Focus
Commentary
A couple years ago there was a fad involving optical illusions called "Magic Eye" pictures. These pictures, often blown up to poster size, looked like a mess of colored dots and lines. Supposedly, if you stared at one long enough, a picture would emerge. People either saw it or they didn't. Those who saw it were thrilled. The images that would emerge were actually three-dimensional. I stared at one of these posters in a store for a long time once. Other customers would stop and look for about thirty seconds and exclaim, "Oh, my gosh! Look at that! It's an eagle -- and it's coming right out of the page!" Well, I stared for a long time and I never did see any eagle. People told me to squint or to stand here or there, but it didn't help. Mostly, they told me I had to focus, whatever that means. I had to quit looking at the dots and the lines and just focus on what was there. I suspected the whole thing was a hoax, but an awful lot of people would have had to be in on it.
The lessons for today, especially the latter two, are about focus, about how we look at life. The suggestion is offered that baptized people can see the world (including themselves) differently than other people. It's no magic gift. It's just a question of orientation. It doesn't come automatically either. It's a perspective we must be encouraged to adopt, one that we may be inclined to abandon unless we are continually re-encouraged to adopt it anew. Paul calls it being heavenly-minded. Jesus calls it being rich toward God. It involves seeing through the clutter; in fact it involves seeing God in the clutter.
I never did see that eagle -- just a mess of cluttered lines and dots. But my son got a book of these pictures for Christmas, and one night when I was staring at a page, the Statue of Liberty suddenly rose up out of the clutter, stood up from the page, so real that I felt I could touch it. It didn't really matter, but I felt like I'd attained some higher consciousness. So, I guess the eagle probably was there, too.
Hosea 11:1-11
The book of Hosea is best known for its extended metaphor that likens God's relationship to Israel to that of a cuckold with an unfaithful spouse (see especially chapters 1-3). But here the metaphor is different: a parent with a prodigal son. Indeed, this text may have provided the inspiration for the famous parable in Luke 15.
The history of Israel is rehearsed, beginning not with Abraham as we might have expected, but with the exodus. God's deliverance there constituted a divine selection based on love. Israel, then, is God's adopted child, the more beloved for being the object of deliberate choice. Note the terms of endearing kindness employed in verses 3-4, the almost sentimental image of parental affection.
But Israel is undeserving and rebellious. Repeated transgression had led to the present predicament. The nation is about to be engulfed by Assyria. Bent on turning away from God, they are, for all practical purposes, about to return to Egypt again. It is as though the exodus -- the adoption -- never happened. Israel behaves as an orphan.
Still, God's love for Israel remains. "How can I give you up?" God cries in verse 8. Here, at the center of the text, we are offered a rare glimpse of God as self-conflicted. God's compassion and "fierce anger" coincide in a heart of anguish. On the one hand, God is inclined to destroy Israel utterly, like Admah and Zeboiim, cities that were apparently regarded as cousins of Sodom and Gomorrah (see Genesis 10:19; 14:2, 8; Deuteronomy 29:23). On the other hand, God's love for Israel remains. "My heart recoils within me," God says. In other words, God regrets loving Israel, but God does love Israel all the same.
This picture of an anguished God is compelling, but biblical anthropomorphism has its limits. Eventually God declares, "I am God and no mortal." Thus, God is able to transcend anger and compassion alike. God will not act out of emotion, but will do what needs to be done. In this case, that means that God will indeed hand Israel over for destruction, but, still, God's love for Israel will remain.
God looks beyond past and present to a day when the people will come to the Lord who roars like a lion. The image implies that they will be drawn not only by God's compassion but by God's wrath as well. They will fear and love God, embracing God's anger along with God's mercy, valuing law as dearly as gospel.
Colossians 3:1-11
We sometimes criticize those who take a simplistic approach to religion as being "so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good." Perhaps we should repent of such caricatures. Perhaps this text will convict us, give us pause -- if only for a moment -- to wonder if we are not the simple ones. "Set your minds on things that are above," the author writes, "not on things that are on the earth." That's what scripture commends.
