Pointless: 18th Sunday OT 2016
“All is vanity.” So says Qoheleth… the narrator of our first reading who is traditionally identified as King Solomon himself, the wisest man on earth. Which makes the words all the more shocking. It sounds so bleak, so dismal. “It’s all in vain.” Wait… is that right? Do you agree? The answer might be ‘sometimes.’ I think most people can relate to this kind of attitude. Chances are you’ve had moments and moods in which it all just seemed pointless. All the things that people run around trying to acquire and achieve, it’s just dust and shadows. Qoheleth puts it like this: “For so it is that a man who has labored wisely, skillfully and successfully must leave what is his own to someone who has not toiled for it at all. This, too, is vanity and great injustice; for what does he gain for all the toil and strain that he has undergone under the sun? What of all his laborious days, his cares of office, his restless nights? This, too, is vanity.” You know this mood. You’ve felt it before. The