In the Classroom with Wisdom and The Teacher – 9/13/09 – James 3:1-12, Ecclesiastes 1:1-18

On this first day of the Sunday school year, after much work has gone into recruiting teachers, planning for the year ahead, and teachers have begun their work, I guess it’s OK if we finally break out the fine print.  The New Testament reading for the day just so happens to be James chapter three, whose opening words are most likely not a part of any pitch that Christian Education committees around the world give for potential teachers.  “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”  For those who have already signed the dotted line, we thank you sincerely.  But there’s no going back now.

A little further down in the fine print are the words from the Hebrew Wisdom tradition which open the book of Ecclesiastes.  In contrast to the exalted form of Woman Wisdom that we find in Proverbs, the Teacher, as he calls himself, of Ecclesiastes, is not taken by the mystical union with God that learning and the pursuit of Wisdom can bring about.  “I, the Teacher, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.  I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.  What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted….  For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.”  Inspirational words from “The Teacher.” 

Who still wants to teach?  These readings are full of warnings and caution signs, putting doubt on the value of wisdom, and calling into question the work of teaching.  Reading further in James chapter three, about the destructive power of the tongue, one could get the sense that any kind of speech, whether it be from a teacher to a student or a friend to a friend, is risky business.  Reading further in Ecclesiastes one can get the impression that after all of his life studies, the one thing that this Teacher has learned to pass on to students would go something like this: Life is hard, and then you die.  Sounds like a short class.

When we decided to carry this Wisdom theme for the month I hadn’t been planning on going in this direction today, but I want to talk some about the connections and tensions between Wisdom and teaching.  Wisdom being this ever present, active and engaged teacher who, as Proverbs says, calls out from the streets and the gates of the city, and who is present in the little things of creation.  And teaching being our difficult work of trying to listen to Wisdom, and passing along what we hear to others.

Those of you who have done this for a living know better than the rest of us the challenges and rewards of attempting to teach.  I imagine you’ve experienced James’ words of being “judged with greater strictness” by parents or students who aren’t all that excited about how you are going about your work.  And that you also judge yourselves with a fair amount of strictness in trying to figure out how to do your work well.  And I imagine that there are time when you can sympathize with the words of The Teacher whose opening words are “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.…A generation goes, and a generation comes.”        

There is a fairly simple diagram that I have found helpful that illustrates the elements of the life of the church.  It’s a Venn Diagram, and there are three circles.  One circle is worship – the ways that we express awe and wonder and lament and praise with God.  Another circle is Community – the ways that we share life together.  And the other circle is Mission – how we reach beyond ourselves with good news.  Worship, Community, Mission.  And the center point, where all these circles intersect, is Formation/Transformation.  All of these things working together for this central reality of the church.  Forming and Transforming people and communities is the central activity of the church.  And the act of teaching, education, that we do, is right at that center.  This is a key place where formation happens.  Teaching is a great gift, and one of the titles of Jesus was the Great Teacher.  We are formed by those who teach us. 

For those who have ever found themselves in a teaching role, whether formally or informally, I’m going to offer that in the act of teaching, we always have two companions with us who don’t exactly see eye to eye, but who help us mature as teachers.  One companion is Wisdom, this personified presence that speaks of that which is good and true and beautiful in the world.  The other is The Teacher, the voice behind the book of Ecclesiastes, who through a lifetime of observation and reflection on all the facets of life, often reverts to a single word that seems to characterize the whole blasted thing: Vanity, Meaningless.  Hevel, in Hebrew, which literally means a vapor, a mist, something without real substance.  The Hebrew Wisdom tradition itself contains both of these voices, and they both continue to speak to those of us who have the gumption to put ourselves in the position of teachers.      

Last week I tried to introduce the first of these companions.  Wisdom has a life of its own and is imagined to be like a woman who has built a house and invites all who wish to enter to come in and learn.  Proverbs 8:22 is the voice of Wisdom speaking and it says, “The Lord created me at the beginning of God’s work, the first of God’s acts of long ago.”  She was the first of all God’s creations, there before anything else existed, and everything that follows in creation, every creative act of God, we could say every cluster of energy that exploded out of the Big Bang, has in it some form of wisdom.             

 The Wisdom of Solomon is one of these books that make up the apocrypha – not a part of the Hebrew Old Testament or the Greek New Testament but still considered to represent the biblical tradition in many ways.  It’s one of the books of Wisdom Literature and has the beautiful poem to wisdom in chapter 7 – “For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of God’s goodness.  Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls, and makes them friends of God, and prophets, for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.” 

