Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 29th January 2023), continuing our series VAPOUR?. This series explores our search for meaning, journeying through the enigmatic book of Ecclesiastes.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded )
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.’
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
HEADLINES
In the same year Billy Joel released his hit song The River of Dreams—back in good old 1993—I started an early morning paper round. I’d already been delivering newspapers (the Liverpool Echo) after school, for over a year. In turning 13, I was now legally eligible (so I was told) to get up at half five in the morning, carry my body weight in paper, and deliver the national and international news through people’s letterboxes.
I loved having a morning paper round—I did it until I left school, only quitting a couple of days before commencing my engineering career. I loved the walking. I loved the fresh morning air. I loved how quiet and still everything was in the morning. And I loved (and still love) the warm smell of freshly-printed newspaper ink.
It also came with the perk of getting paid £7.50 per week! Yep, it’s not much in comparison to today. To be fair, it wasn’t much back in 1993, either.[ii] But it did instil a work ethic into me, and I could treat myself to a chippy tea on a Saturday evening.
As a thirteen year-old, it was the best of times.
But it was also the worst of times, because as I delivered the news, I started seeing the news. And I was shocked by what I saw.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a naive kid. I grew up on a council estate in northern England in a benefit’s household. Growing up, I wasn’t wrapped in bubble wrap. I knew people could mistreat each other. The scale of how inhumane we can be, however, was unknown to me until that point. Naively, I had thought that inhumanity had passed; it was something of another time or the plot of fictional dramas.
Then I found myself delivering the news of the horrific killing of a two-year old boy, called Jamie Bulger …
I read about the civil war in Rwanda, …
… the Bosnian War, …
… and the horrific extent of the ethnic cleansing and mass rape that occurred in both those conflicts.
Then there was the exposure of the rape and murder of young women, who had been buried, for years, behind walls and within the foundations of the home of Fred and Rose West.
The harrowing conditions of Romania’s orphans, although exposed in 1990, were still making headlines here and there, as ‘experts’ unveiled how such conditions had been the consequence of a repressive government.
There was the World Trade Centre bombing … Oklahoma bombing … IRA bombings in Northern Ireland, Manchester, Warrington … Bombs in Bombay (now Mumbai), India.
As a teenager, there seemed to be a lot of bombings in the 90s.
Photojournalists shared scenes of the famine and disease ripping through Sudan because of the tactics used in the civil war. How many of us remember the photograph of the starving Sudanese child with the preying vulture lurking in the background?
Stories of corrupt governments, war, poverty, injustice, and oppression seemed to be everywhere.
I did a lot of growing up as paperboy.
There is a lot that should rightly amaze us; our world is full of beautiful, elaborate and amazing things. As humans, we are made for awe and wonder. Part of our vocation as image-bearers of God is to be amazed, to worship; to reflect God’s goodness into creation and to reflect the praises of creation back to God. And yet, this wasn’t that sort of amazement.
I found myself as a child without any faith, and still find myself now, as a man with faith, being ‘constantly amazed,’ to use the words of one Holocaust survivor, ‘by man’s inhumanity to man.’[iii]
I’ll be honest with you, I want to go back to not seeing. I can totally empathise with Qohelet’s ancient words in Ecclesiastes 1:18, ‘The greater my knowledge, the greater my sorrow.’ In the modern world, we say it in a different way: ‘ignorance is bliss.’
Of course, it isn’t bliss. We know this. It may suit me, to not see, but it’s not bliss for those experiencing injustice and oppression. Whether we know it or not, there is pain and sorrow in our world.
This is not the same as saying that our world is totally depraved, crooked, big, bad and ugly. That would not be true, a caricature of reality. But our world—it’s history, it’s present—is shot through with inhumanity. We need voices to remind us of this, voices that say, ‘look.’
With this in mind, lets’ read a voice that does this.
READ: ECCLESIASTES 3:16—4:3 (MSG)
QOHELET’S CRISIS
As we have said in previous weeks, Qohelet (the central character of Ecclesiastes) is groping for meaning in a world he feels is meaningless. So far, over the past two chapters, he has given some very grand sweeping comments. In the middle of chapter 3, he begins to look at life in a more detailed way. As he does, he repeats himself—all good teachers do.
Themes he has already touched on recur in this passage: Life is nothing but vapour; Death nullifies and levels every advantage humans think they have, not only with each other (Ecc. 2) but with animals as well[iv]; The seasons and times are fixed; He is resigned (like a teenager) to the fact that there is nothing better to do; He has issues with God, not as someone who doesn’t believe in God, but as someone who does.
