Introduction
A woman is walking along a road one day, and she notices two local council workers working by the roadside.
She is quite impressed with their effort and application, but she can't quite work out what their job actually is. So she stops and watches them for a bit but still she can’t understand what they are supposed to be doing.
Finally, she goes up to them and says, “Morning gents! I can see how hard you're both working, but I’m intrigued to know what your job actually is? It seems that one of you digs a hole, and then the other one just fills it back in again.”
“Oh,” they say, “That’s right. Brian, who plants the trees, is off sick today!”
It’s an amusing little story, and maybe you’ve heard it before, but I tell it because I think it sort of illustrates the futility and pointlessness many people feel about their work.
Sadly, there are many who find their work tediously repetitive or pointless. And as a consequence, they feel their lives lack meaning.
By contrast, in my own working life over the years, I’ve had colleagues at times for whom work is frantically stressful, even overwhelming.
A farmer was once asked “What’s the hardest thing about milking cows?” He said, “The hardest thing about milking cows is that they never stay milked!”
Work can feel like one relentless treadmill that sucks the life out of you.
I’ve been in working environments I would describe as attritional, unfriendly, even toxic. Other times going to work has been energising and exhilarating.
What would a Christ-honouring workplace look like? How should a Christian employee approach his or her working day? How should a Christian manager or boss run his or her business?
These are the kind of things we’re going to look at this morning together. It’s 5 verses from the end of Colossians 3 and the beginning of Colossians 4.
It’s just a short passage, tantalisingly brief actually. People have asked me before why the Bible doesn’t say more about work.
After all, for most of us, our job occupies the majority of our waking hours between the ages of 20 and 65.
But God’s word actually says quite a bit more about work than we might realise.
Reading through Proverbs this month, I noted over 30 verses about work. For example, “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.” And this one; “He who gathers crops in the summer is a prudent son but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgrace.”
Someone wrote recently that out of the 52 parables Jesus told, 45 are set in a workplace context.
And out of 40 miracles in the Book of Acts, 39 of them take place in the marketplace.
I confess I haven’t checked those stats, but I suspect they’re pretty accurate.
Furthermore, Jesus spent 18 years working with his hands, from his bar mitzvah at the age of 12 at which point he entered his father’s business, until he began his preaching ministry aged about 30. That means he spent over 50% of his life as a manual labourer.
You might think, “what a waste; he could have healed loads more sick people, given loads more amazing teaching and turned loads more water into wine…”
But it wasn’t a waste. Working productively and taking care to do a job well are important to God.
So I want to encourage you to not think of your Christian life as consisting of Sunday and maybe Wednesday night. It’s Monday to Friday 9-5 as well. And, in fact, every moment of every day.
Your work, whatever it is, full-time or part-time, paid or unpaid, is a calling, a ministry.
And please don’t think this is not relevant for you because you’re retired, or unable to work on health grounds, or out of work for other reasons.
What I’m going to say this morning also applies to the way you do your housework, your gardening, decorating, cooking, looking after your children or grandchildren, serving at church or studying.
What we tend to find in the Bible is that God is interested in your work, not so much because of what you do, but because of how you do it.
So, with all that said by way of introduction, let’s read Colossians 3.22 to 4.1.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favour, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 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. Anyone who does wrong [that’s talking about masters as well as slaves] will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favouritism. Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
Slavery in the Ancient World
The first thing to say straightaway about what we just read is to acknowledge that the context, like all the New Testament, is first century Roman Empire, in which slavery was not just widespread but all-pervasive.
And slavery was commonplace not only there; it was the unquestioned norm everywhere in the ancient world.
I remember the shock and puzzlement I felt when I first came across passages like this as a young Christian. Especially the fact that Paul seems to be quite neutral about it.
No one seems to know what percentage of the population in the Roman Empire was enslaved; an educated guess is about 30% though some think that slaves possibly outnumbered free citizens.
