Rosedale United Church

“Living For A Working”                                                                     September 6, 2009

Doug Norris

 

“The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you most need to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done.   The place that God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”   (Frederick Buechner)

 

 

I want to talk today about work, about our labours.

 

In part for the obvious reason that it is Labour Day,  and in part because I have been thinking about work lately.  And the spirituality of work.  What we do, why we do it, how it affects the world, how it affects us…

 

I know some people who don’t have enough work right now and this is making them unwell, and I know some people who are doing far too much work right now and this is making them unwell, and I know some younger people who are still wondering what they might become and what they might do, and it is making them uneasy, not knowing, and I know some older people who are past their working years now, and missing it – missing the capacities and possibilities they once had, and it is making them wistful, grieving.

 

So it seems to me that our wellbeing and our integrity is very wrapped up in our labour -  and so it is a spiritual question.    

 

 

Very little from Jesus, directly anyway,  about work.

 

He offered jobs  to some former fishermen.   No pay, long hours, family will avoid  you, people will persecute  you.  Might cost you your life… 

 

He did often refer to what people did as he brought about in them various healings.  To the tax-collector Zachaeus he pointed out – look at the effect on people when you cheat them !   You can follow me, but first fix that – make it good, straighten up and fly right…

 

  To the clever lawyer he pointed out that knowing the Law meant nothing if he didn’t know who his neighbour was.   If you believe – as Jesus did – that the whole thing is ultimately about love of neighbour – maybe the clever lawyer has some more learning to do.

 

In his parables he pointed to people who desperately wanted to work and some laboured in the vineyard all day and some only got a few hours work but they all needed, and got, a day’s pay.  Now is that fair or unfair?

 

Remember the two sons?  One goes off with the old man’s money and wastes it – snorting coke and being a big shot and he sleeps with dancing girls and he dances with sleeping girls and then when the only job he can get is cleaning toilets he comes home and says Father I have messed up and now I need whatever work you can give me – make it like your lowest servant but I need to be at home.  And the other son, the dutiful one who went to school land got his law degree and went into the family business and kept everything running as the old man got older and never had much fun but burned the midnight oil -  he comes home from the office one day and here is his unemployable drunken lout of a brother – and the father has given him a bonus!   A ring and a robe and a big meal on the stove.   Is that fair??  Never mind the ‘bankable sick days’…  What is Jesus saying about work, about what’s fair, about generosity?

 

So, I don’t know if there is a specifically ‘Christian’ theory for work – but Jesus understood that what we do is integral to who we are  and to live whole is to be well employed and well fed.

 

 

 

Over to Ecclesiastes –   in the ‘Wisdom’ literature of the Hebrew scriptures.   He’s a bit depressing.   It’s all in vain – what do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?  You work and work and then you die and leave it all to someone who didn’t work for it….

 

But he picks up a bit later on :

 

  …What gain is there fromn all of our toil?  I know that there is nothing better for us than to eat and drink and take pleasure in all of our labour…a gift of God…

 

And then – later :    Whatsoever you do, do it with all your strength…

 

 Maybe there is the best ethic for our work.  Just to do whatever we do well.

 

Martin Luther King Jr  : – “If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets as Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets as Michaelangelo carved marble, sweep streets as Beethoven composed music, sweep streets and Shakespeare wrote poetry.  Sweep streets  so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say – ‘here lived a great street-sweeper who swept his job well…’”

 

 

Which brings me to a bit of a corner, or a hinge in my thoughts on this.

 

 

Tempting to think that there are certain jobs to which God might especially call people.  Higher jobs and lower jobs, noble work and menial work…   Certainly this is the conventional wisdom.

 

 

 

Bute :  The integrity of character precedes any work we will ever do, and it is what will linger when our work days are done.   So the task of the young person seeking work is actually to be building character – not just gaining credentials – and it is the role of the community that forms young people to be in the business of forming character.  

 

And the task of the middle aged who are in the  heavy-lifting years – the task is to do the task but always to have an eye for how it has been done.  Has there been respect, compassion, prophetic care for the world?  The world will quickly forget how many widgets you made and how many cases you tried and the ROI on your leveraged Fund – but how you have been with people will linger.  Maybe this should be a fixed item on employment reviews – we can call it your CQ – Character Quotient – it will matter, but only where we care about it.   For example, it may not matter much to shareholders – which is part of our deeper problem.

 

You can be a crooked but well respected and successful banker or executive, and you can be a compassionate honest worker in the sex trades.  Jesus knew this and it got him into trouble. 

 

And in older years, the difficult shift – now the heavy lifting is not possible – what work is there left to do?  Maybe now, in those years, the  work is all about character and integrity.  The preparation is past and the delivery is past – now what is most urgently needed is clarity of character, deep integrity, fearless love – because this will shape the ones who are working, and it will shape the ones who are preparing to work.

 

Let the closing the words here be from Kahlil Gibran, from ‘The Prophet’ , the chapter on ‘Work’ :

 

 

Work is love made visible.