Qohelet’s words are certainly not upbeat and motivational. Yet, his words resonate. He may be an ancient Israelite, but what he sees and feels are still relevant. They speak of the tensions we all carry.
Maybe I’m alone, but Qohelet’s observations, born of an honest faith, hit home and they hit hard. Especially here, as he wrestles with a big question: The Problem of Evil.
What I will say here will not do justice to this topic. I will add, that Qohelet’s words don’t, either. These words are not the only words on the matter. But I do want us to sit with Qohelet, feel the depths of what he feels, and allow his words to stir us.
The last few verses of chapter 3 parallel the first few verses of chapter 4.
In chapter 3, he sees injustice and corruption in places of authority, places that should uphold and dispense justice: the abuse of economic and political power. In chapter 4, Qohelet zooms his camera lens in, I suppose, on what he sees in chapter 3, and observes oppression, the tears of countless helpless victims, and the violence of the powerful iron-grip of oppressors. With sorrow in his voice, he remarks that there is no comforter to the victims, no helper to rescue them.[v]
We’ll come back to this remark, and who it’s aimed it at, in a little while.
In both cases (Ecc. 3:19-22; 4:2-3), after noticing the suffering, he then turns to the “cheerful” topic of death.
In chapter 3, before anyone can console him with the idea of a better existence in some afterlife, he states that nobody can know there is an afterlife. He won’t be comforted by that idea, at all. He sees it as a false safety net. As far as Qohelet is concerned, death is nonexistence; we don’t go on, we turn back to dust. And it’s a tragedy in his eyes.[vi]
In chapter 4, Qohelet’s observation is bleaker still. In a nutshell, in light of the inhumanity that exists, he now envies the dead and those who have not been born, because, in their nonexistence, they have no memory, no perception of any inhumanity.
To a degree, Qohelet’s words echo another sufferers’ words in Scripture: Job. In Job 3, after experiencing tragedy upon tragedy, Job also wishes he had never been born, believing he would be better off dead:
“Why did I not die at birth,
come forth from the womb and expire?
Now I would be lying down and quiet;
I would be asleep; then I would be at rest…”
Job 3:11, 13, NRSV
Unlike Qohelet, however, who sees death as nonexistence, Job sees death as being akin to the respite of peaceful and restful sleep. This doesn’t make Job’s option any better. His own language is still raw and disturbing.
There’s no easy way to hear such language, is there? Such words are heavy with lament. We are tempted at moments like these to rush past such expressions and think upon something more cheerful. Speaking for myself, it would be nice at this stage to grab a large tub of triple chocolate ice cream, a blanket and huddle on the sofa to watch a good rom’ com’ like Notting Hill.
But we shouldn’t. It’s important to sit in this.
Lament is not wrong; to lament is a spiritually mature response to the suffering and sorrow in our world.
Because of this, it’s worth stating that neither Qohelet or Job are expressing a desire for death, per se. Their words are soul-deep expressions of the extent of their disappointment in how ‘life-less’ life can be. What is desired is justice and wholeness, peace and righteousness, life as it is meant to be.
Qohelet hasn’t changed his point of view from chapter two: death is the problem, death is his adversary. Death is not his friend. It is death, propagated through the inhumanity of violence and oppression, that Qohelet longs for the world to be free from.
Life, he observes, is plagued by death. This shouldn’t be.
JUDGE
Of course, in the midst of all of this, Qohelet says something; he hits a musical note that is usually a ‘major key’, an anthem of hope, I suppose, in the rest of the Scriptures: ‘I thought to myself, “God will judge both the righteous and the wicked” ’ (Ecc. 3:17, NET)
God will judge.
We may not fully appreciate it, but the vast majority of Scripture is not written by people in power, people with perks and privileges and positions of status. The Bible comes from wailing people: people in exile; people in captivity; people suffering under the tyrannical iron-grip of oppression.
Scripture, from the Exodus to the Prophets, is replete with voices crying for justice, lives that are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for God, in his faithfulness, to come and put things right. They expect God to judge.
They expect it because a) God is God, and b) they understand God to be good. They understand that, in this ‘conflict,’ God takes sides, and that he is not on the side of oppression and injustice.
The prophets give voice to this impression of God. Amos and Habakkuk preach against people who oppress the poor and crush the needy (Amos 5:1-25; Hab. 2:1-3:2). Zechariah, echoing the stipulations of the Torah itself, advocates for the protection of widows, orphans, strangers and the poor (Zec. 7:9-10).
There’s not an Old Testament prophet who doesn’t speak on these themes, because their testimony of God’s nature is that God is set against oppression. God’s not on the side of anything that spoils, defaces, distorts, or damages his beautiful creation, and in particular anything that does that to his image-bearing creatures.
