This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalms 41 & 52; Ecclesiastes 2:1-15; Galatians 1:1-17; Matthew 13:44-52
This morning’s Canticles are: Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
Ecclesiastes and life without faith. …and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. — Ecclesiastes 2:11. When you’re headed the wrong way on any journey—and especially the journey of life—the first thing you need is the realization that you’re headed the wrong way. As a whole, the book of Ecclesiastes pursues one dead end after another, driving us to a singular conclusion: all that matters is faith—not generic, fill-in-the-blank, to-whom-it-may-concern faith—but faith in a very specific God. This God is Israel’s Lord, the one who gave commandments to his people (that is, the five books of Moses), and who “will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
The value of Ecclesiastes doesn’t lie in telling us much of anything about what it is to know this God. The value of Ecclesiastes lies in telling us what it is not to know him, so that we know how much we need to know him. As a study in not knowing God, Ecclesiastes is a study in hell on earth.
Today’s lesson from Ecclesiastes is this: Hell is trying to find life in pleasure—the pleasure of laughter, the pleasure of wine, the pleasure of building houses and planting vineyards, the pleasure of controlling others’ lives, the pleasure of buying anything you want, the pleasure of sex-on-demand, even the pleasure of being known as the smartest person in the room. Pleasure doesn’t satisfy—it only demands more. It ends with boredom: “all was vanity and a chasing after wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).
Galatians and life with faith. The Bible’s direct answer to Ecclesiastes’ despair is Paul’s paean to faith in his letter to the Galatians. God has not, in fact, left us to drown in our despair. He’s come down here himself in the person of his Son, “the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age.” Nor has God left it to us to figure it out on our own. He has sent apostles—and in this instance, Paul—“sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead”—to explain the good news to us.
In the next two weeks of Daily Office readings, I pray you are able to make the most of the powerful juxtaposition of Ecclesiastes and Galatians—the one demonstrating the vanity and emptiness of life without true faith in a living God, and the other showing how to respond in faith to the wonder and fulness of new life granted through Jesus Christ. For his kingdom is, as today’s gospel says, “treasure in a hidden field”—really, it’s worth selling all you have to buy that field so you can have that treasure.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+