Of course, we must keep reading to see what the author regards as "earthly." Verse 5 provides a list and, then, in case he missed a few items, verse 8 provides another list. Vices are what we're talking about. When this author tells us not to set our minds on "earthly things" he doesn't mean to ignore social concerns, political issues, and so forth. He means to re-orient ourselves away from the tendencies that come naturally to us as children of the earth, made from dust. Of course we are children of the earth, but this text says we have died, we have been raised with Christ, and our life is now hidden with Christ in God.
It is talking about baptism. Through baptism, we have been clothed with a new image. This, of course, is a mystery -- that's what it means to say our new life is hidden in God. It is not readily apparent to everyone else, or even to us. It will remain hidden to some extent until that great day when Christ is revealed in glory.
But for now the point is focus. It is as though this new image of life in Christ has been superimposed upon the old. We are encouraged to set our sights on the new, to concentrate on it, to seek that which is above. This is the key, or at least, a key to formation. Seeing ourselves as baptized children of heaven -- not just children of the earth -- enables transcendence, takes us out of this world precisely in ways that improve us and, ironically, improve our world as well.
One unfortunate legacy of the Social Gospel movement (for all its accomplishments) was the creation of a false dichotomy between concern for improving the world and desire to transcend it. Arguing -- often necessarily -- from a defensive posture, those who wish to inspire social action sometimes denounce "prayer warriors" whose minds are set on spiritual things but care nothing for their neighbors. But I have met the latter only as sermon illustrations, never in reality. In my church, the fundamentalist ladies who gathered to pray every Tuesday morning were the same ones who sewed bandages for the Red Cross, delivered meals to the elderly, and collected groceries for the food pantry. They were involved in politics, too, though not necessarily with the issues I would favor. They had their problems -- we all do -- but being heavenly-minded or devoted to prayer did not produce those problems. Rather, these "prayer warriors" showed heavenly-mindedness to be an orientation worth emulating, even by non-fundamentalists.
Luke 12:13-21
Now the issue of orientation really hits! The man in Jesus' memorable parable of the rich fool perfectly depicts one who sets his mind on earthly things rather than seeking the things that are above. He explicitly exemplifies one of the vices listed in our second lesson -- greed, which is idolatry (v. 15; see Colossians 3:5).
The power of the story lies in what it does not say. It does not, for instance, depict the rich man as evil or wicked. It does not say that he acquired his wealth through dishonest or exploitative measures, nor does it say that he used it in ways that oppressed or harmed others. It does not even say that he refused to share his wealth in ways that would help the poor or stimulate the economy. If anything, he must have been providing jobs for farmhands -- not to mention barn builders.
But the commentaries go too far. Many of them suggest that this rich man has no failing except that he is rich -- which for Luke is supposed to be reason enough to condemn him (compare 6:24). Not true. He has one very significant failing: he is not rich toward God (v. 21).
What does that mean? What would he have done dif-ferently if he were rich toward God? Would he have given half of his possessions to the poor like Zacchaeus (19:8)? Would he have built a synagogue, like the centurion in 7:4-5? Luke doesn't say, partly because he wants us to have to think about it, to decide what we would have done if we were he. More to the point, the issue is orientation, for which any number of actions might have provided specific manifestations. The rich man is oriented, focused, on earthly things. He seems to have no hidden life, no mysterious other self such as is promised us in baptism.
We should also note that the text is quite reserved in its description of this man's fate. There is no eternal torment awaiting him, as in the companion parable of the rich man and Lazarus (16:19-31). The tragedy that befalls him is simply that of a wasted life. He is a fool because he believed that life consisted in abundance of possessions (v. 15). He spent his life accumulating things that were only temporal. It's as they always say, "You can't take it with you." This is why you never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul.
In our culture of consumerism, the parable also sounds a simple common-sense lesson in keeping with biblical wisdom tradition. It is a parable about knowing when enough is enough. This man had a plan. Someday, he was going to enjoy life, to say to his soul, "Relax, eat, drink, be merry." Notably, there is nothing wrong with saying this -- as Ecclesiastes 2:24 makes clear. The problem was not that he wanted to do this -- the problem was that he didn't actually do it. He didn't allow himself to relax or be merry. Not yet, he thought. First, I'll build bigger barns.
