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Work
as Vocation Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, September 3, 2006 This is Labor Day weekend. Labor Day was first observed as a way to honor working men and women. The U.S. Department of Labor website says this about Labor Day: The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union [of New York] . . . . In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country. Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories. As is often the case with holidays, what began as a day with a purpose has now become another vacation day. In this case: a vacation day marking the unofficial end of summer. Labor Day is summer’s last hurrah. Even though that may be the case, Labor Day affords us an occasion to talk about work and its place in the lives of Christians. You see, at one level work is participating in God’s creation. Most of us are not so much making stuff as we are involved in maintaining or managing it. In our managing we are helping God with creation. At another level work is a pain. It is something that much of the time we’d rather not be doing. Witness the bumper stickers that say “I’d rather be fishing . . . or golfing . . . or scuba diving.” And, of course, work is a way we pay our way in the world; it is the way we make money to provide for ourselves and our families. It’s a necessary evil. But there’s also the sense that work is a vocation – a calling. In fact, the word “vocation” comes from the Latin word which means “calling.” As an aside, I should say that “vocation” has a meaning broader than work. As Christians we are “called” to live as followers of Jesus. This calling has to do with character. And some are called to be single; some are called to be married. Both of these callings carry with them certain expectations. Most often, however, when we think of vocation we think of the work we do, what will do to earn money. That’s the sense of what Paul says in chapter seven of his first letter to the church at Corinth. This section falls right in the middle of a chapter on sex and marriage. In it Paul is counseling his readers to remain in whatever state they were in when God found them. He writes: “Let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God has called you.” If you are uncircumcised then don’t worry about circumcision. If you are a slave you are already a free person in Christ; be the best slave you can be. He concludes this section: “In whatever condition you were called, brothers and sisters, there remain with God.” Paul is not saying, “Don’t have any ambition. Don’t try to improve your lot in life.” I remember being at the Willow Creek Arts Conference a year and a half ago. One of the speakers was the director of the film Braveheart starring Mel Gibson. He began by saying. “I was born a Baptist, raised a Baptist, and I still am a Baptist.” Then he added, “I have no ambition.” Now I am not suggesting that being a Baptist is a bad thing. Not at all. And Paul is not telling slaves to stop seeking their freedom. Nor does it mean that God won’t call us into other roles as our lives progress, or that we shouldn’t try to improve our lot in life. Paul is simply saying that we are what we are, and we are where we are because God has placed us there. As Christians, our freedom is in Christ, and if we are free in Christ, then it doesn’t matter all that much what we’re doing. Some things can’t be changed at all, and others can only be changed in ways that create turmoil for ourselves and for our families. Rather than anxiously trying to change what can’t be changed, we can accept God’s role for us and blossom in it. The key, of course, is to keep listening to what God is saying. The idea of “vocation” is rooted in the notion that God has called each one of us into a certain role in life. One of the implications of all this is that we don’t have to be working in the church to be doing the work of God. We don’t have to be preaching or teaching Sunday School or ushering or singing in the choir or playing in the band to do something that honors God. Fulfilling our callings is also doing the work of God. It, in fact, is the main way we do the work of God. All too often in the church – I have been as guilty of this as anyone else – we think of doing the work of God is doing things in and for the church. Just before the Reformation the highest calling was to the priesthood. Ordination was - still is – considered a sacrament in Roman Catholicism. Men who were ordained to the priesthood were believed to have followed a higher calling. The reformers – Luther and Calvin, in particular – argued that everyone has a calling from God, and living within that calling is good for us. Calvin wrote in his Institutes of the Christian Religion: Finally, this point is to be noted: the Lord bids each one of us in all life’s actions to look to his calling. For . . . [God] knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. Therefore, lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, . . . [God] has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life . . . . Accordingly, your life will then be best ordered when it is directed to this goal . . . . From this will arise also singular consolation: that no task will be so sordid and base provided you obey your calling in it, that it will not shine and be reckoned very precious in God’s sight. Following our calling is good for us; doing so brings us in line with God’s plan. Everyone’s calling is important in God’s sight. The person who works in an office taking care of other people’s money is doing God’s work. So is the person who cuts people’s hair, who puts out fires or arrests criminals or mows yards. If it’s honest work, it can be a vocation, a calling from God. That very fact gives it dignity. If you are fulfilling your calling, you are working in partnership with God just as much as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, just as much as a missionary on a foreign field, just as much as the pope himself. But what about people who can’t or don’t work for money? What about stay-at-home moms and dads and students and retired people? Stay-at-home mothers and fathers can stay at home because their spouses make enough money for them to live on and because they want to be with their children while they are young. Being a stay-at home parent is a calling – a vocation. So is being a student. Children and young people, your work is learning all you can so when you are older you can take care of yourselves and make a contribution to the world. The same holds for retired people. We don’t stop being partners with God when we stop working at our jobs. We can find other ways to partner with God through volunteering and praying. Even though you may have stopped working for money you still have a calling to do God’s work. If we are partners with God in the work we do – whatever it may be – then our work takes on a spiritual dimension. Our work is something we can pray about. Pray that we will do it the best we can. Pray that we will be able to do what’s expected of us each day. Pray for the owners or the managers. Pray for the “success” of the company. Pray for the people we work with: that everyone will find his or her job rewarding, that everyone can get along reasonably well, that everyone will make enough money to live on. Pray that those you work with who don’t know Jesus Christ will be able to see Christ in you. And if we see our work as a partnership with God, something we do with God’s blessing, then other people may wonder what we’re thinking, why we don’t complain all the time, why we don’t try to cut others down to size. They may begin to wonder what’s gotten into us. They might even ask. That’s when our work becomes an opportunity to do God’s work in yet another way: it becomes an opportunity to share the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. Jesus told his disciples to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. For most of us the only place we go consistently is to work. Our working in partnership with God becomes an opportunity to tell others by deed and word about Christ’s love and to begin to make disciples of all nations. Given the multi-ethnic character of many work places these days this command of Jesus actually seems possible. This Labor Day weekend, I invite you to think of your work – whatever form it takes - as your vocation. It is a calling from God – and a high calling it is, regardless how it may seem to you and to others. It is a high calling because it comes from God. Thank God for it. Enjoy it. Allow God to bless you in it, and to use you to bless others. | |||||
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