Thanks to Anthony and Sylvia for that great song! You probably noticed it’s part of a poem by George Herbert, a favorite of mine. Herbert was a 17 th century Englishman: scholar, member of Parliament, pastor, writer who only lived to be 40 yrs old, but his poetry has been set to work by number of people. And if you visit Westminster Abbey in London, there is a special window there honoring George Herbert.

So. It’s Labor Day weekend. What does that mean? End of summer? Start of school? (and the kids all hiss and boo). Beginning of football? A last party, a last camping trip, the end of a family vacation? As Todd said, the first American Labor Day was back in the 1880’s…just about the time that Bethany Presbyterian Church started to gather on lower Queen Anne!

Labor Day has nothing to do with the church. It’s not on the ecclesiastical calendars. And yet, in some ways, it has everything to do with our faith. How could it not? Work is a huge part of our lives- whether we go to an office, a construction site, a school, a factory, whether we are a stay-at-home parent or a doctor or an attorney, or retired and volunteering at a school…work is where we spent the largest chunk of our lives. If our faith means nothing there, than it means nothing.

Here’s how Dorothy Sayers, a feisty acquaintance of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien said it once, criticizing the Church for paying little attention to the work of ordinary people: “How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine tenths of his life?”

Well, one person who seemed very knowledgable about the topic of work was…Jesus. As he taught, regardless of the subject, he was always pulling out stories of servants, builders, businesspeople, investors, fishermen, teachers. Jesus knew who he was talking to, and what they would understand. Our scripture this morning is a parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12 and verse 15.

A couple things about work. The very first story of scripture in the book of Genesis, involves work, doesn’t it. Eugene Peterson, in his perceptive and crisp way, paraphrases: “In the beginning, God went to work.” It’s true. The very first thing in the whole Bible is God working…and then resting from his work, the hard work of creation.

Now, this is very important, because Genesis also claims that we were made in the image of God. We are like Him. And if that’s true, then we were made, created, wired to be workers. Which right off the bat means we might have a problem with some parts of the American dream, which often tries to eliminate work either through making “easy money” or early retirement.

But let’s not get sidetracked. For now, it’s good to remember that the God whose image we are made in, from the very beginning…worked. And it was good.

The second thing, the thing that appears in the very next chapter in Genesis, that Todd read earlier, is that as soon as God had made human beings in his image…he gave them work to do. God went to work. Humans went to work. In the Garden called Eden, in what we think of as that brief and innocent age when all was well, and that in one way or another we are always trying to get back to, in a utopia…human beings had work.

Work was good. Good work. “The Lord God put the human into the garden of Eden…to till it and keep it.” Or other translations would say to “tend it and keep it,” or “to work it and take care of it.”

So before human disobedience set in, before things got messed up, before work became harder as a result of human decision, it was part of God’s good plan was for humans to work. Just like God Himself. It was good.

Now that’s a long, long way from rows of slaves, torn from their native country and chained up, picking cotton in the south in the 18 th century, isn’t it? It’s a long way from 13 year olds being forced to work in the filthy industrial factories of the 19 th century Industrial Revolution. And it’s even a long way from someone in 2009 getting off a bus, taking an elevator 50 floors up a building, sitting down at a computer and pushing a mouse around some words on a screen for 10 hours and going home.

We, especially in the industrialized, developed world, have lost so much of what work is meant to be. And we in the church of Jesus Christ have in many ways led the way in getting lost. So let me just tell you right now where we are headed this morning…that way if you zone out or nod off, you’ll still have the main point!

We are headed for trying reinvigorate our imaginations. To imagine a life that is seamless - Where our work is our worship. Where our worship is our work. We are headed for getting rid of the artificial separation that Dorothy Sayers talks about on the cover of the bulletin, where work and faith are separate departments, and trying to bring the two together. But to get there, we need to first identify some dead ends. Places we do not want to go. So let me introduce you to three different characters: one from a novel, one from a movie, and one from scripture.