To put it another way, if God doesn’t hate racial prejudice, he is neither loving or good. If God is not wrathful at child abuse, he is neither good nor loving. If God is not utterly determined to root out from his creation, in an act of proper judgment, the arrogance that allows people to exploit, bomb, bully and enslave one another, then God is neither loving, nor good, nor wise.[vii]
Biblical hope is founded on this very understanding of God. When the ancient writers looked at the disorder in the world, they looked to God to put it right. Furthermore, they celebrated that one day God would do so. They looked forward to it with glad expectation, like a child looks forward to Christmas morning.
They did not view it with a blood lust or doom-laden outlook that typifies most caricatures of people who talk about impending judgement. It was joyfully expected and joyfully declared, because God’s judgement would break the chains of life’s bondage.
They even sung about it:
‘Let the heavens be glad, and the earth rejoice!
Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!
Let the fields and their crops burst out with joy!
Let the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the Lord, for he is coming!
He is coming to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with justice,
and the nations with his truth.’
Psalm 96:11-13, NLT
‘Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!
Let the earth and all living things join in.
Let the rivers clap their hands in glee!
Let the hills sing out their songs of joy
before the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with justice,
and the nations with fairness.’
Psalm 98:7-9, NLT
It reminds me of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia, in The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe; a world gripped in winter by the power of the White Witch. But the residents of Narnia have a hope that one day Aslan, the great lion, will come and sort things out, a hope they, like the Israelites, put into song:
“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”[viii]
Like the Narnians, the Israelites knew that God (Aslan, for the Narnians) is not some ‘safe’, timid and tamed creature, but he certainly was good and he will do good.
This is good news, isn’t it? God will judge, with fairness. Unlike human notions of justice, which sometimes are about revenge, sometimes about reparation, God’s justice is restoration—setting things as they should be.[ix] This theme carries right on into the New Testament. John, in Revelation 21, writes about the day when God dwells with people, and all death and sorrow is removed, and God declares, ‘Look! I am making all things new!’ (Rev. 21:5)
God will step in. It’s partly because of this hope, that God is often given the names Helper and Comforter.
HOW LONG? TOO LONG!
Those names take us back to what we’ve read in Ecclesiastes. Because, as I have said, this note of God coming to judge is normally sang in a major key, it’s a triumphant sound. But Qohelet, when he mentions ‘God will judge’ (Ecc. 3:17), sings it in a minor key. It’s part of his lament.
He knows what the tradition he belongs to says. He affirms, in a way, that God will put things right—in some future, far off, season set by God. But, as his outcry in chapter four indicates, what about now? The people suffering, now, have no helper or comforter.
Those words aren’t aimed at you and me to do something about injustice. Although, we should—but that’s a conversation for another time. Qohelet is aiming this at God. I suppose, we could word his problem another way: ‘Where’s God? And why doesn’t God do something about this?’[x]
Again, he wouldn’t be alone in voicing this in the scriptures. The word’s ‘How long, O Lord…’ pop up frequently.[xi] The Psalms, for example, also echo this from time to time, and with reference to death:
“I am sick at heart. How long, O Lord, until you restore me? Return, O Lord, and rescue me. Save me because of your unfailing love. For the dead do not remember you. Who can praise you from the grave?”
Psalms 6:3-5, NLT
Except, for Qohelet, it’s not so much, ‘How long’, it’s more like ‘Too long, O Lord…’
What causes this sting, is, again, Qohelet’s adversary of death. For Qohelet, if death is nonexistence, and if God only steps in at some future point to put things right, then sure, that helps the people who are around then, in that future, but how does that give justice to those now, because they won’t exist then.
As one commentator notes, ‘Qohelet’s outcry [in] chapter 4 [almost displaces] his affirmation of a divine justice that will set things right.’ We might expect him to ‘engage in some defence of God, or God’s ways, or to at least strain for some resolution.’ But he doesn’t. His faith is caught in this tension. He gives us no final word, no simple or trite answers. He just leaves it hanging there, before jumping onto another topic.[xii]
Qohelet just leaves us looking at the brokenness and the inhumanity and, rightly, I should add, reminds us that death is not a satisfactory answer to death.[xiii]
COMFORT & RESURRECTION
As I said in the first week of this series, my intent is not to tame Qohelet’s frustration. There is method in his madness, and we need words like this to arouse something within us.
His words resonate. There are no easy answers to this vexing problem and it can’t simply be ignored, it has to be faced.