So Wisdom is this wonderful companion for the teacher.  Or a better way of putting it would probably be that we are Wisdom’s companion.  Wisdom is the great Teacher, already present in all things – already present in the creativity of our children, already present in the subject matter that we try and present, ready to bring us along in becoming friends of God and prophets.  And we as the teacher are the ones who get to help this process along and be a partner with Wisdom. 

That’s one companion, Wisdom, and then the other companion is this tricky booger that Ecclesiastes, also a part of the Wisdom tradition, calls The Teacher.  Because The Teacher has been looking for Wisdom his whole life, been trying to pay attention and be observant and be one of those holy souls that Wisdom passes through, and he’s just not feeling it.  It’s not coming together for him and he’s not going to pretend that he can understand any of this or that creation fits together in one beautiful cosmic work of art.  So The Teacher says things like “I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.  I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.  For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.”  And he says things like “When  I applied my mind to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how one’s eyes see sleep neither day nor night, then I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun.  However much they may toil in seeking, they will not find it out; even though those who are wise claim to know, they cannot find it out.”   In an attempt to know deeply, and to pass on what he has learned to others, The Teacher confronts his own limitations, and often becomes bogged down in frustration, even, at times, despair.  Some of the most constructive teaching he can offer is named in chapter 9, verses 7-10, where he basically says, that we should enjoy life while we can — eat, drink, wear nice clothes, and work hard at what you enjoy, because that’s about the best we can do in life.

One of the teachers I’ve had who reminds me of The Teacher of Ecclesiastes was a history professor at Eastern University.  He was a brilliant guy, knew all sorts of things about history and had been teaching for quite a while, but it was pretty clear that at some point in his career he had become fairly disinterested in his subject.  Somewhere along the way he seemed to have concluded that the more you know about history, the more bleak the future looks.  One of the ways this showed up in the classroom was that he taught with a cynical, although rather humorous tone throughout all the lectures.  Another way this showed up was that he was easily diverted from talking about history to talking about his favorite subject: cheeseburgers.  He loved cheeseburgers and would describe in detail different cheeseburgers he had eaten at different places.  He also had a way of connecting the telling of history with cheeseburgers.  For example, in the 16^th century Martin Luther and the Catholic Bishops could have gotten along a lot better together if they just could have sat down and talked things through while eating cheeseburgers.  They both would have been a lot happier.  Cheeseburgers, and the pleasure that they bring, were the bright light of hope in an otherwise tragic story.

There’s more nuance to Ecclesiastes, but it points toward something that Parker Palmer emphasizes.  He’s a teacher himself, and works to train other teachers, and one of his books is called “The Courage to Teach.”  And he says that every teacher must confront the tangles they run into with 1) their subject matter, and 2) their students.  Both of these containing more complexity and challenges than any teacher can every completely figure out.  He says, ““We must enter, not evade, the tangles of teaching so we can understand them better and negotiate them with more grace, not only to guard our own spirits but also to serve our students well” (p. 2)

And then he goes on to say, which is really his main point and then what the rest of the book is about, that the third tangle confronting teachers is really themselves.  The self of teacher.  That teachers, ultimately, are offering themselves to their students and their subject matter, and that the journey of the teacher is really an inward journey, to maintain one’s interest in teaching, and ultimately, to nurture love.  To let love triumph in us so that our love for our students and our love for our subjects, and, we could say, our love for God, becomes what we teach.  He doesn’t put it this way, but we could say that these two companions of Wisdom and The Teacher also are about our own soul work.  Our desire to become wise people, and the way that we deal with our limitations.

I want to come back to something that I think holds all these different pieces together and close with this – and that is this picture of Wisdom being present at the beginning of creation.  As God creates, Wisdom is there.  This place of creation is also the place where the one who teachers finds herself.  It’s this Genesis One picture of hovering over the unformed stuff of the world, and then being there when formation begins to happen.  Confronting the chaos of the deep waters, and partnering with God as the subject matter begins to take shape.  And using language, the creative instrument of God, Let there be light, as a tool in this creative process.  James three warns that language can be destructive, but we also know it can be constructive and a teacher looks for ways to communicate constructively, in a way that brings to life.  And teaching becomes a partnership with God, a partnership with Wisdom in the ongoing process of creation.