First, there is Mr. Wemmick. I once told you about him, but it was way back in 2004, so I’ll remind you. Mr. Wemmick appears in the famous novel of Charles Dickens’, Great Expectations. It’s the story of Pip, and it follows him from boyhood into manhood, and along the way he meets all sorts of fascinating characters like Miss Havisham (the woman still wearing her wedding dress thirty years after being jilted on her wedding day), and Estella (whose primary goal in life is to break men’s hearts).

Pip also meets this man named Mr. Wemmick, a law clerk in a legal firm. Pip goes to meet with him at his office, wanting his help in anonymously assisting a friend. Mr. Wemmick turns stone cold, and tells him that investing financially in a needy friend would be the most ridiculous thing he could do. In fact, Mr. Wemmick lists the names of six London bridges that Pip could go to and throw his money off of into the river and be better off than helping a friend with it.

A little shocked, Pip says “so that is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wemmick?”

And Mr. Wemmick replies, “That is my deliberate opinion in this office.”

“Ah,” says Pip, “but would that be your opinion at (home)?”

“Mr. Pip,” he replies, “Home is one place, and this office is another….they must not be confounded together. My home sentiments must be taken at home; none but my official sentiments can be taken in this office.”

At that, Pip resolves to go visit Wemmick later at his home. And what he finds is that away from the office, Wemmick is quite a different character, with different opinions. He does in fact, agree to help Pip help his friend, and in fact expresses great admiration for Pip’s desire to do so.

Mr. Wemmick highlights for us one dead end when it comes to thinking about faith and work: fragmentation. As followers of Jesus, I think we are looking not for a balanced life, but an integrated life. We cannot possibly have a work life, and a faith life. If we do, we are ignoring what it means to follow Jesus with most of our time. Or we are simply putting a veneer on top of our work that says “I go to work, and my faith calls me to be a nice person while I’m there.” That is severely undervaluing our work. Our work IS our faith, and our faith IS our work.

The second character helping us see a potential dead end comes from that American classic intellectual movie, Gladiator. You see, you have to be paying attention all the time, you never know where significant things will pop up! Russell Crowe is Maximus, the general of the Roman army, busy taking over country after country.

But at one point he is tired, and wants to go home, but can’t. The emperor gives him another major task to complete. As Maximus ponders his own mixed feelings, he asks his friend and servant, “ Cicero, do you find it hard to do your duty?” And Cicero answers, “Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time I do what I have to.”

I don’t think that’s a road we want to go down either- simply putting up with work. Have you ever said this, or heard it? I heard it this week again: “I work during the week so I can do what I want on the weekend.” Now, of course there are practical realities involved, I’m not ignoring that. But basically it says “I’ll just gut it through 50 hours, just marking time, so I can have 20 to myself. Labor Day Weekend I even get an extra day.”

Somehow, it’s hard for me to imagine Adam there in the garden, reluctantly and begrudgingly tilling the soil, just marking time until he can get to Sabbath day and watch football. He’d be wasting 85% of his life! And so do we, if our worship, our work are not on the road towards being an integrated whole.

The third character helping us see a dead end to avoid is the farmer in the parable, the story that Jesus tells. Jesus uses a story of a businessman to make a point about greed, about material possessions. But wrapped up in there is this picture that work is all about the final reward or output.

Now, the farmer, other than being a fool- is not a bad guy. He’s not doing anything illegal or unjust – that we know of – not mistreating his workers, not somehow lining his pockets at someone else’s expense. He’s worked hard, he’s been rewarded with good years, he’s done strategic planning, he’s totally set himself up for the future with everything he thinks he needs.

Work has simply been a way of getting to his desired spot. And at the end of course, he finds the emptiness of being rich in things but not towards God. Work surely must be about more than simply what it will do for us.

So three possible dead ends:

1. Work as separate from faith.
2. Work as something to get through to do what you want.
3. Work as simply the means to an end materially.

I think the key to finding a road that can actually take us somewhere is to actually view our work as far more important than we do. No matter what our work is. Our work is our worship. But we’ll have to expand our view of worship, won’t we?

Worship is not just what we do with an hour fifteen or twenty on Sunday morning in the sanctuary. Oh, I think this is an incredibly important time. I love to worship with you all, join others, sing, pray, be together, read scripture, love it . But this is an hour or hour and a half a week. Is that what worship is? An hour a week with God?

