Sermons

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The Contemplative Worker
Labor Day Weekend
September 1, 2002
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Genesis 2 & 3

Well, Labor Day Weekend is upon us again. Monday is a holiday that was created all the way back in the 1880s to celebrate the accomplishments of the American work force.

Given that many of you will have the day off from work ... and given that many of us have moved around the country to follow our work ... and given that statistics say that we will change jobs 7-11 times in our careers ... and given that often these changes are major crises in our lives ... and given that (conservatively) most of us will spend over 1/3 of our living hours working (and by that I am including working careers, students in school, and the most demanding work of all -- the stay-at-home parent) … it just seemed appropriate that we would devote a few minutes this morning to considering our WORK, in light of scripture:

Luke 12:15-21

I titled this sermon “The Contemplative Worker.” That may seem like something of an oxymoron. How does one Contemplate…AND Work? I admit, that even for me, it was an interesting pairing of words.

In fact, when the title first hit me, I immediately thought back to when I was 19. I was working in an auto parts warehouse for the summer. A semi would pull in loaded with exhaust pipes and mufflers. These were
shipped inside of huge cardboard boxes, probably 8 feet long and 6 feet wide and high…we called them coffins. Our job was to put each shipment away, so that the mufflers and pipes could be shipped out again on orders. Then we stored the huge cardboard boxes up high in the rafters overhead.

My partner that summer was “Pete,” and Pete was quite a character. One hot summer day, I was working away, unloading these exhaust components when my boss appeared around the corner, wondering where Pete was. I had no idea…I hadn’t seen him for an hour or more. The boss started calling his name, and after a couple of minutes, sure enough, there is a stirring overhead, and Pete is spotted sleepily climbing out of one of the cardboard coffins. Apparently he had crawled in and gone to sleep! A little too Contemplative, and not enough Worker for the boss!

The Genesis verses that Mike read earlier say a great deal about our labor. They say that Work was part of human life from the very beginning … part of the created order, part of what God called “Good.” Adam’s job was to “till and keep” the Garden. But after Adam and Eve’s sin, after they were chased out of the Garden of Eden, things changed. One of the consequences of the Fall was that Work would become more difficult, in fact a painful struggle. And so there is this odd juxtaposition where Work was a blessing, but later bore part of the Curse. Most of us experience work as both blessing and curse, I think.

Jesus knew something about Work. His teachings are filled with stories of farmers, builders, businesspeople, investors, fishermen and teachers. His earthly father Joseph was apparently a carpenter. Jesus knew something about work. And he also knew that if he was to connect with people, the best way was through stories they could relate to. And they could most easily relate to Work.

When Jesus tells this parable in Luke, he hits pretty close to home. He obviously knows something of the pulls and struggles of the working life. One writer, in fact, says about this passage, “Jesus was asking a group of first century workaholics how smart it was to gain the whole world and lose their very souls” (Hybels). Obviously it’s a parable that strikes hard at our desire to accumulate things, but also connects with the energy, focus and TIME spent in working to pursue those things. THAT would hit close to home for many of us. It is so easy for us to lose a healthy perspective on our work.

So…Why do you Work? It’s an important question. At different times in my own life, I would answer that question differently. Sometimes I couldn’t have told you why I was working…until I had moved from one phase to another, and gained some perspective. Why do you work?

a) There definitely was a time I worked for STATUS. I wanted a business card with a title. I didn’t want to be a purchasing agent, I wanted to be the Director of Purchasing. I didn’t want to be a marketing rep, I wanted to be the Vice President of Marketing. When so much time goes into something like our job, when we clearly take so much of our identity from what we do…we want it to at least sound important, or seem important to others.

b) Perhaps you work for MONEY. Nothing to be ashamed of…it’s a major motivator. You earn a living…you follow through on responsibilities, you pay for housing and food and transportation, you share what you have with others…just earning a paycheck motivates much of our work, and depending on its size, allows us to control other parts of our lives.

c) How about PERSONAL FULFILLMENT? Is that why you work? That takes different forms for different people. Some of us love the competition a work environment provides. We love to go head to head against other salespeople. Or we love the sheer challenge of creating and executing an entire project, and that gives us immense satisfaction. Or, for some of us, we are fulfilled because we are convinced that what we do serves other people in some way.

d) Maybe, like so much of America that I talk with…you work for the WEEKENDS! Especially if you don’t love your job…it’s easy to move into a pattern of just getting through the work week…so that you can really ratchet it up and live abundantly…live life to the fullest on the weekends and holidays.

e) Or maybe you work…for RETIREMENT. You have your eye on the future. You put your time in now, and line up what you want to do when you are done working. In some senses, I guess, you “build bigger barns” so you can eat, drink and be merry later. Or, in a more positive light, maybe you have your eye on mission work or volunteer opportunities when you retire.

