Audio recording Sermon manuscript: We tend to get comfortable with certain interpretations and understandings of our life where we figure we know what things are all about and we take that for granted. Who we are, and what we hope for, end up being pretty stable. We know who we are and we know what we would like to have happen. We might accumulate some wisdom for ourselves. We lay down some rules for ourselves, which we figure should help us get what we want. We are something of a work-in-progress. We make our way through the course of this life, trying to do the best for ourselves. The hope is that tomorrow will be better than today. Maybe, through wisdom and hard work, we can bring about a better tomorrow. These kinds of thoughts are what Solomon calls in this short book of Ecclesiastes “vapor,” or another way that this same word gets translated in older translations: “vanity.” This is a peculiar word. The only way that anybody is going to learn anything about what the word means is from the Bible. Outside of the Bible nobody ever speaks this way. “Vapor” or “breath” is a good literal translation, but there’s something more that needs to be understood about it. It is not just the mist or the puff of air. It’s really about the way that something so quickly goes away. Forgive me for my crudeness here, but it’s like someone passing gas in a 40 mile an hour wind. That fart isn’t going to stick around for long. It’s here one moment. Less than a moment later, it is gone forever. You can’t put it in a bottle and store it on the shelf, no matter how hard you try. Resistance is futile. “Futility” is another good word to use to help us understand what Solomon and the Bible mean by “vanity.” Instead of saying that everything is vapor, or everything is vanity, you could also say, “Everything is futile.” There’s no getting around it. There’s no working harder or smarter. The end has been predetermined, and there’s nothing that can change it. Of all the thoughts a person could possibly think, there is no thought that the world hates more than this one. Most people will not even allow themselves to go there. They don’t even think about it. It is strictly forbidden. Such thoughts are evil. Take, for example, a cancer diagnosis. Not all cancer diagnoses are the same. Some are quite curable. Others are terminal. Even with a terminal diagnosis of cancer, however, it is against the rules to say that resistance is futile. This is especially the case if a person is young and otherwise healthy. It is so unbelievably impolite, or even evil, to say that there’s nothing to be done. Instead what everyone is supposed to say is that there’s always hope. Who knows? Maybe there’s some experimental treatment. Maybe herbal medicine might help. Hope is dished out by everyone, including the doctors, until the bitter, bitter end. It’s not until the patient is on the morphine drip that the truth may be aired that curative efforts are futile. By then the patient might already be in a coma. Even at this point, however, we still don’t give up. Immediately the gears get changed. If we get stuck going one direction, then we’ll back up and go another. If one hope is dashed, then it’s time to move on to another. And so at the death bed the family might start to think and talk about the way that the one who is dying will be remembered. The hope for them to continue to live physically is futile, but surely the person can live on in the memories of the people who are left behind. Hope springs eternal. This too, unfortunately, is vanity. It’s not going to happen. The memories are going to die just like their bodies did. The next generation might hold on to some memories. But what about the generation after that? By the time the third or fourth generation rolls around the memories are completely and totally obliterated. You can know this just by consulting what you yourself know. Maybe you remember some of your great-grandparents. What kind of memories, though, do y