“Toiling after Wind”

Ecclesiastes 5:8-20

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

September 17, 2006

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

        A year ago this week I remember there was a student cookout on the lawn and a choir rehearsal.  The day started out nice enough but then the rain and the wind picked up.  The severe weather sirens went off and we all retreated into the bowels of the church for safety.  When our family got home we were without electricity and without a tree in our backyard.  When the sun rose the next morning, we joined our neighbors in the street surveying the damage that straight-line winds and even a few small tornados had caused.  Mounds View lost about 10,000 trees that night.  I bought a chainsaw the next day and joined my neighbors in our toiling after the wind storm.  I think about this storm as the sun rises this morning on Rogers and the other areas hit by last night’s tornados.  There will be much toiling in the wake of that wind

            The writer of Ecclesiastes (named Qoheleth for all of you Bible trivia buffs) was a critic of complacent religion. Written around 300 BCE, his book is an often cynical critique of power and dominance and the seeming futility of fighting against such a huge machine of evil. I’m reminded of what the Borg used to say in the Star Trek Series: “Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.” 

He says that all is “vanity”. But I bet the original language made the word more graphic than that. Qoheleth sees “vanity” everywhere.  The Hebrew word for vanity is “hebel” which means vapor or insubstantial, futile vain.  Hebel is the verdict of things like wisdom, toil, joy, wealth, poverty, sorrow, laughter, risk, assurance, justice, oppression, etc.: all are hebel.  He even calls things vanity of vanities: Vanity of vanities, like Holy of holies means utter vanity or mega-hebel.

Think of the things that are hebel around here.  Think of the things that just make you fed up.  Later on in the semester, course work can feel like that.   Worrying about them is like toiling after wind.

            Ecclesiastes attempts to answer the question, “so what.”  If all we do is toil after wind, what is the meaning of life?  Qoheleth’s answer is that all of life is vanity, hebel, excrement.  So what can raise us above all of that?  The obvious answer is God.  But to get there we need to remember that all the rest is vanity and striving after wind. 

            Qoheleth opens with the familiar line, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”  This is the viewpoint that Qoheleth concludes while looking at the world and what a mess it is.  He goes on chapter after chapter talking about what is vanity from making a buck to accumulating wealth to getting ahead in the world, all of it is vanity and striving after wind.  But Qoheleth doesn’t stop at the vanity part.  He is not content with just tearing things down.  He wants to see that if the world and its ways of getting ahead are vanity, then what is its opposite?

            While Qoheleth draws a grim picture of life and even death, he holds fast to the need for reverence to God.  The warning of Qoheleth is against human hubris.  Like Job’s conclusion, we need to hold to the divine mystery.  A world without God is doomed to be vanity and striving after wind.  God is the power to move mountains, do miracles, reveal herself in surprising ways, and offer hope to a vain world.

            Today’s portion of Ecclesiastes is a familiar indictment upon the temptation that happens around the accumulation of wealth.  The accumulator does not seem to ever have quite enough.  Vanity leads to more vanity.  The accumulator always needs to get a bit more.  Kim and I have a good-natured game when the catalogues come in the mail.  I rush to throw them out before she’ll notice they’re there.  But get me on a book or a CD web site and find something I just got to have even though my floor-to ceiling bookshelves are full.  Many of us know that it is a burden to have so much stuff.  When children are added to the mix, it seems to get even worse—or if one person in the household tends to be a bit of a pack-rat. 

Today’s passage lays out the plight of those who are under the thumb and asks, “What gain has the laborer who toils for the wind?” (5:16) Let’s look at the seemingly futile work of righteousness in the face of massive inequity. Let’s see if we can find some examples of hope amidst such oppressiveness. Lest we let cynicism have the final say, what can we do as we strive after wind?

            On Thursday evening I heard Mel White speak about his new book Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right.  His book is a searing indictment of the power of fundamentalism.  It shows how many of us have been inept in battling it because we have dismissed it.  We hear these people talking on the radio or as we flip the channels on Sunday mornings and say, this there is a lot of wind out there and if we engage it we might get sullied by it.  So we turn off the TV and get onto happier topics.  And yet fundamentalism is tearing our world apart right now.  It goes on unchecked and we find ourselves in today’s predicament.

