The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation
of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not
willing, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope
(Romans 8.20,21)
Death exposes the vanity in human life, the futility of our projects. His
honour affronted, Achilles reflects on the reward of his striving,
confronting death he can find no will to go on:
Fate is the same for the man who holds back,
the same if he fights hard. We are all held in
a single honour, the brave with the weaklings.
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one
who has done much
(Iliad 9.318-20)
Considering this, Achilles sought to live carelessly, at ease with his
friends.
The same considerations are placed before us by the church in this season.
The book of the Preacher, Ecclesiastes, declares:
Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities,
all is vanity (1.2)
Again we have a king who has the means to explore every experience:
I gave my heart to seek and search out
by wisdom concerning all things that
are done under heaven: this sore travail
hath God given to the sons of man to be
exercised therewith. I have seen all
the works that are done under the sun,
and, behold, all is vanity and a vexation
of spirit ... For in much wisdom there is
much grief: and he that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow ... The
wise man's eyes are in his head; but the
fool walketh in darkness : and I myself
perceived also that one event happenth
to them all ... For there is no remembrance
of the wise more than of the fool forever:
seeing that which now is in the days to
come shall all be forgotten. And how
dieth the wise man? as the fool. There-
fore I hated life; because the work that is
wrought under the sun is grievous unto me:
for all is vanity and vexation of the spirit.
(Ecclesiastes 1.13,14,18; 2.14,15,16,17)
The preacher considers the cycle of nature, the succession of days, the
ceaseless movement of wind and water. It all comes to nothing, there is an
endless repetition, there is nothing new under the sun. So he comes to that
pessimistic vision, which, in our illiteracy, we have turned into optimism:
To everything there is a season, and a
time to every purpose under the heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up
that which is planted; A time to kill,
and a time to heal; a time to break down,
and a time to build up (Ecclesiastes 3.1-3)
The cosmos is an endless process in which death and destruction have equal
place with life and birth. Human effort is all a striving after wind,
vanity, lost labour.
And so the Preacher comes to the most terrible vision of sterility, a vision
represented in what is terribly beautiful poetry:
The day is coming
when the keepers of the house shall
tremble, and the strong men shall bow
themselves, and the grinders cease
because they are few, and those that
look out of the windows be darkened,
And the doors shall be shut in the
streets, when the sound of the
grinding is low, and he shall rise up
at the voice of the bird, and all the
daughters of musick shall be brought
low, Also when they shall be afraid of
that which is high and fears shall be
a burden, and desire shall fail: because
man goeth to his long home, and the
mourners go about the streets: Or ever
the silver cord be loosed, or the golden
bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken
at the fountain ... Then shall the dust return
to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall
return unto God who gave it. Vanity of
vanities ... all is vanity (Ecclesiastes 12.3.7)
T.S. Eliot tells us that this is our day. In language more conceptual and
abstract, language more our own, he gives voice to our fear of that which is
high, the failure of desire, the separation of flesh and spirit. For us the
silver cord which links knowledge and will is loosed, the golden bowl of
personality is broken and the pitcher by which we draw from the water of
life is shattered:
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow ...
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow ...
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
(The Hollow Men)
What word does God speak to this division? The Word made flesh. There idea
and reality, conception and creation, existence and essence are one at the
point of their infinite separation: the separation not only between creature
and creator but also between sin and holiness, death and immortality. But
the Word made flesh is slain, given unto the hands of wicked men. He was
crucified and descended into hell. Where says St. Peter, he preached unto
the departed spirits. (1 Peter 3.19)
We shall not comfort ourselves strongly enough with hopes for this present
world, indeed it is just that transformation of religious hope into
expectations for history which has given the old Preacher of Ecclesiastes
and the contemporary poet the same message. We have come in our time to the
loosening of the will, to the breaking of hope and to the despair of truth
not by looking directly at death, but by disillusionment with our own
historical projects. We have come to our present pass not by contemplating
what Homer called immortal evil, but by finding the evil in our own good
works, our own good intentions our hopes for history.
So it happens that we shall only be strengthened by that which our dead Lord
preached to the dead.
Flesh and blood cannot inherit the
Kingdom of God ... the trumpet shall
sound and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on
incorruption, and this mortal must put
on immortality (1 Corinthians 15.50-54)
Only life which has fully encountered, been given over to and so encompassed
vanity, the vexation of the spirit, despair and death can be "steadfast,
unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know
that your labour is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 15.58)
Only when we hold close to ourselves the omnipotent power which binds death
and life together, as we cannot bind them, we who die perforce, only when we
know the holy immortal power which is working in all things by the death of
the Son of God in order to bring the whole creation to immortal and
incorruptible glory and power, only then shall we find the strength to begin
again. Then we shall reckon that the:
sufferings of this present time are
not worthy to be compared with the
glory that shall be revealed.
For the vanity is not just the failing of human will and power but it has
become the will of God who works in all things to the end that:
the creature itself shall be delivered
from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of
God. (Romans 8.21)