Apparently, this man had been rich for some time. The new bumper crop had only increased his surplus to overflowing. This fool could have started enjoying life long ago but he didn't. He thought, "Let me get just a little more." And then he died. On this level, the moral is so simple -- it's a truth that all know and few heed. Again, the cliches: "This is your life. It is not a dress rehearsal." Or, as John Lennon put it (a month before he was shot dead): "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." This is a parable about a man who had a plan for life, but never got around to living.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Hosea 11:1-11
Few passages in the Old Testament are more important than this one, because it sets forth central understandings of the nature of God and of his relation to Israel and to the course of world history.
When the Lord delivered that bunch of slaves from Egypt that later became the nucleus of his people in the thirteenth century B.C., he made them a people and adopted them as his son. Knowing that is absolutely necessary for understanding the Bible. Israel was God's adopted son. The Lord redeemed Israel, that is, he acknowledge Israel to be his family member whom he bought back out of slavery -- that is the meaning of redemption (cf. Leviticus 25:47-55). And so from the time of the exodus onward, Israel is God's adopted son, and God is Israel's Father (cf. Exodus 4:22-23; Deuteronomy 32:6; Jeremiah 3:19; 31:20; Isaiah 1:2; 63:16; Malachi 1:6; 2:10).
What follow in this passage, therefore, are the tender scenes of God the Father caring for his adopted son. God taught infant Israel how to walk, holding out a finger for the child to grasp as he toddled along and stumbled and fell, and was lifted up again in his Father's arms (v. 3). Gently and compassionately God led Israel along the path of life by giving them his presence in the law (Deuteronomy 4:7) and granting them the guidance of the Word from prophets (cf. Amos 2:11) and priests.
Verse 4 of our text is often emended by changing one Hebrew vowel to read, "And I was to them as those who lift a baby to their cheek, and I bent down to feed him." Whether the emendation is accepted, or the verse is read as in the RSV, the tenderness and compassion of the Lord are clear.
But Israel has forgotten the tenderness and love of its Father and has run from God like a disobedient child. God has repeatedly called, and Israel has not listened (v. 2). Indeed, Israel is so set in its apostasy and worship of the fertility gods of baal that it cannot return. "Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God,/For the spirit of harlotry is within them, and they know not the Lord" (Hosea 5:4).
They are slaves of their sin, Paul would say, captives to the habit of idolatry, just as we become habitually captive to our sin and forgetfulness of the One who made us. God calls us through his written and preached Word, and we do not listen, running out into the path of danger, with our Father pleading with us to stop.
The wages of sin is death, however (Romans 6:23), and disobedient Israel will receive that wage, just as every wanton one of us will be paid what we have earned. "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap," writes Paul. "God is not mocked" (Galatians 6:7).
And yet -- and yet -- when God considers the death of his adopted people, he cries out in longing. "How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel!" How can I make you like those cities of Admah and Zeboiim that were destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah (Deuteronomy 29:23)?
The Bible tells us that God has no pleasure in the death of anyone. He just wants us to turn our lives around and to live (Ezekiel 18:32). And so God weeps over his disobedient child Israel, as our Lord wept over Jerusalem (Luke 13:34), and as he still weeps over us. And because he is pure and merciful love, he cannot give up us his children, any more than he could finally give up his adopted child Israel. At the end, writes Paul, "All Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26). Beyond Israel's exile to Assyria, beyond its apparent de-struction for its sin, there is a new and saved people of God that will know salvation.
The reason is plain. God is the Holy One (v. 9), that is, he is totally other than anything or anyone in all creation. His thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9), and his fatherly love for those whom he has made, for Israel and for us, is beyond all comprehension. So there is at the end of our passage the glad picture of Israel saved and returned home -- the dream of God for the future of his adopted son.
As for us, God's love is made manifest in the figure of a young man, hanging on a cross on a hill called Golgotha. There is God's declaration to us that he cannot give us up, despite all our wayward wandering from his fatherly directions, despite all our indifference toward the One who has taught us to walk, and constantly carried us in his arms, and continually bent down to feed us with his good. Instead of giving us up to the death that our sins so richly deserve, God gives up his only begotten Son, and you and I are offered the free gift of life in Jesus Christ.
