A long reading from Ecclesiastes is on the menu for
next Sunday. But sadly it’s listed in
the Lectionary as an alternative reading and I rather think it will be
avoided. In one verse it says: All
things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with
seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. (Ecclesiastes 1:8)
Now let’s do what lots might hope we’d do… that is,
leap ahead suddenly to make it alright and everyone feel better and go home
happy. Indeed it is true, Jesus said: Come to me, all who are weary and
heavy-laden…[1] He recognised the human condition of
world-weariness, tiredness of life. He
offered a “place” of both rest and hope, in him.
Nevertheless, it seems to me, we have reason to be
grateful to the Hebrew Qohelet – the
word means Teacher, or more literally Assembler, someone who assembles wisdom
for us – the sage of Ecclesiastes is called Qohelet. He is a wonderful weary
sceptic who by some wondrous grace emerged in the canon of Hebrew and Christian
scripture. Ecclesiastes is
indispensable. Shakespeare drew on it, as did Tolstoy, Hemingway, Robert Burns,
G B Shaw… Pete Seeger’s song, Turn! Turn! Turn! is straight out of
chapter 11. Edith Wharton’s novel House of Mirth references a sentence in
Ecclesiastes: The heart of the wise is in
the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. I recall a pious old hymn which began with
the incomparable words: Art thou weary,
art thou languid, art thou sore distressed…? Don’t you love “languid”! Qohelet says the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing…
these days when it seems you have seen it all, heard it all, nothing surprises
you now... An Auckland doctor who has
done a lot of emergency medicine wrote in The
Listener about the road toll – he said you can’t change people’s behaviour;
they/we will continue to make stupid decisions.
His letter was an almost perfect statement of the doctrine of original
sin.
G K Chesterton said it memorably: I tell you naught for your comfort, yea, naught for your desire, save
that the sky grows darker yet and the sea rises higher…[2]
Well, so it does.
Faith points us to where the light can be seen, sometimes brightly,
other times dimly and flickering. True
faith will always be open to the sceptic, even the pessimist or the agnostic –
and the Bible certainly supports that openness, and the tension of not
knowing. Similarly, what we know as
contemplative prayer and life, with its awareness of silence and stillness,
humility and gratitude, is open always to hesitancy and question. We have space, that is hospitality, in our
hearts for those who have lost their way in faith – not to correct them and
make everything right, but to listen to world-weariness, to faith-weariness, to
battle-weariness, and gently to point towards the light we can see.
No comments:
Post a Comment