WHEN ALL YOU'VE EVER WANTED ISN'T ENOUGH

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New Year's Eve. Any resolutions? I like the one in the paper yesterday from Hagar the Horrible: "This year I resolve to eat and drink as much as I want...and to stay out all night if I want!" His wife adds, "Hagar never makes a New Year's resolution he can't keep."⁽¹⁾

Wife to Spouse: "I don't want to brag, but here it is February and I have kept every one of my New Year's resolutions. I have kept them in a manila folder in the back of my desk!"⁽²⁾

This is one of those reflective days...a time to think about where we have been, where we are, where we are going. New Year's Eve. And not just ANY New Year's - this one is the end of the century, the end of the millennium, even. Yeah, that's right - I am one of those who refused to get into the Y2K hoopla because that was only the calendar's odometer rolling over, not the beginning of millennium three! This one IS!!!

This has been an interesting year. In George Will's Newsweek column last week, he noted some of the more intriguing developments:⁽³⁾

• a Washington gala celebrating the 35th anniversary of Medicare featured 102-year-old Mark Powell, who said he smokes five or six cigars a day...
• The government knows heroism when it sees it, and honored the 131 agents who in a predawn raid managed to subdue 6-year-old Elián González...
• In New Orleans, Al Davis withdrew his daughter from her public school and enrolled her in a private school - Davis happens to be superintendent of New Orleans' public schools.
• In Canton, Ohio, a mother put her 6-year-old, who had a doctor's appointment, into the bath so he would not notice when the school bus stopped at his house. But when the bus came he ran naked to the window. His school ruled him guilty of sexual harassment of the children on the bus...
• Professional wrestling's popularity, a television program about voting people off a deserted island and adults playing on little silver scooters were evidence of the infantilization of America...
• O. J. Simpson got into a traffic altercation, probably while searching for the real killers."
• And, oh yes, there was an election. I voted. I think. Years ago, that insightful political philosopher Josef Stalin said it does not matter how many vote; all that matters is who counts the votes. Interesting.

I am at the stage of my life when it is normal and natural to be reflective - what I have done with the years I have used up and what I plan to do with the years still left. Someone asked me what I hoped people would say about me at the end of the next century. My first thought was, "Doesn't he look good for his age?"

There are other thoughts too, of course. All of us have them. What will have been the purpose of it all? What will I have accomplished? You have heard that old philosophical conundrum - if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear, does it make a sound? What about this one? If a person lives and dies and no one notices, if the world continues as it was, was that person ever really alive?

Of course, there is nothing new about such thoughts. The book from which we read earlier - Ecclesiastes - is, of all the books in the Bible, uniquely concerned with this question of the meaning of life.

Ecclesiastes is a small book (barely a dozen pages long in most editions) tucked away in the middle of the Old Testament. Most people are not very familiar with it, other than a few phrases they have heard here and there - "For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven...There is nothing new under the sun...Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity" - those all come from Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes, by the way, is an English transliteration of a Latin translation of the Hebrew word Koheleth. Some places you will find it rendered as "preacher." In others, it will be "teacher" or "philosopher" or "sage." It is not a proper name but simply means "one who calls the assembly together." For our purposes, and since folks have called ME "Preacher" for years, I will simply rely on the traditional form and call our man Ecclesiastes "Preacher."

One other note. That line, "vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity" is right at the beginning of the book and sets the tone for the entire work. Please understand that the word "vanity" here does not mean the conceited smugness that modern Americans associate with the term. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" is an Elizabethan English phrase that would better be translated for the new millennium as "Useless, useless...life is useless."⁽⁴⁾ On and on, that theme is repeated through twelve chapters. It is the work of an angry, cynical, skeptical man who doubts that there is permanent value in anything. Have you ever wondered about that?

We must give the ancient Preacher credit though. Despite his opening hypothesis that there is nothing in this life that has any enduring worth, he at least tests his theory. He decides to see if wisdom and knowledge will do the trick and resolves to become the wisest in the world, but he notes that both the wise and the fool end up dead, so why bother. He checks to see if pleasure will offer meaning to life so he gives himself all the wine, women and song he can stand, but finds they just wear him out. Wealth? Power? To paraphrase Jesus, the Preacher thinks "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and leave a rich widow?" The Preacher had everything - Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous - all he could have ever wanted, but it was not enough. Useless, useless, life is useless.

Is It? Is life worth living? One of the classics of world literature, the dramatic poem Faust, focuses on the question of life's meaning, it's enduring significance and satisfaction.⁽⁵⁾ If you recall the story you remember that Dr. Faust, the hero, is a middle-aged scholar and scientist who has just about given up hope that he will ever learn the true meaning of life. He has begun to fear that he will come to the end of his span on this earth honored and well educated, but without ever having experienced what it means to be truly alive. So he makes a desperate deal with the devil, promising his soul in the hereafter in exchange for just one moment on earth so fulfilling that he will be moved to say, "Let this moment linger, it is so good."

By way of background, Johann von Goethe, the author of the play, spent his whole life writing Faust. He intended it to be his major statement about the meaning of life, the enduring literary masterpiece which would give his own life meaning. He began writing the script at the age of 20, set it aside for other projects, then went back to it at age 40 (part of his own mid-life crisis perhaps), and finished it shortly before his death at age 83. While we cannot be sure how old Goethe was when he wrote any particular line, it is fascinating to see how the hero's ideas of what he wants to do with his life change from the start of the story to its end.

