The sad truth is that some of you go to work and
you die a little bit more every day. That is not the
way it is supposed to be. For those of you who
are working, you probably spend more of your
waking hours and energy at work than anywhere
else in your life. Yet for so many individuals, the
everyday workplace is an environment where humanity
is slowly drained right out of them. I realize
this is not a cheerful way to begin a sermon and
for that, I am sorry. I am certain, however, that too
many of you know exactly what I am talking about
in this regard.
For those of you who do know what I am talking
about, you know that this is not just happening to
you at work. Let’s be honest here. If you are
spending forty, fifty, or sixty hours a week doing
something that you do not enjoy - something that
feels emotionally draining and unfulfilling - there is
simply no way you are going to be able to make
that up in the other areas of your life. No way! If
you are dying at work, it is just a matter of time
before you will be dying in every other relationship
of your life. If your work is leaving you with a hollow
feeling in the depth of your being, it will not
take long for this to affect your family, your friends,
your libido, your personality, and your very soul. It
is popular these days to say, “My job is what I do,
but it is not who I am.” We all know that statement
is just not true. Anything that consumes that much
of our time, our energy, our thoughts, and our actions
is going to be a major determining factor in
who we are, whether we like it or not. People try
to look at their jobs in a purely utilitarian light, but I
am not buying it. “Oh, my job is just a way to
make money. I don’t love it but it pays the bills. It
allows us to live the lifestyle we like, the lifestyle
we’ve become accustomed to.” More and more
often, you hear people saying this: “I live for the
weekends.” Well, I am sorry, but that is simply not
good enough. We are not Hindu. We are not going
to have another time around on this planet. It
is simply not enough to tolerate over two-thirds of
your life just so that you can feel some sort of fulfillment,
joy, and purpose in the leftover one-third.
I have to say that I feel a little awkward preaching
about this, because I love my job. I have the
greatest job in the world even though it is a hard
job with extremely long hours. It is very difficult to
get away for vacations, even for a day or two. It is
impossible to please everyone all the time even
though you are constantly trying to do just that.
There are the diverse expectations - as many different
expectations as there are members. Truth
be told, however, it is a great job. It is universally
life giving. I never have to question whether what I
do feels meaningful or not. The job is interesting
and there is so much to it, so many assorted kinds
of roles and responsibilities - from helping to chart
the course of a large organization, to exercising
my creativity on a weekly basis, to being allowed
into the middle of some of the most personal and
intimate moments of people’s lives. I love that my
job includes critical thinking about the world and
honing my abilities to observe the details of my life
from a new perspective, a God perspective. I love
that something as simple as taking a trip to Bed,
Bath and Beyond, putting up a shelf in the laundry
room, or taking my dog out for a walk, carries with
it the potential to take on a whole new level of
meaning. I must simply open my eyes to see and
learn how God is moving in and through my life.
Perhaps the best part of my job is that I feel like I
am making a difference. Sometimes it is a direct
difference in people’s lives, but other times it is just
a subtle reassuring confidence that my job is a
part of something bigger - that in some small way I
am playing my part, the part that I am supposed to
be playing, in helping to build the Kingdom of God
here on earth. In short, it feels like I have a ministry.
That is the whole point; everyone needs a
ministry.
This morning we wrap up our Carpe Diem sermon
series by asking if God can actually make
an honest to goodness, day-to-day difference in
the daily grind of our working lives. I do not
know if you have had a chance to read the quote
by Dorothy Sayers on the cover of our bulletin
this morning, but in it she laments that in recent
years the church at large has essentially abandoned
talking and teaching about calling and
vocation as an essential element to our Christian
discipleship.
This doctrine of calling and vocation was one of
the great revolutions of the protestant reformation.
Back in the Middle Ages, the church was
stuck in this perceived separation between the
material and the spiritual, the secular and the
sacred. It urged those who wanted to dedicate
their lives to God to pull out of their worldly vocations,
drop out of secular society, and move into
convents and monasteries. There was a widespread
belief that the physical world was somehow
inherently less spiritual and less sacred
than the ecclesiastical world. That belief remained
until the reformation when people like
John Calvin and Martin Luther argued vehemently
against what they saw as a false dichotomy
between the sacred and the secular. They
argued that secular work is ordained by God
every bit as much as church work and that a
Christian could serve God just as fully, perhaps
even more fully, in ordinary secular jobs as in the
church. The Christian Doctrine of Vocation became
a hallmark of the protestant reformation as
they lifted up the idea that every single one of us
has a calling placed on our life; a calling to play
a part, a uniquely crafted God-given part that
only we can play, in helping to further this personal
and societal revolution that Jesus Christ
came into this world to launch.
