Reflections of a Royal Philosopher 

Rev. Ron Sala, September 30, 2001 

Several weeks ago, when I chose to preach on the book of Ecclesiastes on September 30^th, I could not have foreseen how different the world would seem from how it did then. But I decided to stick with my announced topic. It seemed to me that this ancient book contains truths that take on a renewed emphasis during this time. Michael read for us this morning about “The Sukkah and the World Trade Center.” The Jewish holiday of Succot, referred to in some translations of the Bible as Booths or Tabernacles, begins tomorrow evening at sunset. Ecclesiastes, or by it’s Hebrew name, Qohelet, is sometimes associated with the Jewish festival of Succot, otherwise known as Booths or Tabernacles.

Ecclesiastes asks, “What is the meaning of life? What should I do when things don’t make sense? When there doesn’t seem to be any answer at all?” If you think I’m going to give the answer to these questions this morning, you came to the wrong congregation. What I would like to do is explore the questions.

First, a basic question. Who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes? The first verse says, “The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” in other words, the book claims to have been written by Solomon, the 10^th century BCE king of Israel. (explain BCE) More likely, some scholars say, the writer lived about the third century BCE and attributed the work to Solomon. It was a common practice in the ancient world to label one’s work with the name of a notable figure from history. Unlike the way we write today, the author put him or herself behind the scenes, giving credit to the tradition instead of the individual.

The attribution does tell us something, however. Solomon, according to tradition, was the wisest man who ever lived—the Samson of the mind. He was also the most successful king Israel ever produced in terms of land, wealth, power, and prestige. Surely, if anyone should be able to find meaning in this life it should be Solomon, the man who had it all. The author implicitly asks us to put ourselves in Solomon’s place, imagining ourselves free of the limitations of our own circumstances.

The other term the author uses in the first verse is rendered by the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible as “teacher.” The King James Version says “preacher.” In the original Hebrew, the word is Qohelet, which might be more accurately translated, “assembler.” Whether he or she assembles wise sayings, audiences, or both, is not clear. It might have been that Qohelet had an independent house of learning, like Ben Sira a century later. That is, the Teacher may have been a type of college professor who taught an early and difficult course on philosophy.

“Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity!” This is the Teacher’s thesis. The word translated “vanity” is hebel. The word is sometimes also translated as “meaningless.” More literally, hebel probably means “breeze” or “breath.” There is nothing solid about it. It lasts only a moment. Hebel is often used in conjunction with the phrase, “a chasing after wind.” No matter how fast we run we cannot catch it. Once the breath has left a person, they die, and doesn’t come back again. If the Teacher had lived today, I think he would have appreciated that old song by the rock band Kansas, the one whose refrain is “Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.”

Having stated the claim that all things are hebel, fleeing, meaningless, the Teacher goes on to demonstrate the point. He starts with what would seem to be the logical place to find meaning. He writes, “And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.” An old sixth grade teacher of mine, Mr. Yura, used to say, “The smarter you get the dumber you know you are.” And it’s true. For every question we answer, how many more do we raise? Look at the study of science or the humanities. As scholars progress toward higher degrees they are forced to specialize. They find themselves “knowing more and more about less and less.” There was a British scientist who passed away recently who prided himself on being the world’s foremost authority on insect excretions. He had spent his career analyzing bug droppings and was apparently very good at it, but, in the vast scheme of things what does it mean?

Even if we look at the whole of our learning as a society, we do not know how it will be used, to heal or hurt, to liberate or to enslave. As we heard in the first reading this morning, two of our greatest technological advances, the skyscraper and the jetliner, have been used against us. All our learning does not put our hearts at rest.

Dissatisfied, the Teacher turns to more concrete pursuits. He laughs, drinks, builds houses, plants vineyards, buys livestock and even slaves, gets silver and gold, singers, concubines, etc. Like Lord Byron’s Childe Harold, though, his inner thirst is not quenched. The Teacher writes, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after the wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

Then the Teacher considers the contrast of different lifestyles. He sees that wisdom is better than folly as light is better than darkness. Far from the end of his quest, though, he remembers that the wise and fools are really equal because they both have to die and be forgotten. He writes, “So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after the wind.”

Then the Teacher looks even beyond death and realizes that someone else will inherit all that he has accumulated. Whether this person will be wise or foolish, he does not know.

But he does concede that it is good to eat and drink and enjoy one’s work, if God allows one to do so. God, who despite his misery, the Teacher never questions the existence of, gives joy to those who please God, we read. But sinners toil only to give what they have to the righteous. The Teacher writes, “This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.”

The Teacher then observes that everything has its time and gives us the poem made popular in the 60’s by the Byrds in the song, “Turn, Turn, Turn.” For everything that happens, there is an opposite. The Teacher does not comment, letting the endless repetition of the world speak for itself.

The Teacher looks then at the injustice that is done “under the sun.” Is there another life to set things straight? Maybe, says the Teacher, but we have no way of knowing. The Teacher sees envy, loneliness, and folly among the powerful—“Surely this also is vanity and chasing after wind.”

Desperate, the Teacher turns toward religion. He believes in God but finds God far away and hard to understand.

The Teacher even goes so far as to say that it might be better not to be born at all than to spend your life in toil and meaninglessness.

The Teacher then steps back to draw some conclusions. Anton Chekhov has a memorable line in his play, “Uncle Vanya.” He writes, “All we can do is live.” “All we can do is live.” It’s the only alternative. Like the playwright, the Teacher realizes that even with the dilemmas and contradictions of life, the majority of us will still try to make the most of it. So he gives some advice: Guard your reputation, live seriously, don’t take bribes, be patient, don’t long for the past, be wise, recognize your limits, submit to authorities, fear God, enjoy the good things in life, and prepare for the future. All rather sober and sensible, but nothing to get excited about.

