Finding God in Our Work(2011Sep11)
Series: Thank God It’s Monday! M2 11 09 11
Speakers: Ken Shigematsu and Betty M
Title: Finding God in Our Work
Text: Colossians 3:23-24
BIG IDEA: We can find God in our work as we take time for Sabbath, pray and remember the Cross.
INTRODUCTION
The founder of McDonalds, Ray Kroc, was asked by a reporter about his priorities. "I believe in God, my family, and McDonald's," he said. Then he added, "When I get to the office, I reverse the order." Though he was likely speaking partly tongue in cheek, when people enter their work world their stated priorities often change and they become unconscious of God.
But does that have to be the case?
Do we need to compartmentalize our work or school life from the rest of our life?
Do we need to forget God or our family or what’s most important to us when we’re at work or school?
As we alluded to last week as we began our series on work, Thank God It’s Monday, because of sin and the radioactive effects of sin in our world, thorns and thistles grow from the ground and we experience frustration in our work: broken photo-copiers, computer servers that break down, office politics, gossip… but work itself is also a gift to us, a gift that was present in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned and fell away from God.
And work can also serve as a primary place where we grow in our relationship with God.
Dallas Willard, respected author on the spiritual life, would say that the primary place of our spiritual formation is not in our church or small groups or 15 minutes of reading the Bible and praying through practicing the presence, but our work place or school or the work you do at home changing diapers.
In his book The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard says (this is a paraphrase),
If we restrict our discipleship (our becoming more like Jesus) to special religious times, the majority of our waking hours will be isolated from the conscious presence of God in our lives. To not find your job to be the primary place of discipleship is to automatically exclude a major part, if not the most, of your waking hours from life with him. The gospel turns your work into a spiritual formation training center.
As I’ve said before, work is not just the place where we get things done, but a place where God gets us done.
How does discipleship or growing more like Jesus happen in our work or school?
How does work become, not only a meaningful part of our lives, but a significant part of our spiritual lives or our life with God?
Please turn to Colossians 3:23-24.
The apostle Paul says:
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
How do we become people like this--people who work with all our heart, as working for the Lord and not for human masters?
One of the ways that we can become people who work with all our heart as we work and do our work unto God, ironically, is by not working… by learning to do what I hope we are doing today---taking Sabbath, taking a 24-hour period which ideally includes the practice of not working: unplugging from our computers and electronic gadgets, worshipping together in community, taking time for rest, recovery, and play.
I know we talked about Sabbath as a gateway to rest and worship, but Sabbath is also a gateway to work.
“Sabbath does as much for your other six days of work as it does for your one-day of worship,” says long time pastor and writer Eugene Peterson. (2X)
Sabbath is as important to our work as it is to worship. Without Sabbath, we will find work grinding us down. By honouring Sabbath we will have renewed energy for the other six days.
After a sermon series on the Sabbath a few years ago, Caitlyn, a university student who has been part of our community, approached me glowing and said, “For the first in my life I have started taking a 24-hour Sabbath. I feel great. I used to procrastinate. Now I find I can really focus on my studies. I have this surplus energy now, so I have decided to do some volunteer work on campus.”
Not only does Sabbath give us renewed energy for the work that we face, Sabbath also enables us to reflect on the meaning of our life and work. The rabbis taught that the Sabbath was given to us to contemplate the meaning of our work and our life beyond work. The rabbis observed that if we had one day of rest in seven, or 3640 days in seven years, that we have ten years of Sabbath rest in a lifetime which would help us reflect on the meaning of our life and the work that we do, as well.
So through Sabbath, unlike Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, we can become conscious about God during our other six days. By taking Sabbath we can on the one hand avoid overworking, but when we do work we can work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Another way we can become conscious of God as we work is by seeing our work as prayer.
