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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
What's so curious and confounding about Ecclesiastes, it acknowledges these desperate seasons we find ourselves in. It names our unique experience while always coming back to the great unifying principle of our finiteness. We all share a common destiny, the failing of our bodies and the transition of our consciousness. We started just last week two, the first of two related July and August summer series. And in the first, in this first exploration, we're considering the spaces and the practices, the rhythms of renewal that are connected to our experience of home.
Speaker 1:And Bobby got it all started with this meditation on our relationship to rest and to our work. And she contended that these things are actually partners. They exist in a kind of dance in our lives. A dance in which Shalom, this long standing Jewish idea which can just be described as divine wholeness and serenity and flourishing all rolled up into one. How Shalom actually comes to find a home in the world through our work and our restfulness.
Speaker 1:And that might sound a tad idealistic for some of us or at best purely aspirational. Right? Because rest can be fun. It can be hard to find sometimes and Shalom. Well, that can just feel like it's somewhere out there in the ether that it's so unattainable.
Speaker 1:But here's the deal, a sermon like last week's is rarely the kind of thing that can instantaneously transform your life but I do happen to think though that sermons like last week's, they're a kind of spark, a kind of nudge, a clarion call that come to you and give you an imagination for maybe something that feels like you haven't seen before or in a long time. That might be a picture of God's goodness that you struggle to hold onto. It could just be a vision of yourself that you're trying to hold onto and be faithful to. It could also just be a glimpse of how your home, your neighborhood, your city, it could be different. Whatever the case, transformation, whether we like it or not, is something that emerges in our lives as we move through them.
Speaker 1:We have no choice but to do it that way. And this summer series is merely an invitation to each of us to just take the next step toward that kind of transformation, which is what we're going to do today. We're gonna think a little bit about what it looks like to digest and to attend to our lives in this season. But before I drop us into all of that, let's take a moment to calm ourselves, fan ourselves. Why don't you pray with me now?
Speaker 1:Loving God, we take this moment. We settle into our bodies, into the rest, into the welcome, into the invitation of this brief moment we share. You are near to us in the welcome that we have offered. You are near to us in the beating of our hearts, in our feet on the floor. You pass in and through and around each breath we take.
Speaker 1:And wherever hearts might be weary today, I pray, would you let there be sustenance in what we share? Maybe we feel hard or resistant to some part of our lives. I pray that you'd let us feel this sense to turn toward openness. And for every place within and every place in our world that is marked by tension and conflict, together we pray, let peace come and let us be carriers of such peace. Be our guide now as we turn to ancient word and ancient wisdom.
Speaker 1:Help us to trust the ways that you speak and you soothe and you provoke and you comfort us gently. We pray in the name of Christ, our hope. Amen. Alright. Well, today, as I said, we're gonna think a little bit about what it means to actively digest and process our lives as they are.
Speaker 1:We're gonna think about time. We're gonna think about the epistemology of experience. We're gonna talk about deep wisdom and then before you go today, I wanna give you a summertime spiritual practice for the go. Now full disclosure, I do wanna play with the ideas of home and interiority in a couple of ways today. We are gonna spend some time thinking about the spaces in which we feel safe.
Speaker 1:The spaces where our domestic and our relational lives unfold. These are places where we make our food and where our affection is shared with others and where sometimes people leave Lego out for other people to step on in the night. That's actually true. Now, I do also want to explore these ideas through the lens of our experience as conscious individuals. And you might say to yourself, it's far too hot in here for me to think about what you just said, Scott.
Speaker 1:What do you mean exactly? Well, let me use the poet David White to describe it. He describes it this way. How we can spend so much of our time working, we can spend so much time paying attention to our relationships, to our travel, and to our vacation plans even, that we quote neglect the necessary internal skills which help us to pursue, even come to know, and then sustain a connection with the person we find inside. And neglecting this internal connection, we can easily make ourselves a hostage to the externals of life, White contends.