Ecclesiastes ends his book with the famous admonition, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth” and then warns about the troubles of old age and death. Not exactly an optimistic picture. The last four verses of the book were probably added by a later author, and tell us that, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” As someone who recently graduated from seminary, I can attest to that! Some scholars believe that the last words of the original ending of Ecclesiastes were, “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.” And so the Ecclesiastes ends as it begins, itself an example of the meaningless circularity of things.

What are we to make of this book? Reading it, you find your mental furniture being rearranged. As we follow the Teacher in his circular quest, our every support in this world is removed. We come to question everything we believe in.

Perhaps we feel a bit like Yossarian, the protagonist of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. He’s an American bombardier in World War II. He has seen friends die, cities destroyed, and has been trapped for years in mind-numbing paradoxes such as lend the novel its title. As he walks through war-torn Rome, he thinks to himself:

What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere. 

It’s been suggested that the warning at the end of Ecclesiastes, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” was added by a later scholar to prevent anyone from trying to produce another book like this one, its import being so threatening.

In the Ancient Near East, the region in which Judaism and the Bible arose, there was a myth about a stone in a cave that held back the waters of the abyss, a vast subterranean ocean. If anyone removed that stone, the waters would emerge and engulf the earth. Ecclesiastes represents a similar danger, only instead of water, we are in danger of meaninglessness. One by one, the Teacher rejects whatever we would use to plug that hole at the center of our lives.

In some times and places, Ecclesiastes was read aloud every year for Sukkot. It was read while the people lived in the rough outdoor shelters, or Sukkot that lend the holiday its name. This encampment was to symbolize Israel’s slavery in Egypt. It was a time to go “back to basics”—physically in the booths and spiritually through the words of the Teacher. The threat of meaninglessness was not to be faced by the individual alone but by the community. As the succah, the booth, is impermanent, so are all things, but we’re in it together. That’s one of the messages of Succot.

It seems that this very impermanence that the Teacher mourns as hebel, “wind,” “breath” is an important theme in many other religions as well—the question mark to which all must respond. To Hindus, it is maya, illusion, to Buddhists it is the sand painting which is destroyed with one motion of the hand, to Pagans it is the ever-turning wheel of the year. Or, to choose a more contemporary testament to impermanence, we might look to the words of Mary Oliver. Words I have thought of often in this time of grief,

To live in this world

You must be able

to do three things: 

To love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

And, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

We are all faced with life and its sorrows ending in death. It has always been the human condition. Ecclesiastes makes us look long and hard at the dark side of things, but by emphasizing the darkness the brightness comes out in greater contrast. At the end of Sukkot, we tear down the booths and move into our houses again, which, however humble, seem suddenly luxurious. We consider the Teacher’s dark vision and then realize that there is good in the world, too, where we may not have noticed it before. For though every word of the Teacher is true, there is much he overlooks and consequently forces us to find: the unexpected brilliance of a flower in a city, the smile on the face of a kid that just got out of school, the delight of a surprise gift, the generosity and heroism of our neighbors, an outstretched hand of compassion. By canceling out the big things, the Teacher makes us look at the small ones, the fleeting ones, the simple delights and kindnesses that are all around us. In so doing, we sometimes catch a glimpse of something too wonderful to name.

There is a Jewish scholarly tradition that circumvents the apparent pessimism of Ecclesiastes by pointing out that the Teacher only describes things that are “under the sun,” that is, directly observable by human beings. This tradition argues that Torah is from “before the sun,” always existing in the mind of God, and is therefore not vanity at all. In other words there is a part of our lives so sacred that it rises above the plain of objective facts. I think of C.S. Lewis who wrote in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that there is a deeper magic from before the dawn of time that can overcome any evil.

You’ll recall that one way to translate hebel, vanity, is “breeze” or “breath.” Yes, breeze and breath signify impermanence, but also life and the spirit. In fact, in the phrase “a chasing after wind,” the Hebrew word for wind is ruach, the same word used for the divine spirit. Of course, life is a chasing after wind—after spirit—for if we think we’ve grasped it, we lose it again. As the Taoists say, “The Way that can be named is not the true Way.” The real difference between meaning and meaninglessness is not in what we own, be it knowledge, gold, or pleasure, but in ourselves.

I believe that one way to attain this transcendence of Ecclesiastes is paradoxically through the spirit of Ecclesiastes itself. By refusing to find meaning in anything, we find meaning in everything, in life itself with its joys and sorrows.

The religions of the world teach us to respect the seasons and cycles of life. Names and faces change, but there is really nothing new. Sorrow comes out of joy and joy out of sorrow, and so the cycle continues. How many of us even know about the Great Fire of New York, in (I think) 1838? At that time, the financial district burned. A quarter of the city was destroyed. This recent tragedy is its own unique event. It is painful to us because it is ours—our time, our place, our lives. It will take a long time to heal, but heal we will. Just like after the Great Fire, we will reach out to each other and we will rebuild. There is a spiritual wind in each of us. The Spirit blows where it will. Though buildings fall, though our very lives are ended, that spiritual wind blows on.

I would like to conclude the sermon this morning by having us read the words of our Meditation Hymn, “Spirit of Life” in unison. We sing them each week. As we read them together, concentrate on every word:

"Spirit of Life, come unto me. 

Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. 

Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; 

Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. 

Roots hold me close; wings set me free; 

Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me."

Amen.