Get real

The Book of Ecclesiastes has been described as one of the most puzzling books of the Bible. Moreover it was regarded as unorthodox and extremely pessimistic. The fact that it was ever included in the biblical canon is put down to the fact that the authorities reckoned Solomon was the author and for that reason alone decided to accept it.

Truth to tell the author’s name is unknown. The title Ecclesiastes has a Greek root meaning ‘lecturer’ and the author is likely to have been a rather elderly and very rich man who lived on the outskirts of Jerusalem around 200 BC.

It’s a fascinating book because it’s so honest! It recognises the reality of the human condition. We are prone to pessimism, cynicism and scepticism. It depends what mood we are in and what our experience of life has been like.

The book paints a dark picture of life and the social order of things with broad impressions of injustice rampant, oppression severe and little hope on the horizon.

How we see life is down to our moods and the older we get the more fatalist we become.

But life is neither that of the inspired perpetual optimist nor is it in the image of the out and out fatalist. Ecclesiastes is a mirror on life. The writer has seen many cruelties and contradictions in human behaviour. He writes very frankly – there are no holds barred, he tells it as it is.

He suggests that all is meaningless. Life is a vanity of vanities. His life, your life, my life is a flutter of wings across a stage, a puff of smoke, a breath of wind.

As a lecturer the writer reveals how he tried to find happiness. His first idea was that in learning, in becoming the wisest man in the world, in knowing everything, in being the most cultured, a philosopher and encyclopaedia rolled into one – he would be happy and satisfied.

But he finds that “in much wisdom is much grief” and in “making many books there is no end: much study is a weariness of the flesh”.

Life is not about being a know-all.

Then he reflects on how he sought the meaning of life in pleasure. He latched on to the eternal theme of “wine, women and song”.

He built himself houses, gardens, employed a large staff, collected curios and antiques and became the richest man in Jerusalem. Life was about getting whatever caught his eye.

That’s life. But it wasn’t. It all ‘turned to ashes in his mouth”. His ‘good time’ turned out to be nothing more than an expensive time, a very silly time, a Hello Magazine time, a dull time. In the end he hates this self indulgent, vain life. It’s a dead end.

He then sets his heart on one thing after another. But as he comes to old age he is full of vexation as he realises that all his accumulated wealth, all that he has driven himself to acquire, all that he has put so much trust in will ultimately be handed over to others. He ends up getting frustrated and angry at the thought that it will all be squandered and come to nothing. His superficial values have no roots, no lasting legacy.

What an honest man. He looks life in the eye. He recognises the reality that sees things as they are and not merely as they ought to be. It’s all to often the case that honest men go to the wall while tricksters prosper.

It’s a fact that life can be cruel. He says, “ God help you if misfortune comes your way for no one else will!”  He is certainly not one to wear rose coloured spectacles.

He warns that no matter how good you are, no matter how honest, no matter how pure bad luck may overtake you. And no matter how honourable you are don’t expect any favours. He tells the story of the poor man who saves his city and is promptly forgotten and unrecognised.

That’s life for real, it’s the world we have to live in and it can be a bitter experience.

Yet out of all this dark reflection he emerges with some hope, a pinprick of light that disperses the gloom and doom. Everything has its place – there is a time to laugh, a time to weep, a time to mourn, a time to rejoice, a time to hope.

Nevertheless there is not a single good man on earth whose good deeds are without sin. That’s what experience teaches us together with all the other unpleasant truths of our mortal life.

And death is the one thing in this world of which we may be certain.

Finally in summing up his experience as a whole, the author of Ecclesiastes says some very wise things.

The world is as it is and this we must accept but not let it get us down. “Go your way eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart,” he says.

And take pride in your appearance, live happily with your wife and family as long as you have them. Whatever you have to do do it with all your might. Rejoice while you can, remove sorrow from your heart and put away evil.

So speaks a man who has seen life from every angle. He looks the facts full and square in the face.

Is it a one sided picture? Or is it a many sided picture that corresponds with many of our own moods and thoughts from time to time?

When the ancient authorities decided to include this book in the canon of the Bible the irony is that it may have been a decision tinged with vanity – after all did they not suppose the author was King Solomon? The real author would have smiled at their toadying and said, “I told you so – all is vanity.”

 A commentator describes the book, as a lesson on how miserable, bitter and negative life can be when we think only of our self- interest and material possessions. He says:  “A man who was more interested in helping his neighbour than in seeking happiness for himself would not feel so strongly that all was vanity.”

Perhaps the author, this old man who had gone down so many paths and been anchored to so much self interest – me, me, me – did in the end rise above childish things and learnt to look beyond himself.

In all this chaos and tired self indulgence he concludes that the best way to live is to “Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man”

Ecclesiastes prompts us to get real, to look the world in the eye and see it for what it is, a world disfigured and ruined by sin.

Christ came into such a world as this. In this dark world – He is Light: in this hungry world, bereft of kindness – He is bread: in this thirsty world – discouraged and defeated – He is the Living Fountain reviving the soul.

So we pray.

Redeeming God,

Grant that we may turn to the light of Christ

And through the gifts of your grace

Know the glory of your new creation,

The forgiveness of sins and the hope of life eternal.