Homily for September 25th, 2020: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11.
The short Old
Testament book Ecclesiastes, from which our first reading is taken, has the
repeated refrain, “All is vanity.” No wonder that many call it the most cynical
book in the Bible. The refrain brings us not good news, but the bad news that
life is indeed empty, “vanity,” unless we center our lives on the Lord God. In
the midst of this bad news, however, we come upon a passage that is like finding
an oasis in a desert: the assurance which we heard in today’s first reading,
that “There is an appointed time for every thing under the heavens.”
In words of
great beauty the author, called Qoheleth, a word of uncertain meaning, often
translated “the Preacher,” says that there is “A time to be born, and a time to
die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant; a time to tear down, and
a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh . . . A time to be silent,
and a time to speak.”
The full and rounded person makes
time for each of these pairs of opposites. There are times when it is important
to speak. At other times silence is more appropriate. When I entered seminary 71
years ago, we newcomers were given a little book called “Principles.” One of
them went like this: “The conversation of the brethren should help and cheer us,
but God’s voice speaks most often in silence. Keep some part of every day free
from all noise and the voices of men, for human distraction and craving for it
hinder divine peace.” I’ve tried to do that in all the years since I first read
those words.
About one sentence in this short
reading, Bible scholars have been disputing for over 2000 years. God “has made
everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into [people’s]
hearts.” What is this “timeless”? I believe it is the sense, inborn in us but
rejected by the book’s author, that there is a world beyond this one, and a
life beyond death. It is for this that we are born and made: to serve God, our
loving heavenly Father, faithfully here on earth; but beyond that to be happy
with him forever in heaven.
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