Ecclesiastes 12 "Days of Youth" Scott Hoezee

A little over a week ago the New York Times published a front-page story on a little hamlet in upper New York State called Newton Falls. Newton Falls sprang to life around 1894 when a large paper mill was built in that part of the northern Adirondacks. In the century since then this mill has provided work for hundreds and hundreds of Newton Falls residents and was the employer of 125 people as recently as four months ago. Except now the mill is closing and Newton Falls, according to the article, is teetering on the verge of communal death. The hamlet still has about 100 residents but not much more than that. In addition to the mill the Newton Falls Hotel with its small pub is about the only thing left aside from the small-ish, working-class style houses which make up the local neighborhoods.

Once upon a time Newton Falls was a busy, close-knit small town with close to 1,000 residents. In the century of its history Newton Falls, like most such towns, has been home to many people who dreamed dreams, baptized their children, sent sons off to war, and mourned their dead. Life happened there, in other words--real life with all its wrinkles, beauties, special moments, sorrows, joys, and just overall variety of experiences.

But now it will soon be a memory, and not much of a memory at that. Even local history books which chronicle upper New York State include just a slim paragraph or two about Newton Falls. The archive of the Saint Lawrence County Historical Society has only a handful of old brochures from the mill and a few undated, early-twentieth century photos of some unidentified men toiling around large rolls of paper at the mill. But that's it. The A&P burned down some years ago and was never re-built. The barbershop closed, followed by the bowling alley. Now with the mill going down the tubes as well the tiny school will almost certainly fold as in all likelihood will the twenty-bed local hospital which, as it is, averages only two patients per day.

Abandoned shops, empty factories, boarded up windows, undated photos of unidentified folks whom no one even remembers anymore: it's Ecclesiastes 12 in a contemporary nutshell. The planet keeps spinning, time keeps passing at its relentless pace, and even the best life has to offer fades into memory, and then into an oblivion where even memory winks out. Life, the Teacher might say, is like some faded and yellowed photograph on the wall at your great-grandma's house. Someone snapped that picture because the people in it were precious and loved. Someone framed and hung that photo because it was an image and a memory worth savoring, worth glancing at again and again. But now it's been in the sunlight too long. The photo-sensitive chemicals have decayed such that now you cannot even make out who was in the picture, and there is no one left alive who could tell you.

Have you ever been in one of those antique shops which sells not just old furniture but old everything? That big antique mall in Lowell is a good example: just about every nook of that shop has not just furniture, lamps, and paintings but knick-knacks and bric-a-brac of every kind. Every once in a while when browsing through such antique shops you run across a shoebox full of old, black-and-white photos. And suddenly you come face to face with all these strangers staring out at you: wedding photos of people who as often as not hardly look like this was the happiest day of their lives; little children gussied up for the photographer and perfectly posed on a little footstool; portraits of older men and women who look like there is much on their minds, much they would like to tell you but in the silence of that moment frozen in time you cannot hear their voices, cannot read their thoughts.

Have you ever run across such a cache of photos? If so, has it ever depressed you utterly? One day will my picture or your picture end up in such a place, being gawked at by strangers who don't know our names, will never know who we were or what made us laugh and cry? Is this what life comes down to: ghost towns and forgotten lives?

Well, if I keep talking like this for much longer, we are all going to slink out of here in abject melancholy this evening! By now you're probably thinking, "I'm sure glad this is the last sermon in this series! It's time for something more upbeat!" If you feel that way, you are not alone. From the looks of Ecclesiastes 12 someone somewhere along the line in history likewise felt the need to brighten things up a bit, to end on a more hopeful note.

Because if you were paying attention, then you noticed a major shift in person and voice at verse 9. Suddenly it is clear that someone other than Qoheleth is speaking. Indeed, the Teacher is referred to in the third person. So it looks like the Teacher's last word on this book came in verse 8, where in both the original Hebrew and in the English translation the very last word is "Phhhht!" In literature this is called an "inclusio" because it ends the book the same way it began. If you compare Ecclesiastes 1:2 with 12:8, then you will see that those two verses are nearly word-for-word identical. Hence, the Teacher's final sentiment is that Hebrew word we looked at in the first sermon of this series: that throat-clearing word hevel, which I've been loosely translating as "Phhht" throughout this series.