People think believers don’t have questions—we do. And I find it extraordinary that the scriptures themselves give voice to these frustrations and questions. However, I am aware that we look upon this text from a different horizon, from after the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
I am also aware that there are many things that could be said at this point. Lots I don’t have time for. You could literally fill book upon book, upon book with reasoning and abstract thoughts about the problem of suffering. If you study ethics, philosophy and theology, you will spend weeks talking about this topic alone—one might even say that it’s the topic that underlies every other topic.
I’m not knocking this, but maybe this is our problem? We are happy to enter into a conversation about suffering, but what about entering into, as an act of compassion, the sufferings of others. Is it possible that the proper response to suffering lies not in philosophy or theodicy, but in incarnational love and solidarity?[xiv]
I’m saying this, because I believe that God won’t let the bullies win, and that God doesn’t stay distant. I believe this because of the Cross of Jesus Christ.
American author and Pastor, Tim Keller, in his book Generous Justice, writes, ‘Many people say, “I can’t believe in God when I see all the injustice in the world.” But here is Jesus, the Son of God, who knows what it’s like to be the victim of injustice, to stand up to power, to face a corrupt system and be killed for it. He knows what it is like to be lynched. I’m not sure how you believe in a God remote from injustice and oppression, but Christianity doesn’t ask you to believe in that. That is why the Christian writer John Stott is able to say, “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who is immune to it?”’[xv]
Jesus is God’s compassion incarnate, God’s help in flesh. The cross is an act of solidarity with the suffering of the world. God suffers at the hands of our inhumanity. In doing so, not only is God embodying compassion and identifying with all those who suffer, but God is also exposing this inhumanity to humanity, and condemning this ‘godlessness’, this sin, this failure of ours to image God’s likeness. And in the exposing of it, God also extends to us forgiveness and a change of life.[xvi]
In the same manner that Qohelet leaves us hanging, saying ‘look at this inhumanity’, God, on the cross of Christ, is saying, ‘look at this inhumanity.’
There’s comfort because God comes where the pain is most acute and takes it upon himself. God doesn’t leave the problem of evil to be the subject of a seminar. God, on the cross, allows evil to do its worst to him. He exhausts it, drains its power, and emerges with new life: God overthrows death with Resurrection.[xvii]
God’s comfort to those living east of Eden, living in the grip of winter, is Jesus, and God’s help in the face of death is the Resurrection.
Qohelet is right to have a hang up with death. If we are dead by the time that last day comes, there is no justice. Paul the Apostle would agree with him. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul makes a similar remark as Qohelet’s: ‘If there’s no resurrection … then those who have [died] in Christ have perished. If we have hope in Christ for this life only, then we are to be pitied.’ (1 Cor. 15:17-19)
For Paul, like Qohelet, death was not an old friend to be welcomed, but an enemy. But from Paul’s horizon, he saw death as an enemy Jesus had overthrown in his resurrection and a foe that will be utterly destroyed when he comes back (1 Cor. 15:24, 51-58).[xviii] For Paul, as well as the other New Testament authors, there is real hope and joy in Christ, there is justice and restoration, because there is an embodied future in Jesus Christ (see also Rom. 8:18-39).
God does not intend for creation to disappear into nothingness, including our bodies. God will raise our bodies from the dead that they might live in the renewed creation, the new heaven and new earth.
As Chad Bird recently said it, ‘Jesus wiped his feet on the face of death when he marched out of his tomb, crucified but alive again, all for us.’[xix]
So don’t despair like Qohelet, trust in Jesus. Trust in his victory. Trust in the one who loved us and gave his life for us.
The world is a messy place. But we are not alone, God is not distant, God is with us, and God will restore.
In the meantime, to use the words of Henri Nouwen, ‘Our vocation as Christians’ is not to get lost in talking of suffering like an academic mathematical problem that needs to be resolved, but ‘to follow Jesus […] and to become witnesses to God’s compassion in the concrete situation of our time and place.’[xx]
‘But Christ has truly been raised from the dead—the first one and proof that those who sleep in death will also be raised.’
1 Corinthians 15:20 (NCV)
[i] Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Wordsworth edition, 1999) p.3
[ii] There was an unhelpful rumour going around the paper lads who worked for the same Newsagent in my hometown of Skelmersdale, that paperboys in Aintree (Liverpool) where earning £20 per week. We envied their ‘Hollywood’ lifestyle. Still, seven pounds and fifty pence were better than zero pounds and zero pence.