It finally is a lesson in history, isn't it? -- that the one fact that will triumph in this world is the love of God. For all the evil of nations, and despite all the wrong of the human race, God is sovereign over every form of evil. He was sovereign over Israel's sin, sovereign over Assyria that took her captive, sovereign over the power of Rome that nailed Jesus Christ to the cross. And he is yet sovereign over our lives, for which he wills only his eternal life and love. Who can refuse the Father of such amazing love?
Lutheran Option, Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
These excerpts from Ecclesiastes could be a characterization of our society. The author of Ecclesiastes, who is called the Preacher, sets out to make an examination of the ways of Wisdom Theology. And in that examination, he studies the work at which men and women toil. It is full of vexation, the author writes. A person strains to do a good job, takes his work home with him at night, worries about it on his bed, and gets up and does the same thing all over again the next day.
But what is the point of it all? the writer wants to know. To what does it lead? Nothing lasts. The contributions that you make are soon forgotten. The capital that you have accumulated may just be foolishly spent by your heirs. Two generations from now, even your relatives will no longer remember much about you.
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more (Psalm 103:15-16).
All the pain, all the toil, all the anxiety and worry that we pour into our daily round finally are part of a transitory life that ends up in nothing -- in vanity, nothingness, as the Preacher says. "Vanity, all is vanity."
To be sure, we all have to earn our daily bread and support our families and put a roof over their heads. And we all do try to do a good job at whatever labor we undertake. But the Preacher here in our text is asking the deeper question. What is the meaning of it all? What endures? What eternal significance does my little life or yours have in the course of history that just goes on and on and on?
Ecclesiastes' answer to that was simply to enjoy the life and work and family love that God has given us, and not to worry about the future. "There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil" (v. 24). "Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life which (God) has given you under the sun ... Whatever your hands find to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol (the place of the dead), to which you are going" (Ecclesiastes 9:9-10). To enjoy your brief span -- that's the meaning of your life. As a young man said to me this summer, "I think the purpose of life is just to be happy."
The Apostle Paul knows differently, however, because he knows that Jesus Christ is risen. At the end of 1 Corinthians 15, which is Paul's great chapter on the resurrection, Paul tells us Christians, "Therefore, my beloved ... be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."
In God's service, you see, nothing is vanity and meaningless, because God uses that labor to further his purpose on earth. And finally, in God's love, our work is taken up into his eternal kingdom and perfected. And you and I end up not in the dark forgetfulness of the grave, but in the joyful company of God's everlasting family. If our lives are dedicated to the obedience, the service, the love of God, never are they in vain.
The lessons for today, especially the latter two, are about focus, about how we look at life. The suggestion is offered that baptized people can see the world (including themselves) differently than other people. It's no magic gift. It's just a question of orientation. It doesn't come automatically either. It's a perspective we must be encouraged to adopt, one that we may be inclined to abandon unless we are continually re-encouraged to adopt it anew. Paul calls it being heavenly-minded. Jesus calls it being rich toward God. It involves seeing through the clutter; in fact it involves seeing God in the clutter.
I never did see that eagle -- just a mess of cluttered lines and dots. But my son got a book of these pictures for Christmas, and one night when I was staring at a page, the Statue of Liberty suddenly rose up out of the clutter, stood up from the page, so real that I felt I could touch it. It didn't really matter, but I felt like I'd attained some higher consciousness. So, I guess the eagle probably was there, too.
Hosea 11:1-11
The book of Hosea is best known for its extended metaphor that likens God's relationship to Israel to that of a cuckold with an unfaithful spouse (see especially chapters 1-3). But here the metaphor is different: a parent with a prodigal son. Indeed, this text may have provided the inspiration for the famous parable in Luke 15.
The history of Israel is rehearsed, beginning not with Abraham as we might have expected, but with the exodus. God's deliverance there constituted a divine selection based on love. Israel, then, is God's adopted child, the more beloved for being the object of deliberate choice. Note the terms of endearing kindness employed in verses 3-4, the almost sentimental image of parental affection.
But Israel is undeserving and rebellious. Repeated transgression had led to the present predicament. The nation is about to be engulfed by Assyria. Bent on turning away from God, they are, for all practical purposes, about to return to Egypt again. It is as though the exodus -- the adoption -- never happened. Israel behaves as an orphan.
