Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Ecclesiastes 1:1-14 April 20, 2008

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 forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes around 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. I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; 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 time I find myself in the book of Ecclesiastes, I can't help wondering how it ever made it into the Bible? The teacher, a man my Bible version calls "a Royal Philosopher," had seen it all, done it all, and come away convinced that it was all pretty pointless. You'll recall a while back when it was popular for people to say, "Been there. Done that." Well, wouldn't they be surprised to learn that the author of Ecclesiastes had been there and done that long before anyone else had.

Did you ever see the film, Gigi. It's a wonderful old movie. At the beginning, two men are walking down a street in Paris: Gaston, played by Louis Jourdan, and Henry, played by Maurice Chevalier. Henry is entirely bored with life and Gaston is trying to cheer him up. "Look at the trees," Gaston says. "What color!" Henry replies, "What color were they last Year?" Gaston says, "The same." And Henry grumbles, "It's a bore." Then Gaston chimes in, "What about the Eiffel Tower? It's ninety stories high." Henry asks, "How high was it last Year?" Gaston says, "Same as this year." And again Henry concludes, "It's a bore."

Then, like a lot of those old movies, they both break into song. Gaston sings, "Life is thrilling as can be." Henry shoots back, "Simply not my cup of tea." G: "It's a gay romantic fling." H: "If you like that sort of thing." G: "It's intriguing." H: "It's fatiguing." G: "It's a game." H: "It's the same dull world wherever you go. Whatever place your are at, the earth is round, but everything on it is flat." Poor Henry; all the fizz had gone out of his pizzazz. But then, of course, Henry falls in love and the whole world starts to look beautiful and interesting again.

I gather the teacher of Ecclesiastes was suffering some of the same feelings as Henry. Generations come and go, he said, but nothing ever changes. The sun keeps going up and down. The wind changes direction only to change back again. Rivers flow to the sea just as they always have. What has been done is what will always be done. There is nothing new under the sun. Today, no doubt, we would call him depressed and put him on Prozac.

Now, it may well be that after writing Ecclesiastes, the teacher himself fell in love and, like Henry, things started looking up. For his sake I hope so. But despite what may have happened later, the Bible has come down to us in its present form, and, for reasons I've never quite been able to understand, it includes this little book, which is filled with futility and hopelessness. You might as well party - eat, drink and be merry - because nothing you do is going to amount to anything in the long run, and then you're going to die. There is one passage in the book that says that God is good, but in keeping with the rest of the book, God is said to be good only because God is the source of what little pleasure we may take in this otherwise wretched life.

As bad as it is though, I find Ecclesiastes raises a rather interesting question. Are we, in fact, making progress, or are we just going round in circles, chasing our collective tails? Everything seems to be changing so fast that hardly any of us can keep up with even a small portion of it. Mostly, we're accustomed to styles, ideas and technologies shifting every time we turn around. We're used to thinking that something may be old simply because it is last year's model, or last month's program. I'll never forget the minor shock that went through me the first time I heard one of my confirmands say, in a voice filled with contempt, "Ugh. How five minutes ago!" I'd like to think he was kidding, but it didn't sound that way.

The fact that things are changing all the time isn't just the inevitable consequence of our modern culture. Some would say it's the way things have always been and are even supposed to be. But curiously, the longer we're around, and the more of these sweeping changes we go through, the more this year's new idea begins to look like something we've seen before. I remember back in Westport, Pam had recently begun her first year of Guidance Counseling at Rodger Ludlow Middle School. One Friday night, we were there for a school picnic, all of us gathered around on the front lawn.

When Pam introduced me to one of the sixth grade teachers, I mentioned that both of my parents had been teachers and that I appreciated how challenging it can be. The response I got was very interesting. He said that teaching can be a very difficult profession, partly because new ways of doing things are forever being handed down from on high. He said, "When you're expected to radically alter your teaching style every couple of years according to the latest teaching fad, it's hard enough. But when that latest fad is virtually indistinguishable from one that was discarded only a few fads back, it can really drive you crazy." The French have a saying, which I like to use as often as possible since it's the only one I know. "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." It means, the more things change, the more they stay the same. There's a lot of truth there, that makes me wonder about the whole notion of progress.

One time, on an overnight retreat with some of my clergy colleagues, we got to talking about some of the stories in the Old Testament and how they were so often filled with war, jealousy, anger and hardship. I said that I had always found it striking that these two to four thousand year old stories all dealt with pretty much the same human issues that we still struggle with today. I said it made me wonder if we were if fact making any progress. Oh boy, you wouldn't believe the reaction I got. Several of the other ministers were up in arms at the very suggestion that we might not be making progress. One woman in particular insisted that the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement and Feminism proved we had made great strides forward. I didn't argue with them, but I did find that old line from Hamlet running through my mind: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

What I eventually figured out, is that most ministers are deeply committed to the idea of progress. We have a need to believe that things are getting better, or at least that getting better is a real possibility. If there's no progress, then the author of Ecclesiastes was right. Human life and human effort are ultimately pointless. We're all just chasing our tails. And if that's the case, then why bother preaching at people week after week? Why bother committing ourselves to social programs of outreach and compassion? If we're only going around in circles, what's the point?

