There’s a joke: you may have already heard it. A Sunday school teacher says to the children at church: ‘What’s small and grey with a bushy tail?’ And a child replies: ‘Well it sounds like a squirrel to me, but I know the answer is going to be Jesus.’ The answer is Jesus. We know that, don’t we? But what if we sometimes skip ahead to the answer too quickly?

Put your hand up if you are currently learning maths at school? Do you sometimes do questions where you have to show your working out? Why do you think you have to show that? [wait for answers]. What if sometimes we know the answer is Jesus but we didn’t take the time to do our working out?

EXPLORING ECCLESIASTES
Our first reading is taken from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. The book of Ecclesiastes falls into the biblical genre of wisdom literature. It’s a collection of sayings ascribed to King Solomon. Solomon, son of King David, is described in the bible as exceptionally, perhaps incomparably wise. 1 Kings 4:29 tells us: ‘God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.’

But although Solomon is amazingly wise, he struggles to find meaning or purpose in life. Much of the book, including the extracts in this passage, are strikingly negative, imbued with uncertainty and doubt. The speaker says: ‘What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation.’ Solomon is saying: why do I even bother? What is the point? Perhaps you know how it feels to wonder that.

Maybe you are familiar with that feeling. As a teenager, I remember sitting in maths class (we’re circling back to maths) thinking: what is the point of all this? How is knowing that a2 + b2 = c2 ever going to help me in life? Why do I have to do all this homework?

Ecclesiastes includes heavy repetition of the word ‘vanity’. It doesn’t mean being obsessed with your appearance: taking millions of selfies or flexing your muscles in front of the mirror at the gym. The Hebrew word for ‘vanity’, havel, could be translated ‘breath’ or ‘futility’. It’s describing something that is just there for a fleeting moment, like a breath, and then is gone forever. The speaker is struggling with where to find depth and purpose in life when everything seems so temporary.

ECCLESIASTES THROUGH THE LENS OF CHRIST
As Christians, we know that it is following Christ that gives life meaning. Like good Sunday school pupils, we know that the answer is Jesus. But what if sometimes, knowing that doesn’t feel enough? And where does Jesus fit into a book like Ecclesiastes?

Christians read the Bible backwards. Which is to say, we read the Old Testament through the lens of what we know and believe about Jesus Christ; through the redemptive and ultimately hope-filled arc of salvation history. From that Christological vantage-point, the ‘vanity’ described in Ecclesiastes paints a picture of the opposite of a life focused on following Christ: a picture of how empty life can feel without faith.

But we must be careful not to skip straight to glib or overly positive answers which fail to do justice to the reality of our struggles. There is an authenticity to the existential angst we find in Ecclesiastes that reminds us there is no question we can ask or doubt we can have that will remove us from God’s loving presence, even when it doesn’t feel that way. We know that, in Christ, we are promised eternal life: a life that is grounded in the purposefulness and depth of loving relationship, with God and with each other. But it can take time and space to reflect on what that big picture means for us today, in the details of our daily life.

We need to take the time to prayerfully wonder: where is God in this? What does following Christ mean for me, in my current situation? We know the answer is Jesus. But sometimes, we need to work backwards from the answer to the question. We need to take the time to show our working out.