(A) Introduction.

I think that the speaker in Ecclesiastes is a teacher. He is a teacher who is putting forward a certain case in the hope that his pupils will refute it. The teacher is playing devil's advocate to stimulate thought and discussion. This is a well-known and effective teaching technique. So it is up to the Christian to argue against the pessimism of the Teacher. The Christian does not accept that life is futile but rather it is a gift from God: The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. Gen2v7.

If God gave life to man then life has value; it should be enjoyed; the recipient is under an obligation to the giver to use his gift in a way which pleases him. When my lovely niece, Angela, went to university I sent her a gift of £50 to spend on books. I didn't want her to spend the money on drink or frilly underwear but on books. I expect that she respected her uncles wishes.

So we must examine the Teacher's case and demonstrate its weakness. He has 3 grounds for disillusionment with life:

(B) Life's Monotony.

The pessimistic Teacher looks at the three great cycles of nature with a jaundiced eye. In this passage there is a brief description of the endless rotation of the earth to produce our daily rhythm, the general circulation of the atmosphere and the water or hydrological cycle. The Teacher concludes that these are monotonous, repetitive and wearisome: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. v9.

There is a lot of repetitiveness and monotony in life in general. My mother used to find the need to prepare an endless succession of meals for her large family a chore. She used to sigh, "What shall we have to day?" I hate the unrelenting cleaning cycle. Every week I have to clean the house in exactly the same way. The work is never done and it bores me rigid. The daily round and common task is not exciting! When I was teaching, each school year had a same ness about it. The same problems kept cropping up. The headmaster made the same speech at prize giving. I wrote the same stale comments on yet another set of reports.

Our spiritual lives are not much better. Nothing exciting happens. We say our prayers each day, attend church on Sundays, meet with the same old folk, sing the familiar hymns and listen to sermons on well worn themes. I visit my dozen or so elderly folk and conversation follows a well-known pattern. Where is all this getting us? It is so ordinary, so mundane, so boring and so futile. Christians get fed up with it.

Well, of course, the pessimist misses something important. We would be in a bad way without the great natural cycles. They actually point to the value of life because they exist to sustain it. The hydrological cycle does change - when the earth is heading for an ice age!

Similarly the monotonous, repetitive actions of daily life sustain it. We would soon begin to suffer if we didn't get our meals regular. The health of the world would deteriorate without the regular collection of garbage, disposal of sewage, provision of water and power. The very things that are done day after day, week in and week out are those things that are most necessary to life. We make the effort however monotonous and tedious and wearisome because life has value.

I was reminded of the value of life when I took my nephew Joseph on his first fishing expedition. We went to the river Ouse in Ely. I am afraid that Uncle John was not the best person to initiate Joseph into the mysteries of fishing. I got the maggot on the hook and the line into the river but it was obvious something was wrong when the float wouldn't float. My method of adjusting the float involved cutting the line! We placed the bit of line with hook and maggot still attached, to one side. When we came to tie it back on to the float, the hook had disappeared. While we had been making the necessary alterations the maggot had seized its chance to escape. It had crawled off carrying hook and line with it. That maggot, pierced with a horrible steel hook and already plunged once into the murky depths of the river Ouse, retained the will to live.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn had the same experience with an elm log:

We were sawing firewood when we picked up an elm log and gave a cry of amazement. It was a full year since we had chopped down the trunk, dragged it along behind a tractor and sawn it up into logs, which we had then thrown on to barges and wagons, rolled into stacks and piled up on the ground - and yet this elm log had still not given up! A fresh green shoot had sprouted from it with a promise of a thick, leafy branch, or even a whole new elm tree.

We placed the log on the sawing-horse, as though on an executioner's block, but we could not bring ourselves to bite into it with our saw. How could we? That log cherished life as dearly as we did; indeed, its urge to live was even stronger than ours. (Taken from Matryona's House and other stories.)

So it is that the monotonous, repetitive, possibly even irksome, duties of Christian life sustain our spiritual lives. Our spiritual health depends upon daily devotions, weekly worship, the communion service and the religious festivals. Not only that but those who accept the responsibility for maintaining the church and its services are making a major contribution to the spiritual well being of others. I am afraid an increasing number of elderly Christians believe that it is more beneficial to have an exciting life than a useful one. They want to be free to travel and enjoy themselves in retirement and so are unwilling to be tied down by some church responsibility. It is only because some are still willing to accept limitations on their freedom and are prepared to take responsibility for maintaining their churches that those churches exist at all. Many of the jobs that the church treasurer, church secretary, Sunday school teacher, youth organiser or cleaner undertake are repetitive and tedious. The Christians that undertake these tasks appreciate the crucial importance of sustaining new life in Christ.