The ancient monks viewed their everyday work as a form of prayer. They really sought to live out Saint Paul’s admonition in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray continually, and literally tried to pray without ceasing. The Desert Father John Cassian encouraged the brothers under his care to engage in simple manual labour, such as weaving baskets in a cave, so that it was possible to engage in constant prayer while they were working. But this proved to be exhausting for most monks. Even Cassian would later admit that this method was harder than he expected.
In contrast, St. Benedict who lived in the 6th century had a slightly different perspective on how we pray in our work. As part of my graduate studies, I have been reading the rule of Benedict, and many have summarized Benedict’s approach to work with the famous dictum in Latin: “to work is to pray.” For Benedict, work, whether he and monks were farming, maintaining the buildings, preparing meals in the kitchen, scrubbing floors, in and of itself had value as a devotional act toward God and didn’t require literal unceasing prayers to be offered at the same time. Benedict believed that work done for the purpose of glorifying God was prayer, in and of itself.
Part of the way that his monks began to see their work as prayer was by having a rhythm of prayer throughout their day. This rhythm of prayer made them more conscious of God in their everyday work of harvesting the crops, repairing the roof of the monastery, placing books on the shelves of the library.
Unlike Benedictine monks, we are not going to be able to pause, in all likelihood, 5 or 7 times a day to engage in formal prayer. But, we can pray. We can have rhythms of prayer in our day that make us more conscious of God as we work, it can help us work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
When I completed my undergraduate degree, I began working in my first corporate job with the Sony Corporation in Tokyo. After a simple breakfast of eggs and tofu, I would slip into my uniform---a gray or navy suit, and leave my apartment at about 7:00 am and catch the subway downtown. I would spend the day teaching English, Western culture and business protocols to salary-men, i.e., corporate soldiers, some of whom were being dispatched to North America or Europe. I would arrive home at about 11:10 pm, sometimes later if I was invited to socialize at a bar with some salary-men. Although I was making far more money than I had ever made before, I was unhappy and felt like my soul was withering.
Although I had never heard of monastic rhythms of life or rules of life, clumsily I began to throw one together out of sheer desperation more than anything else. I made a decision to not work on weekends, to have a kind of Sabbath, got involved in a small local church about a ten-minute walk from my apartment. And during my morning commute, although I was nodding off and half asleep, I would spend some time praying and offering my workday to God.
That rhythm of praying in the morning and offering my day to God slowly changed the way I worked. Over time, I began to focus less on the money I was making and my professional advancement, and came to see that I was doing my work not just for a company, but for God.
I had this energy, this motivation to do well, not just to advance my career, but to honour my Maker, I was able to work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
After a couple of years working for the company, I was entering a time of change in my life, as I was preparing to go to Boston to go to divinity school. As I was cleaning out my desk getting ready to leave, my manager said, “If things don’t work out for you at school or in the ministry, we’d love you to come back. You would always a job here.” One of my younger sisters was visiting me in Tokyo at the time, and she had a chance to briefly talk with my manager Sasaki-san one-on-one. Afterwards, my younger sister said, “Your manager said you are his best guy and he is really going to miss you.”
I hadn’t been working just for a company, just for my career advancement, but working for the Lord, not for human masters.
And if we see our work life as a prayer, as an offering to God, and bring the same kind of discipline, energy and devotion to our work that we would to our relationship with God, we may not be the number one person in the company. We may not make CEO or partner. That kind of worldly success isn’t that important to God. But we will work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Keeping Sabbath rhythms will help prevent us from overworking. A rhythm of prayer, will help us see our work as prayer, as an offering to God. When this happens we can work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Brother Alphonsus was a doorkeeper in the seventeenth century at a Jesuit College in Majorca, Spain. Each time someone knocked that the door he would run toward the door and say, “I am coming, Lord!” This practice reminded him to treat each person with as much respect as if it were Jesus himself at the door.