Still, God's love for Israel remains. "How can I give you up?" God cries in verse 8. Here, at the center of the text, we are offered a rare glimpse of God as self-conflicted. God's compassion and "fierce anger" coincide in a heart of anguish. On the one hand, God is inclined to destroy Israel utterly, like Admah and Zeboiim, cities that were apparently regarded as cousins of Sodom and Gomorrah (see Genesis 10:19; 14:2, 8; Deuteronomy 29:23). On the other hand, God's love for Israel remains. "My heart recoils within me," God says. In other words, God regrets loving Israel, but God does love Israel all the same.
This picture of an anguished God is compelling, but biblical anthropomorphism has its limits. Eventually God declares, "I am God and no mortal." Thus, God is able to transcend anger and compassion alike. God will not act out of emotion, but will do what needs to be done. In this case, that means that God will indeed hand Israel over for destruction, but, still, God's love for Israel will remain.
God looks beyond past and present to a day when the people will come to the Lord who roars like a lion. The image implies that they will be drawn not only by God's compassion but by God's wrath as well. They will fear and love God, embracing God's anger along with God's mercy, valuing law as dearly as gospel.
Colossians 3:1-11
We sometimes criticize those who take a simplistic approach to religion as being "so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good." Perhaps we should repent of such caricatures. Perhaps this text will convict us, give us pause -- if only for a moment -- to wonder if we are not the simple ones. "Set your minds on things that are above," the author writes, "not on things that are on the earth." That's what scripture commends.
Of course, we must keep reading to see what the author regards as "earthly." Verse 5 provides a list and, then, in case he missed a few items, verse 8 provides another list. Vices are what we're talking about. When this author tells us not to set our minds on "earthly things" he doesn't mean to ignore social concerns, political issues, and so forth. He means to re-orient ourselves away from the tendencies that come naturally to us as children of the earth, made from dust. Of course we are children of the earth, but this text says we have died, we have been raised with Christ, and our life is now hidden with Christ in God.
It is talking about baptism. Through baptism, we have been clothed with a new image. This, of course, is a mystery -- that's what it means to say our new life is hidden in God. It is not readily apparent to everyone else, or even to us. It will remain hidden to some extent until that great day when Christ is revealed in glory.
But for now the point is focus. It is as though this new image of life in Christ has been superimposed upon the old. We are encouraged to set our sights on the new, to concentrate on it, to seek that which is above. This is the key, or at least, a key to formation. Seeing ourselves as baptized children of heaven -- not just children of the earth -- enables transcendence, takes us out of this world precisely in ways that improve us and, ironically, improve our world as well.
One unfortunate legacy of the Social Gospel movement (for all its accomplishments) was the creation of a false dichotomy between concern for improving the world and desire to transcend it. Arguing -- often necessarily -- from a defensive posture, those who wish to inspire social action sometimes denounce "prayer warriors" whose minds are set on spiritual things but care nothing for their neighbors. But I have met the latter only as sermon illustrations, never in reality. In my church, the fundamentalist ladies who gathered to pray every Tuesday morning were the same ones who sewed bandages for the Red Cross, delivered meals to the elderly, and collected groceries for the food pantry. They were involved in politics, too, though not necessarily with the issues I would favor. They had their problems -- we all do -- but being heavenly-minded or devoted to prayer did not produce those problems. Rather, these "prayer warriors" showed heavenly-mindedness to be an orientation worth emulating, even by non-fundamentalists.
Luke 12:13-21
Now the issue of orientation really hits! The man in Jesus' memorable parable of the rich fool perfectly depicts one who sets his mind on earthly things rather than seeking the things that are above. He explicitly exemplifies one of the vices listed in our second lesson -- greed, which is idolatry (v. 15; see Colossians 3:5).
The power of the story lies in what it does not say. It does not, for instance, depict the rich man as evil or wicked. It does not say that he acquired his wealth through dishonest or exploitative measures, nor does it say that he used it in ways that oppressed or harmed others. It does not even say that he refused to share his wealth in ways that would help the poor or stimulate the economy. If anything, he must have been providing jobs for farmhands -- not to mention barn builders.
