Let us pray.
God, you are a God who is there on the good days and the bad days and allows us to express our
emotions wherever we are and however we experience them. So may your spirit reside with us in this
moment like a balm, comforting us, guiding us, celebrating with us,
and also grieving with us.
Because your love is so expansive. that it can hold all of that for each of us.
Amen.
So I don't know about you all,
but I have been exhausted this week.
I'm tired of watching good and innocent people and fathers being killed and murdered in front of
their children. Just last Sunday, I spoke at a vigil for one father who died to wake up the next
morning to find out another had died. Another that had been murdered in front of his children.
And then on Friday, I couldn't leave my house because the air quality was so bad and Canada was on
fire.
And then when I go, I can't go anywhere else. So where do I end up? On my phone. And so as I'm
scrolling through my phone, I'm noticing a lot of clips. And I know that my algorithm is very
different from yours. It's a lot of clips of mothers interrupting a worship service at a church
because the... Pastor there had hired a known abuser and didn't care. And so these mothers are
screaming from the depths of their being, demanding that it be a place where children are safe.
Everything feels pointless.
And I didn't even feel like writing this sermon when I got to it on Friday evening.
And as I started to wrestle with the text, I was like, well, at least Qoheleth agrees with me.
So I've got that going for me. The message translation for chapter 8,
verse 9 says, All this I observed as I tried my best to understand all that's going on in this
world. As long as men and women have the power to hurt each other, this is the way it is.
So at least I found a comrade, someone that could agree with me about the state of everything and
was in the same pit of despair that I was in. Qoheleth continues,
are a wisdom tradition that we've been looking at through Proverbs the past two weeks.
And so in the same way, we get some things that sound like contradictions,
because that's what the Proverbs is all filled with, because wisdom is about finding the right path
for the moment. And so he'll say things like, listen to the king, but don't listen when he's wrong.
Just trust your gut. The wicked are celebrated and remembered with joy at their funerals.
He notices that justice is so delayed, people can believe that they can get away with murder.
In a way, it sounds like Qoheleth is talking about our world because we have politicians that
explicitly say, I could murder someone and get away with it.
And so we see that this is just the way the world that we currently operate in works,
and it has been like that for a long time.
So in 8.14, he says, here's something that happens all the time that makes no sense at all. Good
people get what's coming to the wicked and bad people get what's coming to the good. I tell you,
this makes no sense. It's smoke.
Just like how we can relate to Lila and her sense that everything feels meaningless.
We get the same relatability from the text as Qoheleth describes his world.
And so we can kind of hear in between his vents, because this is still kind of towards the middle
of the thing.
keeps doing these rhythms of like being angry about the world and saying this is the only thing
that matters. So if you kind of clip the parts that matter, we get some wisdom for survival that he
also can extend to what does it mean to live in our current world.
You might remember from the last time we talked about Qoheleth, which was when we were talking
about rest, everything is cyclical in the world except for God was his first realization early on.
I think it's chapter three.
And so the first thing he adds to that wisdom here is go ahead and find joy. Have a good time,
eat and drink, and be merry. This shows up around verse 15 of chapter 8. So what does that mean for
us? That we need to find times to connect with one another and make sure that everyone around you
can do the same. Invite your neighbors. To have a meal or a drink or whatever drink.
You can do coffee. You can do tea. You can do the things that we're not allowed to drink on
Methodist-owned property, but you can have at your own leisure. Right?
Kohalas is inviting us to just take time to cultivate joy with those that are around us.
Later, he essentially says to don't try too hard to figure out what's going on because this world
just doesn't make any sense. In 817, he says, no matter how smart you are,
you won't get to the bottom of it. And I think so often we want to try to get to the bottom of it.
Make this make sense. Why did they do this thing? Why is there so much suffering in the world?
And so if Cool Health is telling us not to try to make sense of it, what does that mean for us
today? And I think it just means to limit your time watching the news.
The reality is that the invention of the 24-hour news cycle has pulled us away from one another
and divided us as a world. We can go back to partisan news didn't exist until the 24-hour news
cycle started. Everything before that was news that only gave you the facts, and then everyone else
could then interpret it in their own worldviews. and we could have conversations about it. And so
that whole thing where we're trying to, with the birth of CNN and Fox News and all of these cable
channels that are explicitly trying to tell you a narrative day in and day out that's funded by
advertisers, is just trying to manipulate our emotions, and so there's no reason for us to be
taking in that at all times.