Speaker 1:And I don't read White to you because I think he's suggesting that your internal self is somehow completely unattached from the world that you love and you create and you emote in. No, not at all. I think that's gonna become clear as we talk today but what I want you to walk away with as you head out into the world into this beautiful afternoon, I want you to have this acute sense that your connection to your interior self lies at the heart of what it means to be a human being. Or put another way that it to digest and to assess and to integrate your life that this is spiritual life, that this is holy work. And to do this, I want to parachute us into a wisdom text from the Hebrew Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes.
Speaker 1:And before I drop you into that, I wanna give you a couple of handles for what we're gonna read today. The first is this, that the wisdom of the text is attributed to this mysterious narrator, somebody called Kohelet and I'm gonna say that name a few times. It's not the name of an actual person in history, we don't think. It's a pseudonym and a title given and it derived from the Hebrew verb meaning to assemble and given that the Greek word for the word to gather or to assemble people is it's the Greek word is ecclesia and this is actually where we come to call this this book called Ecclesiastes. Okay?
Speaker 1:And then second, most scholars agree that the content and the vocabulary of this text indicates that it was composed sometime in the post exilic period and the only reason that matters is we need to understand that some of the angst that we're gonna find here, it's rooted in the fact that the Jewish people in this time were struggling to maintain their identity and their theology over and against major empires of the time. Okay? And what Kohelet does throughout the text is explore the rhythms of life and then try to build a theology and build some meaning And all the way through, he's trying to reconcile difficulty and doubt and the certainty of death even with what you might call a theological perspective. And to be honest, the theology of Kohelet isn't particularly hopeful. The author does say repeatedly that everything is meaningless.
Speaker 1:And by the way, going to Ecclesiastes for meaning or for theology can sometimes then feel like going to a bad therapist. Can you imagine doing this? You pay money and you go and you sit down, you share your ideas, your deepest secrets, only to have the person shrug and say, none of it matters. Right? Like get a new therapist.
Speaker 1:Right? But here's the catch, that's not everything that Kohelet says. And in this way that the text has a way of maybe becoming inaccessible to us because there seem to be these contrasts in it. And this is also probably why you've been unlikely to have heard a sermon from Ecclesiastes. But if you have, it was likely taken from these famous lines.
Speaker 1:There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. Time to be born, time to die, time to plant, time to uproot, a time to weep, a time to laugh, to mourn, and time to dance. Time to search and a time to give up searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. And he goes on and on.
Speaker 1:I can't read you the entire list today. There are actually 14 of those offsetting pairs included. And they are famous because of their poetic symmetry, I think. I also think they're famous because this is one of the places where we can look at them and say, I think I know what the author is trying to say here. There's an attempt to lay out the wide expanse of experience while according to the author trying to make sense of how God might be source of it all.
Speaker 1:And to do this, the author is using a poetic device we call merism, where you take two extremes you use them not just as two offsetting ends, like being born and being laid to rest, for example. But in using pairs like this, this device intends that you consider everything in between. And I think this is why if you've been exposed to Ecclesiastes ever before, you've heard this passage. Because there's a powerful locating property in these words as there would have been for an ancient audience too, I think. Where as you listen to the pairs, as I read them earlier, it's as though you're taken and you're placed on a map of your life.
Speaker 1:It's not unlike when you drag that little character in Google Maps over onto the map to get Street View. Right? Hearing these words, you see and feel where you actually are. Sitting here today, maybe you're feeling your age and the summer sun and the warmth has a way of flooding your memory with this appreciative moments of exploration and the vibrancy of your youth. Maybe some of you, you're resting, you're vacating in this season, it's helped you to sense the ways in which your body and your mind have been stretched too thin.
Speaker 1:You feel like, I think I think some adjustments need to be made. Or maybe you're exploring a new relationship and you're feeling the best of emotions. Alternatively, you could actually be grieving and wanting to uproot your life. Maybe maybe just maybe you're somewhere in between those things. The point is that this is a time to, well, acknowledge where you are.