Why do you work? All of these reasons: status, money, fulfillment, weekends, retirement…may have some truth in them, and provide some motivation for work. But all of them also have the potential to put our Work out of focus, out of perspective. And the main way they threaten a healthy perspective…is by encouraging us to live Fragmented lives. Work becomes one component of life. There’s family life. There’s my personal recreation life. There’s my social life. There’s my spiritual life. There’s my work life. I’ve had times in my life when I’ve actually written out a checklist for all the different parts of my life, trying to evaluate each one separately.

That can be a very unsatisfying and artificial way to approach life…because we are WHOLE people. If I have a learning edge right now, it’s that I’m trying to learn to see Jesus in ALL parts of life…all the time, not segmenting parts for other things.

The Westminster Catechism, used by the church for teaching the faith for several centuries, begins with the question: “What is the chief end of man?,” meaning “What is our purpose in life?” And the answer is “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” To glorify God, to enjoy Him…not just in times of silent prayer, not just in worship in the sanctuary…but in Life…in all of life. To look for Him, to acknowledge Him, to recognize Him, to enjoy him…in all of life. If we were to take that seriously, it seems to me that what we would be doing would be learning to Worship God…even in our work. ESPECIALLY in our work. We worship God not just in the sanctuary…but in our offices, in our classrooms, on our ladders, in our trucks, in our homes. The ground in these places is holy because it is where God is…and we must learn to recognize his presence.

And so oddly enough, it might be the Contemplative Tradition of the Christian faith that is of the most help here. When I say “contemplative,” you might think of someone silently praying in a dark room somewhere. Certainly that is part of the tradition. But a broader view would see contemplatives as focused on watching for God’s presence in all of life. Brother Lawrence, Thomas Merton, Henry Nouwen all come to mind. And indeed, all of them spent time in monasteries, exploring what it means to pray. Yet each of them also wrote about learning to find God’s presence in the daily tasks of work that exist even in monasteries. They encourage us to look for God, to enjoy God, to worship God…in our work…in our whole lives.

Kathleen Norris is the author of the book I invited you to read with me this summer, The Cloister Walk. I’ve had a number of conversations with some of you who have read it. Norris tells of working hard at her desk one day, and looking up late in the day to see that the setting sun was filling the sky with an amazing hue of colors. Walking outside, she found herself spontaneously telling God a Psalm she had been reading, from Psalm 121, “The Lord will bless your going and your coming, your resting and your rising, forevermore…” And she writes later, “It is the aim of contemplative living, at least in the Christian mode, that you learn to recognize a blessing when you see one…” Learning to recognize God’s presence wherever you see it.

It is no easy task to move towards Work as Worship…yet that’s what I’m encouraging you to think about this morning. Can you find and acknowledge God’s presence in what you do each day? Or how could you recognize it if you were making progress? Try these three questions to help gauge where you are:

1. Can you CARE for the people you work with? I don’t mean be polite, or civil…I mean, can you CARE? Do you know about their families, their hurts, their passions? Can you look for God’s hand in the lives of people around you? One of my early role models was a man who was a factory rep for a large company we did business with. But every time Joe came into our office, he had this way of making every person he came in contact with feel like he was there solely to find out how they were. Can you CARE for the people you work with?
2. Can you make TIME TO REFLECT on your work and life? In Minneapolis, I had a friend who ran a large insurance company. He flew all over the world, made big deals, managed a ton of people… was a success in many ways. But he had so many balls in the air, was barely getting one thing done before moving on to the next thing… he was missing things. Like his kids growing up. I worried about him. One day at lunch, I asked him how things were. Out of the blue, he very quickly became very somber and serious. He said “Do you know what I miss, Dan? I miss having time to reflect. I’m just running from one thing to another.” I’ve never forgotten that. Mike felt like there was never time to stop and think: Was he doing things he believed in? What was going on with the people around him? Where was he encountering God? It’s almost like we need to take a noontime “Prayer of Examen”: Where has God felt absent today? Where have I seen or sensed God’s presence? Do you take time to reflect?
3. Do you take a SABBATH REST? I’ve preached and taught several times on the idea of sabbath, and I’m not going to today. But it’s an important question. Part of the balance of work and renewal that allows us to glorify God and enjoy him…is this gift that He has provided for us. A Sabbath rest refocuses us, sharpens our eyes so that we can look for Him in all that we do.

If you have a hard time saying “Yes” to these questions…I suspect that work is pulling you down, and it is hard to see God in the midst of your job. God is for after you get home from work, or after you arrive at church. But we are WHOLE people.

When Martin Luther wrote his commentary on Genesis, he said that we were created “not for leisure, but for work…” And yet STILL, he said, our vocation (calling) is not work…but worship. We are to worship God in all we do. If we have committed our whole lives to Christ, then we worship God just as much at work as we do in this sanctuary. The programmer’s computer desk, the architect’s drawing table, the counter in front of a retail worker, the classroom of a teacher…these are the places where, day in and day out…we will either worship God…or merely build bigger barns.

The Apostle Paul says it like this in Colossians, “And whatever you do, in word or deed…do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”