This study for Progressive Christians has five sessions:
WARNING: THIS PROGRAM MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR CHURCH, SOCIETY AND THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE, AND COULD POTENTIALLY HELP RESTORE THE MEANING OF COVENANT.
The first in a series of homilies on Luke 6 and Ecclesiastes
Luke 6:20, 27-28: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God....I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Ecclesiastes 1: The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem: Meaningless, meaningless, says the Teacher, Utterly meaningless! All is meaningless. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? Everything is meaningless and a chasing after wind (or “feeding on wind”).
Those of us raised in a liturgical tradition know that today is Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday also follows the week after Pentecost. It’s as if the compilers of the lectionary wanted to make sure we didn’t get too much Spirit or spend too much time with the Holy Ghost. One week -- that’s plenty! This could get out of hand!
So instead of continuing for at least a few weeks to emphasize and explore the role of the Spirit, they move us on to the doctrine of the Trinity -- that God is three-in-one, traditionally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or often Creator, Redeemer, Comforter or as in our Call to Worship today, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, and Life-giver. Now I know that most of you are here because of our doctrine of the Trinity. You were attracted to becoming a follower of Jesus and a part of Douglas UCC thanks to the beauty of our doctrine of the Trinity. See us sashay now!
The truth is that the doctrine of the Trinity is not even biblical in the most literal sense of the word. You will nowhere find a verse that God is from now on forever to be known as a mysterious three-in-one by the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Try arguing that one with our more fundamentalist friends. Oh, the slippery slope begins...lest we should actually take the Bible seriously.
Certainly we find in Scripture places that intimate this relationship, that hint at something like what we know as the Trinity. The early church was caught in a dilemma. They were accused on the one hand of being poly-theists, people with three Gods -- Creator, Jesus the Christ, and the Spirit/Comforter/Advocate, and on the other hand, if they claimed to be monotheistic (one God) than how could Jesus be divine. So they came up with this elaborate, complicated, and often hard-to-understand (especially if you read its earliest variations and explanations) concept of the Trinity, one God with three parts. Almost any way of trying to explain exactly how this works without the use of very exact and precise language soon puts is into one heretical camp or another. We are either saying God isn’t one or that Jesus and the Spirit aren’t God.
Now being a progressive Christian and knowing that the Trinity is not solidly biblical, I don’t necessarily have a problem with either of those heresies. Being a progressive Christian, I also believe that being a follower of Jesus has very little to do with what we believe and much more to do with how we act and live out our faith. Jesus didn’t say, “Go believe!” He typically said, “Go do...” or “Come and follow.”
That being said, the Trinity does have a richness and complexity that gives God depth and gives us a great deal to explore. God is not always the same. God is in community. God lives in relationship with God-self. The strongest form is a triangle.
Today we begin a homily series based on the Hebrew (Old) Testament wisdom book of Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of Luke, chapter six, which includes Luke’s version of the beatitudes and the sermon on the mount, which for Luke is the sermon on the plain. I have to admit that Ecclesiastes has long been one of my favorite books of the Bible. How much more real can it get than “Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless”? And the frequent conclusion that we are to eat, drink, and enjoy our toil under the sun.
"Utterly senseless" says Qoheleth, "Utterly senseless, everything is senseless!"
The word translated senseless, הבל (hevel), literally means vapor, breath, but it could also mean "absurd".[14] Qoheleth uses it metaphorically, and its precise meaning is extensively debated. Older English translations often render it vanity. Because in modern usage this word has often come to mean "self-pride," losing its Latinate connotation of emptiness, some translators have abandoned it. Other translations include empty, futile, meaningless, absurd, fleeting, evanescent, or senseless. Some translations use the literal rendering vapor of vapors and so claim to leave the interpretation to the reader.
Also comforting while I was in school and now in studying the doctrine of the Trinity and being tempted to stay in the world of intellect and reading are these words from the end of Ecclesiastes:
“Of making many books there is not end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
The end of the matter: all has been heard. Fear God, and keep God’s commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone.”
Throughout this series we will explore the themes of Ecclesiastes, which many wonder if it should even be in the Bible. Those themes include wisdom, pleasure, enjoyment, realism (life is not easy and often difficult), a balance of mind and body and soul, and the burden of riches. Paradox infiltrates the book of Ecclesiastes. The writer holds one thing to be true in one place and its near-opposite to be true in another: on the one hand...on the other hand, without have to solve or resolve this paradox.
Jay G. Williams writes of Ecclesiastes: "Such wisdom may not bring salvation or even peace, but it is better than blind folly which holds up false hopes. The wise know, at least, the limitations of their own wisdom, and perhaps are enabled thereby to laugh at and with life a bit." (Understanding the Old Testament, p. 300).
And Samuel Sandmel adds: "If it is countered that the literal meaning of much of Ecclesiastes is hostile to religious faith, one must reply that all too often religious faith is misconceived of as a sombre gloomy matter, never lightened by the spice of wit or made tolerable by a little malicious but healthy doubt. The genuinely religious do not blot out the doubts that are to be found in Ecclesiastes by pretending that they do not exist. They tolerate them as part of the normal expression of perceptive and thoughtful people. These words of doubt do not defeat genuine religious faith, but form that counterbalance that keeps religious faith effective and suitable for human beings." (The Hebrew Scriptures, pp. 273-274).
In addition to the phrases mentioned above -- Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless and our duty is to eat, drink, and enjoy our toil -- a third phrase appears frequently in Ecclesiastes: “a chasing after wind,” which is also translated, “a feeding on wind.” As you recall, wind is equivalent in Hebrew to breath and spirit. So again there is this paradoxical meaning: chasing after the wind seems futile, while feeding on wind (aka, breath and spirit) is essential to life.
During our exploration of Ecclesiastes and Luke 6 over the next seven weeks, let’s live into a different Trinity. You’ve seen it on the insert in your bulletin: Eat the Wind, Walk the Walk, Fight the System. I just talked about “eating the wind,” feeding on the Spirit. Walk the walk is trying to live as Jesus taught. Pick one of the phrases from today’s Gospel and really try to live it this week. Pick someone who is to you an enemy, who curses you (or has), who has hated or abused you (or is). See what kind of transformation happens within us and within a relationship if we love, bless, and pray for these people. Let me state clearly: that doesn’t always mean we need to stay in close relationship with them.
Finally, fight the system. I struggled with this one, but want to try it on for size. We tend not to be fighters here. I want to stay away from violent imagery. Can we redeem the word “fight” in a nonviolent way? Didn’t Ghandi and Martin Luther King and Harvey Milk and Dorothy Day fight the system? Transform the system, change the system didn’t sound quite right or quite active enough.
Both Luke 6 and the book of Ecclesiastes offer counter-system voices and actions. The subvert the conventional wisdom of their day and ours. We are called to be a different kind of people. A people who live by a different set of values and systems. We can fight the system in the little ways it impacts our own lives each day and by working to change its larger manifestations as well.
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