“Gone with the Wind”
Ecclesiastes 11:1-6
July 29, 2007

Dr. Catherine Taylor

Back in June, one of you said to me, “Are you really going to do six weeks of Ecclesiastes?”  The answer was yes, divvied up between David and me, and today we’ve reached the final sermon in the series.

The title I confess, is not that relevant, but given my background and the mention of wind, it was irresistible.

As for the text, I chose the words we just read, not from the last, but the next to the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, as much for what they don’t offer as for what they do.

They don’t offer a return to a dreary recitation of the inescapably cyclic nature of life.  The final portion, which modern bibles label Chapter 12, does do that, and I just didn’t want to spend a whole sermon in that unhappy region again.

But for those of you who admire the literary craftsmanship in Chapter 12, we are advised to make the most of youth and expect the unavoidable insults of age, all of which are listed in depressing detail.

The writing in this final bit is indeed beautiful, and it ends, of course, with, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” a perfect mirror of how the book began with my first sermon six weeks ago.

That’s where the original ended, anyway.  Someone, or maybe two someones, who also couldn’t stand the return to such a bleak viewpoint added two additional, more uplifting bits.  They may be the reason why the book survived in the canon of scripture.  Most bibles label these add-ons as the Epilogue.  These final words read:

“Fear God and keep God’s commandments,

for that is the whole duty of everyone.

For God will bring every deed into judgment

including every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

With that much too tidy admonition, which doesn’t fit especially well with the rest of the book, Ecclesiastes finally ends.

But today we are not going to revert to what is bleak, or console ourselves with falsely tidy conclusions.  Today we are staying with the meat of chapter 11, which offers a collection of sayings about diligence.  And not just diligence in general, but diligence when it comes to work.

Our text is a little gathering of advice about how to prosper, and all of it is quite sensible, and even familiar.

“Send out your bread upon the waters, after many days you will get it back.”

The words have been used by many to promote the benefits of charity, suggesting, somewhat crassly, that charity brings a good return.  That is how they have been used, but at least one scholar has pointed out that they might in fact have been a practical observation on the profitability of overseas markets.

Next come the words about dividing your means into seven or eight endeavors.  Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, diversify.  Very good advice that is as modern as modern can be, and apparently as ancient as well.

It seems as the Teacher, writer of Ecclesiastes, says near the start of the book, there really is nothing new under the sun.  The poetic images about clouds and wind and rain add up to the admonition to trust your powers of observation:  rain-filled clouds drop rain; once fallen, trees stay where they fell.

So pay attention to the obvious.  Don’t sow seed when the wind will blow it away, or harvest your crops in the middle of a storm.  Don’t even assume you can know unknowable things by deciding ahead of time which of your endeavors is most likely to flourish.  Use the evening hours as well as the daylight to do something profitable; either one of which might bring home the most bacon.  With this list of instructions the Teacher practices what he’s been preaching.  He gives up on so-called Wisdom once and for all, and settles for sheer and observant practicality.

The advice is useful, and it’s consistent with the bourgeois outlook of the Teacher, who was, remember, a person of some affluence.

The sense of absurdity that marks other portions of the book is missing entirely here.  And there is even a hint of optimism:  Be as busy at night as you are in the morning, because at least one of your occupations is bound to pay off.  He never even considers that both might fail.

Nestled among the items on this practical work list is yet another assertion:   that there are mysteries we simply can’t fathom.  We don’t know, says the Teacher, how breath comes into the bones of infants in the womb…and he’s right.  Today we know the mechanisms that bring oxygen to a fetus through its mother’s umbilical cord, but no good biologist would claim that all the mysteries of life have been solved.

In the next breath, the teacher names the work of God as the most mysterious mystery of all, and, without explanation, names God as the Creator of all that is.  It is a deeply paradoxical assertion. These things you can see plainly with your eyes in forest and sky, says the Teacher, these things you can observe and make practical choices about and upon which you should stake your own economic endeavors--your work--these seeable natural phenomena were made by One whose work is ever beyond your knowing.

It is as close to a faith statement as the Teacher comes.  He/she does not suggest there is no God,

just that God’s ways are inscrutable.  He/she does not spend energy denying God or trying to uncover uncoverable things.  Mystery is fine with the Teacher.  God is, and God creates, and God works, and there is much that we can do with what we’ve been given if we are industrious and diligent.  The rest is mystery, and apparently not worth pursuing, for the Teacher does not go any further.

It is wonderfully straightforward.  People don’t always want straightforward, though, particularly not when it comes to God.  Many people distrust mystery.  They want understanding, and if they can’t have it they would rather have nothing at all.

I think of a man in my former congregation, a Ph.D. microbiologist who came to church with his wife and kids, but had no faith of his own.  He liked to ask me questions, really enjoyed theological conversation, and for a little while I thought he was struggling toward God.  But after a while I realized it was the back and forth he liked.  He was not searching for anything, since as far as he was concerned, there was nothing to be found that fit his criteria.

Some people can accept mystery as long as it’s dramatic, complex, holy, or stirring, anything but ordinary.  The great mystics seem to have understood this, and resisted it.  Far from acting like great mystics they did the simplest things, losing disciples sometimes because they asked for too little instead of for too much.

The desert Abbas and Ammas, mothers and fathers, were fourth-century Christian mystics who lived in North Africa.  There are many tales about them, recorded by their disciples who often wanted faith to be anything but simple or ordinary.

The final lines of the Lord’s Prayer as we pray them now are not original.  The words about the kingdom and the power and the glory are a later add-on, like the ending of Ecclesiastes, something to make the whole thing more…holy seeming and religious, as if offering praise and asking for what we need is not enough.                

Many years ago now I was on a plane flying from Boston to Mobile, Alabama.  I was a magazine editor at the time, responsible for four trade magazines aimed at the publishers of small newspapers.

My company had sent me to a publishers conference and I was on my way home on a mid- morning flight full of business people.  I wanted to get home as soon as possible because I was incredibly tired, and I was beginning to think I might be pregnant.

The plane took off and all seemed well until the captain’s voice came on to say that there was a problem.  The wheels did not appear to have folded back up into the belly of the plane.  The crew went through a whole series of standard procedures but in the end nothing worked, and we were told to assume the crash position for an emergency landing back at Logan.

As a result, I know how I pray when I think I might die.  It was a prayer that taught me things I’m glad to know about myself: full of thanksgiving for various people and experiences; full of requests for forgiveness and for safety; for me and the baby that might be; and for the other people around me on the plane.  The Lord’s Prayer was included.  But not once did I say anything specific about the wheels not collapsing under the plane.

The landing was completely normal except for the emergency vehicles poised on the field, and the quiet cabin erupted in applause.  My biggest regret was having to forgo all but the first free drink offered in first class once seated on my new connecting flight.

Years later I told this story to a small group in class at seminary and the professor had only one thing to say.  I didn’t know it then, but after six weeks of Ecclesiastes he might have been channeling that long ago Teacher.  “Next time pray for the wheels to hold up!” he said.

No one will ever be able to prove it, but I think the writer of Ecclesiastes would have recommended the Lord’s prayer with its simple, practical requests.  The writer felt it not only wise, but advisable to do the obvious things in life and in faith, like working for what you really need and praying for it, too, for prayer is another kind of work.

For those who are not especially comfortable with prayer, the ancient Teacher’s words are still more helpful.  Do the simple, obvious thing.  For it is best not to make any limiting assumptions in life, he/she says, especially when it comes to God, who cannot understand, but who made all that is.  AMEN