Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 23rd April 2023), concluding our series VAPOUR?. This series explores our search for meaning, journeying through the enigmatic book of Ecclesiastes.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).
‘My dear partner; When what’s left of you gets around to what’s left to be gotten, what’s left to be gotten won’t be worth getting, whatever it is you’ve got left.’
—Phil Davis’ (Danny Kaye’s) response to Bob Wallace’s (Bing Crosby’s) remark, ‘I’ll get around to that one of these days’, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas[i]
THE POINTY END
Today we come to the end of our journey through the book called Ecclesiastes.
As we’ve discussed in previous weeks, Qohelet (or the Teacher/Preacher), the central voice of the book, is wrestling with the reason for it all, plummeting the depths of the human condition, and wondering, ‘What is the point?’
He has hang ups and frustrations. He observes the suffering in the world and feels the misery of life. But, he also knows there is a God (whose ways he’s not a fan of) and that there is some enjoyment to be had.
Qohelet is a person of faith who is full of contradiction and internal tension—like all of us. He gives us this raw, honest, wide-open gaze on this often-confusing world, with no sugar coating and no simplistic platitudes.
That’s why his words resonate within us, but they also sting because they hit their mark.
In what we’ll read today, we’re told that these words are like a shepherds’ goad (Ecc. 12:11), a cattle prod: a pointy stick that jabs us and makes us go, ‘Ouch! That was too close to the bone.’[ii]
So, if you’ve ever cringed and felt uncomfortable as we’ve travelled through Qohelet’s direct ramblings, that’s the effect he wanted his words to have. Qohelet wants us to admit to, to feel, the inner rumblings and turmoil we often attempt to gloss over and hide from others and ourselves.
As we finish Qohelet’s words, today, in Ecclesiastes chapters eleven and twelve, we’ll hear more of his inner conflict, feel more of his sharp observations, groan with more of his preoccupation with death, and also appreciate more of his wisdom. However, Qohelet’s voice isn’t the only one we’ll meet.
At chapter 12:8, once Qohelet stops jabbering, we’ll once again meet the Narrator of this book, who introduced us to Qohelet in the first eleven verses of Ecclesiastes. And this Narrator is going to give his own conclusion as an end to the matter.
READ: ECCLESIASTES 11:1—12:14 (NLT)
BIRTHDAY GREETINGS
I turned forty-three years old, last week.
Neither of our lads got me a present. Although, on two separate occasions this week—one as I complained about my knees, and another as I groaned standing up—both my sons declared, ‘Ha! You’re old!’.
Cheers.
I’m not getting any younger, I know this. But, just in case you forgot, people send you birthday cards, reminding you. One particular friend sent me a beautiful birthday card with the following message on the front:
‘You know you’re getting older when…
… Everything hurts and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.
You feel like the morning after the night before.
Your knees buckle and your belt won’t
You can only burn the midnight oil ‘til 9 o’clock.
The twinkle in your eyes is the sun hitting your bi-focals.
Your back goes out more often than you do.
… And another way to know you’re getting older is …
… cards like this start showing up on your birthday!
Happy Birthday.’
None of us are getting any younger. And none us, I think, really need reminding of it. But, when we are reminded, it’s good when it’s done with a bit of humour—like the poem on the front of my birthday card.
Thankfully, Qohelet, never wrote any messages for birthday cards. I suspect that he would not have lasted long working at greeting’s card companies like Hallmark.
I’m saying this, because at the start of chapter 12, all the way to verse 7, Qohelet’s final words to us, before the Narrator chips in, are in the form of a poem about getting old and then dying.
How delightful!
Like most poems, it’s rich in metaphors/symbols. Different Bible translators, in order to help us out, attempt to make the metaphor clear to us when translating from the Hebrew to the English. And there’s a difference of opinions about whether the symbols in this poem are an allegory of different body parts getting older, or whether it describes the pattern of an actual ancient funeral procession, or whether it’s about a deteriorating household being ravaged by a storm.[iii]
Even though the poetic images are unclear, the general picture these symbols paint, is not. Whether it is body parts failing, or age hitting us like a storm, or life’s inevitable journey toward the grave, Qohelet is saying that, at some point, we all fall apart.