We’re talking about tens of millions of individuals certainly, and it was a central component of the Roman economy.
It’s thought that New Testament churches had a disproportionately high number of slaves compared to the general population.
We tend to forget this in our land of great cathedrals and bishops in the House of Lords, but the vast majority of 1st Century Christians were poor, powerless and persecuted.
Modern slavery is of course illegal and operates in the shadows. People get trapped into it and trafficked across borders by unscrupulous criminal gangs. In the Roman world though it was entirely legal and just accepted as the way things were.
There were different ways you could end up enslaved. Some were captives of war or victims of kidnapping or piracy. More commonly, people became slaves as a punishment for crimes they committed. Some sold themselves or - tragically - their children into it to settle debts they couldn’t pay.
Under Roman law, slaves had no human rights of any kind and were considered as property, not as persons. Documents from that time describe enslaved people not as employees, but as tools or equipment of a business. It’s mostly complaints from masters about them being disloyal, lazy or dishonest.
As a consequence, slaves were usually treated like animals. They could be bought, sold, mistreated, sexually exploited or even killed for sport without consequences.
This was the brutal, harsh, unfair, cruel society into which Jesus was born and to which the gospel first came.
However bad you feel your workplace is, and I get it that sometimes our working environment can be genuinely awful and humiliatingly underpaid, it doesn’t compare with the way of life endured by some the people Paul was writing to here in this church in Colossae.
So why didn’t the gospel challenge the status quo of slavery in society more than it did?
If you’ve ever seen the animated film Ice Age, you’ll not forget the opening scene in which a squirrel called Scrat tries to open an acorn on the ice so he can eat it.
Alas for him, instead of cracking the acorn, he makes a small crack in the ice. And the crack opens up into a crevice. And, with a growing sense panic in Scrat’s eyes, the crevice gets bigger and, with ominous rumblings, it becomes a giant rift valley. And then before long it’s a massive tectonic fault which splits into two continents.
I mention that scene because it’s a bit like what the gospel did to slavery in the Roman Empire.
The gospel is the acorn. Roman slavery is the vast continental ice sheet.
When Paul said that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, he was saying that these are now redundant categories for Christians.
They no longer define us, nor can they possibly divide us, because every one of us, whatever our ethnic background or social status are first and foremost in Christ.
Because of Christ, Paul told free people that they had been bought with a price – just like a slave.
Because of Christ, Paul told enslaved people that they had been set free from sin and death.
He said all of us, from the richest and noblest to the poorest and humblest, all share one loaf and drink from the same cup.
He said we are all brothers and sisters; members of one another; we are all on the same level.
This is how the gospel introduced dignity and equality and humanity into a sphere of society where it had never existed before.
The little acorn had started to crack the ice! As the impact of the gospel on civilisation steadily grew, the endorsement of slavery steadily declined.
Back in the first century, most masters in the Roman world would have thought it bizarre to be told to treat a slave with kindness and consideration.
What it means for employers
But here, he says, “You guys in charge, if you have become Christians, you cannot go on like before. Those days are over. You are under new management now. You’re no longer top dog. You report to one higher than you.”
Chapter 4, verse 1. “Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.”
The Bible contrasts sharply with all other literature of the time on relationships between slaves and masters.
What you find in secular records is advice on how to squeeze the maximum out your workforce as if they were just tools or machines.
But Paul absolutely makes a stand on this point; never mind convention, forget culture, whatever about customs; these people who work under you are human beings and they have rights and moral options.
So if you’re a Christian in charge of this workplace you’re going to provide them with what is right and fair. From now on there are going to be really good working conditions.
“Because” - and here’s the revolutionary thought – “you know that you also have a Master in heaven.”
In other words, you’re going to have to stand before Jesus when he comes to judge the living and the dead, and give an account of how you treated those working for you.
And, as he says at the end of chapter 3, “Anyone who does wrong [he’s talking to masters as well as slaves] will be repaid for their wrongs.”