To Calvin, it did not matter if you were a doctor,
lawyer, cab driver, business consultant, stay-athome
mom or dad, engineer, contractor, scientist,
teacher, landscape architect, or retiree. Calvin
believed that God calls every one of us to
nothing less than a personally crafted, Godgiven
ministry. It is what makes life come alive.
It is what makes life worth living. There are as
many different kinds of ministry in this world as
there are people and it is your responsibility to
find your ministry. Each one of us needs to figure
out our calling. If we do not feel like we have a
ministry right now, then there are only two ways
to get one.
The first is to quit your job and go find one.
When I was down in Houston, I established quite
a reputation as the Singles Pastor who was constantly
challenging our singles, particularly our
young adults, to make sure that they were serving
God with their careers. Repeatedly I told
them that they would start really making a difference
in this world and enjoying their lives only
when they discovered the mission to which God
was calling them. The scary part is that most of
them took me seriously. Suddenly, we had all
these well-adjusted, career-minded men and
women quitting their jobs and moving all over the
world. Christine left her job as a physical therapist
and moved to Croatia to do reconciliation
ministry, and Jill left a lucrative career in the oil
business and moved to Mexico. Anne went from
interior design to teaching at a Christian school,
and Kristin stopped teaching and went to seminary.
Lauren moved to Ireland, and Jeff left a
huge career at Shell Oil for a Christian leadership
ministry in Dallas. Ellen and Melody, who
were already youth directors, made the switch to
become mission directors, and Chad left his job
as a restaurant manager and took a position running
a small medical ministry that ships free
medical supplies to South and Central America.
I have to be honest with you - I was not sure
what to make of it all. It kind of freaked me out.
Do not get me wrong - they were all having a
ball. I have never seen any of them more excited
or sure about their lives as when they decided
to make these moves, but I could not help
but feel responsible for both their safety and their
ultimate happiness. I realized that I was not sure
if I believed it myself when I was telling them that
they would be happy only if they followed down
the path to which they felt God was leading
them.
Then one of our oldest singles, a little, sweet,
seventy-eight year-old woman named Mary Falk,
came back from one of our mission trips and
promptly announced that she would be leaving
the United States and moving down to Guatemala
to help a small struggling, orphanage with
their accounting. That was the last straw. I was
terrified. I thought, “Come on now! Enough is
enough! I mean, it is one thing to be seeing off
all these young twenty-somethings, but Mary?
What if she gets there and doesn’t like it? It will
be all my fault! What if she gets lonely? She is
on a fixed income. Should she really be spending
what little money she had left moving down
to Central America without any guarantees of
any kind of financial security? And what if she
gets sick? She could die down there!” It was a
very strange, scary, and disconcerting position
for me to be in. I remember asking her, “Mary,
what if you die down there?” I will never forget
sweet Mary Falk looking straight back into my
eyes, brimming with confidence, and saying,
“Then I die! It’s not like I’m not going to die if I
stay here.” I could not believe my ears!
What I had to come to grips with was that,
whether or not I felt completely comfortable with
the ramifications, what I had been saying to
them about calling, passion, and ministry was
entirely true. These ideals were not mine. I was
not making these parishioners quit their jobs and
dive into these ministries. They were listening to
God and following their hearts because they
knew these ideals were true.
They were not hearing my voice. They were
hearing the voice of the One who has been calling
people to new lives of adventure and purpose
ever since He stood in ankle deep water on
the edge of the Sea of Galilee. They were hearing
the same voice as the One who called out to
Peter, Andrew, James, and John to put down
their nets, pick up their callings and go to become
fishers of men. Like those first disciples,
these men and women truly understood, perhaps
better than I when I was saying it to them,
that they had only this one time around to live
their lives. None of them was worried: they were
all elated about their decisions. I was the one
who was a wreck! However, they understood
that comfort and financial security was not going
to bring them the meaning, purpose, or happiness
that they were seeking. They were ready
to ask that terrifying question that can lead only
to our ultimate happiness, “God, what do you
want me to do?”