Just in case you needed reminding.
And he’s not as funny as my birthday card!
Not only does Qohelet lack humour, he lacks subtlety and sensitivity, too. Not the best bedside manner for the ailing. To top it off, he goes on and on, throwing picture after picture after picture at us.
‘Light will dim in your eyes … clouds will darken your skies … ‘
Yep. We get what you mean (nodding with his observation).
‘… your legs will fail … your teeth will fall out … your hair turns white … your libido will fizzle out … ’
Yeah, we get it, but a bit close to the bone.
‘When mourners starting singing at your graveside …’
Alright, enough said now.
‘ … the silver cord snaps, and the golden candle bowl it was holding up drops and smashes on the floor’ (a reference to the lights going out).
You’re just being rude now.
‘The jar smashes and the pulley breaks at the well’ (a reference to water being unavailable; water being so essential to sustaining life).
Qohelet, shut up.
And then, ‘the dust goes back to the ground, and the breath goes back to God’.
Happy Birthday!
As I’ve said in previous weeks, Qohelet is not optimistic about the idea of life after death.[iv] What he’s describing here is a reversal and undoing of the creation story in Genesis 2:7. This is humanity’s un-creation; not a description of an afterlife state, but a prelife condition. Qohelet, as he has done so throughout his ramble in Ecclesiastes, sees death as the ultimate end—it’s why he thinks everything is so utterly meaningless.[v]
He’s wrong, as we’ve looked at in prior weeks, and especially as we remember the hope of Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus’ defeat of death, that we looked at on Easter weekend.[vi] So, I’m not going to focus on that today.
But Qohelet’s poem gets his point across well. He wears us down. He purposely tires us out with his poem, making us feel fed up. That’s good poetry.
I don’t mean to suggest that good poetry leaves you fed up. The goal of good poetry isn’t to provide us with information about something, it’s to provide us with a sense of something. Qohelet uses poetry because he wants us to taste old age.
I feel old and wearied after reading Ecclesiastes 12:1-7.
So much so, that my birthday card isn’t funny anymore. The whole gaff about knees and belt buckles loses its charm.
If I read the card to you again, I suspect you wouldn’t laugh as much as you did the first time around, either.
DUST OR ASHES
Of course, Qohelet has a reason for ending this way. His poem at the start of chapter 12 provides the motivation for what he says in chapter 11.
If we wanted to summarise chapter 11, we could simply use the words, ‘don’t waste your time.’
Throughout his ongoing, eleven-chapter-long rant, Qohelet has been saying that life is uncertain, unpredictable, that there are no guarantees, no matter how wise or good you are, and that there are many things we can’t control or figure out. This is his same message here, in chapter 11.
However, Qohelet doesn’t want his audience to be paralysed with worry or anxiety or fear by this. He wants them to live.
Which may seem odd, as he thinks it’s all pointless. Odder, when we remember that he envied the dead and unborn at the beginning of chapter 4. But, Qohelet’s a complex and muddled person. ‘[He] expresses a sceptical attitude toward life, but not a scepticism that leads to inactivity.’[vii] As he sees it, life is momentary, so don’t waste what little there is.
‘Enjoy the sweetness of the light,’ he writes, ‘because there’s plenty of darkness ahead of you.’ (v.7)
Don’t wait for perfect conditions before you do something with your life—that’s just wasting time you can’t afford to waste (v.4). Keep busy and invest yourself in projects, and people and activity; do not be lazy, arrogant or foolish. Take some risks! (v1, 6). Don’t waste your health with anger, worries and grudges—banish irritation from your heart (v.10).
Simply put, make the most of your life and breath while you still have them.
Qohelet would not advocate the mantra, ‘I’ll get around to that one day.’