(C) Life's predictability.

The Teacher who is depressed by the monotony of life is equally dispirited by its predictability.

The cycles of nature are predictable. The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west.

There is also predictability in human affairs. There is nothing new under the sun. v9. History teaches that there are only so many ways to cook an egg. There has been some excitement lately about the European common currency. It isn't something new. The Romans established a common currency throughout their great Empire 2000 years ago! Nowhere is the futility of change more evident than in the field of education. My old head of department used to say that there was never any need to change. Eventually, once policy had gone full circle, our methods would be back in fashion again. In my career as a teacher I had to modify the content of my lessons and adapt to changing technology but I never really altered my style. In church life nearly all new initiatives have been tried before. There are only so many ways to present the gospel.

People, too, are predictable. I can remember a middle-aged women saying with real feeling, "I wish my husband would do something surprising. I just long to be whisked away for a romantic weekend in Paris." I am afraid she never was! Some of my pupils tormented me with their predictability. Every Monday I would collect in Year 11's homework. I would go from dest to desk. "Where's your work, Peter?"

"Hin't done it."

"Where's your homework Glenn?"

"Forgot me book."

"Why haven't you got your book, James?"

"Can't find it."

Every week it was the same. Every week my reaction was predictable. I would go absolutely ballistic. All to no avail; it was utterly futile.

The predictability of human nature breeds cynicism and despair. A man may have worked hard in his profession or for his church. In comes a new broom. The old is swept out and the new welcomed in. All the hard work and solid achievement of the old regime is forgotten. I can remember being asked what it was like coming up to retirement. I replied that it was like being a threadbare doormat waiting to be thrown out and replaced by a brand new purchase. That is just how it was.

Once again the Teacher's case is flawed. A certain amount of predictability is essential for the enjoyment of life. Think of the awful consequences if the sun did not rise and set each day. Major disruptions in the general circulation of the atmosphere would play havoc with wild life and agricultural production.

Continuous rapid change in any human organisation is disruptive and counter productive. The pace of change in education in recent years has not been conducive to good practice. I can remember C. S. Lewis arguing for an unvarying form of church service. He considered that if the structure of worship changed Sunday by Sunday the congregation would spend their time wondering what was going to happen next and be distracted from what really matters.

Isn't it a good thing that people are fairly predictable? School children like their teacher to be predictable. It gives them a sense of security. Some times we had fancy dress days at school to raise money for charity. On just one occasion I dressed up as a scarecrow - about the only fancy dress I could manage without too much difficulty. I wore a sort of pink mask with a face painted on it! My form didn't like it. I can remember some of the girls saying, "Please get changed, Mr Reed."

Unpredictable behaviour is rather scary. My father was a very even- tempered, placid, man. When he started hiding behind doors and rushing out to attack me with a cushion I was seriously distressed. I found his dementia and increasingly irrational behaviour very stressful.

Think how awful it would be if God, himself, was capricious. We would be appalled if God acted in an unprincipled, arbitrary, fashion. There would be no certainties. We could not sing:

Oh, safe to the Rock that is higher than I,
My soul in its conflicts and sorrows would fly:
So sinful, so weary, Thine, Thine would I be;
Thou blest "Rock of Ages," I'm hiding in Thee.

The Teacher also fails to recognise that life is not entirely predictable. Superimposed upon life's predictabilities are endless small departures from the norm. No one day is quite like any other. The sea, wind and rain combine to produce innumerable, small, stimulating variations. I can remember one glorious, still, clear and dewy evening in May being overwhelmed by the astringent scent of hawthorn blossom from the bushes fringing our cricket pitch. Conditions had never been quite right before to flood the air with the hawthorn's thin and winey fragrance. Surprises like this add zest to life.

No human being is entirely predictable. People continually amaze us. We never know someone quite as well as we think. I used to teach a rather plaintive thirteen year old; one of those tiresome children who was old before her time - aptly described by my English colleagues as, 'over-ripe.' One autumnal morning I took her class down to the recreation ground in Debenham to do a little surveying. I gave the children a few minutes at the end of the session to relax. I was agreeably surprised to see Hayley enjoying herself on a swing. I had a shy and diffident girl in my form. She was a raven-haired beauty and so I was disappointed that she rarely spoke to me. Weeks would go by without her saying a word. Then one day she looked in my direction smiled and said, "Mr Reed, you are lovely." I have to admit that this was not a widely held opinion. However, at the time it gave me a small thrill of pleasure.

