18th Sunday of the year

The parable of the rich fool, Rembrandt

What are the things that really matter in life? That is the uncomfortable question that the readings for this Sunday pose to us. The first reading comes to us from Qoheleth, or Ecclesiastes (“the Preacher”) as his Greek nickname goes, with the well-known refrain that goes “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. Then (leaping into his second chapter, for some reason), this deep and radical thinker offers an example of this “vanity”: “a person who has expended effort and wisdom and expertise and skill – and he leaves his portion to someone who has not put in the effort. This is also vanity and great wickedness”. Some scholars point out that Qoheleth hardly ever mentions God; but you can do God’s work without speaking of the Almighty, and the task of the Preacher is to expose the foolishness of the pursuits to which we normally give our energies, in order that we may find our way to God.

That is a point made more explicitly in the Psalm for this Sunday, setting the folly of human pursuits against God’s greater purposes (“You turn human beings back into dust, and say, ‘Go back, sons of men’.”) and different perspective (“In your eyes a thousand years are like a single day, yesterday...a dream in the night”). So for God, all our passionate human endeavours are “like grass that flourishes in the morning – in the evening it withers and fades”. So we need God’s perspective, to find out what really matters: “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a wise heart”, and then, in a prayer that comes from the heart, “fill us in the morning with your love”. It is God, and God alone, who can “prosper the work of our hands”.