Worship is about experiencing and acknowledging God’s presence… and it needs to include all of life. There is no such thing as work life and faith life. We worship God in caring for others, with the parenting we do, with the type of friend we are. We worship God with the work we do, and that means we need to do good work.

We offer good work to God. (God did good work, in Genesis, remember? Nothing shoddy or halfway there. Two weeks ago I hiked Mt. Dickerman near Granite Falls. It was a stunning day, and you could see every peak and jagged edge in the Cascades no matter where you looked. God did good work in creation.). We worship by doing GOOD work.

Colossians 3:17 says: “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.” Now, here’s something interesting - in that verse the word “deed,”“whatever you do, in word or deed,” though it is properly translated because of the context, is the same word used in many places for “work.” Whatever you do, in word or work…”

So we are concerned, if our work is worship, with doing good work. There is something inherently valuable in the work itself. I think we can understand this. Most of us have had the satisfaction of doing something well (even mow a lawn, paint a wall). That sense extends beyond just what it gets us, or the recognition, or even the end result. There is something immensely pleasurable, satisfying, right about doing good work. Downright worshipful, I daresay. We need to find how these things meet, to take pleasure in giving God good work.

When Dorothy Sayers was prophetically critiquing the church back in the 1940’s on this topic, she said “The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church SHOULD be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. [note: not just tables, but good tables. After all, she said, no crooked table legs or shoddy chest of drawers came out of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth!].

Now, certainly this may be easier to recognize if the kind of work we do is easily connected with kingdom values. We often think that being a missionary, a nurse, drilling wells in Africa is the only way of really doing good work. In fact, in the church we often convey the message that if someone has a real spiritual awakening they better quit their job and go do something more spiritual- be a missionary, a pastor, a seminary professor.

Which means we’re back to our fragmented life. And I just don’t think that’s true. Our Lord needs men and women who worship him in their daily work in almost every industry, every career, every job. Sure, there are a few industries that are ethical challenges. But the point is not to all do the same type work within a narrow bound, the point is not to distinguish between secular and sacred, but to do good work. Our work is our worship.

The corollary is that exactly WHAT we do is perhaps not quite as important as we have sometimes made it out to be, especially in the United States. We have a whole industry, websites, job therapists, coaches trained to find the perfect match of a job to a person’s passions or gifts. That’s all great. But it can also be a diversion.

I’ve been telling people for years about the studies that said Americans of roughly my generation changed jobs 8 times, on average. This week I found a recent study from the University of Chicago that says in today’s world, Americans change jobs 11 times…before the age of 40!

Things are very different now. And I’m cognizant that they are different for a lot of reasons- employee/employer relationships and loyalties are pretty non-existent. Geographic mobility, changing job skills, etc. But another factor, I think, is the quest for the perfect work. It is not finding the perfect job that gives us the sense of rightness, but doing good work. Integrating our work and our worship until they are indistinguishable.

Bethany’s own Tim Dearborn once wrote a little book called “Beyond Duty.” In it he tells the story of traveling in China, and meeting a woman in Beijing who had been one of the first woman pediatricians in the country. During the Cultural Revolution, she had been targeted- like so many- for being both educated, and a Christian.

And so for three years she was given the intentionally humiliating task of sweeping streets in a rural village, despite there being a desperate need for pediatricians. Her oppressors could not understand how it was that she consented to not only sweep…but did so thoroughly and joyously. “You, a doctor, should feel humiliated by being a streetsweeper.” And she answered “I can sweep streets for the glory of God and the good of my country, or I can take care of God’s children here. Either way, it is to God’s glory. You choose how I might serve.”

Your work is important. To do good work is to worship God. I hope that this week when you go to whatever it is you spend most of your time doing, you might see it differently. That whether you are an attorney, a gardener, a teacher or some form of streetsweeper, you can see your work as worship. And that when you come back next Sunday morning, it would not be just as a break from your work, but as a continuation of the worship you have been doing all week in your work.

In the beginning, God went to work. And so do we. To the glory of God.