A man named Howard I met while in seminary sat in a plane that was delayed for take off. After a long wait, the passengers became more and more irritated. Howard noticed how gracious one of the flight attendants was as she spoke with the passengers. After the plane finally took off, he told the flight attendant how amazed he was at her poise and self-control, and said he wanted to write a letter of commendation for her to the airline. The flight attendant replied that she didn't work for the airline company, but for Jesus Christ. She said that just before going to work she and her husband pray together that she would do her work for Christ.
Working for Christ makes a difference and helps us work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Last week, we heard from Leighton Cantrill who talked about how he experienced a sense of working for God as he worked as a day laborer on a construction site building houses.
At this time I am going to invite Betty M to come and share. Betty M is a member of our community and sits on the Board of Elders here. It has been a real gift to have her at Tenth. She has also served a key role for Olympic business development for a financial services company during and in the lead-up time to the Olympics. You may have seen her featured in the newspapers in that role.
I interview Betty
So we can become people who are conscious of God in our work, who work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters: by honoring Sabbath, having some kind of rhythm of prayer, by meditating on Jesus Christ and his work for us. We do can this as we prayerfully read the Gospels, or as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper:
When we honor Sabbath, pray and remember what Christ did for us, we can become conscious of God. We can work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
There is a church here on the West Coast where I know some of the pastors.
One of the pastors is named Kevin Kim.
Listen to part of Kevin’s story:
“I remember my first job. When I was in high school I worked cleaning a motel with my parents, and I hated it! We had to start early every day, around 7:00 in the morning, and we had to clean around 20 rooms. My mom would go in and scrub the toilets and the bathtub. My job was to vacuum. I remember being so resentful about having to work with my mom, because none of my other friends had to work, and I wanted to be hanging out with them.
The last thing I wanted was to clean up someone else's mess with my mom, and my mom knew this, so whenever she could, she let me off the hook, and she would do the extra work. But there were times when she needed help, and she would ask me, and I would come with an attitude. I’d come begrudgingly… But when I was in college, something changed.
My mom thought I needed a car, and so she saved up some money to buy me one. We shopped around and found this beautiful used '89 black Acura Integra. It was stick shift and a hatchback. It had plastic, chrome rims, and it was $3,300. I knew our financial situation. I knew this was an incredible sacrifice on my mom's part, and so I was thankful. I was psyched about the car.
I sat there beaming in the seat, thinking, Man, I got my ride. And as we were finalizing the sale at that used car dealership and the salesman left to go get some paperwork, my mom reached over and grabbed my hand. She had tears in her eyes, and she said to me, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t buy you a nicer car.’
As a kid, you always know your parents love you, but you just don't realize how much love and sacrifice there is behind the scenes, and I got a glimpse of it that day. I never looked at my work the same way again; it changed my perspective. From that point on, I looked for ways to help out at the motel. I’d ask my mom what I could do for her, because it wasn’t just a job anymore. The work wasn't just a job; it was a way for me to express my love and gratitude in response to my mom's sacrificial love to me.”
If you understand the gospel, if you get a glimpse of the sacrificial love of Christ, it will change and transform your job, because it won't just be a job or a paycheck or climbing a ladder. It will be a way for you to express our love and gratitude to a God who loves you enough to die for you.
Our work will be an avenue of worship. Your place of work, whether you’re working as a student or at a job or at home, will be a place of worship, where you work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
When we know that Jesus Christ died as a sacrifice for us, died for us so that we might live, when we know how he literally worked to death for us to give us rest, to give us Sabbath in our souls, we can work for Christ while we work, and finally when we know that we will receive a reward for our work… Paul says…we can work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters… since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
The greatest reward we can receive in our work is not a huge salary or a prestigious job title, but a reward from Christ. He is the greatest person for whom anyone can work and he will reward those who work for him: this text speaks of an inheritance, other texts speak about a crown of life, but our greatest reward will be the knowledge that we are did our work for Jesus and hearing him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
When we know we are working for him, for this, we can work with all our heart, working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Speakers: Ken Shigematsu and Betty M
Title: Finding God in Our Work
Text: Colossians 3:23-24
BIG IDEA: We can find God in our work as we take time for Sabbath, pray and remember the Cross.