But the commentaries go too far. Many of them suggest that this rich man has no failing except that he is rich -- which for Luke is supposed to be reason enough to condemn him (compare 6:24). Not true. He has one very significant failing: he is not rich toward God (v. 21).
What does that mean? What would he have done dif-ferently if he were rich toward God? Would he have given half of his possessions to the poor like Zacchaeus (19:8)? Would he have built a synagogue, like the centurion in 7:4-5? Luke doesn't say, partly because he wants us to have to think about it, to decide what we would have done if we were he. More to the point, the issue is orientation, for which any number of actions might have provided specific manifestations. The rich man is oriented, focused, on earthly things. He seems to have no hidden life, no mysterious other self such as is promised us in baptism.
We should also note that the text is quite reserved in its description of this man's fate. There is no eternal torment awaiting him, as in the companion parable of the rich man and Lazarus (16:19-31). The tragedy that befalls him is simply that of a wasted life. He is a fool because he believed that life consisted in abundance of possessions (v. 15). He spent his life accumulating things that were only temporal. It's as they always say, "You can't take it with you." This is why you never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul.
In our culture of consumerism, the parable also sounds a simple common-sense lesson in keeping with biblical wisdom tradition. It is a parable about knowing when enough is enough. This man had a plan. Someday, he was going to enjoy life, to say to his soul, "Relax, eat, drink, be merry." Notably, there is nothing wrong with saying this -- as Ecclesiastes 2:24 makes clear. The problem was not that he wanted to do this -- the problem was that he didn't actually do it. He didn't allow himself to relax or be merry. Not yet, he thought. First, I'll build bigger barns.
Apparently, this man had been rich for some time. The new bumper crop had only increased his surplus to overflowing. This fool could have started enjoying life long ago but he didn't. He thought, "Let me get just a little more." And then he died. On this level, the moral is so simple -- it's a truth that all know and few heed. Again, the cliches: "This is your life. It is not a dress rehearsal." Or, as John Lennon put it (a month before he was shot dead): "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." This is a parable about a man who had a plan for life, but never got around to living.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Hosea 11:1-11
Few passages in the Old Testament are more important than this one, because it sets forth central understandings of the nature of God and of his relation to Israel and to the course of world history.
When the Lord delivered that bunch of slaves from Egypt that later became the nucleus of his people in the thirteenth century B.C., he made them a people and adopted them as his son. Knowing that is absolutely necessary for understanding the Bible. Israel was God's adopted son. The Lord redeemed Israel, that is, he acknowledge Israel to be his family member whom he bought back out of slavery -- that is the meaning of redemption (cf. Leviticus 25:47-55). And so from the time of the exodus onward, Israel is God's adopted son, and God is Israel's Father (cf. Exodus 4:22-23; Deuteronomy 32:6; Jeremiah 3:19; 31:20; Isaiah 1:2; 63:16; Malachi 1:6; 2:10).
What follow in this passage, therefore, are the tender scenes of God the Father caring for his adopted son. God taught infant Israel how to walk, holding out a finger for the child to grasp as he toddled along and stumbled and fell, and was lifted up again in his Father's arms (v. 3). Gently and compassionately God led Israel along the path of life by giving them his presence in the law (Deuteronomy 4:7) and granting them the guidance of the Word from prophets (cf. Amos 2:11) and priests.
Verse 4 of our text is often emended by changing one Hebrew vowel to read, "And I was to them as those who lift a baby to their cheek, and I bent down to feed him." Whether the emendation is accepted, or the verse is read as in the RSV, the tenderness and compassion of the Lord are clear.
But Israel has forgotten the tenderness and love of its Father and has run from God like a disobedient child. God has repeatedly called, and Israel has not listened (v. 2). Indeed, Israel is so set in its apostasy and worship of the fertility gods of baal that it cannot return. "Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God,/For the spirit of harlotry is within them, and they know not the Lord" (Hosea 5:4).
They are slaves of their sin, Paul would say, captives to the habit of idolatry, just as we become habitually captive to our sin and forgetfulness of the One who made us. God calls us through his written and preached Word, and we do not listen, running out into the path of danger, with our Father pleading with us to stop.