But that's hardly a hopeful way to end a book! So at some point some scribe or some editor or some monk who was copying this book in a monastery somewhere, tacked on verses 9-14. Since "Phhht" did not seem like a proper way to end a biblical book, this unknown person decided to round things out with the more pious sounding sentiment of "Behave, or else!" We end on a note of law, a note of "trust and obey for there's no other way." We end with a reminder of judgment as a goad to spur people to lead moral lives.

But that it is not the way Qoheleth himself wanted this book to end. This, by the way, is not the only example of some later person's attempt to make a book end "better." The more famous example is the last twenty verses of Mark. Mark appears to have ended his gospel in 16:8 with the women fleeing the tomb and saying nothing to anyone because "they were afraid." But since "afraid" did not seem like a good last word for a gospel, some well-meaning scribe later tacked on that hodge-podge of verses which is now bracketed in the NIV and most other translations as not being part of Mark's original gospel.

We likely have no doctrinal difficulty with these last few verses of chapter 12. But I would like to end this series by focusing on just the first 8 verses, concluding where Qoheleth himself seems to have concluded. Of course, that is not exactly a tall order since there is really just one sentiment, one single piece of advice in this chapter and it comes in verse 1 when the Teacher says, "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth."

After that, the remaining seven verses are an extended, highly lyrical description of things we already thought about this evening. Life has a way of winding down. People age. Factories close. Equipment breaks down. Retirement comes and so work stops. Bodies grow older and so there comes a time when the season of spring arrives, scenting the air with the fragrance of almond blossoms, and yet sexual desire is not stirred anymore the way spring used to affect you when you were younger.

All the pretty things of life--golden bowls, pewter pitchers, silver cords--crack and chip and fray and break. You get to a point where you worry so much about breaking your hip that you avoid hikes and walks. The birds still sing on springtime mornings but until you put your hearing aids in, you cannot enjoy their warbling songs. Once well-toned muscles turn to flab and ten minutes' worth of sitting cross-legged on the floor with your grandkids leads to a week's worth of stiff knee joints.

An unhappy portrait, but in this case the Teacher has a point to make: before you get to that time and so while you still have some vigor and pleasure and meaningful work filling up your life, remember your Creator. Doing so will not head off life's inevitable winding-down nature, but maybe it will help you cope with it. Maybe there is a way to enter old age and those latter, more difficult times of life, in such a way as to prevent your outlook on life from curdling into some putrid cup of spoiled milk. Apparently remembering your Creator while you are still young has something to recommend itself. What might that something be?

What effect does such a remembrance have? Maybe a good place to begin is to review something about that word "remember" in the Bible. The Hebrew word in verse 1 is zakar, which is the same word used in the commandment "Remember the Sabbath day" as well as throughout Deuteronomy 8 where Moses tells the Israelites again and again that they must "Remember and not forget" who God is, what God has done, and what God has said. In this sense to remember is more than just keeping something in mind, more than just filing it away some place where you can get at it when needed the way you might be able to remember the dates of the Civil War or something.. Instead remembering means having a living connection with God. Remembering means not just calling something to mind from your brain's memory banks the way you can call up some old file on your computer. Remembering God is something that always and constantly translates into action.

To "remember the Sabbath" day was not simply saying, "What day is it? Oh yes, I remember: it's the Sabbath." No, a living memory of the Sabbath translates into preparing for the day, setting it aside in advance, clearing space for worship. Memory and remembrance have a thick and substantial reality in Scripture--remembering is an alive and enlivening activity. It makes a difference in everything you think and feel and say and do.

Perhaps that is why in many other parts of Scripture you find believers pleading with God to remember them. To be in the divine mind, to have a nook in God's holy memory, was properly seen as the equivalent of having a future. The single most striking instance of this in the Bible is the thief on the cross: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." That was an interesting way to put it. Why didn't that thief say, "Jesus, take me with you" or "Jesus, save me" or "Jesus, raise me up again!"? But he didn't say that. He asked only for a memory, a calling to mind, in Jesus' heart. Is that enough? Apparently.

