It's Not Fair! (Ecclesiastes 4.1-16)

Introduction

If you have spent any time at all with children you’ll know that at the age of about 2 or 3 they develop a deep sense of justice. “She’s got more than me!” “Why is he allowed to stay up longer?” Their God-given conscience triggers an internal alarm bell whenever they see that some universal law has been violated to their disadvantage! “It’s,” “not” and “fair” are the first three words some children string together.

I was the middle one of three children and we always had to do the dishes after meals. One would wash, one would dry and one would put away. Whichever role my little brother was assigned to, he felt it wasn’t fair and he would broadcast his grievance at length and at high volume. I never understood his logic.

And have you noticed, “It’s not fair!” always works in one direction only. My siblings and I never said to my mum, “It’s not fair, I’ve got more cake than her.” Or “It’s not fair, I’m allowed to stay up later than him.” We complained bitterly only when we compared ourselves and felt we could make a case of being worse off.

In chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes there’s a lot of “Life’s not fair”. It’s a difficult chapter to get a handle on. It’s almost like Solomon just picks out random things in life that particularly tick him off.

Actually that’s how I talk when I’m in a bit of a bad mood. “There’s nothing good on TV, the house is cold, I’m sick of this filthy weather, England are rubbish at football, the fridge is empty, and I can’t do a thing with my hair.”

Actually, to be fair, I think England are rubbish at football even when I’m in a good mood. But do you ever talk like that or is it just me? Well, this is where Solomon is at in chapter 4. Everything annoys him. 

I love it that the Bible is honest about human emotions. Life isn’t all unicorns and rainbows is it? A lot of the Psalms, when you read them, are people just sounding off about how unfair life is and how far away God feels. God never says, “Well I’m not having all these miserable, grumbling old men ruining my word!” No, he includes it because he accepts us and love us as we are, not as we think we should be.

I want you to imagine chapter 4 with me as a walk through a room in a museum with six different exhibits.

Suffering and Oppression

The first picture is about suffering; this is what Solomon thinks about in v1-3. It’s a really dark painting of some poor, desperate soul being maltreated by powerful bullies. It’s about tears and oppression. Look how they’re all alone with no one to comfort them or help.

Solomon saw in his day, and we see in ours, that some people just get a sick satisfaction in inflicting pain on others.

Oppression was a fact of life in Jesus’ time as well as our gospel reading shows. Pilate just cruelly slaughters some Jews whose only crime was to be worshipping in the Temple when he was in a particularly foul mood. Then a badly built tower randomly falls on some innocent victims.

From modern slavery and human trafficking to coercive control and domestic violence in respectable looking homes, oppression is everywhere. What a sad, fallen world we live in!

Worldwide, $2.4 trillion are spent annually on an industry that creates or manages violence (the arms industry), while a tiny proportion of that sum, £175 billion, would eradicate world poverty with one investment.

In v2-3 Solomon hits rock bottom. He even envies those who are dead and gone. The second lowest you can go is to wish you were dead. But the lowest surely is to wish you’d never been born in the first place. But this is the kind of thinking that atheist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre ended up with. “Life begins on the other side of despair” he said. Oh wow! A night out with him must have been a barrel of laughs…

But Solomon’s the king. If anyone can do anything about oppression it’s him. He didn’t. He forgot his faith for most of his life. If he had stayed in tune with the God he knew when he was young, he probably would have remembered the orphan, the widow and the foreigner and how God says to love them. He would have done something about all this instead of just sitting on his hands and complaining about how unfair life is.

Sometimes we feel powerless don’t we?

I read this week about a curate who once visited a young couple who were expecting their first child. They were young professionals, friendly enough, but not all that interested in spiritual things. In due course the child was born but very soon it became seriously ill and died.

The curate went to visit them again but, to his great distress, he couldn’t find anything to say and he just sat there in their living room fighting back tears, deeply upset for them. He left feeling a complete failure. To his amazement, the following Sunday, the couple were there in church for the first time. He welcomed them in, sat them down, made them feel at home, and then said, “I don’t understand it; when you needed me most, I had nothing to give you.” And they looked at him and said, “Oh, but you gave us everything you had.”

Possessions and Envy

The next picture in the gallery is about a group of women jealously envying their neighbour’s new designer handbag and slim line figure. 

This is what Solomon thinks about in v4; envy.

Someone once said, “We buy more than we can afford because we want more than we need.”

I have a nephew, now in his twenties, who grew up in a part of the south east where people live in large houses, drive expensive cars, own second homes and yachts and go on exotic holidays.

When he was about 14, his parents asked him what he wanted to do in life he said, “I just want to earn lots and lots of money. I am going to be rich.” He saw opulence and luxury all around him and decided he would give himself no rest until he had it too. And now he works in the City and earns big money with obscene bonuses.

