INTRODUCTION
'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life
Trying to make ends meet
You're a slave to money then you die
'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life
Trying to make ends meet
Trying to find some money then you die
If you were in your teens or a 20-something way back in 1997, you'll probably remember these lyrics from the song "Bittersweet symphony" by one-hit-wonders The Verve. They were on the charts around the break up of my relationship with my girlfriend of the time – a sweet followed by a bitter time for me. So I identified very closely with them. If you remember them, then it's probably because you've experienced both the bitter and the sweet that life has to offer. Perhaps as you were listening you also noticed some resemblance between the lyrics of "Bittersweet symphony" and the book of Ecclesiastes.
IS WORK WORTHLESS?
Do you remember what Ecclesiastes had to say about work last week in Chris's "dramatization" of chapter 1? "What do people gain from all their toil at which they toil under the sun?" (Ecclesiastes 1:3). I can't imagine there is anyone among us who hasn't at least once woken up in the morning (probably Monday morning!) and asked, "Why am I doing this?" ... And most, if not all, of us have at least once probably responded in the great Australian tradition by taking a "sicky".
We know that Ecclesiastes lived a much more privileged life than any of us. In verse 12 of chapter 1 he tells us he "was the king over Jerusalem in Israel." Despite this he stills sounds a lot like me and you doesn't he? Ecclesiastes certainly speaks to me as someone who knows what its like to wake up on a Monday and wish it was still Sunday. (Or in the case of ministers like Chris, Roy, Michael and myself, to wake up on Sunday and wish it was still Saturday!) But it seems to me that Ecclesiastes question reaches much wider than this. He is asking, why work at all? ever? Is work itself worthless? And what's more, he seems to be saying not just why bother with paid employment, but why do anything at all? "You're a slave to money then you die."
But before we look more closely at this question, I want to ask you: How does Ecclesiastes strike you as a person? As a pessimist? Chapter 1, verse 13, in The message translation seems to support this idea: "I looked most carefully into everything, searched out all that is done on this earth. And let me tell you, there's not much to write home about." Is he a cynic? But then as someone said, a cynic is what an idealist calls a realist. Maybe Ecclesiastes is just a realist. I think is a realist because he is wise enough to see that if we are going to live in the real world it is not good enough just to say to people, "Don't worry, be happy". So many of today's spiritualities and therapies, even some claiming to be Christian and to base their teaching on the Bible, are willing to do this, but Ecclesiastes is not, thank God!
Whatever else you might want to say about Ecclesiastes, you've got to admit that "he calls a spade a spade." He speaks to us from the heart of his personal experience. Beginning in chapters 1 & 2, he speaks of his lifelong personal quest for wisdom. In The message translation he is called "the Quester", rather than "the Teacher". This is also an accurate description of him. Over the next few weeks we will be following some of the different paths Ecclesiastes followed on his quest. But this week we will restrict ourselves to his quest to understand human work. Time and again, Ecclesiastes struggles to discover what advantage, if any, people gain from their work. He touches on this theme in several places. Today we'll concentrate on chapter 2 which was read to us.
2:1-11: THE TEST
In chapter 2 Ecclesiastes begins his search for wisdom by exploring possible avenues for the enjoyment of life: Notice how in verse 1 he says to himself: "'Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself'." Then in verse 3 he states the goal of his test: "until I might see what was good for mortals to do under heaven during the few days of their life." Where does he tell us he looked to see what was good? Pleasure, laughter, wine, great buildings, houses, vineyards, parks, gardens, pools, forests, slaves, herds, flocks, silver, gold, song and women. This was a test of "wine, women and song" and just about everything else money could buy in the ancient world.
So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. (Ecclesiastes 2:9-10)
The problem is that when Ecclesiastes sat down and thought about it, all these paths turned out to be an endless series of dead ends:
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 wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:11)
Ecclesiastes just "can't get no satisfaction". And he doesn't waste any time when it comes to pointing out why.
2:12-2:23: THE FINDINGS
1) The first reason he gives is that death (as we would say) is the great leveler. Look at verse 15: "Then I said to myself, 'What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?'"
2) And the second reason he gives is that work is linked with pain and anxiety. We see this in verses 22 and 23: "What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity."
By this stage Ecclesiastes is not a happy camper. "So I hated life" he says in verse 17, and in verse 18 he says: "I hated all my toil".
