Ecclesiastes
7:1-14
March 17, 2013
A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death, than
the day of birth.
It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of
feasting;
for this is the end of everyone,
and the living
will lay it to heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of
countenance the heart is made glad.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning;
but the heart of fools is in
the house of mirth.
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise
than to hear the song of
fools.
For like the crackling of thorns under a pot,
so is the laughter of
fools;
this also is vanity.
Surely oppression makes the wise foolish,
and a bribe corrupts the
heart.
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning;
the patient in spirit are
better than the proud in spirit.
Do not be quick to anger,
for anger lodges in the
bosom of fools.
Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than
these?’
For it is not from wisdom
that you ask this.
Wisdom is as good as an inheritance,
An advantage to those who
see the sun.
For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of
money,
and the advantage of knowledge
is that wisdom
gives life to the one
who possesses it.
Consider the work of God;
who can make straight what
he has made crooked?
On the day of prosperity be joyful, and on the day of adversity
consider; God has made the one as well as the other, so that mortals may not
find out anything that will come after them.
At some point today, if you turn on your television, you
will see a beer commercial for Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors Light, or some
other beer. And it will show people having a blast. They will be smiling,
joking, and basically having the kind of fun you never get to have anymore, or
wish you could have more often. They will make you wish you were at that bar
with them because they are all pretty (even the men), witty, and obviously the
kind of people you want to hang with. They will be filled with mirth!
There’s a reason these commercials emphasize the fun you
can have when you drink their beer. They not only want to sell you their beer,
but they want to sell you a lifestyle of fun, and beer is at the center of it. They
imply a crucial question: How can you have this kind of fun without their beer?
These commercials are enticing, but they are also somewhat depressing because
in watching them you realize that your life lacks this kind of fun. It makes it
feel as though your life lacks meaning, or at least the kind of meaning that
leads to an enjoyment of life.
Ecclesisastes has something to say about that kind of life—the
beer commercial kind of life:
The heart
of the wise is in the house of mourning;
but the heart of fools is in the house of
mirth.
It is
better to hear the rebuke of the wise
than to hear the song of fools.
For like
the crackling of thorns under a pot,
so is the laughter of
fools;
This message can seem harsh, especially for those of us
who want to find meaning in a beer commercial kind of way. But in this message
is deep wisdom: “The heart of the wise is
in the house of mourning;
but the heart of fools is in the house of
mirth.” Basically it is saying is that if you want to find the deeper
meaning of life, you come closest to it in grief than in bars. That’s not a way
of saying that bars are bad, nor is it Ecclesiastes’, or my way, of giving a
sermon on the evils of alcohol. Not with Ecclesiastes saying that life is found
in eating and drinking. The writer of Ecclesiastes recognizes that enjoying
life is important, but it also recognizes that it is in the painful parts of
life that we learn gratitude, appreciation, and what really matters in life.
I think that one of the realities of modern American
life is that we don’t value real wisdom, deep wisdom. Part of the reason is that we don’t is that wisdom is so hard to
define, whether we do it philosophically, theologically, or biblically.
Ecclesiastes and the book of Proverbs, two of the biblical books of wisdom,
spend pages and pages demonstrating wisdom, but it’s hard to get a simple
definition even in those books. Even some of the wisdoms expressed in those
books don’t seem very wise by modern standards, which says that wisdom can be
elusive. For example, you probably wouldn’t follow Proverbs’ advise to “put a knife to your throat if you have a
big appetite” (23:2). Still, the wisdom books of the Bible, such as
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, recognize that in God there is a well of wisdom that
we ignore because we don’t understand the necessity of wisdom.
As for definitions, the word “wise” comes from the old
German word weid, which means "to
see," or “vision.” It is based on the idea that real wisdom means seeing through life to understand what
is deeper and greater. It suggests that life is like a veil or a fog that
obscures what is real and true. To have wisdom means to develop the ability to
peel back the veil, or pierce the fog, and to see what really has been there
all along.
This kind of wisdom is not the same as having
“knowledge.” We’re a culture of knowledge. Our universities are the envy of the
world, but they teach knowledge, not wisdom. We have an internet with a world-wide
web that give us instantaneous information. Add to that social media such as
Twitter, and you find all sorts of instant info about everything. But all of
this knowledge doesn’t make us wise. In fact, it can get in the way of wisdom. Why?
Wisdom is internal
and eternal. As Jesus said, “the
kingdom of God is within you.” It is a reservoir of deep understanding that
connects us with God’s realm, when we choose to tap into it. Meanwhile,
knowledge is external and terminal. It swirls around us from all
sorts of sources, and it lasts only a little while. By itself, knowledge isn’t
connected to God. We can gain all sorts of knowledge that really has little use
beyond the gathering of information, whether it is knowledge about the
Kardashians or how to have fun in a bar. They may entertain us, but they aren’t
connected to wisdom. Much of the knowledge we have is neutral. It is helpful
for our jobs, our homes, or more, but it doesn’t help us live a deep life.
We have so many people in our culture who walk around
with tremendous reserves of knowledge, but who lack wisdom. Some of the most
educated people I’ve met have also been some of the dumbest in terms of wisdom.
