“Things?”
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 13
4 August 2013
The Episcopal Church of Our Saviour
Mill Valley, California
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14;
2:18-23
Psalm 49:1-11
Colossians 3:1-11
St. Luke 12:13-21
INI
A Culture of Cynicism and Greed (Ecclesiastes)
Right after my daughter
had moved out to California to live with Arthur and me, we went out for dinner,
just the two of us. We talked
about our life, both together and apart – about her battle with bio-polar disorder,
and about her adjustment to life in California after a childhood in a Quaker
village in New Jersey. It was a
heavy evening, and as we walked down the street we both paused and looked in
the display window of a fine gift shop.
“Do you like things?” I asked her.
She thought for a moment, and said, “No.” She had weightier issues with which to deal. As we continued to gaze at the objects,
I said, “You will.” As I think
back on my comment and the conversation, I began to wonder if I had pronounced
a blessing or a curse.
The words of Qohelet son of David, king in
Jerusalem. Merest breath, said Qohelet,
merest breath. All is mere breath. What gain is there for man in all his toil
that he toils under the sun.[1]
I love things – books,
pieces of art, food, dance, music.
I knew that my daughter would love them too, but the Preacher, Qohelet,
the author of Ecclesiastes gives us a warning. His words to us can be easily dismissed as cynicism, but the
warning needs to be plumbed for wisdom.
The goods and things that attract us in life are, according to The
Preacher “a breath,” something vapid and vaporous – the least of our
considerations in life. Perhaps,
as a preacher, I need to take the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s words to heart.
“I
think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come
together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of
the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.”[2]
Ah, the truth, that’s what we really ought to be about here,
and that is what both Niebuhr and The Preacher are calling us to – to stare at
the glum word that is described to us in Ecclesiastes, and to see there both
truth and hope. But what will get
us out of this pessimistic point of view?
How can we see beyond our own greed, and the world’s cynicism?
The
Common Death
The author of Psalm 49 has a similar point of view, but he
brings it to a fulcrum, a balancing point. Sometimes when being pessimistic about the world and the
life that surrounds us, we believe that this is our own unique and special
point of view. This is especially
true when we turn on the television and see people becoming ecstatically happy
by the purchase of a deodorant, or a tube of toothpaste. I am reminded of Pablo’s speech in Napoleon Dynamite when he is running for
president of the school council.
“If you vote for me,” he declaims, “all your wildest dreams will come
true.” Our native distrust of what
the world tries to offers us makes us distrust such words. Where does this worldview come from?
Hear
this, all peoples,
hearken,
all who dwell in the world.
You
human creatures, you sons of man,
together
the rich and the needy.
My
mouth speaks wisdom,
my
heart’s utterance, understanding.
I
incline my ear to a saying,
I
take up with the lyre my theme.
Why
should I fear in evil days,
when
crime comes round me at my heels?
Who
trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches –
yet
they surely will redeem no man, will not give to God his ransom.
To
redeem their lives is too dear,
and
one comes to an end forever.
Will
he yet live forever? Will he not see the Pit?
For
he sees the wise die,
both
the fool and the stupid man perish,
and
they abandon to others their wealth.”[3]
It sounds as though the psalmist and The Preacher are cousins
of the mind. Though the world is
filled with greed, as Jesus points out in his parable in the Gospel, about the
farmer with his barns full of wealth and value, there is a commonality that
sometimes evades us – and that is death.
Both rich and needy, pessimist and optimist, man and woman, young and
old – all of them face the grave.
It is at this point, as we face the riddle of living with or without
things, that the author of The Letter to the Colossians comes to the rescue –
taking the notion of death to a new and different place
The Colossians answer to
the riddle of life was to enhance its realities. They were consumed by rituals, laws regarding food, and
days, and seasons. The sought the
answer to the riddle in the Mystery Religions. And the letter writer, writing under the name of Paul, stops
them in their course. He stops
them with the idea of death. In
chapter 2 he writes:
“You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also
raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the
dead.”[4]
And in today’s reading he continues that thought:
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where
Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have
died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God”[5]
The Preacher and the psalmist both
speak of things balancing out in death – that it is our common end. The writer to the Colossians sees death
(and here we need to see through his eyes) sees death in Baptism.
Let me tell you the story of
Helena. My friend, Fr. Stephen
Katsaris, a Greek Orthodox priest, invited me to Helena’s baptism. At one point in the rite, she was stripped
of her clothing and anointed with oil, slathered with oil, the light of the
room glinted off her anointed body.
And then she was plunged beneath the waters of the font. Not just once, but three times – “in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!” When she emerged from the ordeal she
glistened – she was beyond clean.
That is the starting point – “you
were buried with him in baptism”.
Even though we were all most likely dabbed with less than a tablespoon
of water, yet in that moment we faced death – with Christ. That is the starting point. It gives us a different view of the
world. It makes us survivors of
cynicism, of greed, of temptation, and anxiety. It is our new name and being.
But the author of Colossians goes
even further. Not only are we to
die with Christ (which brings us a new life) we are to put to death all that is
earthly. He gives us a list (Paul
likes lists – as does the author writing in his name,) To death with impurity,
passion, evil desire, and greed, to which he parenthetically adds, “which is
idolatry.
Something happens when we do such a
thing – remember our baptism, and consign the evils of our world to death. Martin Luther, in his Small
Catechism, writes about this aspect of baptism and what follows from it:
“What does such
baptizing with water mean?
Such baptizing with water means that the old Adam in us should,
by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil
lusts; and that a new man daily come forth and arise, who shall live before God
in righteousness and purity forever.”
What makes you you? Is it your name? Your husband or your wife? Is it what you have accumulated? Is it what you have accomplished? Such considerations need to be put
away, according to The Preacher, the psalmist, and pseudo Paul. Jesus is in the same company of
agreement. The common situation of
life calls for a new self. In that
regard, the author of Colossians comes to a startling realization. “In that renewal, there is no longer
Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and
free; but Christ is all and in all.
Each Sunday morning I bless baptismal
water and place it in the font.
There it sits, awaiting your new self, dead to cynicism, greed, and
anxiety. Dip in your finger as a
token of your whole self, and rise as a new person. The Eucharistic prayer in Rite One puts it so well.
“And
here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves,
our souls and bodies,
to be a reasonable, holy, and living
sacrifice unto thee.”
It is not what we have taken or earned,
rather it is what we have given up.
In these actions of sacrifice we become something for God in Christ, and
for the neighbor who needs us.
SDG
[1] Ecclesiastes
1:1-2
[2] Niebuhr,
Reinhold, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1944
[3] Alter, Robert (2009-10-19). The Book of Psalms: A Translation
with Commentary, W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
[4] Colossians
2:12
[5] Colossians
3:1-3
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