In the same way, maybe the news, like television, isn't your thing, and so limit your time on
social media.
Or maybe you're more old school like Jerry, who's not here today, and limit the amount of
newspapers you read in a week.
There's so many different ways that we can just limit. I'm not saying don't do this, because it's
worthy to know what's going on in the world, but it's not worth our emotion to consume it at a rate
that it then consumes us.
So later, Qoheleth reminds us that everything is in God's hands. So anything is possible,
and yet at the same time, everyone has the same fate.
In Ecclesiastes chapter 9, verses 2 through 3, I keep jumping to the message translation because
it's a little more fun in this. He says, anything's possible. It's one fate for everybody,
righteous and wicked, good people, bad people, the nice and the nasty, worshipers and non
-worshipers, committed and uncommitted. I find this outrageous. The worst thing about living on
this earth, that everyone's lumped together in one fate. Is it any wonder that so many people are
obsessed with evil? Is it any wonder that people go crazy right and left? Life leads to death.
That's it.
And so we have to stand in that gap. While everyone has the same fate,
we still have a life where God is constantly with us. And so we can either choose to focus on
everyone's going to die so it's all meaningless, or focus on the life that we have that we can live
now, that we can live as partners with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit's work in our world.
And so the last he gives us is seize life for our loves, hopes,
and dreams.
And then in chapter 9, verses 7 through 20, and this is definitely one of the more fun parts,
seize life. Eat bread with gusto. Drink wine with a robust heart.
Oh yes, God takes pleasure in your pleasure. Dress festively in every morning.
Don't skimp on colors and scars. Relish life with the spouse you love each and every day of your
precarious life. Each day is God's gift. It's all you get in exchange for the hard work of staying
alive. Make the most of each one. Whatever turns up, grab it. and do it,
and heartily. This is your last and only chance at it, for there is neither work to do nor thought
to think in the company of the dead, when you're most certainly, where you're most certainly
headed.
So he invites us to affirm the real and sensual life in the midst of suffering and frustration.
There's always a tiny sliver of life that we can grasp at in every single moment.
And so Koheleth is essentially saying, Why spend time while you're living,
acting like you're dead? When you can spend time while you're living,
seizing the things that can bring joy in every little moment.
In a way, Cool Health is essentially hanging out in the mindfulness tradition. Allowing these
emotions to exist and then allowing them to pass so that we can then focus on the things that bring
us joy and delight.
And so Elsa Tamez... in When the Horizons Close, which is a full commentary on the entire book of
Ecclesiastes, which is quite good. She summarizes this. Time is not money here,
as it is in the marketplace, the bank, the stock exchange, and the workplace of enslaving toil.
What counts here is the throat and the shared joy of the feast. What counts are living bodies and
earthly life before the coming of eternal death. She reminds us that eating and drinking are the
foundations of human life and must be done with enjoyment and true pleasure.
When empire demands production and dehumanization, wisdom tells us to humanize one another by
sharing a joyful meal. She continues by saying this whole corporal pleasurable experience is seen
as a gift of God and also a right of all people. First, because it is a gift of God,
Also, because it rightfully belongs to human beings for all the work they do under the sun.
It is their portion, their payment.
And in earlier parts of the text, Qoheleth argues strongly for unity with others,
relationships of solidarity, which give strength and enable people to resist hostility.
Qoheleth is saying that it's in the relationships that we can be united with one another. We can
cultivate joy in the moment. And because of the nurturing aspect of relationships and shared meals,
we can then find the stamina to continue to build a better world for everyone.
And so, in summary,
these are the practices for survival in our world that I see Qoheleth offering us.
That we should cultivate joy at every chance we get, as we limit the intake of the chaos of the
world. So we can seize life abundantly. Sharing meals with others that are most impacted by the
ruthlessness of empire.
And so practically speaking, that looks like getting lunch with someone today. Or maybe having your
neighbors over for dinner sometime this week.
Because it's in those shared meals and shared times of hospitality that we can affirm the beauty of
life. As we work with one another and the Holy Spirit to build a world where we can all.
Live abundantly. So let us pray.
God, we are so grateful for the ways that we can find a listening ear whenever we seek to connect
to you.
Help us to find the same relational space with one another and with our neighbors as we continue to
do the things that Qoheleth has taught us to do. To sit down with one another. To share meals and
affirm the life that we have today.
and hold on to all of the hope that we can possibly muster as a community, as we continue to be
empowered by your Spirit to love boldly, serve joyfully,
and lead courageously. Amen.