Easter Sunday, 2010

Topical

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“Is Life Just a Hokey Pokey?”

I saw a bumper-sticker the other day that sort of summarizes the question of the ages: “What if the Hokey Pokey is what it’s all about?” You remember the Hokey Pokey.

You put your right foot in,

You put your right foot out,

You put your right foot in,

And you shake it all about.

You do the Hokey Pokey

And you turn yourself around.

That’s what it’s all about!

Well, what if that is what it’s all about? What if life is just a meaningless dance, a series of silly, repetitive motions that have no ultimate meaning or value? Don’t you worry about that sometimes? What if MacBeth was right when he said that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? That really is the question of the ages. Is there any point to life? And more importantly, is there any point to my life, or is it all just a Hokey Pokey?

Now you’re expecting me to say on this bright, cheerful Easter morning that life is full of meaning and value, and most of all hope. Isn’t that what Easter is all about – a rediscovery of hope, a rediscovery of the significance and value of life? But what if I told you that the Bible’s own perspective on the meaning of life is that there really is none? What if I told you that Bible’s own view on the matter is that, from one perspective, life is an absurd dance, a flurry of sound and motion signifying nothing. Life is just a Hokey Pokey? Would you believe me?

Ecclesiastes 1:2 - “‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the preacher, ‘All is vanity.’ Or as another translation has it, “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the preacher, ‘Utterly Meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’”

Quite the cheery outlook, isn’t it? Here’s a preacher you’d never see billed as “Special Guest Motivational Speaker” at the Crystal Cathedral. There’s no way you could confuse the Book of Ecclesiastes with the “Be-Happy-Attitudes.” “Just think positively,” is a phrase that never comes up in any of its twelve chapters. In fact, Ecclesiastes reads a lot more like Sartre than Schuller. We’re struck by its pessimism. We’re struck by the desperateness of the writer’s search to find anything of lasting value, anything of consequence, anything of even the remotest objective meaning “under the sun,” and by his conclusion in the end that there really is nothing. “Vanity, vanity. It’s all vanity and a chasing after the wind,” says the preacher. I guarantee you that’s not a sermon title many preachers are using this morning.

But how could this really be the Biblical outlook on life? It just doesn’t seem to jive with what we perceive as the hopefulness of the Bible. Some have said that the book of Ecclesiastes doesn’t even belong in the Bible for the very reason that its perspective on life is so dismal. And yet it rings true, doesn’t it? For those of us who live each day in the world—which is all of us—there’s something about what the writer of Ecclesiastes says that really connects with us. Deep down we feel what he feels. We feel the futility of life, even while we try to convince ourselves mentally that our lives have some point. But from the perspective the writer of the book looks at life, the only honest viewpoint anyone could ever come to is that there is really is no point. It’s all vanity and a chasing after the wind.

You see, the writer of Ecclesiastes looks at life from an “under the sun” perspective. That’s his phrase for looking at life from a purely “this-worldly” perspective—life as we experience it directly day after day; life in the here and now, and only from the perspective of the here and now. That makes it an extremely practical book, because that’s the perspective most people operate from day in and day out. And lets face it; even we Christians have a hard time living our lives from more than an “under the sun” perspective. We’re given the “above the sun” perspective every Sunday, but sometimes by Monday morning we’re back down in the so-called “real” world— the world “under the sun,” the world of trying to find fulfillment in our jobs, the world of trying to keep the bottom from dropping out on our investments, the world of trying keep up with all the latest technology so we don’t become obsolete in terms of the job market, the world of trying to keep precious time from just slipping away, the world of trying to overcome sheer boredom.

Well, life in that “real” world is what the author of Ecclesiastes lived out to the full. As the richest king of Israel, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t have, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do, and he had and did it all. Education. Career. Family. Politics. Possessions. You name it, he’d been there, done that. And the conclusion he reached after a life-time of experience was that life lived merely from that “under the sun” perspective can only ever be a dismal disappointment, an exercise in futility, a frustration, vanity.

He starts with work. “What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?” To paraphrase him a just bit, he says “You work all you life, you put in hour after hour at the job, you toil and stress to get things done, to get the plane in on time, to get the trucks out on schedule, to get all the papers graded, to make that big sale, to cram in one more patient, and then the next day you do it all over again. And at the end of the day, when it’s time to turn the lights out on life, when you’re sitting in your recliner in front of the TV at the retirement home with the volume so loud it could wake the dead just for you to be able to hear it, when you have no where left to go but the grave, what have you gained for yourself by all your toil except to wear yourself out?” How’s that for a dismal view of life?