We are grateful for those with the courage to teach.  Here, and in the schools in our city, and a few that teach at home.  We believe this is a great gift you are giving to us and an important way that you are letting God move through you.  May you find companionship with Wisdom and The Teacher, and may you know God’s grace, extended to you, in your own formation.

 

Looking For (Good) Work – 6/22/08 – Ecclesiastes 3:9-14, 4:1-6

Work. For better or for worse, much of our identities are tied up into our work. One of the first questions that we ask people when we’re getting to know them is “What do you do?” It doesn’t tell us everything about a person, but it does help give insight into a significant part of a person’s life. The challenges one is used to facing on a regular basis through one’s work are formative of one’s personality and outlook on life.

To separate work from spirituality would be a great loss. We regularly give our best energy to our work. Many of our most creative thoughts, a high percentage of our waking hours, the skills that we have taken years to develop, go into our work. A contractor, a social worker, a stay at home parent, an engineer, a factory worker, all have different ways of expressing their spirituality in their work.

Gregory Pierce has written a book called Spirituality@Work and uses this simple definition for work: “All effort (paid or unpaid) we exert to make the world a better place, a little closer to the way God would have things.” Pierce names himself as “piety impaired” and says the kind of spirituality he lives out and encourages in others, “has little to do with piety and much more to do with our becoming aware of the intrinsically spiritual nature of the work we are doing and then acting on that awareness. Authentic spirituality – at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition – is as much about making hard choices in our daily lives, about working with others to make the world a better place, and about loving our neighbor and even our enemy, as it is about worship and prayer.” (The Marketplace magazine, March/April 2008, p. 4)

One of the commentaries on the world of work these days is the comic strip Dilbert. I’m not a Dilbert junkie by any means, but I do try and check in most mornings while reading the newspaper to see what’s going on there. It’s been observed that Dilbert is a one joke comic. The joke is that work is spiritually vacant, depressing, and all about a nonproductive confrontation of egos, and everybody is miserably playing along with the game. The funny thing is, the joke works every time. Each comic strip is another meeting, another water cooler conversation, another email or phone exchange, another cubicle confrontation where this punch line shows up again and again. Dilbert’s popularity has to reveal something about how painfully close it comes to many people’s reality.

Sitting around a meeting table with Dilbert and the pointy haired boss, co-worker Wally says, “I took a class on being less useless. Now I see the world in a different light. For example, I recognize these staff meetings as colossal wastes of time, but there’s nothing I can do about them. Now my helplessness makes my uselessness seem unimportant.” At another meeting Dilbert is giving a presentation and pointing to a projection on the wall with lots of different shapes and arrows going every which way. He says, “You won’t read my technical report so I summarized it in this complicated slide. If you stare at it long enough you will either experience the illusion of understanding it or be too embarrassed to admit you don’t. Do you have any questions to betray your ignorance?” To which someone looks at the slide and asks, “Is the triangle thing mad at the tube?” In another comic Dilbert’s boss, who is continually coming up with meaningless work to make the company seem more efficient and productive, is leading a meeting and saying: “Starting today, all passwords must contain letters, numbers, doodles, sign language, and squirrel noises.”

In Dilbert’s world, work brings out the worst in people.

If there is a biblical equivalent to Dilbert, it would have to be the book of Ecclesiastes – only here the burden of work is more of a tragedy than a comedy. Ecclesiastes, written by one called “The Teacher,” is a reflection by someone who refuses to ignore the darker side of reality or be easily comforted by platitudes. The book begins in this upbeat way: “Utter futility, says the teacher, utter futility. All is futile. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? One generation goes, another comes. But the earth remains the same forever. The sun rises, and the sun sets – And glides back to where it rises. Southward blowing, Turning northward, Ever turning blows the wind; On its rounds the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow. All things are wearisome; more than one can express.” The word used in the opening line, “Futility,” is a theme throughout the writing, showing up in 11 of the 12 chapters for a total of 38 times. It literally means a “vapor” or a “mist,” something without substance or meaning. Useless and empty. Futility. It’s often followed by the phrase, “a chasing after the wind,” an example of something elusive and pretty much pointless.

Ecclesiastes covers more than the world of work and labor, but does mention this a number of times. One of the main complaints is that what we do and all of our efforts make such a little difference. The teacher is fond of saying that “there is nothing new under the sun.” “That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is.” The seasons come and go, we do what we do, and things stay pretty much the same. The teacher asks, “What gain have the workers from their toil?”

