“All that was will be, all that has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
~ Ecclesiastes 1:9
Twenty-three centuries ago a Jewish philosopher who some translators call The Preacher wrote those words in what eventually became the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. They seem especially appropriate today.
“Nothing new” stands in sharp contrast to another word we hear often these days: unprecedented. As in, the Pandemic is unprecedented. The Black Lives Matter protests are unprecedented. America’s recent, historic, 33% drop in GDP is unprecedented. Precedent literally means, go before. So, the point, of course, is nothing like this has happened before.
The Preacher would take issue with that notion.
But The Preacher is not like those Facebook cynics who demand to know, “What’s the big deal?” So many people seems obsessed with denying either the reality or the severity of our current global moment. You can practically hear them borrowing this scripture, flippantly insisting, “There is nothing new under the sun!”
But this is a big deal. As I write this, 157,000 Americans have died in just 5 months. Globally 690,000 people have died. Early data is indicating that 80% of hospitalized COVID patients still struggle with severe symptoms two months later.
Yet The Preacher is not one of those cynics, denying harsh realities. On the contrary, Ecclesiastes invites us to fully reckon the hardships, suffering, and injustices buried deep in the eons of time. Buried so deeply, in fact, that many have been forgotten:
“There is no remembrance of the first things nor of the last things that will be. They will have no remembrance with those who will be in the later time.” (v11)
To put it another way, the past and the future have forgotten more suffering than our present can possibly remember.
Well, that’s a disturbing thought. Not just the suffering bit, but even more so the forgetting. It conjures a murky-ness before and behind; an un-knowingness stretching into both directions of eternity, that is, frankly, unimaginably terrifying for those who have not fully reckoned with death.
And make no mistake, death is the ultimate topic of this Preacher’s sermon. You think life isn’t fair?, asks the Preacher, Wait until you meet death. Everyone dies: rich and poor, man and woman, kings and subjects alike. In the end, whatever good or bad you’ve done, we all meet the same fate.
“For man is going to his everlasting house, and the mourners turn round in the market, until the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is smashed, and the pitcher is broken against the well, and the jug smashed at the pit. And dust returns to the earth as it was.”
~ Ecclesiastes 12:5-8
At this point, you may have gathered that Ecclesiastes is not a terribly cheerful speech. But for good reason. The Preacher is adding a much-needed voice in the Biblical discourse about wisdom, and life, and the way we live it before God.
For the authors of the Psalms and the Proverbs, life is fairly predictable, and therefore, relatively controllable. We do what is right and we receive blessings in return. Abracadabra (nothing up my sleeve!)…God rewards the upright, the diligent, the wise. God punishes the wicked, the lazy, and the foolish. You know how it goes: good stuff happens to good people. Bad stuff happens to bad people.
The Preacher comes along and says, Um, excuse me? I know lots of wicked people who are filthy rich (including me!) and lots of righteous people who are wicked-poor. There’s no real way to sort that out.
And what about hurricanes, and earthquakes, and…global pandemics? This kind of stuff has been going on longer than memory itself, says The Preacher. And none of it makes a lick of sense. Or, as another preacher who helped people think differently once said, “The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.”
You see, The Preacher wants us to dwell on the inscrutable nature of these things — life, death, justice, injustice — not because they don’t matter, but because they do. Life, says the Preacher, is like “mere breathe”; essential and empowering yet faint and fleeting. We must learn to cherish what we have, rather than chase what we do not.
Or, if you prefer, “Consider the flowers of the field; they don’t labor or fret, and yet they’re dressed better than Solomon on his very best day.”
For The Preacher of Ecclesiastes, this leads to the alternative wisdom that we must find life, goodness, and indeed God as well, in simple, everyday joys:
“Go, eat your bread with rejoicing and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already been pleased by your deeds.” (Ch 9:7-8)
The radical vision of Ecclesiastes is not merely that God is pleased by our enjoyment of life — which is God’s gift — but actually present in the mundane-yet-genuinely good moments of life. In this way, Ecclesiastes look back to God’s presence in the bread and wine of the Jewish Passover and forward to God’s presence in the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist.
Our deliverance is daily bread and a glass of wine, seated around the table with friends; this is how the Kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.
Of course, this is exactly the sort of mundane daily joy we have been denied during the pandemic. But fully embracing such an immanent vision of God means letting go of what we cannot control — a theme that came up repeatedly in our recent “American God’s” teaching series. We learned that idolatry comes from the human desire to control God, others, and life.
Instead of control, The Preacher proposes an alternative posture: leaning into the rhythms of life-unfolding-in-God. The Preacher describes this rhythm in the form of a now-familiar poem:
“Everything has a season and a time under heaven: A time to live and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to rip down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.“
~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-4
This is just a season — a long one, granted, but a season just the same. In the midst of a global pandemic and long-overdue social justice uprisings, this simple rhythm of leaning into the life of God-as-God-reveals can bring peace in the midst of any challenges, including ours.
Any groups of people who were able to embraces this kind of life might indeed seem unprecedented, especially here the United States where our daily lives can feel crushingly defined by the frenetic, rhythm-less push-and-pull of wanting, striving, competing, and controlling — even before the global pandemic.