Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 13
September 3, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
THE LANDSCAPE OF CHRISTIAN FORMATION: WORK AND SOCIETY
Ephesians 5:21, 6:5-9
As of last night, my family and I are now officially Crescent Hill residents. Thanks to the gracious generosity of time and energy of several of you spending your Saturday of Labor Day weekend loading and unloading furniture and way too many boxes - all under the benevolent dictatorship (I mean leadership) of Bob Hieb, we spent our first night last night in our new home. You are welcome to stop by any time - in December - of 2007! We hope to have an open house some time during Advent. But don’t mark your calendars yet.
They say hard work never killed anybody. That’s not exactly true. On Friday we packed, loaded and unloaded fragile items like furniture with glass and china and books. And by the end of the day I was aching pretty good. Manual labor seems to run contrary to my calling from God as a man of the word. It also has a tendency to create an allergic reaction in my bones and muscles. Though Bob said I did pretty good job - for a minister.
Work is actually our topic of conversation today as it relates to Christian Spiritual Formation. Though I am thinking primarily of the kind of work we do for a living as we live in society, all kinds of work apply - manual work, office work, school work, volunteer work, house work - any kind of work. Work is a primary venue for Spiritual Formation.
We conclude our study of Ephesians today. This letter has been our text for reflecting on Christian Spiritual Formation. To summarize would be to say that:
Spiritual formation is the work of God’s Spirit within us forming the life of Christ in us for the sake of others, for the transformation of the world.
We engage in spiritual practices such as worship and prayer and spiritual reading and service. These practices do not do the work of Christian Spiritual Formation, but they do prepare us, they put us in a place where God can do God’s work within us.
Because it is God’s work, Christian Spiritual Formation cannot be explained by following four easy steps. It is a work of mystery.
The purpose of that work is the great good news of the gospel - that God, who is rich in mercy, with arms of great love, took us when we were dead in our sin and selfishness, and raised us up, made us alive with Christ, so that we might not be held captive by the powers of this world that seek to destroy us and our world. We are God’s poem of grace and great love. Born into love. Saved by grace.
Shaped in community. Christian Spiritual Formation always takes place with others. The primary others are those closest to us - family and friends. We are tempted to think that if we could just get rid of certain people we would be home free. We could be good Christians. But we would not. We need people, even the difficult ones, especially the difficult ones, to shape us into the people God created us to be. Christian Spiritual Formation is personal but not private. It happens in community where all barriers have been broken down and all are united in Christ, sharing our gifts with one another to build up the Body of Christ.
The fruit of Christian Spiritual Formation, the process of becoming Christian, is that we put away those behaviors of distorted desire - greed, lust, anger - and we learn how to love, speaking the truth with grace, being kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as Christ has forgiven us, submitting ourselves to each other just as Christ submitted himself for the sake of the church.
And to know that all of life is spiritual formation. It’s not just something done at church or when we pray or read the Bible. At home, work, school, society, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, Spiritual Formation, for good or for ill, is happening.
There’s a line in Wendell Berry’s poem about how the sycamore tree has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
Everything that happens to us, everything we do - all of it is gathered together and makes us who we are. All of life is spiritual formation.
In Sunday School today, we began a study of the book of Acts. The authors make the point that the mission field is not simply overseas, but all around us - in our offices, on our streets, in our schools. (Anthony Robinson and Robert Wall, Called to Be Church, Eerdmans, 2006, 44)
Christian spirituality means taking all the elements of your life - children, spouse, job, weather, possessions, relationships, softball, moving - everything in our lives and experiencing them as an act of faith.
As we think in particular about our lives at work and fulfilling our duties as citizens in society, I want us to return to a couple of points from last week and our conversation on marriage and parenting and church.
One is the issue of submission. The text says, Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Because submission has been chauvinistically associated only with women and wives, the tendency has been to do away with the word altogether.
Matters are perhaps made even worse with our text today that fails to forbid and condemn the practice of slavery. Yet another example of the ancient culture influenced the writers of scripture.
This text does however offer a wise word to slaves to obey their masters. An uprising would have resulted in their immediate death.
And though it would have been best if our text had told masters to free their slaves, this text does instruct masters to treat their slaves humanely, and reminds them that there is a higher authority, another Master in heaven who does not view people as master and slave. There is no partiality, no distinction with Christ.