Although I don’t agree with Qohelet that it’s all meaningless. I still think this is right advice. He’s right to remind us, as he has done, that there are many uncertainties and uncontrollables in life. Sometimes, we can “live” in a way where we attempt to limit those uncertainties and uncontrollables. We avoid risks; we are over cautious, we wait, stagnant in life, waiting for everything to fall into place before we do anything or make any decisions.
Worse (but understandably), because of the failures, disappointments and pains of life (and there’s many), we end up closing doors, saying, ‘I’ll never do that again.’
In short, we cease to live, and we merely exist.
While it’s wise to be careful and to think before we act, I don’t want to be like the man in Jesus’ parable who hides his bag of gold in the ground.
When I read Qohelet’s appeal to live, I’m reminded of another poem by the American novelist, Jack London:
‘I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.’
If there’s one message we should take away from Qohelet’s rant, it’s this: use your time.
Whether it is a meal shared with family, a romantic candle-lit dinner, a well-brewed cup of tea with an old friend, or a Chow Mein Pot Noodle on your own, ‘live each moment to its deepest core.’ [viii] After all, you are not dead yet.
This is Qohelet’s conclusion to us.
Having said that. Qohelet’s closing statement is still quite a disappointing end.
After his lengthy search, Qohelet leaves us with no real answers. Even through his closing “motivational” argument, he still thinks everything to come is utterly meaningless (Ecc. 11:8, 10; 12:8). Qohelet remains adamant that humanity has no real purpose—existence is like a shallow breath, a vapour, and he never resolves any of the problems or tensions that he has dragged us through over the past eleven weeks.
He has goaded us, prodded us, cut us open, and exposed our anxieties like a raw nerve, and he just leaves us on the operating table.
It is better to go out in flames than crumble to pieces, according to his final advice in chapters eleven and twelve. But this hardly bandages the wounds we’ve been left with.
Where still bleeding out, wondering if there is a point to it all and what our response should be to the very real disorientation that we feel in life.
Thankfully, Qohelet’s words are not the end of the book of Ecclesiastes.
THE END OF THE MATTER
As I’ve said a number of times in this series, Qohelet’s (the Teacher’s) words are not the only words in this conversation of faith. We must listen to Qohelet as part of all Scripture, and we must read him in light of Jesus.
But even within the book of Ecclesiastes itself, Qohelet is just a part of the conversation. Qohelet’s point is not the point of Ecclesiastes as a book.
At verse eight of chapter twelve, we come back to words of the Narrator, and we discover that he seems to be in conversation with his child, or his student (the Hebrew translated as ‘son’, in verse 12, can mean both), about Qohelet’s words. In verse 8, the Narrator quotes, like he did in the opening verses of the book, Qohelet’s spin on it all: it’s meaningless. However, the Narrator doesn’t end it at that.
It’s as if the Narrator turns to his child and says, ‘Qohelet is wise. Listen carefully and learn from him. But this is not all there is to hear. Qohelet’s words, as wise as they are, are not the final words on existence.’[ix]
It’s crucial we grasp this, because these last few verses—which deserve far more time than I will give them—guide us in what we are to do with all of Qohelet’s frantic rambling.
And yes, it seems unbalanced. Compared to Qohelet’s 214 verse argument, the Narrator’s own advice, in the final eight verses, to his child (or student) in response to Qohelet’s argument appears small, feeble and anticlimactic—like David facing Goliath. But, though it’s tiny, it’s incredibly powerful.
‘We’ve heard it all’, the Narrator says. ‘So here’s the end of the matter, here’s the final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands’(v. 13). To put that advice another way, ‘Worship God and walk with God.’
Again, it seems flimsy. Yet, in one sentence, the Narrator neatly gives us both the purpose of our humanity and our response to the confusion around us.
The Narrator says that to worship God and walk with God is the whole duty of humanity—the all of what we are about. In a way, he summarises the whole of the Torah, echoing one of Israel’s foundational prayers (The Shema), found in Deut. 6:5. What is the purpose of humanity?: To know God, and to embody God. To be loved by God and to show forth that love.
