"If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to
hear, does it make a sound?" You have heard that one. Or how
about this one: If a man says something in a forest and there is
no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong? Tee-hee. Or one
more serious: if a person lives and dies and no one notices, if
the world continues as it was, was that person ever really alive?
What brings that question to mind is that sadly cynical
passage from Ecclesiastes a moment ago in combination with a
motion picture that is currently making the rounds called "About
Schmidt."(1) When we were in Florida a couple of weeks ago, one of
our friends recommended it to us, so we went.
Interesting movie. It stars Jack Nicholson in a unique
role, one which reviewers are raving about and saying he is a
mortal lock to get an Academy Award nomination from it. He is
Warren Schmidt, an actuary for the Woodmen of the World Insurance
company, who is now retiring. We meet him on the momentous day.
Sitting at his empty desk, with boxes neatly piled against the
wall, he watches the clock as it tick-tocks to quitting time for
the last time in his working life. Next we ride along on the
rainy drive to the strip-mall steakhouse where his colleagues are
giving him a party including a cake shaped like the insurance
company's office building. He wakes up the next morning having
no idea what lies ahead. He has spent his entire life working at
a job that could have been done by anybody, or, apparently,
nobody. He goes to the office, ostensibly to see if he can
answer any questions that the new guy might have, but he has
none, of course.
Now what? His wife of 42 years scrimped and saved enough to
buy a 35-foot Winnebago in which they might travel the country
now that retirement has arrived, but, unfortunately, she drops
dead while cleaning the house. Now, Schmidt is really lost. No
job. No wife. No family except a daughter in Denver from whom
he has been somewhat estranged for years. Warren is desperate to
find something meaningful in his thoroughly unimpressive life.
He has nothing better to do, so he sets out for Colorado in the
Winnebago in hope of bridging the gulf between himself and his
daughter by arriving early to help with her wedding preparations.
Unfortunately, he hates the groom-to-be, a profoundly
mediocre, underachieving waterbed salesman and pyramid scheme
pitchman. To make matters worse, Warren is appalled by the free-spirited nature of his soon-to-be in-laws - here is a man who has
hardly had a surprise in 40 years, now finding himself wrestling
with a water bed, and joined in a hot tub by the topless and
incredibly available mother of the groom. Schmidt grows swiftly
convinced that his new purpose in life is to stop his daughter's
marriage.
As this strange journey of discovery unfolds, Warren details
his adventures and shares his observations in long, rambling
letters to an unexpected new friend and confessor -- Ndugu Umbo,
a six-year-old Tanzanian orphan who cannot possibly read, whom
Schmidt sponsors for $22 a month through an organization that
advertises on TV. From these letters filled with a lifetime of
things unsaid, Warren begins - perhaps for the first time - to
glimpse himself and the life he has lived. He finally comes to
wonder about the question we raised a minute ago. 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, since so many of you are teachers, and since our more
modern translation pew Bible renders it thus, this morning we
will call our man Ecclesiastes "Teacher."
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 21st century as our New International
Version has it, "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."(2) 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 Teacher 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 Teacher thinks
"What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and leave a
rich widow?" The Teacher had everything - Lifestyles of the Rich
and Famous - all he could have ever wanted, but it was not
enough. Meaningless, meaningless, life is meaningless.
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.(3) 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 Teacher 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:
No man is an island;
No man stands alone;
Each man's joy is joy to me;
Each man's grief is my own.
We need one another;
So I will defend
Each man as my brother,
Each man as my friend.
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 the man to be alone.'"(4) 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 challenge you to join and take
responsibility for what goes on here. 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 Teacher 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 playwrite) 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."(5) Warren Schmidt, writ large. The church cannot
and will not allow such a state of blissful ignorance.
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(6), 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. Someone has said
that the typical American success story is the boy who grows up
on a farm, moves to the city, works hard, makes lots of money,
buys a farm and moves back to it. Perhaps so.
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 you), 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."(7)
That is the lesson that Ecclesiastes never learned. It is
the lesson that the Warren Schmidts of the world never learn. 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 Teachers who finally have learned that all
you've ever wanted is not enough - "come to me...and I will give
you rest."
Amen!
1. New Line Cinema, 2002
2. Ecclesiastes 1:2, NIV
3. Harold Kushner, When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, (New York: Summit Books, 1986), pp. 47-48
4. Genesis 2:18
5. Quoted by Martin Marty in Context, June 1, 1990
6. New York: Villard Books, 1990, p. 6
7. Kushner, p. 43
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