Coincidentally, it was at this same time that Bob
Buford came out with his book Halftime. Bob, a
native of Dallas, Texas, is one of our country’s
more successful businessmen and happened to
be friends with a circle of similarly influential entrepreneurs
at our church. Bob left his company
to begin a foundation to fund projects to reach
out to the poor and needy. In his book, Bob laid
out a bold challenge to other Christian businessmen
and women. He challenged those successful
businesspersons, those who had already
earned more money than they could possibly
need for the rest of their lives, to consider taking
the second half of their lives, the second half of
their careers, to invest their time and talents into
some kind of ministry for others. Within a year of
his book publishing, the stories started cropping
up everywhere. People like Rich Sterns, one of
the top CEO’s in our country, the man who single
handedly turned Corning China around, was
leaving his mega-million-dollar-a-year-salary to
earn about $200,000 as the president of World
Vision, spurred on, he says, by this book. He left
Corning, joined World Vision, and in just a few
years was responsible for doubling the funding
World Vision was granting to the 122 countries
they serve. He doubled the funding to well over
one billion dollars a year. Rich has been very
outspoken and forthcoming about his transformation
– he is having the time of his life. Did
Bob Buford force Rich Sterns to quit Corning
China? Certainly not. Rich heard God’s call,
“Drop your nets, follow me and I will make you
fishers of men.” Rich understood his options,
and he had the guts to choose real joy. Some of
you already know, some of you have known for a
long time: You need to quit your job and go find
a ministry.
The second way to find your ministry is by staying
at the job you have and finding a ministry
there. One of my best friends, JR, has been
working for over twenty years as a volunteer with
my old youth group. I do not know anyone who
does youth ministry better. When I first met JR,
he was the general manager of a roofing supply
company called ABC Roofing. I do not think he
particularly loved the roofing business, but it certainly
did pay well. It sent his children to school
and kept his family in a really nice home in a gorgeous
shady, oak lined suburb of Los Angeles.
JR may not have loved the roofing business, but
he did love his family. He loved spending time
with his children and friends and he loved working
with the kids at our church. JR was also
smart enough to understand that what he was
doing was simply not good enough. He knew he
could not be apathetic about how he was spending
most of his time in his life and then expect to
be passionate in the rest of it. He knew that he
needed to make his job a ministry as well, for
God’s sake, for his sake, for his family’s sake, for
the sake of humankind. He focused in on his
employees and the contractors who were his
customers. He took a personal interest in their
lives and their well-being. He really reached out
to them and never grew tired of finding creative
ways to let them know that he really cared.
The ABC Roofing company had these simple,
basic T-shirts. They were designed for construction
workers who were always looking for a
throw away shirt to wear on the job. At some
point in time, JR began bringing a few of the left
over T-shirts from the yard to the kids in our
youth group. The T-shirts were an instant hit.
Everyone loved JR and everyone wanted one of
JR’s ABC Roofing T-shirts. Every year a new
design came out and before long, it was like
some kind of crazy-cult-phenomenon amongst
our kids to collect all the various ABC T-shirt designs
available. We started giving them away as
door prizes and as awards for various contests
and games. We found that we could get more
kids to go on our church retreats just by letting
them know that we would be giving away ABC Tshirts.
We could hold a Bible quiz with one of
these T-shirts as the prize, and kids would study
their Bibles as if they were Martin “Fa-lootin” Luther
himself. JR did not need to leave his job to
find his ministry. He took the job he had and
turned it into a ministry.
Life is too short not to love what you do. Your
time is too valuable, and the people in your life
are too important for you to work just for the
money. A number of years ago one of the CNN
news anchors traveled out to Mother Teresa’s
orphanage in India to follow this amazing saint
around for a week, chronicling her typical week
as she administered to the sick and the dying on
the streets of Calcutta. After just one week, the
journalist was exhausted and overwhelmed by
all of the need. In one of the all time best moments
of TV journalism, he said, “Mother Teresa,
I wouldn’t do what you do for all the money in the
world.” And she turned to him with a gleam in
her eye and said, “Neither would I.”
Do not settle for a lifestyle when you can have a
ministry. Do not put up with simply getting by
when you can feel the exhilaration and peace of
discovering your calling. Leave your current job
if you must. Or, stay right there where God has
planted you. Make sure that you allow God to
use you in all the spheres of your life, to heal
people, to witness grace, to be a conduit of joy,
to play your God-given role in building God’s
Kingdom here on earth. There will be no corner,
no closet, no crevice, and no relationship in your
life that will not be transformed. That is truly
something you cannot buy for all the money in
the world.
AMEN |
“For All The Money In The World”
Carpe Diem #3: Work