ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Last Sunday after Trinity, 25 October 2009
Sermon preached by Fr. Julian Browning at Solemn Evensong and Benediction

Readings: Ecclesiastes 11, 12; 2 Timothy 2:1-7.

Ecclesiastes 12:8. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity.

Every now and again we meet someone whose religious beliefs challenge our own and send us in a new direction on our spiritual journey. Christianity is caught, not taught. Today we heard the voice of such a person, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. He turns up so rarely that I have to tell you about him now or you'll miss him. Did you know that in our three year lectionary of readings at mass on Sundays, Ecclesiastes only turns up once? I think there's a conspiracy against him. You see, the Preacher is a pessimist. That's not a popular stance today. Christianity is now relentlessly upbeat and optimistic, it's become like physiotherapy, we're encouraged to feel better all the time, and get happier, because we're Christians. That suits some, but not all of us. Melancholy, an entirely respectable emotion, gets little encouragement in today's church. This sunny confidence suits the professionals, because then we've got something to sell, some sort of fulfilment, the attractive answers which you haven't got yet. Watch out for that vanity. Time and time again a false note is struck, and the faithful are offered, not a full and complete life in the presence of God, but a fantasy world in which we are going to improve, be someone better (and feel guilty if we're not), find the gold at the end of the rainbow, know all the answers. Most of that is pretence, or vanity. As Tolstoy said, Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one wants to change himself. The strain of that sort of upbeat religion, I find, is exhausting, "full of weariness" as the Preacher says. Give me Ecclesiastes any time. I love him. His book's a muddle, but it's the work of an honest man, who wants to be religious and does it his way.

To understand his personality, we should go away and read the whole book. It's only twelve chapters, and as we read it we will come across all sorts of quotations which have passed into the English language. Vanity of vanities. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold all is vanity, and vexation of spirit. To every thing there is a season. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Cast thy bread upon the waters. A time to be born and a time to die. And that most reassuring of observations: much study is a weariness of the flesh. The Preacher doesn't see God's purpose in the world. He sees that there is nothing new under the sun, and everything is repeated because nothing is remembered. He doesn't see God in other people. He sees the world as a good place, but he is pessimistic about the human race; he sees greed, ignorance, madness, no progress. He despairs of all he has done, and all his achievements and possessions, because he knows that those who come after him will ruin everything. The Preacher's a clever chap, but being clever doesn't help him (and it won't help us) to see a meaning in this life. It just leads to sleepless nights. He doesn't even get within talking distance of God. Yet we know that this is a religious man. His pessimism is quite attractive, because it is the pessimism of a genuine seeker after truth, who has been given a glimpse of the glory of God. God has put eternity into man's mind, says the Preacher. The honest seeker after truth remains in touch with reality. The Church of England, has always been home for those on that lonely quest. But we sometimes give the impression that if the church members don't have a close relationship with God week by week, then they are somehow not up to scratch. This should not be so. The Preacher's book, Ecclesiastes, is in the Bible, precisely because there is a place in the Church for those who are making their spiritual journey in the dark, as the Preacher did.

In the end the Preacher has nothing left to go on, except a faith that with God alone lie the answers we're looking for. Faith isn't knowing all the answers, faith is not trying to believe impossible things. Faith is a decision, and we have chosen the Christian faith, the Christian way of living. To have faith is to be faithful, to persist in the honest search for religious truth, even when the world appears to us as it appeared to the author of Ecclesiastes, a meaningless random sort of place, sometimes pleasant, sometimes hateful. So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter. This is a very English, or perhaps I should say Anglican book, in its depiction of a single faithful soul trying to make sense of the world, and it is ultimately hopeful. It's what Newman saw, that we don't need to know all the answers, if we walk by faith. Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom. The Preacher's famous advice is: eat, drink and be merry. We're bright enough to look beyond the attractive literal meaning. It means that the answer to life is to live it. This is what God has given us to do. Everything else, trying to make sense of and thereby control everything, is vanity, it is like pursuing the wind.