The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
August 5, 2001

Blessed and Depressed
Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:23[1]

While on vacation last week, a sign in front of a North Carolina Dairy Queen caught my attention. It read, “Too Blessed to be Depressed.” I’ve seen that same sign in front of a church here in Camden County since returning from the mountains, “Too Blessed to Be Depressed.” It’s a nice idea isn’t it? Think about being so blessed by God and knowing it, that you can’t possibly be depressed. That saying is a wonderful image. Unfortunately, it’s not what we find in our scripture readings for this week. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, we encounter a writer who is better described as blessed and depressed. The writer has everything he ever wanted and more and yet he is depressed.

We get just a glimpse of the Book of Ecclesiastes this morning, a brief autobiographical sketch of its author. But the book as a whole is not so very different. It has been described as cynical and pessimistic. You could go to church your whole life and never hear a sermon on this book. Yet, there, sitting right in the middle of our Bibles, is a cynic who is blessed and depressed and he’s not afraid to say so.

Let’s take a look again at how good life has been to this writer, called the Teacher. The Teacher starts off by saying that he was King of Israel in Jerusalem and later goes on to tell of his accomplishments saying, “I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.”

Then very much a man of his times he goes on to write, “I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.”

What did this wealthy man think of all he had done? He wrote, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

The word translated there and throughout the Book of Ecclesiastes as “vanity” is the Hebrew word Hevel. The plain sense meaning of the word is a puff of wind, vapor, a breath. The Teacher uses Hevel to describe how everything is fleeting, quickly passing away. The Teacher looks at all his accomplishments and says that they are but a puff of wind, a vapor, something that passes before it ever fully existed.

Then our reading for today leaves us with the cheeriest thought of all. The Teacher says, “What do mortals get from all their toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.”

This week we find in the words of Holy Scripture that everything we do amounts to nothing and all of our work, everything we do, everything we become is nothing but a puff of wind, a fleeting breath, something so ephemeral that it is gone before it is fully formed. The Teacher tells us that everything that you ever accomplish in this life will amount to nothing. The Bible gives us the definitive word from a man who has really made it to the top and found all he had seen and done and become is worthless. The Teacher describes himself saying, “I had everything a man could desire!” (2:8b NLT) and yet he says, “There was nothing worthwhile anywhere” (2:11b). Now who is too blessed to be depressed?

If you read the entire Book of Ecclesiastes, the picture gets even more bleak. Let me give you just a sampling. The second verse of the book says, “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” A closer translation of the Hebrew word hevel would be something like, “A puff of wind of a puff of wind, everything is fleeting.” The New Living Translation (NLT) does a great job of capturing the sense of the words in writing, “Everything is meaningless, utterly meaningless.” There’s a great Bible verse to put on T-shirts and bumper stickers.

A few verses later he writes, “Everything is so weary and tiresome! No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content” (1:8 NLT). And he goes on to write, “I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. Everything under the sun is meaningless, like chasing the wind. What is wrong cannot be righted. What is missing cannot be recovered” (1:13b-15 NLT).

We can read further, after our reading for this Sunday and it only gets worse. In chapter three he writes, “I saw under the sun in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well” (3:16 NRSV)

In the fourth chapter he writes, “I concluded that the dead are better off than the living. And most fortunate of all are those who were never born. For they have never seen all the evil that is done in our world.” (4:2-3 NLT).

Ecclesiastes goes on for 12 chapters of brutal honesty. Do you think you can get ahead with wealth? He writes, “Those who love money will never have enough. How absurd to think that wealth brings true happiness! The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what is the advantage of wealth—except perhaps to watch it run through your fingers!” (5:10-11 NRSV).

Do you think that you work will bring you deep satisfaction? He writes, “All human toil is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not satisfied” (6:7 NRSV). 

Do you think that you can earn extra credit by acting holier than thou? You can’t fool the Teacher, he won’t fall for it. The Teacher writes, “There is not a single person on all the earth who is always good and never sins” (7:20 NRSV).

One last example shows what an optimist the Teacher is. He writes, “I have observed something else in this world of ours. The fastest runner does not always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn’t always win the battle. The wise are often poor, and the skillful are not necessarily wealthy. And those who are educated don’t always lead successful lives. It is all decided by chance, by being at the right place at the right time” (9:11 NLT).

