"Vanity of Vanities"

August 3, 2025 - Advent Lutheran Church

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-12; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

I’m waiting for the day when I ask one of my children to mow the lawn and they say to me, “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” And then ask what there is to eat.

That would, after all, be the proper summary of both our first reading and our Gospel text. All the money and time and labour we spend preparing for the future are pointless. We never know what’s going to happen, death comes to us all, even the great legacies we are striving to leave come to nothing. The writer of Ecclesiastes gets particularly irked about that one – “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me –– and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish?” We plan and save for those who will come after us and they treat our efforts nonchalantly or worse, as ridiculous.

Jesus is even a little harsher. He tells this story about the landowner who had such a good harvest he couldn’t store it with what he had so rather than just distributing it to those around him, he hoarded it in new storage facilities for the future. And what happened? He died and didn’t get to enjoy any of the abundance – not the next year, not even the next day. God called him a fool.

The messages from these two readings are counter to the messages we’ve been taught, though. We’ve been taught to plan for the future, to invest money in RRSPs, to save up to purchase a house or a nice car, to make sacrifices in the present for the long term. Kids in junior high are told to take courses now that will prepare them for university, which should in turn prepare them for a long and lucrative career, rather than choose courses for enjoyment. We are taught that every decision we make should prioritize the future, even at a cost to our present enjoyment. And so it’s tempting to hear these words from the Bible and think yeah, all is vanity, we’ll all die at some point, but then to dismiss them in favour of being practical.

Yet, I do believe that they resonate at some deeper level. Because despite what we’ve been promised by the world around us, things are not turning out as we’ve been told they would, especially for the young people in the world. University no longer guarantees a career, and a career no longer guarantees a house. Even a house doesn’t guarantee a stable future – we never know anymore when a wildfire or torrential rains will drive us out of our homes, or even when wildfire smoke will take away the very air we need to breathe. We don’t know what kind of future our children or even our grandchildren can expect as the world gets hotter and hotter. Some insurance companies are saying that 25 years from now, we can expect the global GDP to drop 15-50% and the consequences of that combined with climate change to reduce the world’s human population 15-50%.[1] How on earth can we prepare for that kind of future? What good are our RRSPs or investments for our children and grandchildren if there is no recognizable economy? No place hospitable enough to buy a house? What is the point of young people making sacrifices and working hard in university if there will be no jobs for them at the end because the economy is crashing under the weight of climate collapse? As Ecclesiastes says, “It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.”

 

Every Sunday, our readings come from the Revised Common Lectionary, which was put together by a committee in 1969. And they made some choices about when readings should start and when they should end, some of which are a bit peculiar. Like today’s. Specifically, when it comes to our reading from Ecclesiastes, it ends at verse 23. But I want to read you verse 24. After all of the vanity of vanities, everything is pointless and why do we even work so hard, verse 24 says, “There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw is from the hand of God.” And later on, in chapter 9, it says, “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. … Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because this is your portion in life.” And, after Jesus relates the parable of the fool whose life is demanded of him, he then goes to tell his listeners that just as God feeds the ravens and clothes the fields with lilies, so will God feed and clothe them.

What we have here is the second half of the message – the future is not guaranteed but the present moment is filled with gifts from God. The present moment –– the food we eat now, what we drink now, the work we do now –– has been given to us by God for our enjoyment. The people we spend our time with now, the spouse or family member or pet or friend, are the ones whom God has put into our lives to make them enjoyable. Even the “toil” of our lives is meant to be enjoyed – that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to force ourselves to enjoy work we hate, but that we’re to set ourselves to work that we also enjoy.

             

The most important gift that God gives us is not the guarantee of a future, but the love of God today. In this moment. That love is embodied in those around us, in the food that the land grows for us, in the waters that nourish us, in the sun that shines on the world, in the moon and the stars that shine at night for our delight. Right now, the wild raspberries and the saskatoon berries are ready to be eaten, gifts from God for you. Right now, the people in this very space – in-person and online – are here to love you. Friends love you. Your pets love you. The land loves you. Today. Now. In a few minutes, you will be fed with the body and blood of Christ, the very presence of God in the bread and wine – nourishment for your spirit. The music we will sing together is a gift for your soul.

             

This is pure grace – that God gives us what we need to enjoy life now. Not after we’ve earned it, not even assuming we will earn it, not making us wait for the future to receive it. My kids would be right to respond with “all is vanity” the next time I ask them to mow the lawn. (They’re not here, though, so nobody tell them I said that.) But they would also be right to ask me what there is to eat, regardless of whether they mow the lawn. As Jesus says to his disciples right after he finishes the parable, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” God calls us to turn our eyes from an uncertain future so that we might enjoy this day, which God fills with what we need to enjoy life – food, drink, and companionship. Thanks be to God, Amen.

