September 1, 2002 - Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Romans 12:9-21
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Matthew 16:21-28
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“Nice Work, If You Can Get It”

“Nice work, if you can get it.  And you can get it, if you try.”  Great lyrics for a love song, aren’t they?  As I read over the lessons for this week and gave thought to the Labor Day holiday those words just popped into my mind and wouldn’t leave.  So this morning I’d like to talk a bit about work and then specifically about the work of the believer – the “follower of Jesus Christ.”

There was a time when there was no nice work.  The Greeks, the Romans and the Chinese all considered work as something to be done by menials, by slaves.  Work had no intrinsic worth or dignity, only those who were free could enjoy the leisure to do work in the broader sense – writing, thinking, teaching, and innovating.  The Chinese went so far as to grow their fingernails very long as a badge showing that the individual didn’t need to do manual labor.

The Hebrews began to change that conception.  Their theology involved a God who worked, because it was through the works of creation that we could begin to know and relate to God our understanding of work changed.  When God became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ work, and indeed all of human life, was raised to a new level and given both an intrinsic worth and dignity.  Now, when we work it becomes not only a means to earning a living, but also can be a means of self-expression and an opportunity to come to know God through the activity.

To my mind, no one captured this renewed understanding of work better than did Benedict of Nursia. Benedict wrote a ‘rule’ of life back around the year 549 for those wishing to seek God in monastic life.  This small book of some 73 chapters is still in use, largely because it is so balanced and because it is rooted in the Scripture (seventy five per cent of the document is Scripture).  It has pleased me to see so many people writing books on how Benedict’s Rule can be applied to everyday life, because it can be.  Esther de Waal, author and wife of an Anglican clergyman, has written extensively on the Rule.  Her most recent piece is called A Life-giving Way; listen to how she sums up the section on ‘work.’

It was both by the book and by the plough that the early Benedictine communities conquered Europe.  They brought to the Europe of the Dark Ages the example of work that was civilizing, whether it was in the promotion of learning or in the colonizing of land.  In addition, in the very way in which they handled their large estates they made a further extremely significant contribution: they showed themselves as pioneers in land use and management.  Cultivation and husbandry often involved the clearing of land, diking and draining where it was needed, and the use of professional farming techniques.  They also showed expertise in such matters as hydraulic engineering, designing and building systems of pipes and drains so that they could bring supplies of fresh water to their communities.

Benedict had taught them that work was a shared activity, part of the solidarity with which they lived together.  With this in mind they adopted recent innovations and practiced the appropriate use of new technology as an exercise of responsible corporate stewardship.  This vision of commitment to the shared common good, not simply in the handling of the land itself but also in the applying of new skills speaks to me most urgently today.  As I look around me I see an age of greed, when balance seems to be neglected and when the work of human hands seem to result in waste, exploitation, pollution, a denial in the covenant that God made with men and women to cherish and to nurture the earth for the good of all God’s family. [p. 161]

Her words are thought-provoking, aren’t they?

In recent months we have seen what happens when there is less concern for the common good than there is for one’s own advancement, haven’t we?  The shattered remains of companies like Enron and WorldCom speak to us of people who have misused the virtue of work and replaced it with greed.  There was a time when companies were concerned about the people and the communities where they were, simply because they were themselves an integral part of the locale.  Too frequently we’ve seen companies swoop in, buy up a competing company, wring out whatever profitability was left, and then cast it aside; heedless of the workers who had given themselves to the work and the product.  What the Scripture and the Rule remind us is that there is a work, and a Worker, greater than what we see.  We are to operate with an eye to being co-creators with God and to treat our fellow-workers with the dignity that is theirs by virtue of being made in the image and the likeness of God.  Our ultimate concern is to be the common good.

Our Puritan forebears understood this and, while they turned their “Yankee ingenuity” to making our country one of the great industrial powers, they also understood that it was in work that one sought God.  John Milton in Areopagitica satirized the businessman who forgets his faith and is occupied all day “trading without his religion.”   John Cotton, the great teacher of Boston, wrote:

A true believing Christian . . . lives in his vocation by his faith. Not only my spiritual life but even my civil life in this world, and all the life I live is by the faith of the Son of God: He exempts no life from the agency of his faith. [Quoted in Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints, p. 26.]

His grandson, Cotton Mather, also spoke to this issue.

A Christian should be able to give a good account, not only what is his occupation, but also what he is in his occupation. It is not enough that a Christian have an occupation; but he must mind his occupation as it becomes a Christian. [In Ryken, p. 26]

Our faith, then, is to mark our work as our work gives witness to our faith.  It comes down to this, when people deal with us, regardless of our occupation, they should know and feel a difference when they “do business” with us.

A disciple is a follower.  Those of us who are members of this church have identified ourselves, by covenant, as “followers of Jesus Christ.”  Jesus shows us that to be his follower is to be like him.  As he was selflessly generous and obedient to the voice and the will of the Heavenly Father, so are we.  This is the ultimate work that grounds every other work that we may do, in even the most mundane aspect of our lives.  Sometimes, it seems, we work at the wrong things in our lives.  Self-centeredness, selfishness, and self-seeking become the work that we do and these cut us off from the experience of genuine life in relationship with God and with one another.  The work of the follower is to be like the one followed.

Peter couldn’t quite understand the role of the follower.  He understood, I suppose as much as any of us is able to understand, who Jesus was.  He felt that he wanted to be identified with him, but he was absolutely certain that Jesus had misunderstood his own work.  When he tried to pull Jesus off course, that’s when he became a ‘satan,’ a deceiver, an accuser, a stumbling block.  Jesus’ work involved the full and complete giving of himself for the sake of others.  It took going through the experience of the cross, the resurrection, and even more for Peter to really begin to ‘get it.’  It’s fine if it takes awhile for us to become true followers – that’s part of our work.  However, we must always be working at it.

I think that is what Paul is telling the Christians at Rome.  He is elaborating on how this work of being a follower is to be lived-out in life together.  Last week we heard him exhorting the Romans “not to be squeezed” into the mold of the world, but to be renewed from within by the “transformation” of the mind through Christ.  The work of the Christian is to be a follower and to be a follower means to be transformed to be made a different person by Christ.  That difference is then to show itself in the concrete way that we live.  It begins with genuine love, loving each other with mutual affection, outdoing one another in showing honor.  And the list goes on and on.  In those verses Paul gives us some very down-to-earth advice on how our lives are supposed to look.  I would suggest that we go back to those verses every time there’s a question about how we’re doing in keeping the covenant.  That’s our work – to be followers and to build up the community to be the generous, unselfish, loving, welcoming place that one would expect when the word ‘Christian’ is applied.

 “Nice work, if you can get it.  And you can get it if you try.”  Not a bad refrain for Labor Day.  And it is the truth.  We can get the work of being followers only by trying.  Each new day provides the opportunity to once again “take up the cross” and renew being a follower of the One who showed us the Way of love, of dignity, of genuine life, and peace.  Nice work, indeed , and you can get it – if you try.