The End is the Same for All - Ecclesiastes 9:1–12

Last week we reflected on how Solomon sees injustice and how it impacts us when justice is slow to come. Living under the sun is often difficult and unpredictable, Solomon confesses that we really have no idea of what lies ahead of us, whether love or hate; echoing back to what he’s just written about how the righteous often experience what the wicked deserve and vice versa. Solomon acknowledges that both the righteous and the wicked and everything that happens under the sun is in God’s hands; he’s in control and directs history. Solomon knows that we all share the same end; we’ll all die one day; even Jesus died. This should lead us to hold the things of our lives lightly, easy to let go of to bless others.

It’s good to acknowledge that we’ll all die one day. It doesn’t matter who you are, righteous or wicked, good or bad, clean or unclean, those who sacrifice or those who don’t, we’ll all be held accountable for what we choose to believe, who or what we choose to place our faith in, and for the way we’ve lived our lives and treated God and others. Solomon calls the fact that we all face the same destiny an “evil in everything that happens under the sun.” He goes on to say that “the hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live.” These are hard, depressing, hopeless thoughts, and yet there’s truth in his words.

Since the fall in the garden of Eden, sin’s grown and become normal, impacting all of creation. God warned Adam in Genesis 2, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Adam and Eve disobeyed and death followed, Genesis 3, “To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” This quickly culminates in the flood and a restart with Noah and his family, but history has shown us how wickedness and humanity live together in close relationship. Often, our wickedness is only a matter of degree. 

Solomon now injects a little hope into his reflections on our destinies and death, “Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.” The living have hope because after we die, according to Solomon’s knowledge, there’s no further reward, no knowledge, passions, and even their names will be forgotten, a huge fear in the middle eastern culture. “A living dog is better off than a dead lion,” is similar to saying, “The living still hope;” the living can still experience the joy and hope he moves into talking about next.

We see how early in God’s story of redemption that Solomon’s in; and how little knowledge and hope those who only live under the sun really have. If there’s little or nothing after death, as Solomon describes, then this life is all there is, and the reality is that, while many people have good lives, just as many, or even more people live lives of struggle and even quiet desperation. Yet while we’re still living, we still have hope; we have the opportunity to choose Jesus, to accepting him as our Lord and Saviour, repenting and believing in God, choosing wisdom over folly, offering and seeking forgiveness, participating through faith in Jesus in his death and resurrection, taking away the fear and meaninglessness of death, the sting of evil. Jesus dies to take our punishment on himself so that death now is a doorway into God’s presence and mansion forever. Jesus tells his disciples in John 14, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

Solomon knows Hades as a place of shadow, loneliness, wandering, disconnection, and separation from God. Jonah 2, “He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.”

This is why Solomon returns to his favourite response to living under the sun, “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil.  Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” This isn’t bad wisdom, but it is limited wisdom. He knows it doesn’t matter how gifted, strong, wise, or learned you are, life will throw you curveballs and death lies at the end of it all; so, enjoy life when you can, is all the under the sun living can offer you. Many never succeed, as the world understands success, even though they work hard, are gifted and talented, or strong, or even wise and educated. Life and circumstances can humble us. Solomon doesn’t yet understand resurrection and renewal, the restoration of even our physical bodies.

Solomon’s solution is just a small glimpse of what actually lies before us. Jesus spoke often of what the kingdom of heaven is like; like a banquet held by the king, like a wedding feast full of family and friends, good food and company, like a farmer’s field or vineyard full and lush, ready for harvest in order to be enjoyed. Life’s short and often difficult, but the joys we experience now in food, wine, and relationships are but a small taste of what lies before us. This is why we’re called to live into that joy, to share that joy with each other. The work we put our hands to helps our communities to flourish and blesses others. The church is the body of Christ given as a gift for the life of the world.

Jesus shows that how we live now leads to the blessings of belonging in the kingdom of heaven: Matthew 25, “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’  “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’  “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.” …  “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Life’s a gift and death’s no longer to be feared. Bobby Jamieson writes in his book on Ecclesiastes: “If you believe that life is good because life is a gift, and life is a gift because God gives it, and life is full of good things because the creator is constantly flinging gifts at you faster than you can catch them, then any meaning you discover is catching up with the meaning that God has already built in. Any goodness you enjoy is scratching the surface of the goodness that life is. Any happiness you experience is a glimpse of the one who is happiness himself.”

Paul states it well in Colossians 3 on how to live in response to the blessings that flow out of the kingdom of heaven, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” This is kingdom living, this is hope-filled, meaningful living. We’re called to build each other up, encourage each other, to be a blessing, undoing the ways of evil and brokenness in our world; so go and live in the joy and hope of Jesus.