Sermon for Sunday 3rd August 2025 – Readings: Eccles 1, 2, 21-23; Colossians 3, 1-5, 9-11; Luke 12, 13-21. (not CW but RCL readings) for 3rd August 2025 –

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

Like the golden thread of Ariadne, that led her and Theseus through the twists and turns of the labyrinth from the danger of the Minotaur to freedom and safety, so there is a thread that runs through our three readings from scripture, that leads us from the seemingly pointless exercise of everyday human life, as expressed by the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes (vanity of vanities, all is vanity) to our safety, our liberation into new life in Christ.

The book called Ecclesiastes belongs to a genre of literature in the Old Testament called ‘Wisdom’. Much of it is to be found in the Hebrew scriptures, but the origins of the genre lie in Middle Eastern, non-Hebrew speaking culture. In Hebrew the speaker in the book is called the Qoheleth, often translated as ‘preacher’ or ‘teacher’. Our preacher claims to be the son of David, king in Jerusalem. This could be an attempt to make the writings more acceptable to the Hebrew speaking people of Israel, and to rescue the material from its gentile origins. We do something similar when we recite or sing the Psalms of David – we ‘Christianize’ them by always adding the words, ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit’ a non- Jewish religious formula. I hope you see what I’m driving at.

In the Greek version of the book the Hebrew word Qoheleth is translated as ‘Ekklesiastis’ from which we derive the name of the book.

The content is what we might call somewhat depressing – emphasizing the futility of the human condition, characterized so frequently by us entering into life with our ‘eyes wide shut’ contrasting with the open eyed person who sees the light of God. ‘Vanity of vanities – all is vanity’. This quote from the book rather sums it up, and it has become something of a phrase in everyday English use.

It reminds me of my time on one of my parishes. We were beautifully associated with a small theatre next to the 13^th century church – a 16^th century Sussex barn conversion. One year the theatre production team chose to perform a couple of episodes from the hugely loved vintage TV series called Dad’s Army. One of the characters was called Private Frazer, and as his surname suggests he was a Scot – what we call a ‘dour Scot’. Dour is not so easy to translate directly into standard English, let alone trying to find a Greek equivalent (maybe someone far brighter can try).

Frazer’s glass was always half empty – indeed I think you could say a quarter empty – so he always looked on the gloomy side of any situation (I suppose that’s really what ‘dour’ means). In the two productions the Director cast me as Private Frazer, partly because I can exaggerate my naturally beautiful accent into a rather more accented one. So it fell to me to say occasionally the phrase that Frazer was famous for ‘We’re a’ doomed!’. My apologies to those who have never seen the series, and the entire Greek nation.

So ‘We’re a’ doomed’ could be a very good summing up of the message of the Preacher, the Qoheleth in our book Ecclesiastes.

However I can’t leave us thinking that this book is all just rather depressing, tempting though this might be – it challenges us. It makes us think twice about the things we value, the things we take for granted, and the things that keep us in thrall to this world. I should also mention that there is a very beautiful and poetic passage in the book ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted’ and so on, through many verses of what we could call delightful parallels. Such balance! You can read them yourself in Chapter 3 of the book.

I’ve spent a bit of time on Ecclesiastes – where is that golden thread? Well, ‘All things are wearisome: more than one can express’, says the Qoheleth, ‘Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new?”

Yes, there is. In his Letter to the Christian church at Colossae, the Apostle Paul has the antidote to all this wearisomeness highlighted by the Qoheleth. ‘So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.’ (Col. 3,1), and a bit later as he speaks about something ‘new’ in Christ, the Apostle says, ‘In that renewal, there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!’ (Col 3, 11). In a similar passage in his letter to the Church at Galatia Pauls says, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ.’ (Gal 3,28).

So we can say to the Qoheleth, ‘Behold, this is new’! How so? I will answer briefly and give an illustration as well.

It is an extraordinary claim that St. Paul is making. His whole religious dogmatic system that has sustained him, and Judaism, since its foundation is rigid monotheism; that there is one God! The Hebrew people, the People of Israel, were totally surrounded by polytheistic religious systems, that is systems where there were many Gods. The Middle East (as we rather arrogantly call it) was rife with Gods, and the Hellenistic period of dominance, with the Gods of Mount Olympus, enforced by the Roman Empire with their own Latin forms of these Greek Gods emphasized the distinction and difference of Judaism. ‘The Lord your God is one Lord, and you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength’. (my slight paraphrase) Now St. Paul is make an outrageous claim – that the Lord Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, lived in Galilee, crucified in Jerusalem, risen, and appearing to thousands, transforming lives and long held traditions, including St. Paul, is seated at the right hand of God. What a shocking revelation. Every inch of Paul’s conversion is dependent on Jesus being the revelation of the very Godhead, one with the Father. Here we have the makings of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This leads to St. Paul’s extraordinary claims that in Christ we are all equal, and all equally free in him. This message rocked the authorities of the day – the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate! Order must be kept. Society would be anarchistic if order, underpinned by religion, was not maintained.

In his very readable book ‘Meeting God in Paul’  (SPCK 2015) Rowan Williams calls one of his chapters ‘The Universal Welcome: Paul’s Disturbing Idea’. In it he says of the congregations addressed by Paul, ‘are neither a collection of random individuals nor a group of barely tolerated marginal oddities; they are citizens of a proper civic community…they are God’s assembly: literally, the people who are summoned and invited by God, the people called out by God.’ (p32).

But I promised an illustration. One of my former colleagues had a holiday with us on Aegina recently. He is deeply involved in the link between the diocese of Gloucester and a diocese in the Church of South India. He informed me that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in India, against a background of Prime Minister Modi’s nationalist and oppressive Hindu party. On passing through security my friend was warned that if he was caught preaching he would be arrested and expelled. ‘Vanity of vanities, calls the Preacher’. Among the rapidly growing numbers of converts the greatest number is among the Dalits, the lowest social caste in India. It is a revelation to them that in church they are equal in the sight of God. There is something very moving about this fact, for at the time of St. Paul slaves found that there was no distinction between them and freemen – between Jew and Greek, between male and female.

And so inevitably we reach the one in whose hand the golden thread is held; the one who sits on the right hand of God’s glory, who liberates us from convention, social stereotyping, class, gender and so forth; Jesus.

Jesus, the Preacher, tells us a parable in today’s gospel reading – an illustration in ordinary, mundane life, from which so many people don’t seem to be able to find escape. Yes, folks, we are back to ‘We’re a’doomed’. Trapped in the world of vanities, someone in the crowd asks Jesus to sort out an inheritance issue – an issue about greed really. Jesus will be no arbiter but instead urges the complainant to raise his sights and to understand where his true treasure is to be found. Store away your money, eat drink, relax, be merry. Yet death will cheat you of all these earthly things. He expands this by talking about the ravens, and the lilies of the field. What do they do to maintain social status and wealth? He offers words that re-focus our attention, and he draws our lives back to consider the glory of God.

So we have a thread – and we have a profound challenge. Who are we really as a church? What are we as people? Who is it that renews us? What is the evidence in us, that there is indeed something new – a new heaven and a new earth, for the former things have passed away? Or is it business as usual – vanity of vanities, all is vanity.