[iii] ‘I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.’ Primo Levi, If This Is a Man / The Truce
[iv] As Julie Ann Duncan observes, ‘Qohelet’s comments in 3:18-21 pose a dramatic counterpoint to’ the traditions of humanity’s superiority and uniqueness to animals espoused in other Old Testament writings such Genesis 1 & 2, and Psalm 8:3-5. In these traditions, humans, while created beings, ‘are not categorically the same as other created life.’ They are given the vocation to bear God’s image in creation, to tend and to care for creation, to benevolently rule in humble partnership with God’s design. Qohelet does not bring up, nor is he interested in, the human vocation of governance. His focus is simply a matter of mortality. Yes, he would possibly agree, we have governance over the animals, but the ‘realities of death and finitude render this hierarchy moot’, and, with added irony, humans ‘are not substantively different from the creatures over which they are elevated’: we, like them, are dust (as per Gen. 2) and will end up as dust. ‘Elsewhere in the Old Testament “dust”, as applied to humans, often signifies the great divide between mortals and God (Gen 18:27; Pss 104:29; Job 10:9; 34:15). So, too, with this passage. [In Qohelet] the gulf between human and divine is further expressed by emphasizing the sameness of humans and animals, which are both constituted of finite material and die.’ [See Julie Ann Duncan, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: Ecclesiastes (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2017), p. 54, 57].
[v] As John Goldingay indicates, ‘There are two aspects to the idea of comfort in the Old Testament. As in the English, it denotes offering solace and encouragement. In Hebrew it also denotes to relieve the causes of distress.’ John Goldingay, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone (SPCK, London, 2014), p.192.
[vi] Using Peter Enns paraphrase, ‘[Qohelet] is almost taunting his readers, “I dare you, make a case for how we differ from animals in terms of our ultimate end! Any case you make, I can thwart with simple observation: we do not know—period. What we do know is that we all will die, and it is this ever-present threat that renders any activity, and labor in which we engage, wholly pointless, without profit.”’ Peter Enns, The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary: Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2011), p. 59.
[vii] I’m sure these words belong to N. T. Wright—I have them noted down as such in my notes app’, but I foolishly haven’t noted where they are from.
[viii] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2010), p. 75.
[ix] Saying this one little sentence hardly does any justice to the notion of divine justice. On that basis, I’d highly recommend reading Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. I’ve only dipped in and out of it so far, but Volf’s own experience of conflict and suffering, and his treatment of justice and what is needed, is first class. Especially his chapter entitled Oppression and Justice, in which he talks about the importance of God’s partiality (‘God treats different people differently so that all will be treated justly’) and how seeking justice ought to be led by seeking love, in order to circumvent propagating injustice.
[x] A number of commentators note this, but in particular Robert Alter states, ‘It is notable that Qohelet registers the suffering of the oppressed as a given fact without the slightest indication, as in Psalms or elsewhere, that God will rescue them from their suffering, and without any exhortation, as in the Prophets, that we must act to rescue them.’ See Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, The Writings (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York, 2019), p. 687.
[xi] For example, Ps. 6:3; 13:1; 35:17; 74:10; 79:5, 80:4; 89:46; 90:13; 94:3; Jer. 12:4; Hab. 1:2; Zec. 1:12; Rev. 6:10. To name a few…
[xii] See Julie Ann Duncan, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: Ecclesiastes (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2017), p. 57.
[xiii] Unfortunately, I do not have the time to expand this thought: but could we not also say that the cross of Jesus Christ echoes something of Qohelet’s methodology, here? Alternatively, would it be truer to say that Qohelet’s method pre-empts something of the cruciform posture of God?
[xiv] Richard Beck explores this more in his book, Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted. See his chapter, God at War.
[xv] Tim Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes us Just (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2010), p. 187.
[xvi] I should add, this action is not only present at the Cross, but embodied in the whole incarnation—a point Tim Keller also makes. As Acts 10 indicates, Jesus’ response to suffering was not to do philosophy or even theodicy, but that ‘… Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil, for God was with him.’ (Acts 10:38).
[xvii] Adapted from Tom Wright’s words, ‘Jesus doesn’t give an explanation for the pain and sorrow of the world. He comes where the pain is most acute and takes it upon himself. Jesus doesn’t explain why there is suffering, illness, and death n the world. He brings healing and hope. He doesn’t allow the problem of evil to be the subject of a seminar. He allows evil to do its worst to him. He exhausts it, drains its power, and emerges with new life. The resurrection says, more clearly than anything else can, “There is a God, and he is the creator of the world we know, and he is the father of Jesus, Israel’s Messiah.” That is the first part of the good news about God.’ (Simply Good News, p. 137)
[xviii] Further to my earlier comment of Job, even Job does not embrace death as a friend, but the lesser of two evils, it could be argued.
[xix] Chad Bird recently shared this reflection on his Instagram feed: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn6pZ88ukOq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
[xx] Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 2007), p. 69
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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