 

[1] https://actuaries.org.uk/news-and-media-releases/news-articles/2025/jan/16-jan-25-planetary-solvency-finding-our-balance-with-nature/

Easter 2025 - Trinity Lutheran, Calgary

 Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-25; 1 Cor 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have great sympathy for those women who gathered at the tomb of Jesus early in the morning on the third day. Mary Magdalene, who deeply loved Jesus, Joanna, whom scholars believe was healed by Jesus and was the same woman, Junia, whom Paul mentions in the letter to the Romans, Mary the mother of James, one of the apostles, and “the other women.” (In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, these women are called the Myrrhbearers, and they include Martha and Mary, Lazarus’ sisters.) These were faithful women who followed Jesus as closely as the twelve apostles, who were likely with him at the last supper, and who stayed at the cross and watched him die. As they approached the tomb, they carried with them the spices used for preparing the corpse for entombment. They saw Jesus die, and they were prepared for the reality of that death. They also must have carried in their hearts those feelings that we all have at the death of a loved one - feelings not only of grief, but of uncertainty and discouragement, full of questions. How will we live without him? What will our days look like? It isn’t possible to go back to living the way we did before we met him, but how shall we go forward? Will more of our brothers be arrested and crucified? Where is the hope for carrying on? Their certainty that they had lost someone would have been felt just as strongly as their fear of an uncertain future that was about to unfold.

Interestingly, this is the same situation that the writer of Acts found himself in as he crafted Peter’s speech to the people at Pentecost. The story of Acts is written in retrospect, as a way to tell the story of the birth of the church. But a really important piece of this story that most Christians don’t know is that it was written shortly after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and, in fact, the entire city. For Jesus and his followers, the Temple was the place where the spirit of God dwelled amongst the people. It was God’s actual home on earth, where people would go at least twice a year to worship and to receive God’s blessings. It had stood for over 500 years, and was the Second Temple to have been built, with the first being there for 500 years before that. So, picture it, for over 1000 years, the people of Israel had experienced God literally dwelling among them in Jerusalem, and then, over the course of just a few weeks, Roman soldiers completely destroyed the Temple and all of the walls around it, burned Jerusalem to the ground, and killed 3/4s of the occupants in the city, including women and children. Not only were the people destroyed, but so was the place where God dwelled. Jews, including those who followed Jesus, were absolutely devastated. What was the future for them? How would they worship? How could God find them? Who were they as a people? The Book of Acts was written in this context - in the midst of loss and grief and uncertainty which mirror the women at the tomb.

It is a story we are also living. It seems that whatever context we consider, whether it is the church or the world, this congregation or the larger ELCIC, we are experiencing a massive shift - the loss of what we have known and how we have lived, and uncertainty over what the future holds and how we might continue as a people. As you know, in the church, there simply aren’t enough pastors to serve every congregation, at least not in the current ways we have congregations configured. Too many people have lost access to that weekly encounter with the grace of God in the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion. People are somehow not experiencing the call to go to seminary and become pastors - this year and next the seminary will not graduate any pastors, and last year we graduated only one. We, both the seminary and the church, do not know what the future holds. It is uncertain. We know that the life of the church as we knew it in the past is dead, it is impossible to go back, but we wonder what would it look like to go forward? What might new life look like?

 I don’t have an answer for you, not one that will give anybody a complete and unshakeable sense of certainty for the future. But, neither did the angels whom God sent to appear to the grieving women at the tomb, nor did Peter when he was talking to the people gathered for Pentecost. All I can tell you is what the angels told the women at the tomb, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? [Jesus] is not here, but has risen.” In the gospel of Luke, written, by the way, in the same context as the book of Acts, the angels didn’t tell the women where to find Jesus, or describe what he looked like, or offer any vision for how the women and the others were to continue on with their lives. All they said was, Jesus is risen.

That was enough for the women. That proclamation was enough for them to leave their grief behind, to leave their fears for the future behind, and to go forward. Very likely still uncertain about how things would look, but certain that God was again in their midst.

That same certainty exists for Peter. The writer of Acts wanted to convey to those Christian Jews who were grieving the loss of God’s Spirit in the Temple that God was still with them, in the Spirit of Christ who was raised from the dead. And so Peter proclaims to the people that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and that as the Spirit of the Lord is among the people now, thus is God. The writer of Acts, through Peter, was equally uncertain about how exactly the future would look, but his proclamation that God was with the people was enough for them to leave their grief over the Temple’s destruction behind and to go forward, becoming the church.

This same Easter proclamation is made to us today. Christ is risen, God is among us. There are many things that are uncertain about the future - we do not know what the country will look like after the election. We do not know who will be elected National Bishop of the ELCIC this summer or where they will guide the church. We do not know the future of this congregation, or any other congregation without a pastor. At the seminary, we do not know what the future will look like for teaching and forming people for ministry. BUT. Christ is risen, God is among us. Today. Now. Christ is among us in the Easter proclamation, in the hymns we sing together, and in the body and blood of Christ that we will share together this morning in Holy Communion. This is why we sing Alleluia.

I want to end with the reminder that Easter is a season, not just a day. Over the next seven weeks of Easter, you will hear the stories of Jesus’ appearances to the disciples and others, more details of how God’s presence with us takes form, and more examples of what God’s future for us looks like. Things will become more clear. And God will continue to send messengers to proclaim that Christ is risen and God is with us, not where we have seen him in the past, but in a new place and in new ways. Today, on this first day of Easter, simply rest in the joy and amazement that God is with us, that Christ is risen, that new life has begun. Thanks be to God, Amen.