That’s not to say that all smart people lack wisdom. It’s to say that knowledge
and wisdom aren’t the same thing.
Back in the 1920s there was a young man who struggled
with the meaning of life. He felt like his life was moving on a wasteful path,
so he sought the advice of a Unitarian pastor named James Marineau, who was
known for his wisdom. The young American had no beliefs other than that
religion was an illusion. He had attacked religion consistently in writings
that he published. But now he sought deeper meaning.
Martineau gave him a prescription to follow for a year.
For the first six months he was to live in the country with simple farmers,
learning the ways of the farm. For the next six months he was to live in the
city with alert, cultured, modern intellectuals. At the end of the year he was
to return to Martineau and share what he had learned.
The American spent the year in Germany. The first six
months he spent with farmers in the Westphalia region. The next six months he
spent in Berlin, which, at the time, was considered the hippest city in Europe.
When he returned to Martineau, he said that the farmers were devout, narrow,
ignorant, slow-minded, and bigoted, full of superstitions, and basically
lacking in intelligence. But, he said, they understood everything about life
and death. They had conviction about how life was to be lived, and seemed to
live lives that were penetrated by something greater than themselves.
Meanwhile, he said that the people he met in Berlin were delightful,
intelligent, keen-witted, entirely emancipated from all moral and religious
prejudices, yet they were helpless and had no clue or inwardness in the face of
the realities of life. Simply put, the farmers had wisdom, the Berliners had
wit. Faced with a choice between the two, I’d rather have wisdom.
What a fool would take from this story is that somehow
education makes us dumb, and that lack of it makes us wise. It’s not education
that makes us foolish, only when we substitute education for wisdom because wisdom
and smarts aren’t the same thing.
So what makes us wise? Wisdom comes when we learn from life,
especially from pain, struggle, and mourning. Ecclesiastes says,
It is better to go to the house of
mourning
than
to go to the house of feasting;
…
The heart of the wise is in the house of
mourning;
but
the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
What also makes us wise is learning what really matters
in life so that we keep the main thing the main thing. Simply put, wisdom comes
when we learn the lesson of Groundhog Day.
You’ve seen that film, haven’t you? I think it’s a wonderful film, and an
extended lesson in learning wisdom.
The gist of the film is that an arrogant, sophisticated,
intelligent weatherman from Channel 9 News in (of all places) Pittsburgh, has
become cynical and jaded because of his lack of advancement. How could the
national news not see how great he was? To make matters worse, he’s sent to
Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover Groundhog Day.
On that morning he wakes up to the alarm clock playing
“I’ve Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. He goes down for breakfast to find, what
he thinks, are a collection of loser buffoons, all gathered for this worthless
event, Groundhog Day. He goes to Gobblers Knob to report, and gives a
lackluster, sarcastic report, and then walks away from his cameraman and
producer to go have breakfast. They join him as he cynically criticizes
everything from the town of Punxsutawney to life.
The problem is that they get stuck in Punxsutawney for
another night because of a snowstorm. He goes to bed in the same inn. The next
morning he wakes up to Sonny and Cher singing “I’ve Got You Babe.” He finds the
same buffoons having breakfast as he did the day before. He then realizes, to
his horror, that it is Groundhog Day all over again. The same events happen,
and the next morning he wakes up again to find that it is,…. Groundhog Day.
He is distraught as he realizes he is stuck in his own
permanent, repeating Hell. Throughout the movie he goes through a number of
permutations. For a while he realizes that he can do anything he wants without
consequences. He can eat whatever he wants (demonstrating this by having a breakfast
of everything bad that is possible, and even stuffing a whole angel food cake
into his mouth at one time). He gets drunk with minimal consequences. He
engages in a police car chase as he drives a car on the railroad tracks. He
even gets sent to jail, but wakes up the next morning in the bed and breakfast
to “I’ve Got You Babe.”
Then he becomes despondent. He can’t take this Hell
anymore. So he tries to commit suicide. He still wakes up to “I’ve Got You
Babe.” He tries suicide many, many times again, but each time he wakes up to
Sonny and Cher. He then tries to use his repeating Hell to bed his attractive
producer. He tries 100 different ways on 100 different nights. Each time he
fails, and still wakes up to “I’ve Got You Babe.”
Finally, he realizes that he has to change, and to take
advantage of the opportunity to better himself. He learns French poetry. He
learns to play the piano. He tries, and fails, hundreds of times to keep a
homeless man from dying in the cold. No matter what he does, from bringing him
inside and feeding him hot soup, administering CPR, and getting him to the
hospital, the man dies. It is in the house of mourning that we learn wisdom,
and the he is learning. By the end he has completely transformed himself from a
cynical, sarcastic, narcissistic and arrogant man, to a man of compassion,
generosity, and wisdom. And only then does he wake up to a new day, the next
day, the day after Groundhog Day.
What this film, and Ecclesiastes, teaches us is that wisdom
is a choice: a choice to tap into life the way God meant it to be lived. The
question is, will we make that choice, or do we have to wait until life makes
it for us.
Amen.