2:24-26: THE WAY FORWARD
At the point of his deepest despair Ecclesiastes finds a way forward. What seems to be most important is the circumstances in which, having explored all the dead end streets, Ecclesiastes recognises only one that will satisfy. In verse 24 he concludes that "There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil." Work can be enjoyed but – and this is vitally important but – "The possibility of enjoyment returns, significantly, only when Ecclesiastes has is given up his quest for profit all together" (Webb 2000, 93-94). When this happens he is able to say that "This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?" He has recognised that his work is a gift "from the hand of God" not intended to be enjoyed without God.
3 OBSERVATIONS ON WORK
1) Work is not a goal to live for, but a gift to be accepted
Opportunities to eat and drink and find satisfaction in our work, when they come are not human achievements but divine gifts. Ecclesiastes still concludes that they are "vanity" or "smoke" at the end of verse 26 because they will slip from our grasp like everything else – but there is no reason to reject them. Ecclesiastes makes this point again in chapter 3, verse 13: "it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil." I think it's worth emphasising a second important observation from Ecclesiastes here:
2) Work and any wealth it produces is a gift and not a right
Over the last few years an idea that has spread into Australian churches from North America is what has been called "prosperity theology": that is, that God will automatically shower "faithful" Christians with health, wealth and happiness, and especially wealth. While this type of thinking is most influential in Pentecostal churches, I have heard the same ideas expressed in Anglican churches. Even if we forget about the fact that "prosperity theology" has it's origins in the New Age movement where in the 1980s it was called "prosperity consciousness (Lewis & Melton, eds, 1992, 26), it seems to me that Ecclesiastes is a very good biblical antidote to this misleading belief. We do not have time today, but if we were to look at chapter 6, for example, we'd see Ecclesiastes comment that "those to whom God gives wealth, possessions and honour, yet God does not enable them to enjoy these things, but a stranger enjoys them" (v. 2). Ecclesiastes won't allow us the luxury of easy answers or simplistic formulas.
There one final observation to be made from Ecclesiastes' quest. But before we come to it let me ask another question: what has Ecclesiastes got to do with Jesus? On first impressions we might be tempted to say that the gloomy, pessimistic (or cynical) "Teacher" doesn't sound at all like Jesus. But let's listen to a few words from Jesus before we write off Ecclesiastes. In chapter 16 of Matthew's Gospel Jesus tells his disciples:
"Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world and forfeit their life?" (Matt 16:24-26).
And in chapter 12 of Luke's Gospel someone in the crowd calls out to Jesus asking Jesus to tell his brother to divide the family inheritance with him. But Jesus says to him:
"Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." (Luke 12:13-21).
Ecclesiastes final observation, that:
3) Work is not to be made the whole meaning of life
is entirely consistent with this teaching of Jesus. I doubt if any of us believe our work is the whole meaning of our life, but how often are we seduced into living as if it is? How much of who we are, our self-image, our self-esteem, is often derived not from our richness towards God but from what we have gained in the world?
One final question. Chris has called this series on the book of Ecclesiastes "Wisdom for postmoderns". But in what sense is this wisdom for us as postmodern people? Who are postmodern people anyway? According to sociologists you're a "postmodern" person of you were born after about 1967, so I just qualify. At the risk of angering Ecclesiastes by making a complicated idea simplistic, being "postmodern" means we are people who live in world where everything is said to be relative. There is no truth out there to find. But can we really cope with life without having any idea of where we are going? Do we need to shield ourselves from the lack of meaning in of our life by accumulating more and more possessions, or with endless entertainment to take our minds off it? – the television and the computer screen? Big brother? Survivor? Australian idol? Sunrise? (sorry, I couldn't resist that last one).
In 1985, Neil Postman, the professor of communication at New York University (and not, as far as I know, a Christian), wrote a very controversial book called Amusing ourselves to death. Postman believed that it had become difficult, often almost impossible, to have serious public discussion of important issues in what he called "the Age of show business." Unfortunately, most people were too busy watching TV to read his book! Perhaps one of the great gifts of having Ecclesiastes in the Bible is that "the Quester" is prepared to ask hard questions and confronts life's puzzles head on. Ecclesiastes was wise enough to see that he was amusing himself to death. Many people in our postmodern world are in need of the same wisdom so they can escape from virtual reality. Others need to be released from slavery to money and find enjoyment from the hand of God. For these reasons, and many others, I believe Ecclesiastes' observations on work and wealth are certainly wisdom for postmoderns.