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March 19, 2017 - Third Sunday in Lent
Ecclesiastes 9:7-18
7 Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long
ago approved what you do. 8 Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking
on your head. 9 Enjoy life with the spouse whom you love, all the days of
your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion
in life, and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your
hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge
or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
11 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.
12 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.
13 I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it
seemed great to me. 14 There was a little city with few people in it. A great king
came against it and besieged it, building great siege works against it. 15 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. 16 So I said, “Wisdom is better than might;
yet the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heeded.”
17 The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded
than the
shouting of a ruler among fools.
18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war,
but one bungler
destroys much good.
Sermon: enjoyLENT: Wise
Joy
A
boat docked in a tiny Thai village. An American tourist complimented the local
fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch
them.
“Not
very long,” answered the fisherman.
“But
then, why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more?” asked the American.
The
fisherman explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and
those of his family.
The
American asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
“I
sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a nap with my wife.
In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks,
play the guitar, and sing a few songs. I have a full life…”
The
American interrupted, “I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You
should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you
catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat.”
“And
after that?” asked the fisherman.
“With
the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a
third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of
selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing
plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little
village and move to Bangkok, Singapore, or even Hong Kong! From there you can
direct your huge new enterprise.”
“How
long would that take?” asked the fisherman.
“Twenty,
perhaps twenty-five years,” replied the American.
“And
after that?”
“Afterwards?
Well my friend, that’s when it gets really interesting,” answered the American,
laughing. “When your business gets really big, you can start buying and selling
stocks and make millions!”
“Millions?
Really? And after that?” asked the fisherman.
“After
that you’ll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep
late, play with your grandchildren, catch a few fish, take a nap with your wife,
and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends.”
You
may have heard this parable before. It reveals to us the inherent wisdom and
joy to be found in simplicity. It’s the same message the book of Ecclesiastes
(or Qoheleth in the Hebrew, its true name) is trying to convey.
Life
is fleeing. The effects of time and hardship happen to us all. But enjoyment – living with an indwelling of
joy in all circumstances – is God’s gift to us. Those deemed wise and powerful in
this world are often the most foolish; the poor, like our Thai fisherman,
possess a wisdom the world tends to overlook or dismiss.
This
book is often dismissed in the same way: it comes across as inherently
pessimistic (“all is vanity!”) or something to dust off only for funerals (“for
everything there is a season, and a time for ever matter under heaven.”). It
names the uncomfortable realities of life and death, presents confusing
contradictions to us, and certainly does not seem to exude joy.
Well,
at least not joy in a simplistic understanding of it: the stark realism of
these words doesn’t conjure up warm fuzzy feelings for us. But these words do,
if we’re brave enough to sit with them, show us the path of joy.
Elsa Tamez explains this
best, writing, “The book of Qoheleth or
Ecclesiastes has become timely again today, when horizons are closing in and
the present becomes a hard master, demanding sacrifices and suppressing
dreams…we see Qoheleth’s sayings as rays of light, shining through the cracks
in a dark, depressing room.”[1]
This
book offers us a brilliant gift, if we’re patient enough to recognize it: that
gift is joy rooted in wisdom. And that wisdom is rooted in one word, well known
by our humble fisherman, a word that has the potential to radically transform
our faith and our worldview, especially in this season of Lent: enough.
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 in loving community…whatever
your hands find to do, do with all your might.
We have enough. We are
enough. God is enough.
When
was the last time you gave yourself permission to be enough? Or your spouse, or
your closest friend, or your children, or even your enemy?
In
a world that constantly pressures us to do more, be more, buy more, achieve
more, we find true joy in the wisdom of enough.
Now,
perhaps it’s important to address a rather tricky part of the wisdom this book
offers us: that phrase, “God has long ago approved what you do.”
This
doesn’t mean I get to steal your cup of coffee because God knows it brings me joy
and approves of my action. Though its wisdom is rooted in simplicity, nothing
in Ecclesiastes, or Qoheleth, is simplistic. The word used for “approved” is
used elsewhere in the Old Testament to talk about God approving sacrifices,
offerings, sabbath, and other acts of righteousness. And so this approval is
rooted in covenant with God and one another, woven through with faithfulness.
(I can’t steal your coffee, or treat you as less than human, and claim God
approves of it.)
What
I can do is know that I am, flaws, finitude and all, completely whole through
my Creator. When we know we are enough, and that God is enough, an incredible
joy comes from such wisdom. We can cherish what Mary Oliver calls our “one wild
and precious life.[2]”
It’s joy that enables us to make our fleeting moments count, especially in the
face of opposition, indifference and tyranny.
That’s
the curious thing about simplicity: claiming that we have enough enables us to
do more than we ever thought
possible. To be people like Sophie Scholl[3] (whose
name means ‘wisdom’), a twenty-one year old college student in Munich in 1942.
She, her brother, their friends, and their professor secretly produced and
distributed pamphlets called The White Rose, blatantly naming the evil of the
Nazi regime.
They
were eventually caught, arrested, and at their trial, Sophie, the voice of
wisdom, had the courage to speak out.
The
judge could not understand how such nice, educated German young adults could be
“corrupted” into speaking out on behalf of Jews and against the government. True
wisdom is often seen as foolishness to the powerful.
Sophie
surprised all who were present by responding, “Somebody,
after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many
others. They just don't dare to express themselves as we did.” Later in the
proceedings, she said to the judge: “You
know the war is lost. Why don't you have the courage to face it?”
Sophie
and the others were sentenced to death. Witnesses there that day wrote of her
interaction with her parents, their final goodbye. She was calm and clear-eyed,
and when her mother offered her candy, she smiled, delighting in it, and said,
“Gladly! After all I haven’t had any lunch.”
It’s
incredible to think of a person in such circumstances finding gladness and joy
in something as simple as a piece of candy, and bringing comfort to her mother
in that moment. But wise Sophie did, because she knew that the work of her
hands, her resistance to tyranny, was enough.
If
we claim a spirituality of enough, joyfully spending our days with wisdom and
not foolishly wasting them, we can do so much good in this world. We can be set
free from the tyranny of more, and set others free in the process.
You
are enough.
You
have enough.
God
is enough.
Enjoy this one wild and precious life.
Amen.