This is the kind of thing Solomon saw going on in his day too. Envy. It’s not fair! People obsessed about getting into the next tax bracket, sending their children to a more elite school, moving to a more select neighbourhood.

Solomon noticed that people are so consumed by this drive that they never stop to ask “Actually, what is this all for?”

We tend to imagine that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. But even if it is, remember the neighbours’ water bill is higher as well.

Work and Inequality

You walk on and look at the next picture in the gallery and it’s of two workers in an office; one is quietly skiving off while the other is so overworked he doesn’t even notice. 

In v5-6 Solomon muses about the workplace. You’ve got workaholics driving themselves into the ground, getting into the office early, leaving late, taking work home at the weekend, and always stressed.

And you’ve got workshy idlers, throwing a sickie every two weeks, never pulling their weight, forever hanging round the coffee machine, systematically late back from lunch…

Neither has a good work/life balance and neither is really content.

In my first job we hired a young man called Craig Burden. I’ve never known someone so aptly named. He took laziness to a new level. You asked him to do something like move a box from a to b, and he’d just stand there and look at you slightly startled, as if you’d asked him to weigh the Moon. And he picked up the same wages as me at the end of the week. It’s not fair!

Solomon’s seen all this. “What’s the point of working hard?” This is what v6 means.

Money and Weariness

Next to that picture is one of a man sitting on a pile of wealth, more money that he’ll ever be able to spend, but he’s without a friend in the world and his eyes are empty and sad. 

This picture is the epitome of the expression, “It’s lonely at the top.” Here’s what Solomon sees in v7-8.

In 2013 Jane Park became Britain’s youngest Euro Millions lottery winner. She was 17 years old and won £1 million. She’s now 21, and says that her new wealth has failed to deliver any long-term happiness.

She was recently interviewed in The Independent, and said: “I thought it would make [my life] ten times better but it’s made it ten times worse. I wish I had no money most days. I say to myself, ‘My life would be so much easier if I hadn’t won’.”

She claims that she is considering taking legal action against Camelot, suing them for negligence for allowing her to win the money so young because it has “ruined my life.”

This is what she said: “People look at me and think, ‘I wish I had her lifestyle, I wish I had her money.’ But they don’t realise the extent of my stress. I have material things but apart from that my life is empty. What is my purpose in life?”

She could have taken those words right out of Ecclesiastes. Even people who win the lottery say “It’s not fair!” You see how relevant this is? As people climb the ladder of success, or win instant fame and fortune, many get lonely and the people they can honestly call friends get fewer and fewer. 

Popularity and Disapproval

And the last pictures are actually photos in two sections. The first two show three politicians the day they took office. 

Notice the optimism and happiness. But next to those pictures are scenes from a few years down the line.

Popularity has sunk. People feel betrayed and let down. It’s the same old same old. In politics, yesterday’s men are quickly replaced, often discredited, and seldom thanked for years of public service. It’s not fair.

This is what v13-16 are about. Solomon’s kingdom was torn in two in one generation later. I think he saw it coming. It all fell apart. He left no lasting legacy… For our politicians, it usually ends in tears, and for our celebrities, fame is fleeting.

Ending

Why has God given us Ecclesiastes? Because all the questions raised in this book, all its yearnings, things that the world still feels (if anything more than ever) are answered in Christ.

The church he established, and promised would grow, a community united by love, is the ultimate fulfilment of v9-12. People working together and making a difference. “If you remain in me, in I in you” Jesus said, “you will bear much fruit.” The chord of three strands (you, me and Jesus) is not quickly broken.

The thing is, Solomon never really enjoyed fellowship. His dad, King David, wrote in Psalm 122, “I was glad with those who said to me, ‘let us go to the house of the Lord.’” But Solomon, the loner, like so many in our culture, didn’t really do church. Too busy. Too distracted. Too self-absorbed. And look where he ended up.

But the gospel changes peoples’ hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. It is good news for people, like Solomon, are just lost in a deep frustration that life is empty and going nowhere.

In the 4th Century, the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate bemoaned the fact that his pagan religion was failing and in decline whilst Christianity was growing everywhere. And he wrote these words in a despairing letter: “Observe the kindness of Christians to strangers; their care for the burial of their dead, and the sobriety of their lifestyle has done the most to advance their cause... Not only do they care for their own poor, they care for ours.”

This is who we are, and this is the gospel we have, which is still as good news as it’s ever been.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

Encountering Jesus changes everything because it affects the very heart of who you are. Jesus recalibrates all your values. He all redefines your ambitions. What a discovery!

Jesus said about the one who finds the treasure “in his joy he goes and sells everything that he has.” He doesn’t just sell all he has; he does so with elation, with abandon, laughing out loud. No regrets. No complaints about the sacrifice. He doesn’t even consider it a hardship. However much he gives for the field, he gets so much more in return.

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 26 February 2017