"The Poetry of Living Simply"  Ben Johnston-Krase, UPC

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

Our reading this morning is from Ecclesiastes.  May these words be alive in us today.

The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,

   vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What do people gain from all the toil

   at which they toil under the sun?

A generation goes, and a generation comes,

   but the earth remains for ever.

The sun rises and the sun goes down,

   and hurries to the place where it rises.

The wind blows to the south,

   and goes round to the north;

round and round goes the wind,

   and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea,

   but the sea is not full;

to the place where the streams flow,

   there they continue to flow.

All things are wearisome;

   more than one can express;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

   or the ear filled with hearing.

What has been is what will be,

   and what has been done is what will be done;

   there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said,

   ‘See, this is new’?

It has already been,

   in the ages before us.

The people of long ago are not remembered,

   nor will there be any remembrance

of people yet to come

   by those who come after them.

The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

Walter Bruggeman’s quote:  “The church on Sunday morning, or whenever it engages in its odd speech, may be the last place left in our society for imaginative speech that permits people to enter into new worlds of faith and to participate in joyous, obedient life.”

Odd speech.  As we have moved into this summer sermon series on the poetry of faith, I have loved thinking about our language of faith as an “odd speech.”  What better way to describe what we do here together—here where we regularly try to name the unnamable, describe the indescribable, and generally give voice to that which is beyond the limits of human reason and intellect.  It’s one of the things we do best as a church, I think—this odd speech.  When you think about it, it’s really one of the things what Jesus did best too…

            The Kingdom of God is like yeast…

            It’s like a mustard seed… 

            It’s like a treasure hidden in a field…

            The Kingdom is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.

            And I am the bread of life. 

            I am the good shepherd. 

            And you are salt.

            And you are the light of the world.

It’s all kind of odd speech.  But something happens when we use it.  Something faith-filled and wonderful happens when we allow ourselves to use and be captivated by these odd words.

Emily Dickinson wrote:

A word is dead,

When it is said,

Some say.

 But I say

It just begins to live

That day.

And that’s what happens.  We come here to church and at some point during the worship service out of habit and/or out of firm thoughtful conviction, we allow a word to slip from our lips or to lodge itself firmly in that notch between our thinking, believing, and doing, and that word—that piece of odd speech—begins to live that day!  “The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.”  How wondrous and scary it is that we give our lives over to the power a word or two might have once it begins to live in us.

With that in mind, we gather ourselves around some words from Ecclesiastes this morning.  Ecclesiastes—not often the first book we turn to when in search of definitive guidance in Scripture.  Pete Seeger did it back in the 50’s with the song, “Turn, Turn, Turn”

            “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn,

            And a time for every purpose under heaven…

            A time to tear, a time to sew,

            A time to love, a time to hate,

            A time for war, a time for peace…”

Odd speech.  Fifty years now with the song, but we’re still not sure what to do with the book of Ecclesiastes.  “Vanity of vanities,” it begins.   “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”  That word, “vanity” is essentially an English translation of a Hebraic metaphor meaning “breath” or “the wind chasing the wind.” Ecclesiastes begins with a description of it all as this “breath,” this vain “wind chasing wind.”

At first glance, it may seem a pretty bleak picture.  “What do people gain from their toil?” the poet asks.  Generations come and go, the sun rises and sets, the winds blow and blow only to replace themselves, the rivers flow into the sea, but it is never full.  And then the crux of the issue:

All things are wearisome;

   more than one can express;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

   or the ear filled with hearing.

What has been is what will be,

   and what has been done is what will be done;

   there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said,

   ‘See, this is new’?

And so the Ecclesiastes poet seems to ask, “What’s this all for?”  Living, dying, suffering, healing, working, loving… With a poem he or she summons that question before us.

The poet Tukaram wrote:

                                                                                                 A good poem is like finding a hole

in the palace

wall—

never know what you

might

see.