I actually spent a lot of time some years back asking myself this very question. Are we making progress? And as I wondered, it felt as though my entire ministry hung on the answer. I couldn't see myself continuing in ministry if there was no possibility of progress, but no matter how I approached the question I couldn't seem to put it to rest one way or the other. I looked for evidence of progress or non-progress in current events, in the theology of my training, in my own experiences. The question nibbled away at the back of my mind, literally for years. Until, finally, it occurred to me that, all along, I had been asking the wrong question.

Progress does not exist all by itself. It must always be measured against a goal of some kind. There is no such thing as absolute progress. There is no way to meaningfully answer the question, "Are we making progress?" if we don't know where we're going. What is our goal? What are we trying to accomplish? Whether we're making progress or not can only be measured against where it is we think we're supposed to end up. The mistake I made was to ask the question without any particular goal in mind. I was, in effect, trying to sort out whether progress was some kind of universal constant; some kind of absolute quality of being. And asking the question in that way made it impossible to come up with an answer.

What is our goal? That's the question we have to answer first. There was interesting little article in Thursday's Portland Press Herald about the changing leadership in Cuba. It seems that Fidel Castro isn't entirely happy with some of the changes his brother Raul has been making lately. Fidel has given up power, supposedly, but he continues to write editorials for a Cuban newspaper. He's apparently not thrilled that Cubans will now be allowed to use portable electronic devices like cell phones, pagers and iPods. He warns that the Cuban people should not play the games of "the system that imperialism has imposed upon the world." Alright, but if we were to ask Fidel and Raul if they thought Cuba was making progress, it seems likely they wouldn't have the same answer. Apparently, they don't have exactly the same goals in mind.

Are we making progress? Well, we are making changes, constantly. I'm sure some of them will turn out to be for the better and some for the worse. But I've come to realize that whether we're getting closer to, say, a healthier, happier, saner society is a question only history can answer. Real progress can be very hard to measure while we're in the midst of trying to accomplish something; some things that look like progress turn out not to be, while others that look like set backs end up revealing themselves as the only way forward. Still, I'm sure my old clergy group would insist that making progress is important, and I would agree. We just need to have some clarity about where we're headed, and where we're headed needs to be worthy of our calling.

There's a story I came across recently in one of the Chicken Soup books. It goes like this.

The Brooklyn Bridge that spans the river between Manhattan and Brooklyn is simply and engineering miracle. In 1883, a creative engineer, John Roebling, was inspired by an idea for this spectacular bridge project. However, bridge-building experts told him to forget it, it just was not possible. Roebling convinced his son, Washington, an up-and-coming engineer, that the bridge could be built. The two of them conceived the concept of how it could be accomplished and how to overcome the obstacles. Somehow they convinced bankers to finance the project. Then, with unharnessed excitement and energy, they hired their crew and began to build their dream bridge.

The project was only a few months underway when a tragic on-site accident killed John Roebling and severely injured his son. Washington was severely brain-damaged, unable to talk or walk. Everyone thought the project would have to be scrapped, since the Roeblings were the only ones who understood how the bridge could be built.

Though Washington Roebling was unable to move or talk, his mind was as sharp as ever. One day as he lay in his hospital bed, an idea flashed in his mind as to how to develop a communication code. All he could do was move one finger, so he touched the arm of his wife with that finger. He tapped out the code to communicate to her what she was to tell the engineers who continued building the bridge. For 13 years, Washington tapped out his instructions with one finger until the spectacular Brooklyn Bridge was finally completed.

Personally, I've never driven across the bridge. I've seen it. I love the story of its building. It's a truly magnificent accomplishment, and it makes life a lot easier if you need to get back and forth from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Does it represent progress? It depends on what goal we have in mind. I'm not exactly sure how humanity is all that much better off for it, but Washington Roebling was, against tremendous odds, able to fulfill his dream and his own inner potential. Humanly speaking, I would have to say he made great progress personally, and what is progress for the individual is not unrelated to what is progress for society as a whole. If nothing else, his example is very inspirational.

For us, progress can be measured in much the same way. Are we moving in the direction of our own God given potential? For those who claim a Christian identity, like Paul, there can be no higher goal than the living out our own unique gifts, to the best of our ability, in service to those whom Christ loved. We are called to "strain forward" to what lies ahead, to press on toward this goal of becoming one with the Spirit of Christ, and as we do so, whether we can always see it or not, we are, I believe, making great progress.

Amen.