In our context, that translates as follows:
If you’re an employer, or a manager, if you have staff who answer to you, because you answer to Christ, your boss, you’ll treat each member of staff equally; no favourites. You’ll take an interest in them as people. You’ll pay them what they’re worth. You’ll respect their time off. You’ll not tell them to do anything you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. You’ll give them opportunities to develop their skills. When you have to discipline them for unacceptable performance, you’ll do it fairly and proportionately.
I remember when Kathie started a community nursing job when we lived in France. On her first day, she came home and said, “Do you know, I think my new boss, Doctor Marze, is a Christian.”
I said “How can you tell?” I thought that maybe he wore a cross on his lapel or had a fish on his car or a poster on his office wall or a Bible on his desk.
But no, she said, “I can just… tell.” She had been with him one day and he hadn’t said one word to her about Jesus.
What convinced her that he was a Christian is the way he spoke to people, his gentleness, his fairness. He took a genuine interest in others, especially anyone in trouble or pain. And he was fun to be with, and it was clean fun, he was full of joy.
She mentioned that he had adopted three children, and didn’t seem to really care about status symbols. He drove an old beat-up Citroen 2CV and evidently lived quite simply for a doctor.
She looked him up online, (nothing like stalking your boss on social media), and it turns out that she was right. He was a charismatic Catholic deacon, very actively involved in his local church.
Isn’t that a great witness? Kathie asked him later about his faith and he was happy to talk about Jesus with great enthusiasm.
But it was his lifestyle and character and personality that provoked the question.
People at work can tell if you are born again and have been filled with the Holy Spirit not so much by what you say but by who you are.
What it means for employees
So much for bosses. What about workers?
You’re not just some random, replaceable nobody getting a wage for a day’s graft. You’re an ambassador for Christ. Lift up your head! You represent the kingdom of God in your workplace. How do you want to be seen by colleagues, contractors, clients, customers, and your employer?
Let me paraphrase v22-25 the best I can and try to frame it in 21st century terms.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favour, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
Employees, you should do what the boss asks you to do not just when they’re around but do an honest day’s work, offering it up to God.
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.
And don’t just scrape by with the bare minimum. Give your absolute best. Put your heart and soul into it. You might be badly paid on earth, but there are eternal, heavenly bonuses that will recognise all your hard work.
It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favouritism.
Remember this; ultimately your boss is Christ himself. Don’t think he’ll let you off doing a lousy job just because you’re a Christian. He doesn’t drop his standards for you just because you’re one of his loved children.
God is looking for people who are thorough, industrious, and who end the day able to say I gave 100%.
The Bible sets out a vision of a Christian worker who’s always cheerful, amenable and hard-working because they treat their work as an act of worship.
Contrast that with what sometimes blights a workplace; people always saying, “that’s not my job”, Olympic-level wasting of company time, bad language, constantly complaining about the company, cursing the boss behind his back, clock watching, always arriving late and leaving early, jobsworth pettiness, computer says no unhelpfulness, slacking, skiving and cutting corners
And it doesn’t matter if you’re a brain surgeon or a toilet attendant or a stay-at-home mum or a student or retired.
The reformer Martin Luther once said, “The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays – and not just because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making excellent shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
Turn your job or daily activity into an act of worship. Say to yourself, whatever I’ve been asked to do today, it’s got to be good enough for the Lord.
When you take that attitude into work, even the dullest job can be a joy.
Ending
So, as I end...
What do you think God is saying to you today about your work; part-time or full-time, paid or unpaid?
Do you need to receive grace from God today so you can please him more in your workplace, whether you’re a boss or an employee?
Do you want to put a bad attitude down at the foot of the cross and leave it there so that tomorrow there’s a new you in the office?
Do you want to ask God for a spiritual breakthrough so you can have words of knowledge and be a witness to your colleagues or customers, like in Baba and Bisi’s testimony today?
If you’re able to do so, let’s stand to pray…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 6 November 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment