Aug. 3, 2025 | Word Out!
Sermon Pastor Dan Peterson
“The Reset Button”
August 3, 2025
First Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to humans to be busy with. 14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
2:18 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to my successor, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or foolish? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21 because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22 What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? 23 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.
Second Reading: Colossians 3:1-11
1 So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, 3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7 These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8 But now you must get rid of all such things: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11 In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!
Gospel: Luke 12:13-21
13 Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus,] “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Grace to you, and peace, from God, the source of abundance and life, and from Jesus, who is that light and life and abundance in the world. Amen.
This morning for you, I have a question, one I have heard over many, many years. The first time was in college courses I was teaching in theology that involved a Biblical component. I’ve heard this question again and again since I’ve been pastor here at Queen Anne Lutheran, and I heard it finally last Sunday after church here when we had a discussion that we call Afterword (which was really a lot of fun, and the next time we have it, I hope you can join us. It’s there after service, where we talk about questions that were raised, or the topic itself of the sermon for today).
The question is this: what relevance does the Bible—a book, and, more specifically, a library, a collection of different books, of different texts, of different genres—what does the Bible, 2,000-plus years old, have to say for you and me today? What relevance does it have?
...Think about how much our world has changed. We live on the other side of the age of science. We’ve lived through—at least our country has made it through—two World Wars. We have electricity, we have cars, we have planes, we have computers. We have artificial intelligence. We have nuclear proliferation, we have running water, we have climate change, we have medicine, and we have space travel. We live in a world that is so vastly different from the people who lived in what Karl Barth, a famous theologian, called “the strange and mysterious world of the Bible.” Why strange? Well, in part, because over 2,000 years separate us from the time, or times, in which this book was written.
So, what? What can the Bible possibly say to you and me, to people who are modern in mentality, and in many cases, secular in sensibility?
Now, I want to pause here for a moment and invite all of you to contemplate this question with me. This is not some abstract question for a pastor or a theologian like me to consider; it’s a question that each of us should be asking, not only for ourselves, but also especially in such a secular place like Seattle: why we say we’re Christian, and why the Bible is important to us when we talk with others.
So why is Scripture important? What can it possibly say to people informed by modern science, who use electric lights, who watch TVs, and who carry screens around with them wherever they go? Now I know the easy answer to that question, and that is this: “Well, because the Bible is the Word of God.”
And from a Lutheran perspective, of course, I agree with that. The Word of God comes to us in two ways. It shows us our sin, and it shows us our salvation; Law and Gospel, period. That’s why we’re not fundamentalist Christians, because we believe the Word of God is more than simply the words in the Bible. It’s the message in the Bible pertaining to how we fall short of God’s expectations, and how God nevertheless forgives and claims us, sets us free, renews us, so that we can try, try, try again. I’m okay with that.
But when people say the Bible is the Word of God, I think to myself, “That’s a circular argument.”
“Why is the Bible the Word of God? Because it says it is the Word of God.”
And then some people say, “Well, because of prophecy.” Many of the prophecies, they say, were fulfilled. Well, many weren’t. Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “This generation will not pass until I return.” Not fulfilled.
Okay, what about “because it doesn’t have any contradictions”? I have a book in my office called The Errancy of the Bible. It’s this thick, containing all the errors and contradictions in Scripture. I could name many of them for you, but if you simply go through the Passion narratives and the Resurrection narratives, you’ll notice that there are stark contradictions. If you go back to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 13, Jesus says, when it comes to the end of the age, he doesn’t know, “only the Father knows.” Then you fast-forward to John 21:17, Peter says to Jesus, “Lord, you know all things.” Which is it?
So for me, simply saying “the Bible is the Word of God because it says it is the Word of God, which therefore makes it relevant,” or “the Bible had prophecies which have come true, therefore it is relevant,” or “the Bible has no contradictions, and therefore it is important for our lives, and so the Bible is relevant”—none of these reasons do I find personally satisfactory.
Now I will go the mile on the Bible containing the Word of God, but to say that it is simply the Word of God makes an idol out of Scripture and a fool out of us. So for me, given the less-than-satisfactory answers I’ve just reviewed, none of these reasons are satisfactory.
So for years, my answer has been this: “The Bible is relevant to our lives because of its perception.” No book, or again, no collection of books, has informed Western culture more than Scripture—our music, our art, our literature, our philosophy, our law. All of these things are informed, knowingly or not, by Scripture. So, simply as an informed, intelligent person, knowing something about the book that has informed all of these expressions of culture is important.
But today I’m going to offer another answer for you to consider that I haven’t stopped thinking about ever since I heard this question last week, and that question is, again, “How can the Bible be relevant to you and me 2,000 years later after it was written?”
