This morning we read from the Book of Ecclesiastes – a
truly amazing piece of literature. Its
author identifies himself as Qoheleth
– Hebrew for “the teacher”, or one who speaks to an assembly. Today we might call him a preacher. Qoheleth’s wide-ranging sermon probes big
questions about the meaning of life. It is
spellbindingly honest in its description and heartfelt in how it identifies our
emotional response to all that happens to us.
Today he ponders all the work he is doing and all the
effort he has put forth in life to make something of himself and wonders if it
has been worthwhile or not. “I must
leave it to those who come after me,” he says, “and who knows whether they will
be wise or foolish?” He despairs that
those who have done nothing to earn it will benefit from his labors. He considers whether all his hard work and
even his restless nights have been for naught.
And, famously, he calls all of it “vanity”. The effort, the despair, the worry about what
others will do with what he will pass on to them – all of it is vanity.
Biblical scholars have written a great deal about what
the word Hebrew hebel means. It
was the King James Bible that first translated it as ‘vanity’ and the
word seems to have stuck. But is the
teacher’s understanding of vanity the same as ours? Some suggest he means “meaningless.” All of our toils are meaningless. Others suggest futility or useless. Hebel carries with it the sense of
breath or vapor – things that are short-lived, transitory. My favorite translation is “shepherding the
wind” – an evocative image that, like our phrase “herding cats”, suggests we
have set ourselves to an impossible task and pursuit.
The teacher has spent his life trying to shepherd the
wind. Will he give up on this endeavor? If so, what will take its place?
On 14th of January in the year 1869, on
what I can only assume was a very cold and snowy day, Agnes Davidson married
Hugh Emerson in Potsdam, NY. This bible
may have been a gift they received or something they purchased for
themselves.
There is a beautiful
certificate in it commemorating their marriage, which each signed. The following pages record my family’s genealogical
beginning with the names of their children, their dates of birth, and
marriages. The same information follows
for their grandchildren, then great-grandchildren – my generation. The information on the newest two generations
is not up-to-date and needs tending.
Beyond needing updating and being large and heavy and falling
apart, The Emerson Family Bible weighs on me for another reason. It is in my possession because it has been
passed down to the youngest male Emerson of each generation under the theory we
would 1) outlive our brothers and 2) pass on our last name. It weighs on me because I do not have a son
with whom to entrust it. I have only one
male cousin and he does not have any children. I look at this bible and realize the Emerson
name passed down from Agnes and Hugh ends with me. I don’t lose sleep about it, but it is
something I carry with me. And it is
just one of the tangible ways I identify with the teacher and his sense of hebel.
Try as hard as I might, the wind eludes my efforts to shepherd it.
What does letting the wind be the wind look like?
In today’s gospel reading Jesus encounters a person
who wants him to intercede in a family squabble. He wants Jesus to instruct his brother to
divide the family inheritance and give him half. Jesus refuses to get involved, but uses the
opportunity to issue a warning about greed.
He tells a parable about a person who keeps doing more and more,
becoming wealthier and wealthier as time goes by, but has an impoverished
soul. He is not, as Jesus puts it, “rich
toward God.” His simple plan for life is
to relax, eat, drink, and be merry. What
could go wrong with that? Well, its Jesus' story so het gets to
tell any way he wants to and so the man will die that very night and have nothing to show for
his life because he spent it focused on the material and never once made an
investment in the spiritual – in what will endure in the life to come.
Years ago I was present to hear an elderly bishop
address a clergy gathering on the topic of retirement. It changed my perspective on life in at least
one way. He described one challenge we
clergy will face. Clergy, he pointed
out, are prone to collect many, many, many, many books over the years. It is an occupational hazard for sure. When he retired he moved all of his things out
of his church office, including boxes and boxes and boxes of books. He had lived all his life in houses provided
by the churches he served so retirement also meant he and his wife had to find
a place to live. As they looked around
he quickly realized there would be no room for the vast majority of his
books. Disposing of them created one of
the biggest challenges of retirement and I have not bought a book since then
that I didn’t think about the bishop’s talk.