He then turns to family. “One generation passes away, and another comes; but the earth abides for ever.” The truth of that statement was really driven home to several summer’s ago. I went to visit one of my favorite places on earth: Hume Lake in the Sequoia National Forest. Part of what makes Hume Lake so special to me is that it’s the place I used to go camping with my dad. I had a lot of wonderful experiences with my dad on that lake, fishing and swimming, canoeing and diving off the rocks. And I was thinking about my dad as I was taking an evening stroll around the lake. And I came to a spot where I just like to stop and look out over the water and contemplate life. And that evening the water was like glass. I mean there wasn’t even a ripple. It was just a dead, flat calm. And it struck me: here was the place that I always thought my dad was most in his element, most alive, up here having fun with his family, splashing around in the water with us kids, and there wasn’t the faintest ripple left to show that he’d ever even existed. And I saw this as a kind of parable of life: You’re born into the world kicking and screaming and flailing about, and then you spend the rest of your life all worked up about something as if it were the most important thing that every happened to anyone in the history of the world. But when you die, man, you’re just gone, and the world doesn’t remember, doesn’t care that you ever were. Our lives don’t add up to a ripple in a pond.

Isn’t that depressing? But that’s life. That’s life from the “under the sun” perspective. “Vanity, vanity. Meaningless, Meaningless.” You can search down every possible avenue under the sun for lasting satisfaction and true fulfillment and all you’ll find that same old sign that says “not a through street,” “dead end.”

Solomon said, “I saw that death comes to the wise man just as it comes to the fool. So why did I spend all my time trying to be wise? And I saw that one event happens to both the righteous and the wicked. As goes the sinner, so goes the good man. So what point is there in being righteous?

You see, it’s death that robs life of meaning. It’s death that makes life under the sun an absurd dance. Sartre said that death makes life absurd. So let’s just give up! Let’s just stop trying to fool ourselves. Life is just a Hokey Pokey, a flurry of sound and motion signifying nothing. Vanity, vanity, it’s all vanity. So why go on?

But something has changed. Something new has happened. An event has taken place that has raised our lives out beyond the arc of the sun. You see, someone has broken through. Someone has broken the bonds that kept us down. Someone has robbed the robber of the meaning of life.

“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received,” says St. Paul, “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”

You see, Christ came down into this life under the sun, with all its futility and sorrow and death, but then He raised it up to the highest heaven. Paul says, now “our lives are hidden with Christ in God.” Our lives have been raised up out of the vanity of this world to the very throne of God. For in Christ’s resurrection, we have the guarantee of our own.

That’s why this day is so important, folks - this glorious Easter morning. That’s why we celebrate this day above all others days, because on this day Jesus Christ robbed the robber. On this day Jesus Christ robbed the grave of its power to steal away meaning from our lives. Life isn’t meaningless, because death isn’t final. Christ’s resurrection makes death the absurdity, something to be mocked and ridiculed. “O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave where is thy sting?”

You see, now we can live our lives from the “above the sun” perspective.” Everything we do now in relation to our living Lord has eternal meaning and value. Work is no longer meaningless toil. “Be stedfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,” says the apostle, “knowing that you labor is not vain in the Lord.” In the Living Lord is how your labor is no longer vain, because it now has eternal significance and consequence.

The pursuit of wisdom is not vain pursuit, because wisdom is coming to share in the mind of the living Christ. Striving to live a righteousness life is not a futile exercise, because we are assured by the One whose righteousness was such that death could not hold Him, that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness we will be satisfied. Not even suffering is meaningless, because as it is written, if we share in Christ’s sufferings, so we will also share in his glory.

So take the above the sun perspective on life today. Don’t just live out your lives under the sun. Christ has opened up to you a life of eternal significance and value. So take hold of it. Live out your lives with meaning and purpose, for death can longer steal that away from you. Live life to the full, for Christ is risen, and if you live your life in relation to Him, He will raise you up as well. He’s powerful to do it.

He is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. And you are risen with Him. Glory be to Jesus. +