Vanity of vanities! All is vanity…
Says the Teacher in Ecclesiastes. And we are led to understand this is someone who has had it all: he says “When I was king over Israel in Jerusalem”. He has tasted wealth, power, security, material abundance, and prestige and having done so, finds it all empty, or perhaps finds himself still empty, despite it all. “Vanity of vanities!”, he says, “All is vanity.”
Most of us here won’t have the opportunity to do the same experiment of having it all to see whether we too find it empty, but I think many of us can recognise the temptation of our Gospel reading to think: if I had just a bit more, then I will feel secure, and when I feel secure then I can relax, be generous with others, begin to worry less and live more. We can connect to the man of the parable who wants to hold onto just a bit more, and more, and more. Investing time, energy and life into trying to feel secure. Hoping it will work and we too can say, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”
I wonder though, is it really our soul that longs for this level of security? Or is it another part of us? What does our soul really long for?
As humans, we have a quite understandable, natural inner drive for security. We do want to know that we can eat today and in the days to come, that we will be warm and housed and will be able to look after ourselves and those we love. These things are indeed important. But we also often sense that this drive is never quite satisfied; I think because we recognise that these things, while important, aren’t the things of real meaning and purpose. While important, they are not the things that lead our heart and soul into God’s flourishing. For that we need something more.
And this turns us to faith. Our pilgrimage of faith, may in one sense, be described as a process of discerning what is vanity and mist, and what is enduring and real.
So, what then is real? What then is enduring? Is it as bleak as the author of Ecclesiastes has it: that ‘he saw all the deeds that are done under the sun and that all is vanity and a chasing after the wind.’? That, therefore nothing has meaning and all is purposeless? Or is it more like Jesus’ parable: that we are warned simply to be on guard against greed and the lure of an abundance of possessions, which proves to be a false path, and doesn’t lead to God’s flourishing for us.
Our reading from Colossians reminds us of the temptation of idolatry; that is, putting something else in the place of God. We sometimes think of idolatry as a rather old fashioned thing, statues of false Gods and the like, and therefore easy to spot. But at its most profound, we are asked to reflect on what is it in our lives or beliefs that we put in the place of God – that is – where are we misplacing our hopes for security, love, growth, transformation. This is often harder to spot – because often they are good and necessary things, but which have been elevated to an importance they don’t deserve, and on which we place hopes they can’t fulfil.
For example, like our man in the Gospel, we can put money and material security in that place. Money provides us with security – with the ability to feed and clothe ourselves – to put a roof over our head – all things necessary for survival. Money that allows us to meet our needs is a good thing. The irony is, that beyond the ability to meet our basic needs, research shows that more money doesn’t make us feel safer and happier and yet when asked, people regardless of what they currently earn, will universally say that if their income was ‘just 10% higher’ that they would be happier and more secure. We believe that ‘just a bit more’ will bring us the security we long for, but what we actually find is that it doesn’t – it cannot replace the God-shaped hole.
Other idols may be the promises of the personal development, health and wellbeing industries. Excellent things in their place but which can turn into the false promise of self perfection: if we just improve ourselves a bit more – become a bit more confident, resilient, healed, then we can shield ourselves from suffering and sail through life with comfort and ease.
Thirty staff at the Cathedral recently completed the excellent Mental Health First Aider training and one of the things we were reminded of again and again is that we are not looking to ‘fix’ situations or ‘fix’ people – yes, we can work together to grow in skills and resilience and wisdom, we can build and access networks of support, but that never protects us from challenges, disappointments, hurts, pain and imperfection. They are excellent tools for living well, but they too can’t fill the God shaped hole.
So what then does fill this God-shaped hole? That’s a bit like the Sunday School questions where the answer is always Jesus. We know only God can fill the God-shaped hole, but we are also wise enough to recognise the outworking of that answer is a bit more tricky: if I went onto ask how you let God fill the God-shaped hole in your life, what would you say? Most of us know the answer but struggle with the ‘how’.
How do we find God, live with God, dwell in God and let God dwell in us?
We come back to the ongoing journey of discerning what is passing and what is real. Noticing what does bring us purpose and meaning and leaning into those connections, activities and relationships. Noticing what leaves us desiring more, never quite satisfied, and letting go of those false promises.
Sometimes we discern these things through our lived experience and at other times we can learn from the experiences of those who have lived well before us – in Scripture, the lives of the saints, other wisdom literature and those people we know who seem to have discovered something of God that we’d like to know too.
And if in doubt, we turn to the task of love – the task of loving ourselves, others and the world. Knowing and trusting that through the ongoing and transforming task of love, which challenges and reshapes us through each relationship, we understand something more of the heart of God and therefore of what is real and not merely vanity.
God is love, and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them. (1 John 4:16)
And so let us enter again the task of love.