All the stuff of my life eventually will need to go somewhere where I
can’t take it.
Jesus highlights how our material possessions are not
who we are and someday will become a burden to how we move forward in
life. And yet they can be all we work
for. They become our heart’s desire and
the focus of all we are about. Bigger
and bigger. More and more. Better and better. Did you know you can now buy a refrigerator
with a camera inside you can access from your smart phone? Is it really that hard to remember you need
to buy some milk when you are at the grocery store?
In Jesus’ parable God calls the man building bigger
barns a ‘fool’, which is not exactly how I hope to hear God address me. But in truth, most of us come to this
realization on our own somewhere down the road of life. Why did I buy all these books? What was I thinking when I spent thousands of
dollars for an appliance I could see on my iPhone? Look at all this stuff I have
accumulated. Does any of it mean
anything?
Should we be invested in future generations? Should we focus on building wealth and
material possessions? Today’s readings
raise questions as contemporary as our very lives.
I have always been fascinated with Erik Erikson’s work
on developmental tasks associated with each of life’s stages and I find his thinking
to be a helpful lens through which to examine today’s readings. Erikson labeled the major developmental
challenge during the ages of 45-65 ‘generativity v. stagnation.’ Generativity is a marked “concern for establishing and guiding the
next generation… It is a matter of caring for whatever is being generated,
attending to its nurture and growth… It involves a continuing emotional
investment in what is being generated.”
For those of us in this age range our on-going work is to contribute to
the common good rather than to retreat from it (an action Erikson labels “stagnation”).
Do you hear in today’s reading how the teacher is
weighing generativity and stagnation?
Erikson would say he is making the shift to the final developmental stage
in life, which typically begins around the time one turns 65. He labels this challenge ‘integrity v.
despair.’ By integrity Erikson means the
following:
· Being
faithful to the image-bearers of the past.
· Accepting
your place in the life cycle.
· Accepting
the people who have played a significant role in your life – for good or for
ill.
· Accepting
responsibility for how your life has turned out.
Despair, on the other hand, arises when a person is
unable to accept that life is too short to go back and “get it right.” Because time no longer permits one to “start
over”, we are tempted to surrender to deep feelings of regret. Such despair, one author writes, is “often hidden behind a show of disgust… or a
chronic contemptuous displeasure with particular institutions and particular
people – a disgust and displeasure which [ultimately]… signify the individual’s
contempt for himself.”
So, rather than shepherding wind or building bigger
barns, Erikson suggests that the vast swath of our adult years involves a
continued giving of ourselves to others and to life. It is a project of producing what you are
passionate about; “caring” and “emotional investment”. And, it is about accepting who you are and
who you are not; about accepting what you have done and what you have not been
able to do. It is about accepting
yourself for who you are and not defining yourself by the winds you could not
shepherd. It is about locating your life
in principles bigger than yourself; timeless principles not bound to our
current age.
St. Paul describes it as “as seeking the things that
are above, where Christ is” and knowing your life is “hidden in Christ.” Contrast this with the person in Jesus’
parable who “thinks [only] to himself”, and speaks only in the first person
singular: “I will tear down”, “I will build”, “I will store”, and “I will say to
my soul”. When the only conversation you have is with
yourself, how startling must it be to hear the voice of God speak to you,
especially if God says “You fool!”?
So, about my family bible. Here is what I am thinking of doing. The idea that the youngest son of the
youngest son must pass it along to his youngest son is arbitrary at best,
burdensome at worst, and more than a tad sexist. What matters about it is that we decedents of
Agnes and Hugh know from where we have come.
What matters is how this bible connects us together and across
generations. I need to get the
information up to date and talk with my siblings, cousins, nephews, and nieces
to see who would like to carry this task forward and to see how we might make
this bible common to all and not just a possession of mine. As opposed to shepherding wind, this seems
both manageable and meaningful. Thank
you, teacher, for your sermon. In this
small way I have learned how to let go of shepherding the wind.