INTRODUCTION
The founder of McDonalds, Ray Kroc, was asked by a reporter about his priorities. "I believe in God, my family, and McDonald's," he said. Then he added, "When I get to the office, I reverse the order." Though he was likely speaking partly tongue in cheek, when people enter their work world their stated priorities often change and they become unconscious of God.
But does that have to be the case?
Do we need to compartmentalize our work or school life from the rest of our life?
Do we need to forget God or our family or what’s most important to us when we’re at work or school?
As we alluded to last week as we began our series on work, Thank God It’s Monday, because of sin and the radioactive effects of sin in our world, thorns and thistles grow from the ground and we experience frustration in our work: broken photo-copiers, computer servers that break down, office politics, gossip… but work itself is also a gift to us, a gift that was present in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned and fell away from God.
And work can also serve as a primary place where we grow in our relationship with God.
Dallas Willard, respected author on the spiritual life, would say that the primary place of our spiritual formation is not in our church or small groups or 15 minutes of reading the Bible and praying through practicing the presence, but our work place or school or the work you do at home changing diapers.
In his book The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard says (this is a paraphrase),
If we restrict our discipleship (our becoming more like Jesus) to special religious times, the majority of our waking hours will be isolated from the conscious presence of God in our lives. To not find your job to be the primary place of discipleship is to automatically exclude a major part, if not the most, of your waking hours from life with him. The gospel turns your work into a spiritual formation training center.
As I’ve said before, work is not just the place where we get things done, but a place where God gets us done.
How does discipleship or growing more like Jesus happen in our work or school?
How does work become, not only a meaningful part of our lives, but a significant part of our spiritual lives or our life with God?
Please turn to Colossians 3:23-24.
The apostle Paul says:
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
How do we become people like this--people who work with all our heart, as working for the Lord and not for human masters?
One of the ways that we can become people who work with all our heart as we work and do our work unto God, ironically, is by not working… by learning to do what I hope we are doing today---taking Sabbath, taking a 24-hour period which ideally includes the practice of not working: unplugging from our computers and electronic gadgets, worshipping together in community, taking time for rest, recovery, and play.
I know we talked about Sabbath as a gateway to rest and worship, but Sabbath is also a gateway to work.
“Sabbath does as much for your other six days of work as it does for your one-day of worship,” says long time pastor and writer Eugene Peterson. (2X)
Sabbath is as important to our work as it is to worship. Without Sabbath, we will find work grinding us down. By honouring Sabbath we will have renewed energy for the other six days.
After a sermon series on the Sabbath a few years ago, Caitlyn, a university student who has been part of our community, approached me glowing and said, “For the first in my life I have started taking a 24-hour Sabbath. I feel great. I used to procrastinate. Now I find I can really focus on my studies. I have this surplus energy now, so I have decided to do some volunteer work on campus.”
Not only does Sabbath give us renewed energy for the work that we face, Sabbath also enables us to reflect on the meaning of our life and work. The rabbis taught that the Sabbath was given to us to contemplate the meaning of our work and our life beyond work. The rabbis observed that if we had one day of rest in seven, or 3640 days in seven years, that we have ten years of Sabbath rest in a lifetime which would help us reflect on the meaning of our life and the work that we do, as well.
So through Sabbath, unlike Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, we can become conscious about God during our other six days. By taking Sabbath we can on the one hand avoid overworking, but when we do work we can work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Another way we can become conscious of God as we work is by seeing our work as prayer.
The ancient monks viewed their everyday work as a form of prayer. They really sought to live out Saint Paul’s admonition in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray continually, and literally tried to pray without ceasing. The Desert Father John Cassian encouraged the brothers under his care to engage in simple manual labour, such as weaving baskets in a cave, so that it was possible to engage in constant prayer while they were working. But this proved to be exhausting for most monks. Even Cassian would later admit that this method was harder than he expected.