Speaker 1:To take time today to name it, to write it down, pick an adjective, pick a noun to describe your location in the world, and then remind yourself that moving forward will likely include some weeping and some laughing, some grieving and some dancing, some working and some play, all of it according to Kohelet in step with divine presence that walks beside you in every activity under the heavens. Now what's so curious and confounding about Ecclesiastes is that it acknowledges these desperate seasons we find ourselves in. It names our unique experience while also always coming back to the great unifying principle of our finiteness. That whoever or wherever we might be, we might be old or young, we might be well positioned or marginalized, we might be righteous, or we might be a disgruntled Oilers fan. Listen.
Speaker 1:Don't let me lose you. We all share a common destiny. The failing of our bodies and the transition of our consciousness. And that admission can feel a lot more like Ash Wednesday than July 21. I admit that, but stay with me because here's my quick take on Kohelet without being able to walk you through everything he says.
Speaker 1:I I think the wisdom here, and I think this actually goes for a lot of scripture actually, it comes less from the most tweetable conclusions that the ancient authors come to. And in the case of Ecclesiastes, it's this ad nauseam, all is meaningless. Thanks, Quahelet. I'm gonna keep moving on. I think the wisdom is less in those sound bites and more in the process, in the incisive way that Kohelet models for how to look at the world.
Speaker 1:See at the beginning of chapter nine, the narrator says this. He says, look, I look out into the world and I see that the wicked get all that seems to be good and I see that the good get what the wicked deserve. I look out at human experience. I see all this meaningless toil and trying to get ahead. I see human action at its best and at its worst.
Speaker 1:And then he says this, he says, I have reflected on all of this. I've digested it all. I've considered how it all lies within the scope of divine providence in some way and how it all disappears, how it all fades away. And then he says this, go eat your food with gladness, drink your wine with joy for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white, always anoint your head with oil, enjoy life with those you love, all in the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun, all your meaningless days.
Speaker 1:For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all of your might. For in the realm of the dead, where you are all going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. That's a lot. Right?
Speaker 1:To return to the therapist analogy, sometimes when I read Ecclesiastes, I'm like, I can't believe I chose to expose myself to this. It doesn't feel like wisdom. It's a bit of a downer. But here's a thought. These lines feel like a lot because Kohelet is a bit of a buzzkill for a certain type of religious or spiritual sensibility.
Speaker 1:Or more specifically, those sensibilities or those rhythms that are rooted in blind optimism. Or a sense of moral superiority or a sense that we have somehow secured divine favor. To these traditional ways that we sometimes seek comfort in is quick to say, remember where you are going, there is no need for such pseudo wisdom. This is a big part of what the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible is there in scripture for I think. Because it gives this assertion that traditional ways of finding value and authority and security through things like austere obedience to rules or strict observance of religious space and ritual, he asserts these are not the only way to God.
Speaker 1:Those structures and authority are actually absent from Ecclesiastes as a collection and in their place is this repeated instruction to use one's senses to encounter wisdom. And I love how scholar Jennifer Cousset calls this the epistemology of observation and experience, which is just an academic way of saying that we come to know God, that we come to know ourselves, that we come to know the deep riches of God's grace in the world in how we sense and how we encounter with our bodies. And Kousset points out that in the face of life's deep complexity, Kohelet seems to recommend these everyday pleasures of living. Things like eating bread and drinking wine, beautiful bread and wine. Right?
Speaker 1:And wearing clean clothes and fixing your hair and loving one's lover or friends. It's this kind of bold contention that there is divine wisdom to be found in the valuing of the body's experiences and the pleasures found in domestic spheres. And for me, in a world of political antagonism and systemic injustice and pervasive violence and channels that feed this to me all the time, in a world where I feel like I'm just doing my best to resist the apathy and cynicism that these things inspire in me, I feel like I've needed Kohelet's awareness. And I feel like I've seen it spark in things like the daily brewing of iced tea. I fill the pitchers, I let them cool, and then my kids drink it all before I get to it.