At the beginning of the play, the middle-aged Faust as pictured by the young Goethe wants to experience everything, to live without limits. He wants to read all the books, speak all the languages, taste all the pleasures. So the devil gives him everything - wealth, political power, the ability to travel anywhere and be loved by any woman he desires. Faust does it all and he is still not happy. However much wealth he acquires, however many women he seduces, there is an unsatisfied hunger with him. Sounds like Ecclesiastes.

By the time we come to the end of the play, Goethe is in his 80's and his hero Faust has aged along with him. Instead of winning fights and attracting women, Faust is hard at work building dikes to reclaim land from the sea for people to live and work on. Instead of being consumed with the pursuit of pleasure and power, he is interested in people. Now, finally, Faust can say, "Let this moment linger, it is so good."

This, I think, is where our old Preacher went wrong. For all his interest in the search for life's meaning, he never takes seriously the fact that HE IS NOT ALL BY HIMSELF. There were others with whom he rubbed shoulders day-in and day-out who could have insured that his life would have meaning simply through his care and concern for them. I remember a song we sang in our high school chorus:

We NEED one another. If you recall the story of creation from the first chapter of Genesis, you will remember the litany of "and God created this, and it was good...and God created that, and it was good," and so on. It only takes until the second chapter of Genesis for us to find something that is NOT good - "and God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.'" No man, no woman, no boy, no girl, is an island.

This is one of the reasons I believe in the church, I encourage folks to attend, and I challenge them to join and take responsibility for what goes on. For all its flaws, for all its foibles, for all its failures, the church is God's divinely instituted way of offering people who need people the chance to find them. It even challenges those modern versions of the ancient Preacher who need people (whether they know it or not) the chance to give life meaning through involvement with others. Vaclav Havel, the first President of Czechoslovakia upon its freedom from Communism (and himself a poet and playwright) has said, "The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less."⁽⁶⁾ The church cannot and will not allow such a state of blissful ignorance.

In recent years, as the gap between the rich and poor has become wider, as the homeless and hungry population grows, we have been moving in the direction of becoming a nation that ruggedly refuses to care. That ought not to be, and I think everyone knows it. That is why there are still modern versions of the Preacher around who, even though they have it all, know down deep it is not enough.

We can make a difference, you and I. The vast majority of what happens in our lives is in our hands and is very much of our own choosing. In Robert Fulghum's best-seller with that wonderful title, It Was On Fire When I Laid Down On It⁽⁷⁾, he recounts the following conversation: he spoke with a colleague who was complaining that he had the same stuff in his lunch sack day after day. "So who makes your lunch?" Fulghum asked. "I do," said the friend. Up to us.

When all you've ever wanted isn't enough - the perfect end-of-the-millennium sermon for someone like me. As I look back on my life, I have had virtually all I ever wanted. Despite the fact that I struggle to make ends meet (as do most of us), the vast majority of this world sees me and you as fabulously wealthy. Life has surely not always gone the way I wished. I remember what Pat Moynihan said after President Kennedy was shot: "When you're Irish, one of the first things you learn is that sooner or later this world will break your heart." Even we non-Irish learn that. My heart has been broken on occasion, but I survived and moved on. As painful as some of those times were, I honestly think I am the better man for having gone through them. It has been a good life, made better because at some point I learned that "having it all" would NEVER be enough, because we were not made that way.

A man went for a walk in the forest and got lost. He wandered around for hours trying to find his way back to town, trying one path after another, but none of them led out. Then abruptly he came across another hiker walking through the forest. He cried, "Thank God for another human being. Can you show me the way back to town?"

The other man replied, "No, I am lost too. But we can still help each other in this way - we can tell each other which path we have already tried and been disappointed in. That will help us find the one that leads out."⁽⁸⁾

That is a good lesson to remember as the calendar turns at midnight tonight, as this century of both incredible accomplishment and incomprehensible horror ends and a new millennium is offered. Sadly, that is the lesson that Ecclesiastes - the old Preacher - never learned. But it is exactly what Christ's church is all about. We make our way through this vale of tears, we become confused, we get lost, we search for a way out. We finally find our way with the help of others who care, others who can share with us their own disappointments, their own blind alleys, their own roads already tried. And at the end of the road, together we see one who taught us long ago that to save our life we must be willing to lose it, one who beckons with loving arms outstretched saying, "Come unto me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens" - all you old Preachers who finally have learned that all you've ever wanted is not enough - "come to ME...and I will give you rest."

Happy New Year!

Amen!

1. Chris Browne, 12/30/2000, © 2000, King Features Syndicate

2. Orben's Current Comedy

3. George F. Will, "Y2K: You Must Remember This," Newsweek, 12/25/2000-1/1/2001, p. 112

4. 1:2 TEV

5. Harold Kushner, When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, (New York: Summit Books, 1986), pp. 47-48

6. Quoted by Martin Marty in Context, June 1, 1990

7. New York: Villard Books, 1990, p. 6

8. Kushner, p. 43

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