            Mel spoke about how he heard evangelist John Hagee speak at Jerry Falwell’s church a week or so ago.  Hagee said that World War III has already begun and the war is between Christianity and Islam.  This met with thunderous applause from the 1200 people in the pews and who knows how many more in the national television audience.

            Just this past week, Pope Benedict used language that called Islam evil and violent.  His apology later was to the tune of “I’m sorry that people got upset with my words.”  Not quite an apology.  We need to recognize the influence of leaders to push their agenda.  There seems to be a clear and consistent enemy behind even the most conciliatory of language.

But the word today is that all of this is vanity.  It’s all hebel.  It’s all striving after wind.  Sometimes our activism seems like that, too.  We work our tails off to help someone get elected or to get legislation passed or defeated.  We hit the streets and pound the pavement and it seems like we are voices crying in the wilderness.  It feels like vanity and hebel and striving after wind.  It makes one want to really consider brunch instead of activism or church or to get our phone number unlisted during election season.  It all seems like vanity, hebel, striving after wind. 

            I was asked to speak on a local Christian radio station this past Thursday.  It was  a teaser for the event at Northwestern College on Friday evening.  The topic was “What does the Bible Say about Homosexuality?”  I had never listened to this station so I spent some time listening as I went about my business on Thursday.  There were talk shows about how Rosie O’Donnell should not be on The View because she dared to say that Christian Fundamentalism is as bad as Muslim Fundamentalism.  They brought her sexual orientation into the discussion as they continued to disparage her.  Right before I went on the air, James Dobson encouraged the listeners to vote for candidates that would oppose gay marriage and support the traditional family which he said is under attack.  I said my piece on the air and the next show was “Rapture Watch” with Tim LaHaye of the Left Behind series.  I wondered, “What planet am I on?”

            Sometimes I feel like I’m spitting in the ocean.  And that’s exactly what the proponents of evil are counting on.  They are counting on our cynicism.  They are counting on our burnout. They are counting on our exhaustion. 

            And yet, even as we step up to the plate, our work might be futile.  It might not make a difference in the larger picture.  But it might make us better people.  We don’t need to necessarily be conformed to the fact that life is hebel.  It may well be, but we don’t have to wallow in it.  We don’t have to let that fact define us.  Like a good existentialist work, our task might well be to push that stone up the hill knowing it will come back down and find our pleasure in toiling with that stone in the midst of all of the winds of vanity.

            Even if we’re striving after wind, we don’t have to do it alone.  We should never have to do it without the sense of the presence of God, who in her ultimate humor knows that the world is full of hebel and is watching to see how we creatively handle it.  I would love it if we could find ways to surprise even God by our reactions to the hebel around us.

            I look forward to Tuesday and Sunday evenings when I get to sing some Sacred Harp music.  After a long time of toiling after wind, it feels good to make a different kind of wind and be transported by the music into a different level of power.  That power feels to me like God.  I come away hoarse sometimes, but almost always more ready to face the world.  I have connected with a mystical power beyond myself and I have done it within a community of like minded and like-throated people.  

            When I was in Gallup, New Mexico this past May, I got up before dawn and walked the labyrinth in the backyard of my friends Sharna and Pam’s yard.  They spent three years gathering just the right stone from nearby canyons to build this labyrinth.  I walked it with the stars and the moon as my canopy.  The methodical and balanced circular walk helped me to center myself and connect with the ancients.  It helped to remind me that I am here in part to toil after wind, but to not let that be my full existence.      Our activism might just be striving after wind, but we do it anyway. 

Perhaps we do it so that we will not be defined by our enemies. 

Perhaps we do it because it is absurd.

            Perhaps we all do it because striving after wind in the company of sisters and brothers who are equally foolish enough to follow the Gospel are going to make our lives a whole lot more interesting. 

            So let’s toil after some wind.

            Let’s do some absurd activism.

            Let’s care for each other.

            Let’s do right even in spite of the consequences.

            Let’s always remember that God is by our side when we do it.  Let’s give God something to laugh about.