Take It As It Comes                                                              1/20/46

 

Ecclesiastes 9: 1-11

 

Text: Ecclesiastes 9: 2a to 11b

 

Bear in mind, if you please, that the Book of Ecclesiastes from which I read this morning is an Old Testament Book.  If one looks at it after reading considerably in the New Testament, its expressions are puzzling, if not shocking, to the searching spirit.  It sounds pessimistic in spots, and in a sense it is.  It shows a sort of sadness at the brevity of mortal life.  It looks toward the monotony and vainness of living.  Its author seems to believe that God’s plan and judgments are obscure and not understandable to man.  But he does believe in God as an awe-inspiring judge.

 

There is a strange-sounding passage here in the 9th chapter of the book.  It is startling to find it in the Bible.  And yet it states bluntly an important truth - a truth so important that without understanding such a truth we can hardly make sense of some of the things that happen to people.

 

The passage is really parts of the 2nd and 11th verses:  “All things come alike to all: there is one event to the wicked; to the good and to the evil, to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the sinner ------- the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor riches to the men of understanding, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

 

Leslie Weatherhead, the widely-known and heeded English preacher, points out in this connection that sooner or later everybody needs a philosophy of life, or a faith, that will stand up to the disasters of living.  Blessed is he who has his anchors out, and secure, before the storm breaks.  When what we call “disaster” breaks, we are too stunned to be able to arrange our ideas --- too bewildered to build a faith.

 

An old Scotsman lay dying.  He knew it and his daughter knew it.  The daughter asked him is he would like to have her read to him some passages from the Bible.  With a firm but kindly “No,” he remarked that he had “thatched his house in calm weather.”  It is the wise person who gets the house of his personality protected against all weather before the storms set in.

 

Not all disasters are alike.  There are at least two kinds:

 

(1)  Disasters that come to us from the ignorance and foolishness of man.  We need not think of those which are obviously our own individual fault.  I am thinking of the disasters that come to us from others.  We are closely linked with all the rest of the great human family.  Without the assets of the great human family- the privileges won through the wisdom and good character of others - we could not live.  From getting up in the morning to retiring at night we depend in thousands of ways on what others have done for us.  Receiving these assets - or having them denied - we are not surprised to learn that disaster falls on us through the ignorance, sin or foolishness of others.  So simple a matter as having meat or butter at today’s dinner depends on what thousands of others do or do not do.

 

(2)  Then there are disasters which come from the forces of nature - storms, floods, earthquakes, spontaneous fires - things that are not the result of human foolishness or neglect, but which nevertheless man has to call disaster.  The most willing, able, efficient and pious farmer may lose his season’s crop in the few minutes of a heavy hail storm.  Something like this must have been meant by the writer of Ecclesiastes when he said: “All things come alike to all.”  The first step in trying to understand the universe, and to make sense of living in it, is to accept its facts.

 

Have we not often acted as though we believed that God would guarantee special advantage to his favorites?  the farmer who says his prayers and does his best will surely be allowed a good harvest!  The truly sincere Christian woman will never suffer from cancer.  Have we ever heard such a statement?  It is not so!

 

Again and again we hear the question in the day of calamity, “Why did this happen to me?”  “What have I done to deserve this?”  And we remember, perhaps, that the book of Job wrestles with the old heresy that somehow God has decreed the misfortune - that it is the just payment for some misdeed, and that goodness is always rewarded with beneficence.  We should, rather, get it into our minds once and for all that disaster falls on all - without any reference to the merit or character of the victims.  The sooner we part with the notion that God “sends” calamity to this man, illness to that child, bereavement to that mother - as a punishment for some wrong done, the better.

 

Both sunshine and rain and hail fall on the farms of the good farmer and the skinflint scalawag alike - upon the just and the unjust.  The bomb on Nagasaki wiped out Shintoists, Buddhists, Christians; men, women, children; soldiers, civilians; physicians and gutter-drunks alike.

 

Can doing God’s will put him “on the spot” so that he must restrain all the tragedies from falling on the righteous?  How should such a capricious God deal with the farmer who prays for rain, and his child who longs for a sunny circus day - on the same day?  What about disease?  Is it God’s purposeful dealing with people who have disobeyed his will?  Or is it the result of man’s ignorance and foolishness?