When Jesus was asked, ‘What is the greatest commandment, what’s the best thing we can do with our humanity, what is the point of me and us?’ He replied with the same summary of the Torah: Love God and love your neighbour as yourself. (Mk. 12:28-34)
Paul the Apostle makes the same point, in Galatians 5. He states that what is important, as people in Christ, is faith expressing itself in love (Gal. 5:6). We’ve been made for freedom, he states. Not freedom to do whatever we want to satisfy ourselves; but freedom to serve others in love, for the command to love your neighbour as yourself sums up the whole Torah (Gal. 5:13-14).
Life is not meaningless.
Life is not vapour.
Life is to be a vessel for Divine glory, love and honour.
But there’s more.
The Narrator is not solely challenging Qohelet’s bleak outlook in these words. He is also recommending practice to his child.
I want you to note that the Narrator does not spend a further 214 verses correcting Qohelet’s observations or resolving his tensions. He doesn’t, because Qohelet has been right in what he has observed and what he has felt.
In the real world, our faith, like Qohelet’s is caught up in this tension, this collision between what should be and what is. We know God is sovereign, but, at the same time, everything seems to be a mess. And all of us, on one level or another, struggle to hold these things together.
Life (or, our current experience of it) is full of dark and light, good and bad, pain and pleasure, fairness and unfairness, things that make sense and things that don’t. We will never remove the tensions—especially just by talking about them like Qohelet does. Though there are many who try and many who encourage such things, faith is not the removal of the tensions. What we must do, somehow, is learn how to walk in the midst of such tensions.
Life is disorientating. Life is uncertain. Life does have its limits and frailty. Real, honest, faith carries questions not just declarations. Real, honest faith carries disappointments, not only testimonies. Real faith wants to give God a piece of our mind and our praise all at once—like many of the Psalms master so well.
Often, like the disciples standing before the resurrected Jesus, I am filled with doubt and joy and wonder at the same time (Lk. 24:41).
Real faith is not ‘everything is awesome’. Nor is it superstitious (if I avoid stepping on cracks I will also avoid bad fortune). Real faith is not a denial of the way things are. Faith looks the reality of earthly life in the face.
The Narrator knows that Qohelet’s feelings are legitimate. Qoholet’s experience is the experience of any Israelite in the Old Testament and any disciple of Jesus in the New. Anyone who aims to follow God will feel like this.
The question is, when life is messy and murky, what do we do?
What the son has set before him is the tried and tested formula of worship and putting one foot in front of the other.
This is still our mandate as followers of Jesus. Jesus didn’t come with a message that if we follow him everything will fall into place, all will make sense, it will be easy and everything will happen exactly as we would like it. His invitational challenge is, ‘pick up you cross, daily, and follow me’ (Mt. 16:24, Lk. 9:23)
In light of all the tensions we face, the unanswered questions, the pain and joy, the disorientation we feel on a daily basis, the response the Narrator gives, and the invitation Jesus puts before us is, ‘keep having a faith that worships and a faith that walks’.
It may sound like shoddy advice, but from personal experience of many high and lows (on a daily basis), it works. It’s the only thing that has.
It’s not intellectual answers that have sustained me when I have hit the walls in life. They’re good, and I am certainly not anti-intellectual—I love studying and having my head in a book. But answers, rightly, lead to more questions. When the world crashes, answers offer me little comfort.
It’s not miracles that sustain me, either. Like me, you may think that if God did what I want, when I wanted, I would have an unshakable faith. But, when God does something remarkable, I find myself not only with my jaw dropped, but also with the lingering questions about the mounting pile of unanswered prayers. And what about the suffering that continues everywhere else?
Trust me, as good as miracles are—and who would not want more of them?—when the world is on fire, a miracle will not sustain you. The Israelites saw God do incredible things as they left Egypt, and it didn’t pull them through long-term. Jesus did miracles, and people still left him when it came to the challenge to follow.
I’ve known people who have seem the dead rise, and they no longer believe in God.
