Faith and Work

detail from the first plate in John Speed’s 36-page genealogy, 1611 KJV Bible (Replica Edition) photo by jch

Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 3, Genesis 3:14-19

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return. –Genesis 3:19

Our nation is celebrating Labor Day weekend, a happy coincidence for a preacher who has chosen a primary text that contains one of the oldest scriptural expressions we know about human labor. 

In this third week of our journey through Genesis, we return to the story of Adam and Eve, and the curse that results from their poor choices in the Garden. Old Testament scholars tell us this story likely was formed as the semi-nomadic Hebrews were settling into Palestine after the time of Moses.[1] Is it as old as the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who appeared on the scene nearly 4000 years ago?  Is it from an even more distant time, when Middle Eastern peoples first gathered into small cities? It can’t be dated precisely, but it could be that old.

We don’t know who first told the story, but it helps me to imagine it this way.  A wise man, perhaps a chief of an old Mesopotamian tribe, observed what happened through the seasons and years as his people tried to survive.  He saw their sufferings and felt their hopes.  In the back of his mind the Spirit of God began to teach him a tale.  

One autumn evening, during a full moon, the community held a feast around the campfire.  They were tired after the harvest of olives, fruits, and vegetables. They think back over the past season.

They had experienced heartaches and challenges to survival. Several new children have been born.  Some of the babies and new mothers didn’t survive the sickness which came with the cold and wet spell when floods destroyed the fresh plantings of crops.  The wise man helped to prepare the bodies of those babies for the afterlife, as well as the body of another boy who had stepped on a venomous snake.  He said prayers during these times, and comforted people through their suffering. When the floods ended, the dry winds began.  The blazing sun blistered men's backs as they kept the vegetables clear of weeds, and hauled water.  One gray-haired elder collapsed during the work, and the flames of the campfire now remind everyone of his fiery funeral pyre not so many nights ago.

In a quiet moment, one of the younger men asks the question on everybody’s mind: “Noble Father, wisest of us all, why is life is so full of pain and work?”  Out of the depths in which the Spirit has been working, into that clear night with the sound of crackling campfire logs, the Wise Man gives voice to the Spirit, telling a story that embodies all the joys and concerns of that little tribe.  

The main character in the wise man’s story is “A'tham,” the Hebrew word that we pronounce as “Adam.”  Its literal meaning is “earth,” “ground,” or “dust.”  A’tham is the dirt that runs through your hands as you reach down and dig into your garden.  To A’tham – the one made of earth – God said, curse and toil and sweat will be wrapped up with your work until you return to the earth from which you came.

This rather grim assessment of work is what the third chapter of Genesis offers, but it’s not the only biblical perspective.  Today, I’ve paired our Hebrew Testament text with one from the ninth chapter of John. In John’s gospel, work is cast in a more positive light.  A man’s blindness presents a prime opportunity for Jesus to do God’s work. The pronouncement of work to be done is not a judgment for doing what is wrong, but rather Jesus’ s invitation to join in doing what is right. Jesus says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.”

Five-hundred years ago, Martin Luther and John Calvin also cast work in a positive light for Protestant Christians. One of their chief themes was the “priesthood of all believers.” It included the idea that the role of the common worker carries as much access to God, as much value to God, as that of a pastor or priest. As this theme developed, Protestants taught that all honest work that benefits humankind is important and valuable in the sight of God.  In Calvin’s Geneva, it’s likely that workers understood making fine products and providing good services as a religious obligation. Thinking about work in this way is seeing it as “vocation,” a Latin-rooted word we use to describe a “calling” from God..

Consider your life’s work.  Does it feel (or did it feel) more like the Genesis version of punishment and challenge, surviving each day “by the sweat of your face?”  Or does it feel more like the Gospel of John version of vocation and an opportunity to work the works of God? I suspect that for most of us, it is a mix of both.

When I was a child, my first connection to the daily newspaper was the comic strips, and no comic strip was more anticipated or loved than “Peanuts.” When its creator Charles Schulz died, journalist Ellen Goodman wrote a column about his life work, which included 18,250 comic strips about Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts gang.  “Schulz once said, ‘Drawing a daily comic strip is not unlike having an English theme hanging over your head every day for the rest of your life.’  But another time he wrote that he did cartoons for the same reason musicians composed: ‘They do it because life wouldn’t have any meaning for them if they didn’t.  That’s why I draw cartoons. It’s my life.’  Which was it? A theme paper hanging over his head? (or) The meaning of life?”[2]  Probably it was both, and most of us sympathize.  

If you’re wondering whether the preacher can say something less obvious and more useful about faith and work, then I’d like to draw your attention to a beautiful vignette by Miroslav Volf, a theologian who teaches at Yale.[3] Years ago, he wrote about a visit to his native Croatia, and the road trip he took into Slavonia in search of kulen. Kulen is a specialty sausage of the region, prepared according to closely guarded family recipes. In what he describes as a nondescript house on a nondescript street in a village without television, he met the sausagemaker whose kulen was supposed to be the best, “Djeda” (or “Grandpa”) Gjordje. 

Grandpa Gjordje’s open Bible was on a table; he obviously was reading it before the travelers arrived. He laid on the table marvelous handmade kulen and brought wine made from the farm’s grapes. Dr. Volf says that Grandpa Gjordje had the rough hands of a farmer. Just as farm work had left indelible traces on his hands, so the hands had left marks on the Bible. Its pages, each carefully handled, had obviously been read and reread through the years.

During their visit, the conversation turned from kulen to Christian life. “Always choose a more difficult path,” Dieda Gjordje offered as a nugget of wisdom.” “What do you mean?” responded a neighbor, who happened to there. “If I want to dig a hole in the ground, should I use a dull shovel rather than a sharp one?” “I didn’t mean it that way,” said Grandpa Gjordje, irritated a bit that his neighbor didn’t get it. “It’s easier for us to be served than to serve and take than to give. Serving is the harder path; giving is the harder path. Because we are selfish, the path of love is always more difficult.”

I don’t know any better advice on the subject of labor. Robert Frost wrote a famous poem about uniting avocation with vocation.[4] Frederick Buechner says the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work that you need to do and the world needs to have done.[5] In the film Mr. Holland’s Opus, the music teacher learns that the symphony he dreams of as his life’s crowning achievement has less to do with musical notes on paper and more to do with the students in his classroom. Still, in my view, no one offers more inspired advice about faith and work than Grandpa Gjordje when he says, “Always choose a more difficult path …. Serving is the harder path, giving is the harder path.” Choose the path of love.

NOTES

[1] J. Alberto Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testament, Revised Edition, Trans. by John Bowden, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981, p. 59

[2] Ellen Goodman, “Charles Schulz’s life and work a study in perseverance,” Springfield Journal-Register, 18 February 2000.

[3] The following account is drawn from Miroslav Volf’s “Not by sausage alone,” The Christian Century, 9 Aug. 2005, p. 32.

[4] “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” in The Poetry of Robert Frost, The collected poems, complete and unabridged, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979, pp. 275-277.

[5] Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith, HarperSanFrancisco, 2004, p. 404.

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