Such Is Life! My Summer Sermon Series

I finished the worship guide for summer. This will cover the Sundays from June 26 through September 18th. You can download the guide here. Summer worship is going to be based on the Book of Ecclesiastes. We have great guide in the person of Lloyd Geering.




Geering's latest book is called Such Is Life! A Close Encounter with Ecclesiastes. Geering provides a new translation and has a "conversation" with the author of Ecclesiastes.




Who was the author of Ecclesiastes?

Ecclesiastes is attributed to Solomon. Modern scholarship disagrees. It places authorship around 300 BCE by an anonymous philosopher who writes in the persona of Solomon. The philosopher, Qoheleth, challenged conventional wisdom, especially conventional theological wisdom. From the perspective of most biblical authors, he would be considered a “heretic.”

There is no covenant with YHWH. “God” for Qoheleth is what we might call “Nature” and in some cases, “Luck”. There is no justice in this life. Wisdom yields sorrow. Death is the fate for humans and animals alike. Nothing lasts. The reader experiences the mood swings of Qoheleth. Yet amidst the despair over the impermanence of life, he affirms

“that nothing is better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. Indeed, it’s possible for all people to eat and drink, and find satisfaction in everything they do.”
3:12-13

Join us this summer as we spend some time with the biblical heretic, the author of Ecclesiastes.

Check out some of Lloyd Geering's other works

• Coming Back to Earth
  
• Christianity Without God
• Christian Faith at the Crossroads
  
• The World to Come, and
• Tomorrow's God.

You might be interested in this article by Geering in the Fourth R, How Did Jesus Become God and Why.






Other articles by Geering in the Fourth R include, "Is Christianity Going Anywhere?"

• Part 1, Christianity at the Crossroads
• Part 2, Excavating Jesus
• Part 3, The Recovery of Jesus' Teaching
• Part 4, The Diverse Futures of Christianity

And an informative history on the Israeli-Palestinian question: "Who Owns the Holy Land?"

• Part I, The Jewish Claim
• Part II, The Palestinian Claim
• Part III, The British Responsibility
• Part IV, Who Solves the Conflict?
  

I have made a few posts about Lloyd Geering as well:

• Of Deities and Deeds
• The Meaning of Life, Part 37
• Lloyd Geering: A Religious Atheist and a Secular Mystic

You can watch a documentary about Lloyd Geering on Youtube, "The Last Western Heretic."