So, here’s the answer to the question of why we—yes, you and I—consider the Bible so important after 2,000 years. My response is: because the human condition never changes. The human condition never changes. The human condition is always the same. And there is, in my view, no better book, no collection of texts written over the course of 500, 800, 1,000 years, that gives us better insight into the human condition than the Bible.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Take a look at our readings today. Let’s focus for a moment on Ecclesiastes.
This book has a rich heritage of interpretation. In the early part of the Common Era, the Jews assumed that Solomon, King Solomon, David’s son, wrote it — and that King Solomon was also the author of the Song of Songs, which is romantic, even erotic, love poetry in the Bible. They believed Solomon was also the author of Proverbs, a collection of common-sense sayings about how we should live our lives. And that King Solomon, according to early Jewish tradition, was also the author of Ecclesiastes.
The tradition says that Solomon wrote the Song of Songs in the heat of youth, when passion was so intense that it came out expressed as love poetry. Then, with a more sober, middle-aged mind, Solomon wrote the Proverbs. And then, as an elderly man (old enough to get the senior discount at Denny’s), Solomon sat down and wrote Ecclesiastes — cynically, bitterly, as a reflection on the vanity and meaninglessness of our toils and struggles in this life. (It’s very uplifting!)
Now, when it comes to our reading today from the book of Ecclesiastes, can you guess which word stands out? Vanity.
Here, “vanity” means pointless, worthless, meaningless, or futile. We see it in the opening verse. Again in verse 14: “I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.” And again in verse 22: “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.”
The Hebrew word here for vanity is hevel, which literally means smoke, a puff of wind. More abstractly, it means: because nothing lasts, life is meaningless. Everything we do — all our toils and struggles — goes up like smoke. Everything is fleeting.
That problem isn’t unique to people living 2,000 (or in this case, 2,500) years ago. I’d bet many of us — myself included — have stayed up at night worrying about our work, our projects, our pursuits, or even what we’ll do with our retirement.
Our second example comes from both our Second Reading and the Gospel Reading. And here, aside from vanity, I’m looking for another word. It starts with a “G” — and it’s not “God.”
“Jesus!” (from the congregation) [Laughter]
Jesus is not spelled with a G! “It was then that Queen Anne Lutheran established a new tradition that Jesus would be spelled with a G.” Very nice.
No, the other G-word is Greed.
Colossians 3:5 says: “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).”
We get so fixated on the things we want that they control our lives. That’s idolatry. Living for acquisition destroys the soul.
We see it again in the Gospel reading, when Jesus says: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
Some of you know that about six months ago, I moved out of the parsonage. That process was one of the most profound experiences of my middle-aged life because I got rid of half of my books — and many other possessions. Over the first half of my life, I had been acquiring things (oh, how I love books!), but do I really need 2,000 of them? Do I even need 1,000? For me, that was a case study in letting go of the pursuit of acquisition — sometimes a kind of greed.
Greed not only destroys the soul; it’s destroying the planet and the lives of many people who go hungry every day. The statistic — and I’m sure it’s higher now, with places like Gaza — is that 26,000 to 28,000 children die of malnutrition every single day across the world. If Elon Musk, the richest man, gave up all of his money, every person across this globe would have about $20 in their pocket. That’s greed. And it destroys not only our lives but the lives of others.
The Bible, in this case Jesus, puts a magnifying glass over that and says: “Look at this. This is bad for you. This is bad for others.” And if Jesus were around today, I believe he’d say: “This is bad for the planet.”
So — vanity (the futility of our work) and greed. When work becomes the worth of our being, and greed becomes the center of our pursuits, this is the human condition.
So what do we do? Clearly, the human condition hasn’t changed. People will continue to be greedy. But the Bible is clear: every time this happens in Israel’s history, every time greed or vanity throw people off course, God hits the reset button.
And do you know how God does it? Through the prophets. God reminds the people of who they are and who they are called to be. And again, in the New Testament, God hits the reset button in the person, words, and work of Jesus (that’s G-E-S-U-S!). In Colossians 3:11, we get this message about renewal — that’s the reset button.
Every Sunday, when you and I gather here, we’re hitting the reset button. We recognize that we live lives not free from greed, acquisition for its own sake, and vanity. We come here, we gather here, we hit the reset button.
How? By practicing the life to which we are called. Worship is a rehearsal for how we are to live in the world. When you give in the offering, you are practicing generosity. When you come to the table, you are practicing receiving — receiving the kind of forgiveness and renewal Colossians talks about, so you can go out again into the world and try again to be the person God intended, helping to recreate the world God intended.
The Bible is relevant — more than it ever has been — because the human condition doesn’t change. But renewed in hope, replenished in faith, and risen in Christ, we do.
The Bible is more relevant today than perhaps even 2,000 years ago. The human condition doesn’t change — but neither does God’s character, God’s love, God’s forgiveness, or God’s renewal.
Let us be the people God created us to be, freeing our lives of acquisition for its own sake and greed, so that we can live as God intended.
In Jesus’ name (spelled with a G!), Amen.