A teacher can never tell how a pupil is going to turn out. A boy called, Martin, was a real pain - a very self-centred, attention- seeking youth. He married a very pretty, vibrant, girl who contracted multiple sclerosis within a short time of the marriage. Martin has proved to be a very supportive, solicitous, husband. I would never have expected it of him!

Jesus had much to put up with during his earthly ministry. Human nature had little to commend it. He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man. John3v25. Yet even Jesus was sometimes agreeably surprised: by the Centurion's faith, the widows two mites, Mary's gift of precious perfume, Peter's recognition of his true status and the insight and trust of the dying thief. Human nature is not so depraved that it isn't capable of the occasional gleam of goodness.

(D) Life's Inevitabilities.

The first chapter ends with the Teacher lamenting life's inevitabilities. It is very easy to think like the Teacher. We achieve so very little in life. I taught Geography for 37 years. If I hadn't taught it someone else would and, perhaps, my pupils would have been better off being taught by another teacher. It has certainly been very difficult trying to make the crooked straight! Many unmotivated disaffected boys have remained alienated from the school culture to the very end. My brother has been helping a few of his church members with their behavioural problems for over 25 years. They regularly produce much unhappiness in their own lives and the lives of others. My brother sometimes despairs because people have such little success in overcoming their weaknesses.

What we do seems to matter very little. All our efforts are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. v14. When we add up all our accomplishments what do they amount to? They are very insubstantial. I feel like this when I examine my service to the church at Brockley. I have worked on behalf of the cause there for 45 years. The fellowship has declined inexorably in strength and faces closure in the next ten years unless God shows mercy. Have I wasted my time? Have I been chasing after the wind? Should I have left to serve God elsewhere? All my efforts and the efforts of my co-workers seem so futile.

Many of us matter so little to others. The cynical Teacher says, There is little remembrance of men of old. v11. Last Christmas five or six of the form I had from 1991 to 1996 stopped communicating with me. I was sad but not surprised. Boys and girls rarely continue writing to a former teacher for longer than five years. They gradually forget. It is dispiriting to matter little to others. I read that Christopher Reeve, who used to play the part of Superman until he fell of a horse and broke his neck, contemplated suicide. He decided to soldier on because he mattered to his wife and children. Some people have no wife, no children ....... nobody. Even in Bury St Edmunds there are several funerals which only the clergyman, organist and undertaker attend. It is very demotivating not to really matter to anyone. It is easy to think in such circumstances that life is futile; to say, "What's the point. Nobody cares. I shan't be missed."

Once again there are facts that the pessimistic Teacher overlooks. Perhaps it is time to return to the maggot! One maggot doesn't achieve very much but millions and millions of maggots help to keep the earth clean. One grain of salt is of little significance but many grains together preserve, flavour and cleanse. So Christians together are the salt of the earth. A teacher in isolation may have little impact on society but thousands nationwide have a profound civilising effect upon the population. One brave, dedicated, soldier will not win the battle but if the army is made up of men like him it will win the war.

God does not forget. God remembers his promises. Israel suffered hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt but God had not forgotten them. He said to Moses at the burning bush: "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with mild and honey. Ex3v7to8.

God does not forget about individuals. Elijah was overwhelmed by the futility of life and fled into the southern desert, lay down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. God did not leave him there. He sent an angel to sustain Elijah and later appeared to him in the cave of Horeb and spoke to his heart in a gentle whisper.

God does not forget about us. If we have been adopted into his family then he no more forgets about us than a loving earthly father forgets about his children. The writer to the Hebrews reminds his readers:
God has said,

"Never will I leave you: never will I forsake you."

So we say with confidence,

"The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me?"

Paul writing to the Christians at Corinth reminds his readers of their hope: Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands. 2Cor5v1. One day God will give us new bodies and new life. When Jesus returns he will banish loneliness because close and sweet and untroubled communion will recommence with God, our creator. Paul as he contemplates all that God has done and planned for Christians writes: So we make it our goal to please him. v9. We are under an obligation to live to please our Father in heaven - his will be done.

There are times we are tempted to think like the Teacher. It is probably evident from this exposition that there are times that I do. As Christians we must dispel such thoughts with hope that the promises of God will be fulfilled. The writer to the Hebrews says: We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. Heb6v19. See sermon on, Heb6v12to20: God's Promise.