ECCLESIASTES 12.5-7

5b. Then man goes to his eternal[long] home and mourners go about the streets.

6. Remember him [i.e. the Creator] - before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring [fountain], or the wheel broken at the cistern [well],

7. And the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

After decrepitude comes death, so if you failed to remember your Creator in the days of your youth, says Solomon, then please remember him now -- before you go to your eternal home and mourners walk past at your coffin! You will be in the grave for a long time.

As we are reminded of our inescapable mortality, we can only wonder what goes through the minds of bare-faced liars and cheats, perverts and cold-blooded murderers, wicked people in general, and tyrants who greedily oppress and exploit the weak. Do they think they can escape the judgment of God?

Solomon now stresses the mere physical nature of the mortal body we perceive and so often prize as he goes on to deal with the pathology of death – in particular, the mechanical failure of the brain and the heart. The silver cord probably refers to the silver-sheathed spinal chord with the fibres of the central nervous system which carry electrical signals to and from muscles and sensors in all parts of the body.

The golden bowl may refer to the skull and its lining, and metaphorically to the brain, to which the silver cord is connected – the gold designation probably implying a greater importance than the silver. When the brain and nervous system fail, the body dies.

However, failure of the heart and the circulation system also bring death, and that fact seems to be the focus of Solomon’s next two metaphors. The first speaks of the pitcher being shattered at the spring or fountain.

A pitcher was the vessel used to collect water from the well and carry it home – and the shattered pitcher may well represent a ruptured aorta, the large artery or vessel which carries blood out of the heart and then around the body, bringing oxygen and nutrients with it. It is interesting that the metaphor involves the transportation of water, which is the major constituent of blood, and that some of the water carried home from the well would actually have ended up the blood streams of the family members.

The second metaphor speaks of a wheel being broken at the cistern or well. A cistern is a storage tank, and likewise a well is actually a hole in the ground into which water seeps and accumulates, ready for future use. The literal wheel referred to may have been the simple mechanism for raising a bucket of water out of a deep well, or water out of a river into irrigation channels, or possibly to be stored in a cistern for later use. It is interesting that a wheel moves in a mechanically repetitive fashion, making it an appropriate metaphor to describes the pulsating pumping action of the heart, the means by which blood is supplied to the heart, the cistern, and then transported via the aorta to the whole body. If this mechanism fails, then again the body dies.

Perhaps Solomon is dwelling at such length on these matters in order to remind us of the fragile, mechanical nature of our fleshly bodies – and the fact that no matter who we are, no matter how rich or powerful or famous, we are just a heartbeat from death at any moment.

After death and burial, the body will, in time, rot and be devoured by worms and microbes -- and the chemical elements of the dust, or soil, will then return to the ground whence they came. The once-beautiful body will be no more – and the spirit, the indestructible element that imparts consciousness and humanity, will return to God who gave it.

As Solomon realized, there is more to man than mere atoms and molecules, far more than Darwin ever dreamed, a fact that is confirmed by James, when he says, Quote: “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead” (James 2:26).

Do we see mortality with the stark reality Solomon describes?

Such is the termination of life and the demise of the body, but spiritually speaking, as Christians, weshould never age and grow weak and weary, but should carry on growing and developing. There may, however, be a tendency to lose sight of our calling and to neglect the work to be done, which is, perhaps, why Paul exhorts Christians, saying, Quote: “Strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees!” (Hebrews 1212).

Although the physical body wears out and dies, we are promised a new body at the resurrection of the dead, one that is composed of spirit rather than material atoms and molecules, as Paul explains in a long section, saying, Quote: “How are the dead raised: With what kind of body will they come? . . . If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body . . . just as we have born the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven . . . Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God . . . Listen, I tell you a mystery . . . we will all be changed, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed . . . then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:35-54).

As signified by the blowing of the last trumpet, this resurrection will take place when Jesus returns as the conquering Christ to establish the kingdom of God on earth.

Notice that Paul concludes his account of the resurrection with an interesting statement that is strangely reminiscent of the words of Solomon, when he says, Quote: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain” (verse 58).

Although critics, even theologians and supposed church leaders, continue to scorn accounts of a resurrection because a dead body is consumed by the worms and microbes in the soil and might even be dismembered in the sea by a pack of sharks, they are making the simplistic assumption that there is nothing more to the body than atoms and molecules.

Meanwhile, however, biologist Rupert Sheldrake, moved by the sheer incomprehensible complexity of living organisms, now theorize that in addition to atoms the body must also contain and have been shaped since birth by a non-physical “morphic field” – a non-physical element which he compares to the invisible field of a magnet that dictates the arrangement of iron filings under its influence, as commonly demonstrated in high school science experiments. Perhaps it is significant, in light of this theory, that Paul speaks of the body being changed, and in the quote below about it being transformed.

It is not by some accident of evolution, but by direct divine design, that this change from mortal to immortal at the resurrection from the dead, is clearly typified each spring by the emergence of new plant life from the seemingly dead seeds and bulbs that were buried in it earlier, as Paul also explains (verses 37-38). As the Creed also says, and contrary to much popular teaching, Christians do not live in hope of drifting off to heaven on death, but in hope of the resurrection to the body and the life of the world to come. Paul himself stresses this fact when he says that his whole ambition was not to get to heaven, but to attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:10-11).

Paul provides additional details just a few verses later when he says, Quote: “Jesus Christ . . . by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21).

The apostle John also confirms that his amazing transformation will take place at the return of Jesus as the Messiah when he says, Quote: “Dear friends, now are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:1-2).