24-25a) The simple joys of food and work are oases of rest and peace in the face of life's difficulties. These simple pleasures are given by God and are to be enjoyed with a clear conscience. "Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do." (9:7)

The final chapter begins by saying, " Remember your creator in the days of your youth…" (12:1a) The human situation is not hopeless because there is a Creator God, and we must remember that God from our youth.

And just when we think we have his message that nothing matters, he says, "Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment." (11:9)

The writer has looked at so much of life from the human point of view, but toward the end we begin to find the God's-eye-view entering into the picture. "God will bring you into judgment." And the last sentence in the book says, "For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil." (12:14)

Suddenly, we are told that everything we do does matter. It matters to God. We matter to God.

Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 10:42, "Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." God sees and knows all that we do!

"The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone." (12:13) To fear God is to give reverence, honor and thanksgiving. God is the ultimate source of our meaning, or as Tillich said, "the ground of our being."

Ultimately our source of being and meaning comes in the person of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Because God cared enough to send Jesus to live and die for us, we can have meaning. All is not vanity. Everything is not empty. All is not meaningless.

"The whole duty of everyone" is to keep God's commandments. Someone has said that the commandments of God is a way of giving us a map, a map of a minefield. If we step in the wrong place, we will suffer disaster. But God has given us a map so that we can know where to step so that we might find joy and happiness. God points out the path that is right, righteous, wholesome in the midst of a minefield that will otherwise blow us apart. Keeping the commandments is the heart of wisdom.

1) From Trivial Pursuit to Essential Questions and Standards-Based Learning by Jamie McKenzie, http://www.fno.org/feb01/pl.html. Retrieved 7/8/2004.