In contrast, St. Benedict who lived in the 6th century had a slightly different perspective on how we pray in our work. As part of my graduate studies, I have been reading the rule of Benedict, and many have summarized Benedict’s approach to work with the famous dictum in Latin: “to work is to pray.” For Benedict, work, whether he and monks were farming, maintaining the buildings, preparing meals in the kitchen, scrubbing floors, in and of itself had value as a devotional act toward God and didn’t require literal unceasing prayers to be offered at the same time. Benedict believed that work done for the purpose of glorifying God was prayer, in and of itself.
Part of the way that his monks began to see their work as prayer was by having a rhythm of prayer throughout their day. This rhythm of prayer made them more conscious of God in their everyday work of harvesting the crops, repairing the roof of the monastery, placing books on the shelves of the library.
Unlike Benedictine monks, we are not going to be able to pause, in all likelihood, 5 or 7 times a day to engage in formal prayer. But, we can pray. We can have rhythms of prayer in our day that make us more conscious of God as we work, it can help us work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
When I completed my undergraduate degree, I began working in my first corporate job with the Sony Corporation in Tokyo. After a simple breakfast of eggs and tofu, I would slip into my uniform---a gray or navy suit, and leave my apartment at about 7:00 am and catch the subway downtown. I would spend the day teaching English, Western culture and business protocols to salary-men, i.e., corporate soldiers, some of whom were being dispatched to North America or Europe. I would arrive home at about 11:10 pm, sometimes later if I was invited to socialize at a bar with some salary-men. Although I was making far more money than I had ever made before, I was unhappy and felt like my soul was withering.
Although I had never heard of monastic rhythms of life or rules of life, clumsily I began to throw one together out of sheer desperation more than anything else. I made a decision to not work on weekends, to have a kind of Sabbath, got involved in a small local church about a ten-minute walk from my apartment. And during my morning commute, although I was nodding off and half asleep, I would spend some time praying and offering my workday to God.
That rhythm of praying in the morning and offering my day to God slowly changed the way I worked. Over time, I began to focus less on the money I was making and my professional advancement, and came to see that I was doing my work not just for a company, but for God.
I had this energy, this motivation to do well, not just to advance my career, but to honour my Maker, I was able to work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
After a couple of years working for the company, I was entering a time of change in my life, as I was preparing to go to Boston to go to divinity school. As I was cleaning out my desk getting ready to leave, my manager said, “If things don’t work out for you at school or in the ministry, we’d love you to come back. You would always a job here.” One of my younger sisters was visiting me in Tokyo at the time, and she had a chance to briefly talk with my manager Sasaki-san one-on-one. Afterwards, my younger sister said, “Your manager said you are his best guy and he is really going to miss you.”
I hadn’t been working just for a company, just for my career advancement, but working for the Lord, not for human masters.
And if we see our work life as a prayer, as an offering to God, and bring the same kind of discipline, energy and devotion to our work that we would to our relationship with God, we may not be the number one person in the company. We may not make CEO or partner. That kind of worldly success isn’t that important to God. But we will work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Keeping Sabbath rhythms will help prevent us from overworking. A rhythm of prayer, will help us see our work as prayer, as an offering to God. When this happens we can work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Brother Alphonsus was a doorkeeper in the seventeenth century at a Jesuit College in Majorca, Spain. Each time someone knocked that the door he would run toward the door and say, “I am coming, Lord!” This practice reminded him to treat each person with as much respect as if it were Jesus himself at the door.
