As I thought about all these passages of Scripture that we read this morning, I suddenly imagined myself speaking to a graduating class at a university, a group of young adults just starting out. What would I say? “'Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!' says the Teacher" (Ecc. 1:1). The Teacher in Ecclesiastes has done it all, everything there is to do under the sun, and found it all meaningless. He's seen it all and had it all and found it all to be meaningless. He took the route of learning and understanding wisdom, which in his day was what science is to us today. He found it to be a mere "chasing after the wind", unattainable futility. He even tried to explore madness and folly and those also turned out to be "chasing after the wind". He denied himself nothing, indulged himself in all pleasures. Even more, he says that in his heart he truly enjoyed all his work, but it was all still void of any real meaning. Why? Well, he found it doesn't really matter whether you're wise of foolish, the same fate overtakes everyone. You die. You pass everything on to someone else and who knows what they will do with it. Then, (dramatic pause) you are forgotten. That realization drove the Teacher to the point of hating life. Why love something that is simply a meaningless waste? Fortunately he then concludes, the best a person can do is eat and drink and be satisfied with your work realizing that it is all from the hand of God. Indeed, without God no one can live or find enjoyment.
The Teacher, as we know, was King Solomon, son of David. Solomon is legendary for being the wisest man ever as well as the richest king of Israel and maybe of his day. He built the Jerusalem Temple and many other important cities in Israel. He had a fleet of ships that may have gone global. He knew no war. His reign was a remarkable feat of what humans can accomplish when there is peace. How did he accomplish this peace one might ask? Well, he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. We may fail to see the wisdom in that, but…consider that those wives were the daughters of all the neighbouring kings and warlords. He simply made all who could be his enemies to be his family. That’s…brilliant. Yet, Solomon was not perfect. He was still a man, a man with many wives, and in order to keep all his wives happy he had to allow their idols into the land and go worship with them as a good husband should. That was not so brilliant. That move had its price in the next generation when Israel became divided into two kingdoms, but it kept peace at home. Solomon was short-sighted when seeing the needs of the next generation. So anyway, it is Solomon the Wise, who tells us to eat, drink, and be satisfied with our work knowing that it all comes from God. Our food, our celebration, our work though toilsome all comes from God to be enjoyed even though in the end, sin and death have made it all meaningless. Without God there is no joy in this life.
Well, I suspect that Solomon was also a skilled writer because there seems to be a bit of a word play going on here with the phrase “chasing after the wind”. You see, in the Hebrew the phrase is literally “striving after wind”. The Hebrew word for wind is ruach which is the same word used for breath and for spirit. So, hold on to your seats. Genesis 1:1-2 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit (the ruach) of God was hovering over the waters.” The ruach of God, the Spirit or Breath or Wind of God, was hovering over the waters ready to bring order to chaos. I think Solomon is making a word play that says, on the one hand, that life is meaningless in the end because of death, a striving after wind or ruach; wind that we cannot contain or control and thus the effort is futile. Yet, on the other hand, he is prodding the wise among us to remember the beginning of Genesis where the ruach of God hovered over the waters of chaos ready to create. Therefore, it is after the ruach of God that we should strive.
Moving on to Colossians, Paul says as much by using an image from the act of Baptism into Christ, the image of taking off the clothes of the old self and stepping into the waters of Baptism to die and be raised with Christ and then putting on the white robe of the new self who will be fully revealed when Christ returns bringing glory with him. Paul writes: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:1-4) The ruach of God the Holy Spirit isn’t just hovering over us now. He is in us raising us to New Creation life in Jesus own risen and ascended life which is the new humanity that is in Jesus, in him the one in whom the fullness of the Divine nature was pleased to dwell bodily, the one in whom, through whom, by whom, and for whom all things have their being. We are to seek that which is in and of him.
The word for seek which some Bibles translate as “set your hearts on” means to zealously seek or strive for with all of one’s passion. Therefore, if we have been raised with Christ from the meaninglessness of life that is infected by sin and death, then our moral, ethical, religious and even civic best choice is to strive after the higher life in Christ with all earnestness. Death no longer has hold on us. We will be raised as Christ Jesus was raised and we will stand with him in glory. And, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:58, the work we do in the Lord now is not in vain. It will endure into the New Creation.
Now, returning to my opening thoughts, if I were to speak to a graduation class of university students and to all in attendance, I would proclaim to them oddly much the same thing I would say at a funeral…in the end you will be raised from the dead. Whether you have faith in Jesus or not because he was raised from the dead, so also will you. Whether you know it or not, the Spirit of God is hovering over the chaos of the waters of each of your lives working to open up space in you for Jesus to sit enthroned. Everything you do with the life that God has entrusted you with will amount to nothing more than vanity unless you realize that everything you eat and drink, all the work you do, and what you work for is from God and is a gift with which it is possible for you to be satisfied. So, as Solomon the Wise prompts us, strive for the Spirit of God otherwise you are simply chasing after the wind. As Paul says, seek and be minded towards that which is above where Christ sits as Lord. Who you are and what you will be is hidden with Christ in God…in the very self of the loving Communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!
Paul goes on to give a long list of how to do this and all of them deal exclusively with how we relate to God and to one another. He says, “Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col. 3:12-17).
So, whether Jesus has made it so that you know him or not or whether or not you have acknowledged him as your Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ is the Lord of all of Creation and we will all be raised to stand before him in the New Creation because he has saved this entire creation and will make it utterly new. Therefore, we do best not to make our lives a waste with nothing to show that will endure. Rather, let us strive to live together in the love that he has poured into our hearts. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive! Be thankful. Be kind. Be compassionate, meek, humble. Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ not your own or someone else’s. Show me a better way to live than as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Show me something better to seek than Jesus Christ. Apart from him and the new humanity he is making us to be by placing his own ruach in us and in our midst, everything is meaningless. I tell you good news today. Jesus is Lord and his way is the Way, the Truth, and the Life that we all seek. Take it up and walk accordingly and know peace. Amen.
