One Church, One Mission, One Work
- Jamie Leahey
- Oct 25, 2011
As one church joined by one baptism and one Spirit, we are called to extend the Gospel to every network. As New Yorkers, we spend more time than many people in the workplace. We make friends at work, we meet our spouses at work, we look for work, avoid work, worry about work.
However, the Gospel transforms why we work and how we work. The Gospel tells us that Christ came to work perfectly in the will of God and fulfilled the Law with his whole life… when he was declaring the kingdom, healing the sick and raising the dead for three years and when he was a just carpenter for some twenty years before that.
No matter how temporary, menial, frustrating or dumb our jobs might seem, our work matters to God.
Why We Work:
(For God’s Glory)
This is why Paul reminds us several times, (Colossians 3:23 and Ephesians 6:8) to work heartily as serving the Lord and not men. We are commanded to work HARD, with excellence.
Is that all? Does the Gospel just make Christians hard workers?
No, the Gospel transforms our industries. In our work, we are called to demonstrate Christ, our King come and envision His coming kingdom, his restored Shalom. Do not be conformed to the present image of this world, it’s passing away. Live for Kingdom Come.
My vocation, education, becomes not about teaching kids to pass tests, but promoting their flourishing as students and persons by seeking to shape their characters as well as their minds. Creating classrooms of community and peace, restoring a vocabulary that includes words like mercy, compassion, forgiveness and justice. Tilling the soil of their hearts in hopes that the Spirit would plant faith.
Art becomes not just about selling paintings, but imagining a world to come, sights unseen, making the invisible visible, integrating words like truth and beauty back into the conversation, inciting a desire in the heart to search for the deeper and more beautiful truths of God.
Retail and marketing becomes not about buying and selling, but about humbly and joyfully serving people well. Lawyers work to see justice done, the innocent protected. Chefs remind us of God’s abundant goodness in the delicacies they prepare.
The Gospel calls us to walk as children of the light, to embrace what is good and right and true and pleasing to the Lord not just in our personal conduct but in our jobs, work decisions and spheres of influence.
(For The Good of Our Neighbors)
The Gospel makes office politics becomes less about advancing my status and guarding my reputation, and more about seeking the good of my co-workers, even the ones I don’t like. We stay late, not in hopes of a promotion, but to help someone struggling to finish their work. As people of peace, we foster reconciliation between co-workers, offer counsel and comfort because Christ brought us counsel and comfort in abundance. We willingly labor, often in obscurity, so our actions and words might reintroduce the language of the Gospel into our workplace. We would be people of mercy, forgiveness, humility and wisdom.
(For Our Sanctification)
When we are frustrated our work is not changing the world or even our office, we find can joy that in our work, God is changing us. We are the work of His hands, his masterpieces, and he is making us beautiful, conformed to the image of Christ. This gives God great joy, and it should give us joy too.
As Paul tells us in Philippians 2:13, God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. And in 1 Corinthians 15:58 Therefore be steadfast, immovable… knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Even as I wrote this week, I felt my heart faltering: I wanted to be eloquent, I wanted to do a good job, so people will think its good. I found myself working for your approval, but this is not our goal. We work so that God may be glorified, so that our brothers and sisters in Christ might be encouraged to allow the Gospel to transform their work. As I worked on this, even as I speak this to you, God is working on me, subduing my pride, teaching me to obey, to listen and be sensitive to His Spirit. He is making my ugliness beautiful, more like Christ, through my work by His Holy Spirit. He wants the same for us all.
How We Work
How do we start to let the Gospel transform our work? How can I not be frustrated at work? How can I stop dreading work on Monday morning?
Our bosses might chide us for sitting around on the job, but Jesus beckons us to come and sit. In Jesus’ conversation with Mary and Martha, Jesus radically tells us “only one thing is necessary,” to sit as Mary did, seated at the feet of Jesus, just listening. This is the good portion and it won’t be taken from her. Please don’t miss that. When we choose the good portion, we sit at His feet to love him and learn from him and accept His Sabbath rest from work, so we might work for others. To have this impressed on our hearts is to never work a day in our life. I might lose my job, my 401K, see my business fail, but I will always find comfort, wisdom, and rest at the Savior’s feet.
Our jobs may require at least three months work before we earn a sick day or vacation day, but Christ invites us not only to sit, but to recline and feast.
In Luke (17:8), Christ tells us a parable about a servant and his master.
Will anyone tell his servant when he comes in from work, come eat? No! You’ll say put on some clean clothes and serve me first until I am finished. Then you may eat. After all, that’s what servants do! Yet Christ’s perfect life, death and resurrection declares, “Come to the table and recline at once!!” He has made slaves and servants into sons and daughters, and so our duty, our work can become our delight. In Christ, we hear, this is my beloved son, my precious daughter in whom I am well pleased. Friends, we don’t work for a feast, we feast in Christ that we might do God’s work. We have God’s love and approvable before we ever put our hand to the plow and our feast in Christ is a family meal that we may enjoy together.
As we extend the Gospel into every network, let us stop longing for the weekend, and start longing to see God move in our work, through our work, and in our workplace. Let us begin each day resting and feasting in the God’s goodness in Christ, seeking His will and way and inviting others into the feast he has prepared for them. And let us rest in the assurance, that in Christ, everything in life and work takes on new meaning. No work is wasted. Nothing is vanity. All suffering is gain. All labor is fruitful when we work for the glory of God in Christ Jesus and our glory to come.