A relevant analogy for us would of course be the employee / employer relationship. And that can often feel like a master-slave relationship.
There are jobs that dehumanize. They hurt those who do them. Some of them bring harm to creation. Whenever it is within our power, we need to end all work that dehumanizes, harms people and/or creation. It is never okay for another person, especially a Christian, to treat another human being as an object or to cause anyone to work under oppressive conditions. Whenever the church has failed to work for the abolishment of slavery or oppressive working conditions, it has failed to be the church.
While our text may fail us at the point of not forbidding slavery, we are offered some helpful guidance about how to be Christian at work. Because that is what we are after most of all. We want God to use everything in our lives, including our work, as instruments of making us more like Christ.
I think we often fail to see how radically different a Christian world view is when compared to our culture. The goal of the Christian is not to climb the ladder of success, or to get ahead in the business world, or to further our career for the sake of furthering our career.
Our Sunday School lesson from Acts today reminded us that wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, we are the church. Whether we are gathered here becoming disciples, students of Christ, or whether we are scattered out in the world as apostles, as teachers and witnesses of God’s grace and love, we are always the body of Christ (Robinson and Wall, 42-43), with higher goals than happiness and career success.
We are here to serve the needs of the world. We are here to serve the needs of hurting people. That’s what it means to be Christian in the workplace and in society. Because the greatest are not those who rise to the top but those who rise to the bottom and serve.
At work, at school, and in our interactions with people in society, our calling is to practice submission to one another, being Christ to one another.
In addition to submission, last week we addressed the issue of happiness. I shared with you Gary Thomas’ question: What if God’s primary goal in our marriages is not our happiness but our holiness?
What if we asked that question about our work? What if God’s primary goal in our jobs, or retirement for that matter, is not our happiness but our holiness?
We all want to be happy in our work. No one wants to wake up every morning and go to a place that makes them miserable. But not everyone has a choice. There are bills to pay and mouths to feed, and sometimes we have to do what we have to do in order to make ends meet.
Whether we are in a job we love or a job we are simply enduring, whether our employer is Mother Teresa or Donald Trump, whether our workplace is the home, school, office, or field - the primary goal is not our happiness not our spiritual formation into the likeness of Jesus Christ.
Our text instructs us to work as if we work for Christ. We work not to please our employers but to be a witness for Christ by the good work that we do. If we are the employer, we do not create a threatening atmosphere of fear for our employees. We realize that God is over us.
There was a service station owned by devout Muslims who had a great reputation for fixing cars. You knew that whatever was ailing your automobile would be fixed correctly, at a fair price, with impeccable honesty. You could trust that they’d never fix anything that didn’t need fixing. When asked about their motivation for working so hard and being so honest, they would reply that they were called by Allah into their profession. To them, this meant that they needed to fix cars as if Mohammed himself were riding in them. These mechanics had not the slightest sense that theirs was a profession any lower than that of a prophet, priest, or king. (Eric Elnes, The Phoenix Affirmations, 2006, 138-139)
In the Christian tradition, the apostle Paul articulates the same understanding as the Muslim service station owners when he says, “Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not humans, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3:23-24)
In some ways I think we have done a disservice to other professions, jobs, and callings by labeling only church-related vocations - pastors, ministers, and missionaries - as “full-time Christian service.” The life of every Christian is “full-time Christian service.” At baptism we are all ordained to a lifetime of ministry and service.
All of life is Christian formation, Christian ministry, Christian service.
The goal is to become like Christ.
Even in our failure and incompleteness, in our brokenness and bondage that hinder our growth toward wholeness in Christ, it is still God’s good pleasure to adopt us as God’s children. God is here, in grace, offering us the forgiveness, the cleansing, the liberation, the healing we need to continue the journey toward wholeness and completion in Christ. (M. Robert Mulholland, Jr. Invitation to the Journey, InterVarsity Press, 1993, 36-37)
The promise is that the God who began this good work within us will bring it to completion. It may take the life of a sycamore.
In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.
- Wendell Berry, “The Sycamore”
Like an old sycamore tree growing, we need sustenance. And so God provides a table of life and grace, bread and wine, where we are fed. It is our native place because God has welcomed us here. All are invited. So come and feed.
feed back to Greg
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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