Advent 2019, day sixteen

I have been sitting with Qohelet this Advent. To refresh ourselves:

Merest breath, said Qohelet, merest breath. All is mere breath.

What gain is there for man in all his toil that he toils under the sun...

A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever.

The sun rises and the sun sets, and to its place it glides, there it rises.

It goes to the south and swings round to the north, round and round goes

the wind, and on its rounds the wind returns…

I have seen all the deeds that are done under the sun, and, look, all is mere

breath, and herding the wind.

(from Qohelet chapter 1)

And recall your Creator in the days of your

prime, until the days of evil come, and the years arrive, when you will say,

“I have no delight in them.” Until the sun goes dark, and the light and the

moon and the stars, and the clouds come back after the rain…

And dust returns to the earth as it was,

and the life-breath returns to God Who gave it.

Merest breath, said Qohelet. All is mere breath.

(from Qohelet chapter 12)

(Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, The Writings)

The heavens frame all our activity on earth, watching over us, faithfully marking our times and seasons, our prime and our return to the soil we toil and from which we came, and the return of our life-breath to God who gave it.

In Matthew 16, the Pharisees and Sadducees — two groups that mix like oil and water! — demand of Jesus a sign from heaven. He refuses them any such sign. Instead, he will go on to do something unimaginable: give to Peter, the human — indeed, the rock-man — the keys to the kingdom of the heavens. Whatever this human — representative of the Church — binds on earth will be bound in the heavens, and whatever they loose on earth will be loosed in the heavens — all this, in order to ransack Hades below the earth. In other words, the maker of the sun and the moon asks of them to step aside for the kings and queens of the human realm.

Your will be done, on earth as in the heavens.

Your will be done, in the heavens as on the earth.

That was unexpected.