The Wrong Text for the Wrong Time Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 December 31, 2107

(Lectionary for December 31,2107)

This long title requires some explanation. I am assuming that very few churches will actually hold New Year’s Day services this year, since it falls on a Monday. I further assume that most preachers will attend to the “new beginnings” theme on the Sunday before. Hence, I will briefly discuss why Ecclesiastes 3 remains the very worst text one might choose for this day, while Is.43 is precisely the right text.

Why do the lectionary collectors persist in pointing a preacher to Koheleth (the Hebrew name of the book) 3 for New Year’s Day? I can only imagine this is true because the committee refuses to admit that Koheleth is clearly a very dark and negative book, and the third chapter is the hallmark statement of the unchanging quality of a hopeless and trapped life. Can they not read the three verses that directly follow the poem made famous by various pop singers of the 20th century? Listen!

“What gain (one might translate “profit”) have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. God has made everything suitable (“appropriate” or perhaps “OK”?) for its time; God has put a sense of past and future (Hebrew ‘olam) into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.”

How could one read those darkly teasing lines and imagine that they offer some sort of hope for the beginning of a new year? What the preacher (one reading of “Koheleth”) appears to mean by the poem is that everything is fixed into a wearisome and unchanging pattern that we may never alter, and further that God has made life like that, and in such a way that we pathetic humans have only the smallest glimpse of what God may be about, just enough of a glimpse to realize how foolish and pathetic we are! And a Happy New Year to you!

Plainly, this will not do as we enter still another year. It is to me especially poor this year, after a year of the most dysfunctional and dangerous government in any of our lifetimes (yes, I lived through Nixon and Bush 2, also!), I certainly do not want to hear that all of this is fixed forever by God and that God appears to enjoy teasing us by tiny views of something that might be better, only to continue to keep things as they always will be. No thanks!

I want something quite different, and I find it in Isaiah 43. Whatever else may be said about that poetic prophet of the exile, he knew how to buoy up a sagging spirit, how to offer hope when there appears little hope to be had, how to find a way when there is no way. Just listen to these lines as you contemplate another new year:

“Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed (“saved” or “bought”) you; I have called you by name, you are mine!
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned; The flame shall not consume you!”

That is what I need to hear as I face an uncertain future in a world run by inadequate leaders who do little else than feather their own nests, acting as if they are the only people in the world who count, who think that to “make America great” we must act as if no one else save Americans count in the world.

And I need also two more of Isaiah’s gems:

“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
Now it springs up; don’t you see it? I will make a way in the wilderness And rivers in the desert.”

That is a direct rebuke to the tired and dispirited words of Koheleth, who cannot conceive of a new thing at all. On the contrary, says Isaiah, God is ever the God of the new thing. Will you be in exile forever? Hardly! Will Donald Trump and his pathetic minions run our government into the ground forever? Never! A new year with God fairly bursts with possibilities; it is alive with dreams and hopes. If I imagine with Koheleth that change is impossible, I doom myself and those around me to apathy and despair. But if with Isaiah I face the future with the certainty that God will bring a new thing, will provide a new option, will offer a bright new and fresh day, I can work to change the dark world I see into a world that God desires, a world where justice and righteousness prevail for all instead of riches and glamor for the few.

This of course in no way means that I am not realistic about the vast challenges we all face; turning the Trump world into a world more inclusive of all people will take time and considerable effort. But unlike Koheleth, Isaiah can envision such a world and bids us to join him in the struggle to achieve it. So, preach with Isaiah by your side, and consign sour old Koheleth to the brooding philosopher’s chair, surrounded by flickering candles and smoldering pipes and woolen slippers. He is a fascinating figure and is worth the occasional read to warn us against the siren call of uninvolved reflection and undesired engagement in the world. But we need Isaiah to lead us into the new light of God, a God who will not give up on us, no matter how far we trudge down the wrong road. For this God is about to do a new thing in this New Year. Come and join God in that fresh action, because we are in the end God’s named ones, saved and redeemed for compassionate love of all that God has made. And now we can say it: Happy New Year!