The wages of sin is death, however (Romans 6:23), and disobedient Israel will receive that wage, just as every wanton one of us will be paid what we have earned. "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap," writes Paul. "God is not mocked" (Galatians 6:7).
And yet -- and yet -- when God considers the death of his adopted people, he cries out in longing. "How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel!" How can I make you like those cities of Admah and Zeboiim that were destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah (Deuteronomy 29:23)?
The Bible tells us that God has no pleasure in the death of anyone. He just wants us to turn our lives around and to live (Ezekiel 18:32). And so God weeps over his disobedient child Israel, as our Lord wept over Jerusalem (Luke 13:34), and as he still weeps over us. And because he is pure and merciful love, he cannot give up us his children, any more than he could finally give up his adopted child Israel. At the end, writes Paul, "All Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26). Beyond Israel's exile to Assyria, beyond its apparent de-struction for its sin, there is a new and saved people of God that will know salvation.
The reason is plain. God is the Holy One (v. 9), that is, he is totally other than anything or anyone in all creation. His thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9), and his fatherly love for those whom he has made, for Israel and for us, is beyond all comprehension. So there is at the end of our passage the glad picture of Israel saved and returned home -- the dream of God for the future of his adopted son.
As for us, God's love is made manifest in the figure of a young man, hanging on a cross on a hill called Golgotha. There is God's declaration to us that he cannot give us up, despite all our wayward wandering from his fatherly directions, despite all our indifference toward the One who has taught us to walk, and constantly carried us in his arms, and continually bent down to feed us with his good. Instead of giving us up to the death that our sins so richly deserve, God gives up his only begotten Son, and you and I are offered the free gift of life in Jesus Christ.
It finally is a lesson in history, isn't it? -- that the one fact that will triumph in this world is the love of God. For all the evil of nations, and despite all the wrong of the human race, God is sovereign over every form of evil. He was sovereign over Israel's sin, sovereign over Assyria that took her captive, sovereign over the power of Rome that nailed Jesus Christ to the cross. And he is yet sovereign over our lives, for which he wills only his eternal life and love. Who can refuse the Father of such amazing love?
Lutheran Option, Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
These excerpts from Ecclesiastes could be a characterization of our society. The author of Ecclesiastes, who is called the Preacher, sets out to make an examination of the ways of Wisdom Theology. And in that examination, he studies the work at which men and women toil. It is full of vexation, the author writes. A person strains to do a good job, takes his work home with him at night, worries about it on his bed, and gets up and does the same thing all over again the next day.
But what is the point of it all? the writer wants to know. To what does it lead? Nothing lasts. The contributions that you make are soon forgotten. The capital that you have accumulated may just be foolishly spent by your heirs. Two generations from now, even your relatives will no longer remember much about you.
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more (Psalm 103:15-16).
All the pain, all the toil, all the anxiety and worry that we pour into our daily round finally are part of a transitory life that ends up in nothing -- in vanity, nothingness, as the Preacher says. "Vanity, all is vanity."
To be sure, we all have to earn our daily bread and support our families and put a roof over their heads. And we all do try to do a good job at whatever labor we undertake. But the Preacher here in our text is asking the deeper question. What is the meaning of it all? What endures? What eternal significance does my little life or yours have in the course of history that just goes on and on and on?
Ecclesiastes' answer to that was simply to enjoy the life and work and family love that God has given us, and not to worry about the future. "There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil" (v. 24). "Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life which (God) has given you under the sun ... Whatever your hands find to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol (the place of the dead), to which you are going" (Ecclesiastes 9:9-10). To enjoy your brief span -- that's the meaning of your life. As a young man said to me this summer, "I think the purpose of life is just to be happy."
The Apostle Paul knows differently, however, because he knows that Jesus Christ is risen. At the end of 1 Corinthians 15, which is Paul's great chapter on the resurrection, Paul tells us Christians, "Therefore, my beloved ... be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."
In God's service, you see, nothing is vanity and meaningless, because God uses that labor to further his purpose on earth. And finally, in God's love, our work is taken up into his eternal kingdom and perfected. And you and I end up not in the dark forgetfulness of the grave, but in the joyful company of God's everlasting family. If our lives are dedicated to the obedience, the service, the love of God, never are they in vain.
