Being Human

This is the sermon I gave on Sunday, July 31, 2016.

Being Human

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 31, 2016

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 1:12-14, and 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

“Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Or in an older, I think more famous translation: “Vanity of vanities.” All is vanity. Not vanity in the sense be being vain about one’s appearance, of preening in front of the mirror too long and fussing too much about your clothes. No, rather vanity in the sense of everything is in vain. Nothing is worthwhile. Everything is pointless or, as the NIV has it, meaningless. Don’t you find it odd that there are verses like the ones we just heard from Ecclesiastes in the Bible? I do. The author here, who calls himself the Teacher, says “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after wind.” He thinks everything we humans do is meaningless basically because in the end we all die. We’re mortal not immortal. We are finite not infinite. We live only for a time, not forever. He says “I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.” I die, my things remain, and the people who inherit them might be fools. Whether they are or not, I pass away and lose everything I have worked for. So it’s all meaningless. I once led a Bible discussion group on Ecclesiastes. My concluding comment to those folks was: “This guy needed Prozac.” I mean, he’s really depressed, and he’s depressing. Nowhere in the book of Ecclesiastes does it get any better, although it does have the lines Pete Seeger made famous about to everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season. Still, the book is a real downer.

It might be odd that they’re there, but those lines we heard are in the Bible. So I guess we have to figure out why they’re in Bible and whether or not they can mean something for us even though on their face they just sound odd. To be perfectly honest, I think the only reason Ecclesiastes is in the Bible is that it claims to have been written by King Solomon, which it almost certainly wasn’t. Still, there it is, so it must have something to say to us.

And actually I think that it does, although it certainly doesn’t say it directly. The author of these lines is depressed and thinks that nothing in life has any value or meaning. Perhaps we should ask: Why does he feel that way about human life? I think we get an answer to that question when he talks about how he must leave everything for which he has worked behind when he dies. He says: “I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.” This supposed Teacher’s big problem is that he knows he is mortal. He knows that he will die, and the world will go on without him. He won’t be able to keep the things for which he worked forever because he won’t live forever. I hear in his depression the cry of one who can’t deal with the fact that he is mortal. Because he will die he thinks that his life, and all life, is meaningless.

I’ve got to be perfectly honest with you. I sometimes feel that way too. I mean, let’s face it. Our human mortality is something we all have to deal with, and for many of us dealing with it isn’t easy. It may not lead us into the kind of depression we hear in Ecclesiastes, but it can be hard to deal with nonetheless. I will die. Will anything I have done then have any meaning? Maybe, but more likely not. I think that those of us who are authors or painters or composers maybe do what we do because we hope that our writings or our art or our music will survive us and still have some meaning for at least some people. Or maybe that’s just true of me, for I know that it is true of me. Being mortal is rough. That means that being human is rough.

Being mortal is sometimes so rough that we humans get really good at forgetting that that’s what we are. Take the guy in our passage from Luke. He has produced more crop than he can fit into his barns. So he’s going to tear down his barns and builds bigger ones. Then he’ll think he has it made. But God calls him a fool because he has forgotten that he is mortal. And God asks him a question very reminiscent of Ecclesiastes: “Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” The implication is clear. Whoever that is, you fool, it won’t be you. The author of Ecclesiastes was way too aware of his mortality, and it depressed him. The man with the barns wasn’t aware of it enough, and it made him foolishly self-satisfied.

So here, for your consideration, is what I take from these stories. We humans struggle with being human. We want to be gods, and sometimes we think that we are. Especially, I think, in our dominant American culture, we ignore our mortality. We pretend death doesn’t exist. Many of us are quite a bit like the man in Jesus’ parable with his bigger barns. We think that if we lay up enough earthly treasure that we’re set. Material wealth, yes. Spiritual wealth? Not so much for far too many people today.

The Bible understands how we want to be gods. In the story of Adam and Eve God doesn’t expel the two transgressors from the Garden of Eden because just because they disobeyed his command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God expels them not so much for their disobedience as for what God fears may be the consequence of their disobedience. Genesis says “the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” Adam, and presumably also Eve even though Genesis doesn’t mention her here, has already become too much like God for God’s liking. God is going to make sure that Adam doesn’t become fully God by doing something that would make him live forever, and God’s going to make his people’s lives hard enough that they will never think that they’re gods.

See, the Bible knows that as long as we’re mortal we aren’t really gods. It also knows how much we really want to be immortal gods and not mortal creatures. The Bible knows, and God knows, that if we ever got the chance we’d turn ourselves into gods in a heartbeat. That’s sort of what the man in the parable does with his bigger barns, or at least that’s sort of what he thinks he’s done. He’s stored up enough wealth that he thinks he has nothing to worry about. He’s forgotten that he has one big thing yet to worry about, namely his death. God calls him to remember it, but apparently after it is almost too late for him to do it.

Here’s what we humans so often want to forget. God created us as mortal beings not immortal ones. And not only that, but God called and calls us to live freely, fully, abundantly the mortal life that God has given us. God doesn’t want us to be like the author of Ecclesiastes, so overwhelmed by his mortality that he thinks life has no meaning. Neither does God want us to live like the man in Jesus’ parable, concerned only about earthly wealth and not at all about the things of the spirit. God wants us to accept our condition as creatures, then live lives that make that condition meaningful not meaningless.

How do we do that? Well, God has given us a perfect model of how to do that in Jesus Christ. Jesus was mortal too, you know. He knew he was mortal because he knew he was human, but he didn’t spend much time fretting about it. He didn’t run from it. He didn’t hide from it. He accepted his mortality, and he lived a mortal life more filled with meaning than any other mortal human life ever has been or ever will be. He knew that even his death could have cosmic meaning, and it does.

So how did Jesus live his very mortal human life? For others, that’s how. In the stories we have about him in the Gospels it doesn’t ever appear that he did much of anything for himself, with one exception. More about that exception in a moment. Mostly, he lived for others. He lived to teach others. He lived to heal others. He lived to reveal the nature and will of God to others. That, folks, is how we live a truly full, finite human life. By not living it for ourselves at all, but by living it for others. By living it for those who don’t have enough. Those who don’t know that God loves them. Those who are lonely or are lost. Those who need a hand out or a hand up. Those like the author of Ecclesiastes who think their life has no meaning. Those like the man with the bigger barns who have forgotten what life is really about. That’s what Jesus did, and that’s what God calls us to do too.

Now about that exception: Jesus did, or at least tried to do, one thing for himself. He went away, or at least tried to go away, to pray. The one thing he wanted to do for himself was strengthen his spirit by strengthening his connection with God. Yes, he was God, but he was also human; and as human he needed to tend to his spiritual life just like we do. In his seeking time to be with God in prayer he showed us the way every bit as much as he did in the other aspects of his life. Thanks be to God!

So, folks, we’re human. All of us. Every person on earth is human. That means we’re all mortal. Our lives will end one day, but that doesn’t mean our lives are meaningless. Ecclesiastes is just wrong. All is not meaningless. Or at least all is not necessarily meaningless. God gives our lives meaning and calls us to create meaning in our lives and in the lives of others. God calls us to embrace our humanity, as fragile and as mortal as it may be. God is always there to help us do it, too. Our task isn’t to become gods. It is to become fully human. To become human like Jesus was human. No one said it was easy, but with God’s help I think we can do it. Amen.