It wasn’t all that long ago that you first walked into this school as children. Now you’re about to leave it as adults, legally able to drive, marry, vote, drink alcohol and gamble online.
As the Apostle Paul in our first reading reflected on his passage from infancy to adulthood he said, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” And he went on to talk about hope. It’s not greater than love, he says, what is? But it is up there in his all-time top three of virtues. Faith, hope and love, and the greatest is love.
What about hope, then? Hope is defined in the dictionary as “expectation and desire for something to happen.”
As I awaited my A-level results it was more a case of desire than expectation - hoping against hope; clinging to the mere possibility that I might attain the grades I had scarcely worked for. Some hope… But I’m sure you have greater cause for optimism than I had.
At the time in my life when I was sweating on my A-level grades, I was looking forward to something better. Even two years before then - I always seemed to be dreaming of utopia which was just over the next horizon. So when I was 16, I said “When I have a few exam certificates to my name, life will be great,” and then I passed my GCSEs, doing inexplicably well, went on to VI form - and for a couple of months it felt great to be free.
But as soon as term started in September, I found myself thinking “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”
And then I thought “Maybe when I’ve got a girlfriend, things will finally start to get interesting.” And somehow or other, I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow managed to get a girlfriend and it was amazing… for about three weeks! But then my sweetheart and I had a big argument about nothing and, (I still maintain I was right by the way) but before I knew it, I discovered I had been unceremoniously ditched. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”
So then I thought, “Well, when I get a job, I’ll earn some serious money and I’ll be able to buy more and do more.” And I got a job offer. Oh, the elation when I opened the letter! “Dear Mr. Lambert, we are delighted to inform you…” So I started work and for a short while it was fantastic. The adrenalin, the challenge, the pay slip at the end of the month… But then the novelty of that wore off too. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”
I’ve found that many people spend the best part of their lives dreaming about the next house, the next promotion, the next relationship, the next holiday. But when they get there, they find it doesn’t really satisfy them in the way they hoped it might.
King Solomon was such a man. He lived about 1000 BC which was Israel’s golden age. And he was in charge of it all. Its economic wealth, its cultural influence and its military strength were at their zenith during his reign. Israel’s borders have never in history been so extensive either before or since. This is the narrator of our first reading and he tells there of the many things he did in his quest for greatness.
Like many of you here, I suspect, with the best years of your lives ahead of you, he was ambitious. He wanted to be significant and leave his mark on the world. His engineering feats were legendary; grand building projects, fortress cities, landscaped parks and gardens, impressive roads and canals...
People worked for him in their thousands. He was one of the most powerful people on earth. Royalty from all over the then known world travelled to Jerusalem to admire the splendour and finery of his palace and kingdom. He amassed unparalleled wealth and lived the luxurious life of a superstar – including the charm. As far as we can make out, there were about 1000 women in his life. Everyone wanted to be Solomon and everybody envied what he had.
He planted vineyards and produced the finest wines. He held banquets serving the world’s most luxurious and sumptuous food imaginable with top celebrity guest lists. Anyone who was anyone had to be seen at Solomon’s dinner parties.
He took to writing; he was a gifted poet, a prolific song writer, a brilliant philosopher, and he also delved into science and academic investigation.
In fact, he says “I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me… Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”
Like when you try and hold water in your hands, as hard as you try, it leaks out and it’s gone. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”
He came to a depressing conclusion; that study, wealth, fame, greatness and unlimited pleasure just don’t satisfy the soul. They can’t because there is a God-shaped gap in every human heart that gives us a yearning, a restlessness, for the eternal. Like a square peg in a round hole, nothing else fits.
Even learning and wisdom... Near the end of his life Solomon wrote these weary words; “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” Even Solomon sat A-levels it seems…
He also wrote this in the same chapter;
“Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over. Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends… Remember your Creator while you're still young, before the years take their toll and your strength wanes, before your vision dims and the world blurs and the winter years keep you close to the fire.”
You have worked hard during your time at Yarm School. Well done. (All right, perhaps some of you haven’t worked that hard – some of you are probably a bit like me in that way)!
You have so many options and possibilities before you. I wish you well. (Not least because when you get to the height of your earning powers, you’ll be paying my state pension)!
I hope that, collectively, you’ll achieve more than Solomon, that distinguished overachiever.
But most of all, I hope that, unlike Solomon, you’ll remember your Creator while you’re still young, so you’ll not end up concluding, as he did at the end of his career, that it was all so pointless, nothing more than chasing the wind.
Sermon preached at the Yarm School leavers’ service, Yarm Methodist Church, 20th May 2010
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