Even on the human level our thoughts and memories have a powerful reality to them. Just by saying something to you, I can change you. In a way science cannot explain we are genuinely molded, our physical brains are re-wired, sheerly by the power of thought alone. You can change my whole outlook on life just by saying something. You don't have to touch me, you don't have to inject a chemical into my brain: all you do is open your mouth to impart some information and my mind and heart and outlook can be altered.

Thoughts and information do not show up on CAT scans or PET scans of my brain. But memory and words and information and thoughts have a powerful reality that transcend biology. And if that is true for us, just think how much more real God's thoughts and God's memories must be! Small wonder that the thief on the cross could ask Jesus just to remember him. Because perhaps there is a very real sense in which to be alive in God's memory is to be alive indeed!

So given that background, what might it mean to "remember your Creator "? It means making God alive to your senses and so knowing how supremely alive you are to God as well. It means having the Creator of the universe clearly before you at all times. This is a remembrance, a calling to mind, that has substance, that has kick to it. It is not merely recalling now and again, "Oh that's right! I have a Creator out there somewhere!" No, remembering the Creator has a vastly more significant effect than that.

For one thing, remembering your Creator means knowing that you are yourself a creature. You are not self-made. So you cannot make up your own rules as you go along. You were created by someone. Presumably this wise Creator had something in mind for your existence by virtue of having made you. Remembering your Creator makes alive and real to you your proper place in the grand scheme of things. This, then, is part of the wisdom tradition in which Ecclesiastes stands. The wise look for ways to fit in with creation's order.

But secondly remembering your Creator helps you remember that you are finite, limited. You are not the Creator but a creature and so your life has a closed frame around it. Only a fool would think he can go on forever. Your life on this earth will end. That should shape how you live up until that terminal point. The person who tacked on the last few verses of chapter 12 took this thought in the direction of "Therefore, behave or else! You will die and face judgment, so have a care lest you be damned!" The Teacher would perhaps agree with that, but in the wider context of Ecclesiastes I have the feeling Qoheleth would steer this thought about life's finite nature in a slightly different direction. Remembering your Creator in the days of your youth seems to mean to the Teacher to remember also all the wonders and pleasures and beauties and sensations which the Creator made for our use and enjoyment.

Ecclesiastes makes two major points: the big point is that life is often fleeting and unfair. But a second big point is the Teacher's idea that between birth and death there are plenty of goodies God has given for our joy. Food, wine, love, meaningful work, sexuality, leisure hours: these are not just quirky little things we just happen to stumble across. No, these are all created wonders that are gifts from the Creator. Remembering your Creator in the days of your youth may indeed lead you to keep judgment in mind. But the Teacher does not see some bland, up-tight, dull existence spinning out of this focus on the Creator. He sees a zestful life which takes advantage of God's gifts for this short time while we have access to those gifts. We need to live life while we've got it!

Newton Falls is a town that looks to be winding down. Some of us know firsthand how that feels. Yet Newton Falls did have its day in the sun, did have a time when good lives well lived happened there. Most of us have had such times, too. When such times come to an end, memory can transmute into nostalgia: a word which means "the pain of the past." But if we remembered our Creator in the days of our youth, if we led a life that had a living connection to God in all those times before retirement came and before the spring went out of our step, then maybe memory itself becomes infused with grace.

As Frederick Buechner once wrote, looking back on our lives we can all be a little amazed and plenty grateful that we made it this far at all. There were so many times when it could have all ended for us, so many times when we could have given up on God or God on us, so many times when those closest to us had every good reason to tell us to take a hike, but they didn't. That we made it this far at all is itself a kind of grace, and a gift too.

Remembering your Creator will not change your status as a limited person in a life which as often as not goes, "Phhhht" all around you. But maybe, just maybe, remembering God infuses the fleetingness of this life with intimations of that eternity which, as we saw in chapter 3, God has set into our hearts. To be alive in the mind of God is to be alive indeed. How can we know that we have found a nook in God's living memory? We know it, we are engulfed by it, every time we hold nuggets of bread and cups of wine as we hear, "Do this in remembrance of me." We remember Jesus, and he remembers us. We remember Jesus, and he reminds us that we have never been alone. We remember our Creator who has promised that he will remember us. Always. Even to the very end of this otherwise meaningless age. We remember. God remembers. And so together we are alive to one another. Always. Alive. Amen.