The Teacher is also mindful of injustices connected with labor and the apparent lack of divine or human regulation going on to right these wrongs. Chapter 4 begins, “Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed – with no one to comfort them! On the side of the oppressors there was power – with no one to comfort them….Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from one person’s envy of another. This also is a futility and a chasing after the wind.”

But this isn’t all that scripture has to say about work. Like many other aspects of life, the original vision for what something can be like, comes out of the mythical first chapters of Genesis. Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took and placed the human creature in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” The original vocation of humanity was to be keepers of the earth, stewards of creation. And like the rest of creation, this is good. Work is good. It’s actually a gift. Work has meaning and is part of who we are. It’s in our DNA to long for good work to do. To care for our plot of land, to care for our neighbors, to create and invent and build and collaborate together on projects that enhance the beauty of the world. We can’t separate ourselves from this connection to work. Whether we are getting paid for it or not, we are all workers looking for good work to do.

It’s possible to read the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures as a people’s long journey from poor work – futile toiling and laboring – toward good work. It didn’t take long after Genesis 2, of course, for the joy of work to become the burden of work. And it didn’t take much longer for the burden of work to become the worst form of work, slavery — when one people or nation seeks not to care for the earth and nurture life and beauty, but to dominate the earth and consolidate power. The ancient Israelites found themselves on the underside of an Egyptian empire that sought this very control over the world. And work became not a life giving activity, but a life-draining demand. Exodus tells that, “The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them” (Exodus 1:13-14). The harder the Hebrews worked, the more the Egyptians demanded from them, eventually not even supplying them with straw for the bricks they were making, but asking them to gather their own straw while still having the same quota of bricks. And so the people cry out.

In The Lord of the Rings book, Frodo’s companion Sam says, “The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.”

Yahweh, the God of slaves and all oppressed people, could not agree more with the theologian from The Shire, Sam Gamgee. Yahweh hears the cry of the slaves and responds with a mighty hand to deliver the Hebrews from their slavery and to bring them out as a free people, giving them laws and commandments in order that they may keep living as free people. A people who will partner with God in the good work of being a blessing to all nations.

There is a phrase in the scriptures that represents the vision of what good work looks like. When everyone has opportunity for constructive, meaningful work. It’s a phrase that also refers to a state of security and peace and social stability. The prophet Micah uses the phrase when he says, “God shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.” (Micah 4:3-4). Sitting under one’s own vine and fig tree was a symbol of people having the freedom from fear of violence, and the freedom of good work on one’s own plot of land. To care for one’s family and community.

So the Hebrews who become the Israelites make the God-led move from the toil and poor work of slavery toward good work that can lead toward all sitting under their own vine and fig tree.

For the last couple of years I’ve been engaged in the work of pastoring. I have found this to be good work and am grateful for the chance to have this kind of work. Inevitably, there are two common responses that people give when I tell them that I’m a pastor. One is to say that pastoring must be the most difficult, challenging work that there is, something that no one would really do in their right mind. The other is to say that pastoring must be the most rewarding, meaningful work that there is, right in the middle of God’s work in the world. Without meaning any disrespect to the calling of pastors, I believe that this work is no more and no less a part of God’s mission in the world than many other forms of work that are available. We are all engaged in difficult work that we have to be a little out of our mind to be doing, and we are all right in the middle of God’s work that can be meaningful and rewarding.

Here’s a line from a recent essay put out by the Alban Institute that summarizes all of this well: “Every rightful human task is some aspect of God’s own work: making, designing, doing chores, beautifying, organizing, helping, bringing dignity, and leading. Our work then is to reflect God’s work. As the apostle Paul proclaims, ‘Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people’” (Col. 3:23). (Alban “Called to purpose and meaning” 5/12/08)

We’re all called to good work, and even the Dilbertesque Teacher of Ecclesiastes is willing to give some worth to this calling: In 3:12-14 it says, “I know that there is nothing better for us than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we live. Moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before God.”

Over the next few weeks we’ll keep reflecting together on work and spirituality. What makes for good work? How do we encounter God and wisdom at work and through work? As a way of visualizing the coming together of work and spirituality we’re inviting everyone to bring in some object from their work world to be up front in our worship space. This could a hammer, a calculator, a baby toy, a book, or whatever may symbolize what you give your time to throughout the day. I’m going to get things started by placing this sermon manuscript on the table. May God bless our worship and our work and bring them together as one expression of love for God and neighbor.