A man named Howard I met while in seminary sat in a plane that was delayed for take off. After a long wait, the passengers became more and more irritated. Howard noticed how gracious one of the flight attendants was as she spoke with the passengers. After the plane finally took off, he told the flight attendant how amazed he was at her poise and self-control, and said he wanted to write a letter of commendation for her to the airline. The flight attendant replied that she didn't work for the airline company, but for Jesus Christ. She said that just before going to work she and her husband pray together that she would do her work for Christ.
Working for Christ makes a difference and helps us work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Last week, we heard from Leighton Cantrill who talked about how he experienced a sense of working for God as he worked as a day laborer on a construction site building houses.
At this time I am going to invite Betty M to come and share. Betty M is a member of our community and sits on the Board of Elders here. It has been a real gift to have her at Tenth. She has also served a key role for Olympic business development for a financial services company during and in the lead-up time to the Olympics. You may have seen her featured in the newspapers in that role.
I interview Betty
So we can become people who are conscious of God in our work, who work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters: by honoring Sabbath, having some kind of rhythm of prayer, by meditating on Jesus Christ and his work for us. We do can this as we prayerfully read the Gospels, or as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper:
When we honor Sabbath, pray and remember what Christ did for us, we can become conscious of God. We can work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
There is a church here on the West Coast where I know some of the pastors.
One of the pastors is named Kevin Kim.
Listen to part of Kevin’s story:
“I remember my first job. When I was in high school I worked cleaning a motel with my parents, and I hated it! We had to start early every day, around 7:00 in the morning, and we had to clean around 20 rooms. My mom would go in and scrub the toilets and the bathtub. My job was to vacuum. I remember being so resentful about having to work with my mom, because none of my other friends had to work, and I wanted to be hanging out with them.
The last thing I wanted was to clean up someone else's mess with my mom, and my mom knew this, so whenever she could, she let me off the hook, and she would do the extra work. But there were times when she needed help, and she would ask me, and I would come with an attitude. I’d come begrudgingly… But when I was in college, something changed.
My mom thought I needed a car, and so she saved up some money to buy me one. We shopped around and found this beautiful used '89 black Acura Integra. It was stick shift and a hatchback. It had plastic, chrome rims, and it was $3,300. I knew our financial situation. I knew this was an incredible sacrifice on my mom's part, and so I was thankful. I was psyched about the car.
I sat there beaming in the seat, thinking, Man, I got my ride. And as we were finalizing the sale at that used car dealership and the salesman left to go get some paperwork, my mom reached over and grabbed my hand. She had tears in her eyes, and she said to me, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t buy you a nicer car.’
As a kid, you always know your parents love you, but you just don't realize how much love and sacrifice there is behind the scenes, and I got a glimpse of it that day. I never looked at my work the same way again; it changed my perspective. From that point on, I looked for ways to help out at the motel. I’d ask my mom what I could do for her, because it wasn’t just a job anymore. The work wasn't just a job; it was a way for me to express my love and gratitude in response to my mom's sacrificial love to me.”
If you understand the gospel, if you get a glimpse of the sacrificial love of Christ, it will change and transform your job, because it won't just be a job or a paycheck or climbing a ladder. It will be a way for you to express our love and gratitude to a God who loves you enough to die for you.
Our work will be an avenue of worship. Your place of work, whether you’re working as a student or at a job or at home, will be a place of worship, where you work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
When we know that Jesus Christ died as a sacrifice for us, died for us so that we might live, when we know how he literally worked to death for us to give us rest, to give us Sabbath in our souls, we can work for Christ while we work, and finally when we know that we will receive a reward for our work… Paul says…we can work with all our heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters… since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
The greatest reward we can receive in our work is not a huge salary or a prestigious job title, but a reward from Christ. He is the greatest person for whom anyone can work and he will reward those who work for him: this text speaks of an inheritance, other texts speak about a crown of life, but our greatest reward will be the knowledge that we are did our work for Jesus and hearing him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
When we know we are working for him, for this, we can work with all our heart, working for the Lord, not for human masters.
posted by Shigematsu at 8:11 PM
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