Speaker 1:I also find it in the longer meals and the laughter we share in the backyard because it is we are gonna eat outside every night we can. It's in the savoring of tender herbs grown and picked with my own hands. And for you, well, I wonder where you might see wisdom in its approach, in the flavors, in the sounds, in the touch that makes you feel at home. Is it Kool Aid or is it Pinot Grigio? Is it birdsong or is it in a quiet space in your home?
Speaker 1:Is it in an intimate lover's touch or is it in the playful glance knowingly of your deepest friend? Could it be that the spirit endorses and inhabits such sacred sensory simplicity? And this is the kind of reminder that Kohelet seems to prompt in us. But as I've already said, it's not the recurring theme of the text. The narrative keeps circling back time and time again to the weight of our mortality.
Speaker 1:How our existence is so ephemeral, how our summer days are so ephemeral. And while the book does close with this encouragement to the reader and to the listener to fear God, to obey all the commands, I assure you moral adherence is ideological takeaway of Ecclesiastes. Rather, it's this imperative to digest and attend to every day, to take note of each passing, to keep in mind that life, that summertime heat and flourishing, that sunscreen and the flowers in your garden, these things will fade. And that that can sound like mixed messaging for a fun summer series, but I think we're all better served by this kind of honesty. The kind of honesty that's the foundation of statements like those that we find at the beginning of chapter 11.
Speaker 1:Where Coelit says this, he says, light is sweet. It pleases the eyes to see the sun. To which I say, oh, yes it does. Have you seen the light when it streams in my window at 04:30AM? Have you seen the light as it keeps the sky beautiful as I read at twilight?
Speaker 1:Have you seen how when sunlight falls, it doesn't matter where it falls, my dog will find whatever place that is, doesn't matter where it is, and he'll find comfort there. It's it's experiences like this that Coilette's mentioning. They're some of the sweetest we enjoy, but then unsurprisingly, the narrator widens our perspective to the scope of our actual experience and he says this, however many years anyone may live, let them enjoy them all and let them remember the days of darkness for there will be many. And here, Koheletz, again downer, seems to be using a form of merism again, resets up the glow of light against the gathering darkness as illusions to the waning that comes as we age. And admits in this that while embracing enjoyment and pleasure is spiritual practice, sure it is, so too is recognizing that there are so many hard and difficult moments.
Speaker 1:Aren't there? And this is the kind of admission that taps into the wisdom that I think we all carry because you know better than anyone else how the professional challenge and setbacks that you've experienced, these have shaped the acumen and the knowledge that you have. You know how illness and disease, how pain and weakness in your body, how these have formed a resilience that's just part of you. And you know that your most caring, faithful relationships, they're marked by moments of hurt and betrayal and failure and unmet expectations, and it's the fact that you know that. You know those painful things.
Speaker 1:That's what informs your persistence in love. Remember the days of darkness? How could we forget them? And it's as if Kohelet knew something of what it means to admit that our wisdom isn't born from our strength, that our sense of settledness or assuredness, if we ever feel that or when we do happen to, it's not derived from having sailed through endless bright and sunny summer seasons. No.
Speaker 1:In writing this centuries ago, I think Kohelet agrees with our contemporary, Christa Tippett, when she writes, quote, none of us, if truth be told, knows home, knows belonging, knows welcome, tangible or spiritual, without struggle. And that kind of deep wisdom, it's the kind you form every time you do the internal work of facing your memory and pushing toward forgiveness and flourishing. It it shows up when you take this introspective approach, so many of you do, to the issues of inequality and responsibility that are needed in the extended backyard that is your neighborhood, that is this sprawling city, that is our beautiful world. And I assure you this kind of deep wisdom, it develops in you when you pray and you reflect and you read with an eye for how grace flows freely both when you feel all is well, but also too in your days of darkness. Which brings me to what I feel is an appropriate place for us to end today, with a practical consideration of how to cultivate this kind of digestive, absorbing, considerate approach.
