You’re so vain?
Proper 13, Yr C, Ec 1, Col 3, Lk 12
8am, 10.30am
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Geek that I am, I saw a great sign this week on a church social media page:
‘You’re so vain, you probably think this psalm is about you’.
Those of us of a certain age are now singing in our heads, Carly Simon’s famous song, ‘you’re so vain’. She wrote that in in 1971 and released it in 1972. I was 9 and yet it was a soundtrack to a lot of my teenage life it was so popular. It was crowned at one point the ultimate song of the 1970s!
Clearly, this could also be the vocal backing track behind the book of Ecclesiastes – part of the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament written after the exile, somewhere between 450BC and 180BC; not to be confused with the book of Ecclesiasticus, a book of the Apocrypha, not part of the authorised canon of scripture in the protestant tradition written around 196 to 175BC.
The author appears to be somewhat melancholy. ‘Vanity of vanities. All is vanity’. ‘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; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.’
I don’t know but this chap sounds depressed. Many people find their minds work overtime as they try to go to sleep but it doesn’t make them vain. We can all get philosophical at times, and it is good to think, - would that we all did that more rather than absorb things uncritically – but what the author is talking about is his frustration with meaninglessness and the particular work of seeking wisdom. Why? Because true wisdom is elusive but perhaps more particularly because most people who are truly wise would not consider themselves wise – it is something that others would use to describe them, not themselves. It doesn’t excuse the effort though to find wisdom, just be careful where you look for it and don’t be vain about it!
In the reading from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we find the antidote to that meaninglessness and depression – Paul tells the people of Colossae to ‘seek the things that are above’. We are to look upwards and outwards not downwards and inwards. And that renewal breaks down all barriers and even all distinctions and just think about the immensity of what he is saying here – that there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, between circumcised and uncircumcised, Barbarian, Scythian, between slave and free. A Scythian was a member of an ancient tribe. A barbarian to the Romans was any member of the tribal non-Romans with whom they were in contact, people such as the Berbers, Germanics, Celts, Iberians. The term comes from the Greek – in their own tongue, it sounded to them gibberish, bar bar bar bar. It is actually an onomatopoeic word and would be used as a highly charged political jibe against opponents. We see this sort of approach used all the time in our own politics and even in the leadership election exchanges this week.
But Paul doesn’t leave it there with that massive statement that those distinctions no longer matter and are no longer meaningful or important, and instead says this: ‘Christ is all and in all’. That is all that matters. In Christ, we are one, not without differences but despite our differences which are inconsequential in comparison. This is important. We may here all have differing political views; I would be surprised if we didn’t and very much hope we do have a range of views here. We may disagree on all sorts of important questions like immigration, how to bring up children, whether people on benefits deserve more support, on further support for the war in Ukraine and even on whether we should use the Nicene or some other creed or none on a Sunday morning. We can continue to discuss these things and agree or disagree but whatever we think or believe, more importantly, we are one in Christ and Christ is all and in all.
When we come to the gospel reading, we are in some ways back to vanity. Someone in the crowd asks Jesus to tell his brother to divide his inheritance with him, - the implication is that it should be equally divided. Now you have to understand something about Jewish inheritance laws here. Firstly, only the sons inherited unless there were none, in which case it passed to the daughter. The first-born son always inherited double what the rest inherited so if there were two sons, the first-born son received a two thirds share and the other one third. If there were four, three inherited one fifth each and the firstborn two fifths. If the first-born son had died, then they all inherited equally.
It sounds therefore, as if the question came from a son who was probably one of only two sons and definitely not the first-born. Jesus rejects the premise of the question that it was his place to adjudicate. Why? Not because he couldn’t but because it was all about possessions and greed – in other words meaningless. The old dictum which I first heard from a funeral director still applies. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s relatives.’ Lawyers in wills and probate have numerous horror stories of families squabbling over wills and estates. It is terribly sad and seems so often to divide families at a time when they need to be united.
Jesus then goes on to tell a parable about a rich person with barns wanting to build bigger ones but only so he could ‘eat, drink and be merry’. He concludes with the warning to the beleaguered brother in the crowd about people who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich towards God. A few verses later, he sums it up more clearly by saying first Strive for the kingdom of God, and then ‘sell your possessions and give alms’ but that is in next week’s gospel reading.
Notice the language in the parable about the rich man is all about ‘what should I do? I will do this. I will say to my soul. It was all about him - his ego, his vanity. Not once was there any hint of thought or compassion for others. That was what was missing. That was what wasn’t right.
Martin Luther King once summed it up well, saying:
“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?'
Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?'
Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'
But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right”
So the challenge for us is how we can maintain a priority for others, not just those we know or who are close to us, how we can be less vain and think of others, especially and all the more so, at a time when everyone is feeling squeezed by high fuel and energy prices; where can we best put our efforts, resources, time and help for those in the greatest need?
I am not going to set out exactly who that should be for each of you but who might be on your heart? Is it those near you who are suffering? Is it those who are finding they can barely afford their energy or fuel supplies now let alone in winter? Is it those supported by the foodbanks and places like the Roberts Centre? Is it asylum seekers without any support or refugees with some but limited support and little English? Is it people in Ukraine? Or those in Africa and other places where high grain prices mean many are now unable to afford to buy grain for their families and are literally starving?
We cannot help everyone, but we can help some and if today’s lessons are to teach us anything, it is surely that we should be less vain, and concerned about our own future, and in order to find meaningfulness, we need to make the effort to think about those who need help that we can offer. Who can we help the best? That seems to me to be a reasonable and wholly wise and Christian question, remembering that we are all one in Christ, and it is not about us or our possessions, but how we can share more fairly with those in the greatest need.
May God guide us in our thinking, and then in our actions and our giving of our time, money, and resources for the common good of all.
Amen.