Flesh, Grass, Vapor, Hope

Flesh, Grass, Vapor, Hope November 9, 2015

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

“All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass.”

Flesh is weak. Flesh is finite, limited, mortal. Flesh is grass, and you are flesh. Your strength is the strength of flesh; your arm is the arm of flesh. Pile up the wealth, build a business, establish institutions, wrap yourself in the dazzle of success, but your glory is more the dandelion than the sun: “its flower falls off and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed; so too the rich man in the midst of his pursuits will fade away” (James 1).

You can’t transcend flesh by joining others like yourself. A blade of grass doesn’t escape its fate by becoming part of a lawn. Sennacherib may come down “like the wolf on the fold, cohorts gleaming in purple and gold,” but all his hosts amount to a frail “arm of flesh” (2 Chronicles 32:8).

The nations too are flesh. Surely the people are grass.

“Vapor of vapors,” Solomon says. “All is vapor.” Solomon does not say all is vanity, or all is “meaningless.” His poetry is more concrete: All is vapor, a wisp that appears for a little while and then vanishes before the slightest breeze (James 4:14).

Living in this world of vapor is like trying to shepherd the wind. Solomon increased in wisdom more than anyone before him. He experimented with wine and sex. He built houses for God and for himself, planted vineyards and gardens and parks and pleasure domes. He dug pools and raised aqueducts to irrigate his gardens. He accumulated more gold than any king, and kept 1000 women in his harem. It all slipped through his fingers. His energies and intelligence were expended to carve castles out of the mist.

“Vapor of vapors. All is vapor.” Who can shepherd wind?

Solomon considered the future. He built and accumulated and saved and organized and planned, but he knew that he would die and leave it all to his successor. Would his son be a wise man or a fool? Would he preserve Solomon’s achievement, or lose it all?

Solomon wanted to mold the future, but the future, like Solomon’s pursuit of wisdom, like his building projects, like his pleasure gardens and harem – the future too is vapor, beyond our ability to control or tame. Vapor like Solomon himself. Vapor like you and me.

All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades. Surely the people are grass. Vapor of vapors. All is vapor.

We don’t want to believe this. We want something under the sun that doesn’t wither like grass. We must be able to achieve something that won’t slip through our fingers. We spend much of our energy shoring up against the wind, building screens that we fondly think will protect us from the noonday sun.

We exercise and diet to extend our youth into our 70s or 80s. We tuck and taper and Botox and smooth to maintain the illusion of young flesh. We watch market fluctuations like a hawk, and we take advantage of every loophole to make sure that our wealth is preserved for our children and grandchildren.

We want the world as we know it to last forever. We want a stable stock market, an eternal republic, an empire without end.

Scripture seems so hopeless, and leaves us feeling so helpless. We want to amend it. All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, but America stands forever. Vapor of vapors. All is vapor, except the NYSE.

All this is whistling through the graveyard. We know we’ll die, and we know that worlds rise and worlds collapse. Rome fell before barbarians, and the glories of medieval Christendom were left smoldering in the fires of the Thirty Years War. We became our own barbarian marauders in two World Wars and the totalitarianisms that followed.

Scripture does add a qualifier. There is something that is not flesh, not grass, not vapor. All flesh is grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Vapor of vapors. All is vapor. But the words of wise men are like goads, and the masters of collections like well-driven nails. Who can shepherd the wind? Solomon wonders. And he concludes: There is a Shepherd of the wind, only one, the Shepherd who is the wind of the Spirit.

With the Word, there is a table, a table in the mist: There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. Go, then, eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works.

Under the sun, all is grass and vapor. Under the sun, all is flesh. But there is one who has come from beyond the sun, who is the rising Son, who takes our flesh in order to burn it into Spirit. Every world we know will come to an end; everyone we know will die. But we live joyfully in this vaporous world, we are happy grass, because we have heard the word of the Lord, because we are seated at His table.

Today, we face enormous cultural challenges. For a generation, our nation and many of the “advanced” nations of the world have tolerated and passionately defended the slaughter of unborn children. We recently redefined human nature, overruling outdated distinctions between male and female. We believe that we have become shepherds of the wind, sculpting the world to our liking.

We’re tempted to seek something to hang on to here. We grope for some rock in the vapor, but we soon enough find out that it too is vapor. We cling to the Constitution or to the free enterprise system or to our international preeminence, but soon enough we find that all this too is flesh, grass ready to wither.

If we are to be faithful, we need an economics and politics, a healthcare system and an exercise regimen, a way of life that suits who we are and what the world is. We need to conform our hearts and lives to reality, and the reality is this: All flesh is grass. All is vapor.

Now as always, we are called to live by faith, hearing the word that lasts forever, sharing the joyful feast at the Lord’s table, knowing that in swirl and turmoil of the world, there is a place to stand, but only one: Only one Rock, only one Shepherd of the wind, only one Spirit who can give us new life that is not the life of the flesh.

What is built by Spirit lasts. The church is erected and maintained by the Spirit. The good works of the Spirit-filled people of God will follow them. Spiritual bodies will last forever in a new creation, created by the hovering Spirit. As we hear, trust, and obey the eternal word, loyal to the Word, and as we  share the Spiritual food and drink of the Lord’s table, we are forged into an everlasting city within the vaporous world. That, and that alone, is our hope.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

(This homily was delivered as part of the tenth anniversary gala for the John Jay Institute, Philadelphia, November 7, 2015. Photo by mattbuck.)


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