 And so this morning we peek through and strain to catch a glimpse of something.  Our theme today is “The Poetry of Living Simply”—maybe not an obvious place to go with a passage like this one.  Then again, it would seem the usual routes to simplicity in our culture aren’t having much effect.  The quest for simplicity has become big business.  Books abound:

The Simple Living Guide: A Sourcebook for Less Stressful, More Joyful Living

Living Simply: Choosing Less in a World of More

Living the Simple Life:  A Guide to Scaling Down and Enjoying More

Living Simply in an Anxious World

Living Simply in an Complex World

Living Simply in God’s Abundance

The list goes on and on, as do classes and seminars.  Add to all of this the countless gadgets on the market made to supposedly streamline our lives and make things simple.  I guess that’s what they had in mind when they invented email.  But I don’t know if our technology has made it any easier.  Email, pagers, cell phones, blackberries, text messaging, facebook, Myspace… Think of the time we spend managing the tools we use to manage our lives.

In many ways, we’ve reduced the effort of living simply to a process of effective time management.  Gadgets in hand, we’re scheduling our work, scheduling our recreation, taking time, making time…  Add to all this some other elements of a simplified lifestyle—organizing our stuff, paring down, spending less, consuming less, eating less, driving less…  Soon we find ourselves struggling to keep up with the demands of a simplified lifestyle!

Wendell Berry has written a nice little poem called “Throwing Away the Mail.”

             Nothing is simple,

not even simplification.

Thus, throwing away

the mail, I exchange

the complexity of duty

for the simplicity of guilt.

Isn’t that great?  He’s right—even simplification is not simple.  And just look at us.  On the whole as a culture we’re overscheduled, over-programmed, overworked.  The gift of simplicity is one we don’t have time to unwrap and enjoy.

The poet writes, “Vanity of vanities!”  And, stuck in traffic between school and soccer practice, we’re apt to say the same thing.  But I would offer this for us to consider this morning:  that perhaps what we have here is not simply an indictment of the way things are, but rather an invitation to simply rest in the way things are.

Fourteen years ago almost to the day, two years before my mom died, I found out that she had cancer.  I was backpacking with a friend in northern California.  I had known that she was having some tests done, so that morning I hiked out to a pay phone to call home.  The news was horrible.  When I got off the phone, I didn’t want to hike back to camp just yet, so I made my way down to the shore of the ocean—a remote, rocky place where I could think.  I stood there for a while, naturally overwhelmed with worry and fear, wondering what was next, staring out at the sea.

A head popped out of the water, looking at me.  It was a sea lion.  Maybe twenty-five feet away, he floated there for a bit, checking me out, and then went back under.  Soon another popped up, a little closer, and then another.  I guess there were about seven or eight of them, and after a while, they became a little less wary of me, doing what sea lions do—playing in the surf, catching fish.  I stood there like a statue for maybe half and hour, forty-five minutes, watching them. 

It was a meaningful moment for me.  On some level, certainly, those sea lions gave me comfort.  But beyond that, a truth began to dawn in me.  Watching them and the sea beyond them, I realized something. 

            My mom will die

            And so will I

            And so will all of these sea lions

            And others will come

            Other moms

            Other sons

            Other sea lions

And had I been writing the book of Ecclesiastes at the time, I might have added,

All streams run to the sea,

   but the sea is not full;

to the place where the streams flow,

   there they continue to flow.

            We are like wind, chasing wind, chasing wind.

And for a moment, standing there, weeks before the hospital visits and the chemotherapy, I had some sense of this sweeping arc of time and all of natures rhythms going along with it—life and death, change, decay, new life… joy, sorrow, hope, despair… And seldom have I felt more afraid, but seldom have I felt more connected. 

The Ecclesiastes poet writes,

All things are wearisome;

   more than one can express;

But that word “wearisome” is an ambiguous one, sometimes translated as “constantly active, always in motion.”  Never-ending. 

 I want to suggest today that something happens to us when we reckon with the never-ending-ness of time—that something happens in us when we wake up, even briefly, to the notion that our lives and our life spans are like microscopic flecks of cosmic dust in an unfathomably large universe of space and time.

Perhaps we stop trying to manage it all

   To control our time

   To control our relationships

   To manage our feelings

   To keep our emotions in check

   To accumulate the things and events that will comfort us

Acknowledging the timelessness of millions of moments before and after us,

Perhaps we can recognize the timeliness of this moment

   This tree

   This silence

   This person in need

   This conversation with a child

   This prayer

 Simplicity becomes not the goal we strive for

   But rather the byproduct of our perspective

   Our paying attention

   Listening

   Becoming more aware

   And alive

May God with God’s own odd speech gift us in such a way.