 

When a blind man was brought to Jesus for help, his disciples said to the Master, “Lord, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus said, “Neither.”

 

When a tower fell on 18 men, Jesus was asked what they had done to deserve such calamity.  He in turn asked whether the disciples really thought that the 18 were more sinners than the rest of the people who lived in Jerusalem.  His own answer was “No!”  At this point, it is in his spirit that Matthew Arnold wrote:

 

 

            Earthquakes do not scorn the just man to entomb,

            Nor lightning stand aside to find his virtues room.

 

It was Jesus who said, “He maketh the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.”  [Matthew 5 :45].

 

The great cosmic processes of God seem not to notice human merit.  They can’t, and still remain trustworthy.  They must be impartial.  We can talk more usefully about accepting our lives if we accept this situation.

 

There is, of course, a wrong acceptance of life in what the pagan calls weak resignation.  It is right to say, “I am not going to leave life as it is handed to me.  I am going to fight it, and master it, and overcome it, and make it fit higher purposes.”  Some such great urge as this is behind the incessant urge to find the cause and cure of disease; to watch for the signs and issue warnings against tidal floods, volcanic eruptions, droughts, and storms.

 

But, if with all our fighting, disaster still has to be borne, it is not for us to lie down under it in weak resignation; but to regard it as the circumstantial will of God that we stand up under it and bear it.  If it must come, take it as it comes!

 

Jesus tried, until “the eleventh hour,” to find a right way out of the cross.  “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”  When he saw that it could not be honorably avoided, he accepted it not in passive resignation, nor in suspicion that God was picking on him.  Knowing that it was the result of evil in the hearts of some people, he bore it as the means of wresting an important spiritual advantage from the disaster.

 

St. Paul often spoke of his “thorn in the flesh” without saying what it was.  Some scholars have believed that it may have been attacks of epilepsy.  He never regarded it as the “will of God,” for he called it “a messenger of Satan.”  But while he could not prevent it, or evade it, or overcome it, he believed that he could win something splendid from it and he accepted it in that spirit.

 

Here are his own words:  “There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, as messenger of Satan to buffet me ---- I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee; for my power is made perfect in weakness.’  Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my weakness that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  Wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then am I strong.”  [II Corinthians 12: 7-10].

 

The same man, Paul, was put in prison.  It is a fate bad enough under any circumstances.  It must have been particularly evil under conditions of his day.  But from his imprisonment he writes, “I would have you know, brethren, that the things which happen unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel; so that my bonds became manifest in Christ. ---- In every way Christ is proclaimed; and therein I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. --- For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”  [Philippians 1: 12-21].  (He does not say “my gain.”  He says “gain” in the sense of ultimate good which he believes must come from his death.)

 

The goodness of God is shown forth by the possibility of disaster - not denied by it.  Weatherhead puts it this way: God allowed the possibility of sin in order that there might be such a thing as saintliness.  If man had not the choice between evil and right, there would be no such thing as sainthood.

 

Even the One Perfect Life was not excepted from this fact.  Tempted in a wilderness for 40 days; suffering scorn, hatred, desertion and treason, he did not court or seek trouble.  But when it came he bore it to triumph.  A wreath of thorny branches was jammed in derision on his head - and he wore it like a crown!

 

It is this triumphant ability to bear disaster to the glory of God that enables the humble in heart to do heroic things.

 

            [See “A Modern Apostle”, printed in today’s calendar]

 

 

 

 

                                                A Modern Apostle

 

Modern Acts of the Apostles would contain a dramatic chapter on Archbishop Damaskinos  of Greece: striding into a Nazi fort to protest the shooting of eighteen Greek hostages in reprisal for the death of a Nazi officer; the commandant of the fort had his moment of scorn also:  “I have to kill eighteen Greeks - I don’t suppose you can name me eighteen other Greeks willing to die for these present hostages?”  Instantly the six-foot prelate in the high turban and the long black robe seized a pencil and wrote eighteen names; his own at the top!  The other seventeen being the other bishops of Greece!  The Gestapo confined him to his house for the next six months as a dangerous character; but now, trusted by all, he has been made regent - “for greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, January 20, 1946.