Preached third Sunday of Epiphany (22nd January) 2023, Balliol chapel, Oxford, Evensong
It is a great pleasure to be asked to preach here. I did not go to Balliol while I was at Oxford, but I hold it in great affection. I have lots of good friends at Balliol, through them I met my wife. I’ve visited plenty of times. I have never set foot in this chapel.
I am delighted to rectify this this today, though less delighted with the circumstances. It’s always cold in Oxford, and it’s freezing today. It is also potentially difficult to be doing the sermon in a week where the bishops of the church have failed, once again, to reach the right answer on same sex relationships. And lastly, it is daunting to be asked to preach on one the most famous passages of the Old Testament, though it is now two generation since the Byrds took it to top of the US chart, so the resonance may have faded. As we are in Oxford, one never knows.
Still, no matter what place it occupies in the popular imagination, the Book of Ecclesiastes occupies a strange place in the Bible. Plenty of people have thought it shouldn’t be in the bible, and this is because throughout, instead of the golden thread of God who chooses, judges and redeems, this one doesn’t. The author of Ecclesiastes is resigned; God is remote.
And there appears to be little ambiguity about this. There are sections of the bible where the metaphor clouds the meaning, and the message is obscure. Not here, not least because the superscript literally tell us: ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.’ The message is not subtle one: everything happens, no-one understands God, and then you die. A few verses later we have that the ‘fate of the songs of man and the fate of the beast is a single fate’.
In fact, all our texts lack ambiguity as well, though the others are more upbeat, at least. But, if we can escape the blinding obviousness of the metaphor, the text is less clear. What is the time for? What does the author of Ecclesiastes think we are doing with our lives?
Because despite the opener, every activity under the sun is not listed: there are twenty-eight of them, in fourteen opposed pairs. One of which doesn’t count because you can’t allocate much time to being born or dying. Fairly essential tasks are not included - no eating, no drinking, no sex at all, no studying, no writing, no entertainment, no travel. Some of these do pop up in other parts of the book.
So actually, Ecclesiastes thinks thirteen types of activity are what fill a life:
- Two about violence (fighting, healing war)
- Two are about the getting of things, either the finding or the putting off. This may include another about the gathering of stones.
- Three are about building or making: planting/uprooting, building, mending.
- Five are about feelings: Embracing, speaking, mourning, weeping, love
I’d like to talk about the last two.
What binds all the building and the making is that it’s for the future. Even the negatives. You obviously build a house or plant a seed for the future, but you also don’t tear down a house if there’s no tomorrow, you tear down a house because you don’t want someone in it or you want to put something there.
When we have later that God has put eternity in the human heart, this is what he means. And in the epistle. ‘the prophets … trying to find out the time and circumstances [of the] the sufferings of the Messiah …. they were not serving themselves but you’.
The prophets may have been laying the foundations of heavenly salvation, but throughout the Old and Testament, and again here, the earthly future matters.
And how is that earthly future going?
It may not feel like it, but it’s going pretty well. Several centuries of material progress, dramatic increases in global wealth and global health has meant a vast improvement in lifestyles. The gap between the time to be born and to die has expanded in length and in quality.
In my own field, nearly two billion people have gained access to clean water in the last two decades. Ukraine’s day of national unity, which is today, is just over 100 years old. You can’t tell them it’s not important.
But, just as with Ukraine, that earthly future is being denied to too many people because of the lack of sound foundations. Think of the basics. Think of Ecclesiastes.
- To plant: over 700m people are suffering from hunger, half of the countries in the world have food insecurity
- To build and create: over 600m live in extreme poverty
- I would add my own field, the foundational gift of water, essential for physical and our spiritual life. 800m people still do not have access to clean water nearby
And, right now, those foundations look shaky. Because of COVID those numbers have gotten worse; undermining the huge gains made. And the drumbeat of climate change gets ever louder threatening it all.
Where is God?
Our first instinct is to look for a God who judges. Is this a test we are failing? What works should we do to get this right, to secure salvation?
The Psalm is clear about the greatness of the Lord, but Ecclesiastes reminds us of the fundamental chasm between man and God, the gap only bridged by Christ. And the tolls of that bridge are not a tariff of good works.
The world matters not because we’re commanded to care, but because of those last set of activities in Ecclesiastes. Those feelings. They aren’t inner feelings, but social ones. For example, keeping silent is normal alone, it’s only an act when you’re with someone.
Faced with the vastness of divine power, an unknowable, unreachable, uninfluenceable God, where all is ‘mere breath’, Ecclesiastes points to people, to the crown of God’s creation. Now, this is no blandly pious ‘God is Love’ message, he’s not saying you can’t hate them, just that a full life engages with them in all their complexity, their diversity , and their messiness. It requires us to engage with the world as it is. And it allows for change. Some might say – I would say – that this week’s position from the college of bishops isn’t changing enough. That it’s not engaging with the world as it is.
But the point is that we must do this, not because these works to be done for a test, but because this is life to be lived to its fullness, this is what we have the time for. Ecclesiastes isn’t telling you how; it’s certainly not telling you when, it’s just telling us that creation, not heaven alone is our mission. Nothing can be left to God alone, when we can act ourselves.
Keep your eyes fixed on the heavens, sure, but lay those foundations, plant those seeds. There is a time for everything. Let us act in the world. Eternity is coming, God has placed it in our hearts, but not yet.