Speaker 1:Because to a certain degree, our ability to create homes and spaces that offer welcome and relief, it's directly related to whether or not we have found our way home to the places of reprieve and peace in our own heart and mind. And this is truth that the mothers and fathers, the mystics and spiritual cartographers of our tradition, they have known known so well for a long time. That's why we shouldn't be surprised that the book of Ecclesiastes has actually been used for centuries by Christian mystics and monastics. It's also why we shouldn't be surprised that Ignatius of Loyola taught his students in the sixteenth century the daily practice of reflection called what? An examine.
Speaker 1:And yes, this means that you get an examine in liturgy and you get an examine to go. In it, Ignatius encouraged all novices to cultivate awareness of God, to review the day with gratitude, to take an inventory of their emotions and feelings and then to pray from those emotions and feelings and then to look ahead just to the next day with hope. And this is a practice I've found super helpful in my own life for a while and as I spent time with Cohel at the last few weeks, I found that his questions and his angst and his honesty, you know, these are the things that pop up for me in my examine practice and so I thought it would be appropriate to encourage you to pick up the examine as a way to digest and reflect with this summer. So here are some very basic instructions. First, you can do it anytime, but I'm gonna recommend you do it in the evening as you are winding down.
Speaker 1:Okay? Second, if you aren't already when you go to do your examine, please put on comfortable summer clothing and please sit outside or if you can't sit outside, sit beside an open window. Do not under any circumstance, do the examine in your work clothes. Okay? Cold drinks, frozen treats, highly recommended as prayer aids but they are not required.
Speaker 1:Then, start by doing what Padre Gottuma recommends. Say hello to the little world you live in, to your living room, to your patio, to your deck, to your garden, to your flowers, to your camping chair. Welcome God's presence there, where you are. Then take a few moments to reflect on the day. Take note of the sights, the smells, the taste, the aromas, the textures of summer.
Speaker 1:They're all around you. The fading light, the sound of kids in the bath, the smell of something on the grill, the feel of grass on your feet. It could be anything, but just do it at home or in a place of welcome and safety for you. And then ask yourself, how aware you were through the day? Of God?
Speaker 1:Of yourself? Of course, the key here is to not chastise yourself for having daydreamed or having taken a nap or having slowly strolled wherever it was that you were going. Simply pay attention to what brought you life and what caused strain. Think about where the spirit felt close. Think about where you felt most close to those in your life.
Speaker 1:And then quietly say a prayer of thankfulness. Say a prayer of gratitude or of forgiveness. Pray from whatever emotion is right there with you. And then finally, think about the day to come. But don't let your wine monder too far.
Speaker 1:Stay in summer mode. Okay? No plans for the fall, and August isn't here yet. Just tomorrow. Hope that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Even as I hope to, that time and this season and your experience and divine wisdom deep inside you conspire to shape your life in hopeful healing ways. Let's pray. Loving God of each and every season. But God to us in these long summer nights and of the safe and comforting spaces we are privileged to enjoy. You're also God of the peaceful kingdom that we pray would come to places of darkness and turmoil in the world today.
Speaker 1:We're so grateful for the moments we have and the great privilege of having margin and a community in which to think about how we might grow in our awareness, how we might make space and time to reflect on who you are and who you've made us to be, how you're present to us in all the places we call home, and how there you have this way of filling our senses with this capacity to take in and take hold and to make memory out of the simplest of blessings. And we pray and ask for grace to be more present to the great abundance. Be with us now as we do the work of attending to the deep wisdom. For some of us, it's being shaped in places that feel dark and imposing and heavy in this summer season. And we ask, would you help us to trust your presence wherever we find ourselves, even as we open our hearts in welcome to those we will meet, and we open our hearts to the part of ourselves that is truest and emerging in these moments of reflection, all of it coming to us as gift.
Speaker 1:We pray this in the name of Christ, our hope. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.