The Teacher seems content to pose the questions without giving any lengthy discourse that can be considered an answer. In fact, the Teacher is content to contradict himself and make no apologies. For while he says that the lover of money will not be satisfied, he also writes that “a party gives laughter, and wine gives happiness, and money gives everything!” (10:19 NLT). If you think you’ll find the answer in a book, even this book, the Teacher clears that up writing, “Of making many books, there is no end, and much study is weariness of flesh” (12:12 NRSV).

For anyone who drifted off a bit in the sermon so far, here is the gist of it. The Book of Ecclesiastes says that life is not fair and nothing you do is going to make that any better. How in the world did this little book get in the Bible? What in the world is this bizarre little book of Wisdom doing tucked in after the great poetry of the Psalms and the succinct little statements of Proverbs?

What the book is doing first and foremost is contradicting our every attempt at bumper sticker theology. The Teacher would scoff at a saying like “Too Blessed to Be Depressed” saying that the person who wrote a ditty like that has observed too little of all the evil done in this world to both the good and the bad. Ecclesiastes also tells us that it’s not only OK, it’s biblical to question all that we have seen and experienced. The Teacher is not afraid to present life at its worst, life in all its frustratingly contradictory absurdity.

The book is not devoid of answers, but Ecclesiastes is first and foremost a book of questions. If you find yourself questioning your faith, wondering what life is all about, then you have a companion on the way in the Teacher. If you have gotten everything you ever dreamed of and you are still not happy then the Teacher is the one person in scripture to really voice your concerns the loudest. If you can’t get everything you want out of life because life itself seems to conspire against you, the Teacher understands that as well.

Before leaping to any conclusions, I think it’s important to pause just long enough to take in a breath of fresh air. In a world that will pressure you, as a Christian, to have all the answers and present a public face that says you have your act together, the Teacher says that all that is meaningless. It’s OK to not have many more questions than answers. It’s OK to find yourself blessed and depressed at times. That doesn’t make you any less Christian, it just makes you all the more human. And being human is a key to understanding Ecclesiastes. You see the teacher never cheats. The Teacher has not seen the next life, he has not experienced life after death, so he doesn’t hold it out as an answer. The after-life is never even referred to in Ecclesiastes. The Teacher is a this worldy kind of guy who wants to understand the world we live in now. In understanding what a fleeting puff of wind human life is, the Teacher learns humility. Learning humility is no small trick for a great king who possesses land, property, and other wealth exceeding all who have come before him.

The Teacher sees how fleeting and meaningless all his possessions are and he is humbled. Then through this book of questions, the Teacher hints at the answers. Woven in the very fabric of this book is the idea that all that we have is a gift from God to be enjoyed. The Teacher says that God gives wisdom, knowledge and joy (2:26 NLT). He tells us that God has made everything beautiful for its own time (3:11a NLT).

The Teacher knows that God has given us much and has more to give us. The way to find more fulfillment is to take joy in the gifts God has given you rather than to join in the all too human pursuit of the things you don’t have. The Teacher writes, “I have noticed one thing at least that is good. It is good for people to eat well, drink a glass of good wine, and enjoy their work—whatever they do under the sun—for however long God lets them live. And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy you work and accept your lot in life—that is indeed a gift from God. People who do this rarely look with sorrow on the past, for God has given them reasons for joy” (5:18-20 NLT).

The Teacher tells us that life is fleeting, but rather than being upset by that he concludes that we should get the enjoyment out of life that we can. Live life to the fullest by enjoying what you have or can achieve rather than by an endless pursuit of things that will not in themselves bring happiness. If you are not happy with what you have now, you will not become more happy by getting more of it, or even something else. For happiness does not come from stuff. Know and appreciate what you have, the good and bad, as a gift from God. The great church reformer Martin Luther wrote of Ecclesiastes saying, “If someone compares the good things he has with the bad things he does not have, he will finally recognize what a treasure of good things he has.”[2]

Take joy in the many good things God has given you. You have been blessed. Perhaps not always too blessed to be depressed, but blessed nonetheless. If you take joy in what you have already been given (the good and the bad), enjoy your work as a gift from God then you will have little to look back on with sorrow for God has given you reasons for joy.

Amen.