Pieces of the Picture

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Sermon for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost1 31 July 2016

Emmanuel Church, Greenwood (The Rev.) Christopher Garcia

Pieces of the Picture For many years, in the lobby inside the Pentagon’s metro entrance, hanging on one wall, was a photo collage, a representation of a huge American flag. This work of art is enormous – perhaps twenty or thirty feet tall, and almost twice as wide. This image of a red, white, and blue American flag is made up of hundreds upon hundreds of individual photographs of individual service men and women, thousands of individual faces. Perhaps you have seen other examples this pixilated digital art form. The artist comes up with an overall image – and then constructs that image using hundreds or thousands of smaller images, each selected as a pixel, each contributing something to the larger image, selected for color or tonal value. Together, they made up something bigger. No one individual image alone is the whole picture, indeed no one individual, up close, could see the whole picture. Only when you stand back can you see the work of art. In our first reading today we heard from the Teacher, or narrator in the Book of Ecclesiastes. This narrator has forgotten the larger image, the higher vision of the Kingdom of God, breaking in. His focus is too close, too narrow, too self-centered. “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity,” he says. We translate the narrator’s title as Teacher. He poses as King Solomon, to claim his title and reputation as a man of perfect wisdom, the wisest man who has ever lived. Yet this book was probably written long after Solomon lived, just a couple of centuries before the time of Jesus. His title could also be translated as Preacher, or Gatherer. Indeed, he wants to be the Gatherer of wisdom; he tries to capture the elusive, chase after the undefinable. I think he fails. Its worth remembering that the Bible has all sorts of points of view, all sorts of literary genres. Ecclesiastes is sort of like the New Yorker magazine, or the Onion. When Jewish rabbis were trying to sort out the canon of the Hebrew scriptures, Revised Common Lectionary Proper 13 (Track 2), Year C. Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21. “Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 1

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many wanted to leave this book out. A bit satirical, tongue firmly in cheek, Ecclesiastes is still rooted in the reality of trying to sort out life. All of us have been there. At some point, we think, “What’s the point? Why do we work so hard, when we’re just going to end up dead, anyway?” If work does not give us meaning, perhaps riches will. Yet if you end up rich, you will probably find yourself just as empty, because simply gaining wealth is not the meaning of life. Gaining wealth is not why you and I were created. Fine, Ecclesiastes says. If work and riches won’t do it, how about pleasure? Let’s just seek after pleasure. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Yet just chasing after pleasure won’t gain us happiness, either, because chasing after pleasure is not the meaning of life. Chasing after pleasure is not why you and I were created, either. Not that pleasure is bad, it’s just that pleasure alone is not enough. So the Teacher of Ecclesiastes concludes that all is vanity. Life is like breath, or vapor; fleeting, and elusive. The Gatherer arrives at the end lost, and puzzled, and unsatisfied. His attempt at philosophy fails, because he cannot account for the reality that “the real word is full of inconsistencies and even contradictions that cannot be explained away.”2 He is lost, and puzzled. That brings me back to the image of the flag, made up of thousands of smaller faces. I believe that the Teacher, the Preacher, is trying to find meaning in his own one, small picture. He is too focused on his piece of the puzzle. He focuses more and more on himself: what can I achieve by my toil? What riches can I gather? What pleasures can I experience? Rather than drawing himself into community, rather than making connections, he wall himself off and tries to find meaning by looking inward. He forgets, or never learns, that he is but one piece of the puzzle, one pixel in the larger picture. Jesus tells us that this inward looking search for identity, for meaning, is not only futile, it is dangerous and self-defeating. The rich landowner builds larger and larger barns and hoards all of the wealth of the harvest to himself. Significantly, the rich landowner talks to whom? To himself: to his soul, trying to find meaning within, trying to reassure himself. The rich man says to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” C. Leong Sew, Ecclesiastes, in James L. Mays, gen. ed., The HarperCollins Bible Commentary (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 466. 2

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Yet this self-medication does not work. It never does. The very things that the rich landowner turned to for meaning and security and reassurance turn on him in turn. Look carefully at what God says to the rich landowner in the parable: “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” This very night, your life is being demanded of you. God is not the one who does the reckoning, does the demanding. The reckoning, the demanding comes from the barns and riches and concerns of wealth, the very things the landowner thought were his security. He became possessed by his own possession, and ultimately oppressed and defeated by them. Like the gatherer, or Teacher or Preacher of Ecclesiastes, the rich landowner defeated himself by looking inward for meaning, by building walls and barns, rather than investing in connections and community. But what happens when we pull back the focus? What happens when we look at the bigger picture? What happens when we find our meaning not in one little pixel, each of us looking inward into our own little petty walled-off empire, but step back and appreciate the beauty of the greater Kingdom? “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col 3:3-4). In Christ, in God’s in-breaking kingdom, we do not lose ourselves. In Christ, in God’s in-breaking kingdom, we find our true identity, the true meaning in our life. Paul confronts the tiny early church in Colossae with a sin list that sounds strikingly like our own current political and social narrative. Paul says, you aren’t going to find meaning in fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed. Seen any of that those things being peddled lately? Paul writes, you are not going to find meaning or success in anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language, or lying to one another. A good list to remember in these hundred days running up to the national election. Instead of these things, we have put on something new, and better, and lasting. We have been clothed with a new self. We are part of God’s bigger picture. 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. The Artist comes up with an overall image – the kingdom of God - and then constructs that image using hundreds and thousands of individuals, each contributing something to the larger image. God’s in-breaking kingdom is made up of you and me, of all of us. Those we agree with and those we disagree with. Those who look like us and those who are very different from us.

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Every one of us is important in making up that larger picture. Every one of us has a role to play. Every one of us brings talents and skills and passions and gifts and abilities. Every one of us brings financial generosity. The picture is not complete without you. The church is not the church without you. The kingdom is not the kingdom, without you. If you or I hold back, focus inwards, clutch our gifts and abilities and time and treasure to ourselves, the artist cannot use us very effectively as part of the great masterpiece. So where do you find your meaning? Where do we find out meaning? Looking inward, possessed by your possessions, walled off, or connected, reaching out? What will you contribute? How will you give? What role will you play? Amen.