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Sermon: "The Working Model"
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| This is the first Sunday in July, and so the first week of a new financial year. I guess this affects people right round the country but in Canberra with all the government departments it seems to be a particularly significant time of the year. For many of us it's a time ofthinking about tax return forms, about what we've earned and how we've earned it, and where our resources have been spent. Charity groups use the opportunity to encourage tax-relief donations. I saw an article in the real estate section of the paper suggesting it is a good time to buy property for investment. But it may also be a time when we are prompted to focus again on our work - whether life is really shaping up the way we wanted it.
We don't talk about work very much in church. In fact there is a tendency to view our time here as quite separate from our working week. Sometimes in this church we talk about it being a "good interruption" to the week. Or we might think of coming to church as a time of gathering strength and nourishment so we can face the week ahead in the ordinary world. In some ways the fact that we don't talk about work much is a good thing. In most other areas of life the first and most defining thing people know about you is what sort of employment you do or don't have. But on the other hand, we might run the risk of separating the spheres of our lives too much. Maybe church, and the bible, even God, do have something to say to us about work. Whether it is something we want to hear or not is another thing! The writer of Ecclesiastes asks -
If you are like this writer work doesn't hold much meaning for you. Before we were married David lived in Corowa for a couple of years working at a big piggery. Corowa was a small town with two major businesses in the area - the unge piggery and an Uncle Toby's factory. David had a degree in Agriculture, so he got to do some of the glamorous jobs, such as using the rich effluent to raise strawberries and roses. But for the most part working at that farm meant shovelling ... effluent. So people would stick at it for a year or two, then chuck it in and go over to the Uncle Toby's factory. There they would stand in rows and pack boxes. Then they'd get jack of that and go back to the piggery. There wasn't much unemployment in the town, but the level of meaningful work was pretty low. Those workers would probably have related quite well to this part of the bible.
And it wasn't just meaningless work that troubled this writer. He also felt there was no long term gain in work - why work hard all your life only to pass it on to someone who hasn't worked? The book is identified with King Solomon, who was well known for his wisdom. But the writer asks why spend time searching after wisdom when fools ultimately suffer the same fate as wise people? The well known conclusion he comes to is that the pursuit of enjoyment is the most important thing in life. This attitude only sees work as a means to an end - a means of earning enough wealth to be able to spend it. And of course, that is the attitude of so many around us, maybe even some of us. It certainly is the impression one gets when one hears radio announcers begin to count down to the weekend on Thursday afternoon, or when so much thought is put into holiday plans, or how surprising it is to hear someone say they really do enjoy the work they do. And yet, the same writer has written these words:
If that is our experience, that we can take pleasure in our toil, then indeed it is a gift from God. But what of those who don't have pleasure in their work? Perhaps it is necessary to redefine what work is. As long as we limit the discussion to paid employment, as we've already noted not many will be satisfied. And we also fall into the danger of belittling work which doesn't draw a wage, but is equally valid. We do have to admit that for most people work is a central feature in their lives. Whether they are paid or not, the dominant claim on a person's time is work. And so we must consider work in connection with what we do at church. In the first hymn this morning and in the children's talk we focused on God's creative work. Before any other work existed, God had to work to bring the world into being. This is brought out particularly in the second account of creation found in Genesis 2. In the first chapter of Genesis creation is described as happening by the word of God -
But in the second account God gets his hands dirty. Listen to this from v 7:
It sounds like a potter moulding clay. Or a sculptor forming a shape. But it is more than that, because God's breath gives life to the moulded form. In this second account the creation of the man comes before the making of the animals - not until v 19 do we hear that -
Quite a different idea to Genesis 1 where humankind was the pinnacle of creation. Even so, in both accounts creation is called "good,"and in both stories humankind is given the task of caring for God's creation. In chapter one male and female are told to "have dominion over" all the other creatures. Ch 2's version brings man down to earth. He is made from the dust of the ground, and his job is to till the earth. This is especially evident in the Hebrew, where there is a play on words - Adam is made from "adamah" - the Hebrew word for earth. The aboriginal concept of the earth as our mother isn't so far removed from this is it? Perhaps if we were more aware of that connection we would look after the earth better. You know I do wonder whether God ever looks at the work of his hands and says "All is vanity". Was it worth all that hard work just to see it be abused and wasted away? An important aspect of God's work as creator is that the work is ngoing. It didn't just stop back then. God didn't leave man on his own tilling the earth. God worked on, finding a perfect companion, bringing about community. Even when the human community turned against their creator, God didn't just give up on creation. And God is still working to perfect it. A trinitarian formula which is being used more and more expresses the three aspects of God as creator, redeemer and sustainer. God worked to create us and our world, God worked to redeem us, and God continues to sustain his work. Since we are made in God's image we need to understand our work as creative also. We need to recognise that work has value which isn't necessarily directly related to how much it earns. We listened to the parable of the workers in the vineyard earlier. It's a good story, like all good parables there's a pretty significant twist to it. The men employed at the beginning of the day made a contract with the vineyard owner and set out happily enough, even though they ended up toiling through the heat of the day. The next group also agreed to work for a fair sum. The ones who were employed at the eleventh hour, - an hour before knockoff time - are a bit of a mystery group. They said they'd been waiting to be employed, but one wonders whether they were there in the middle of the day. Why do any people become the "long term unemployed"? Surely not simply because they are lazy. The fact that the wner takes them on suggests he was a compassionate man - prepared to take on extra workers even at the last hour so that they could feed their families. Or maybe there suddenly was need for more work - perhaps a frost had been predicted and the grapes had to be picked. We don't really know - not enough detail is given. The story is cleverly told - with the last to be employed paid first naturally an assumption grew in the mind of the earliest employed as well as the listeners that they would be suitably compensated. And then the twist - the owner pays everyone alike. Don't forget the first were only being paid what they'd agreed to, so their anger came in comparing their reward with that of the others. Last year I got the Youth Group to reflect on this story, and the strongest feeling that came out of it was the sense of unfairness. The trade union movement has promoted its principles well because every one of these school age kids understood the concept of workers' rights. In fact they found it quite hard to put themselves in the shoes of those in the story who were employed last - it was just too unrealistic a scenario. Like all good parables one ought to be surprised by the story. But to understand it properly there must be some sense of joy that those employed at the eleventh hour would have felt when they were paid. For them it was an experience of the grace of God. For the others it was a lesson in the freedom of God to be gracious. The parable of course is about the kingdom of God, not about economics, and yet it is about a God who calls us to participate in his creative work - not for the merit we will receive but because of the gracious character of God. We are made in the image of God, and asked to care for the world as God would. God who redeems and sustains will go on working even when the conditions change. Work is of value not because it is the means for living, but because it is part of life. We are made in the image of the first worker, and we have a good working model! God's work is creative, and ongoing. It is not determined by the end result. And God's work is life-giving. |