Through every storm, over the past twenty-five years, the only praxis that has pulled me through is the “low-key” praxis of attempting to walk humbly with God (Mic. 6:8).
Honestly, I don’t have any other survival advice for you! Keep worshipping and keep placing one foot in front of the other.
In the words of Winston Churchill, ‘If you are going through hell, keep going.’
And by the way, when I say worship, I do not necessarily mean singing, though it could certainly include that. I mean taking our eyes of ourselves and taking a moment, however how brief or prolonged, to be in awe of God.
It’s not unquestioning loyalty God is after, it’s loyalty with the questions. It’s adoring God in the wounds, with the wounds, and through wounds, because that’s all I can do and all God can work with, and God’s fine with that arrangement.
I am, and you are, made to be a vessel for Divine Glory. And I’m in no great shape, I am a jar of clay—frail and fractured in places. But, as Paul reminds us, God’s glorious light can be better seen that way (2 Cor. 4:7).
Keep going. That’s the end of it all.
‘We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.
Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies. So we live in the face of death, but this has resulted in eternal life for you.’
2 Corinthians 4:8-12 (NLT)
‘Let everything that has breath praise the Lord’
Psalm 150:6
[i] White Christmas, Paramount Pictures, 1954
[ii] As Tremper Longman notes, reflecting on Michael Fox’s words, ‘If the frame narrator wanted to focus on the positive aspects of the shepherd’s function, he would have more likely written of the rod and staff (Ps. 23:4). Thus, I believe that the frame narrator uses the image of the shepherd and his tools to emphasize the dangerous and painful aspects of wisdom teaching, a very appropriate image after presenting the sceptical and pessimistic teaching of the wise man Qohelet.’ Tremper Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament), (Eerdmans Publishing Co., Michigan), p. 280.
[iii] Some commentators, such as Tremper Longman and Pete Enns (see references in previous series endnotes), also note that, with reference to the Sun, Moon and Starts, Qohelet use of cosmic imagery is purposeful, not only describe the end to an individual, but of humanity as a whole. Thus, this poem has an eschatological flavour to it, adding nuance to the brevity of a human life. As Pete Enns states, ‘We have, therefore, a series of comments that is nothing less than eschatological in scope, envisioning a time when all of life will stop dead in its tracks. How much more, therefore, should we consider our own mortality “in the days of our youth?”’ [The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary: Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2011), p. 109]
[iv] see VAPOUR | PAIN & SORROW (Ecc.3:16-4:3)
[v] On this note, it’s also worth mentioning Qohelet’s refrain of ‘Remember your Creator…’. Qohelet has never really shown an awed and loving reverence for God throughout his rant, so this appeal should not be read as an encouraging exhortation to worship and praise. Of course, it is possible, that at the end of his search, Qohelet does experience a heart change. But, it’s more likely that this exhortation still carries an ominous tone to it. Especially, as Qohelet considers the finality of human life, and the un-creation of our humanity. When this saying at the start of his poem (Remember your Creator) is held together with the end of the poem (dust returns to earth, and the breath returns to God), it’s better to see that this exhortation as connected to Qohelet’s consistent appeals here, and elsewhere in the book, to his audience to remember that they will die. Ergo, remembering your Creator is a parallel to recalling the un-creation, as he sees it, that awaits. Qohelet feels both our creation and un-creation come from the same hands.
[vi] see RESURRECTION SUNDAY | EASTER EGGS
[vii] Tremper Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament), (Eerdmans Publishing Co., Michigan), p. 258.
[viii] As theologian, Julie Ann Duncan summarises, ‘The encroaching shadow of death, rather than crowding out all else, brings into relief the delicate shimmer of the small daily gifts of life. … Be it a shared meal with candlesticks or a well-brewed cup of tea, [Qohelet] invites us to live each such moment to its deepest core.’ Julie Ann Duncan, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: Ecclesiastes (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2017), pp. 193-194.
[ix] Adapted from Pete Enn’s paraphrase in The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary: Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2011), p. 110
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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