Labor Day is, of course, not on the church calendar. But it always seems like a good time to think about the work that we do. Day in, day out, five to seven days a week and eight to eighteen hours a day for 40 or 50 or 60 years, we work.

By comparison, day in, day out, seven days a week, 24 hours a day for 40 or 50 or 60 years, we try to live out our faith in Christ. It is no small coincidence that the two sets of numbers (life, work) are so close together.

One might almost say that who you are at work is basically who you are. Most people spend less time with their families than they do with their colleagues at work. And for this morning’s purposes, I will use “work” in the broadest sense, to mean the job you have or will have or did have. And I don’t use “work” to refer only to teachers or contractors or lawyers or farmers, but also students and perhaps especially stay-at-home parents who I believe work harder and longer hours than anyone.

“Why Work?” is the name of a famous essay that Dorothy Sayers wrote back in the 1940s. In it, Sayers reminds us that work came from God, way back in the garden before anything else happened, including the disobedience of Adam and Eve. And work was given as part of the good relationship between humans and God.

Sayers argues that the church has done a terrible job of recognizing and proclaiming that so-called “secular work” can be sacred. Her essay might also be called How Work? because one of her major points is that good work honors God…and so how one does work is critical. She says this:

“How can any one remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”

She follows a nice stream of theologians from the Reformation era that she has much in common with. By the day of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, there was a long-standing belief that leaving society and going to live in a religious monastery was the only real vocation or godly calling in life.

Martin Luther took great issue with this. Luther fought to put theological dignity to the everyday work of common people. He didn’t do it to just exalt work, but to emphasize worship. A Christian’s truest calling, he said, their real vocation is to glorify God in all things. That is, people are called primarily to worship. And so to do work properly is to do it as way of worshipping God. (I wonder if I called you this week at your workplace if you would feel like you were involved in worship!)

John Calvin joined Luther in placing a very high spiritual value on work. Vocation for Calvin had much to do with engaging in “honest work.” He once wrote,

“No task will be so sordid and base, provided you obey your calling in it, that it will not shine and be reckoned very precious in God’s sight.”

Reformers following Calvin went even further, elevating especially manual labor to the place of divine calling. But Calvin and others also cautioned that because we live in a sin-filled world, we can easily place too much importance on work and thereby allow it to become idol, an end in itself. We have no trouble spotting that trap, but we do have lots of trouble avoiding it.

In everything you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

If Dorothy Sayers wrote on “Why Work,” and perhaps how work, I thought about titling this sermon “Who Work,” as in who are you at work? Are you a person going to work to worship God, or are you assuming a particular role that lasts during business hours?

Some of you have read Charles Dickens’ great novel Great Expectations. It’s the story of Pip, and it follows him from boyhood into manhood, and along the way he meets all sorts of interesting characters like Miss Havisham (the woman who still wears her wedding dress 30 years after being jilted at the altar) and Estella (whose goal in life is to break men’s hearts).

Another character that Pip meets is a man named Mr. Wemmick. Mr. Wemmick is a law clerk at an office that Pip is connected with. Pip goes and meets with Mr. Wemmick at his office, wanting his help in anonymously assisting a friend. Mr. Wemmick turns stone cold and tells him that investing property in a friend would be the most ridiculous thing he could do. In fact, Wemmick names off six of the bridges of London as sites where Pip might go and throw his money into the river and be better off than helping a friend with it! A little shocked, Pip says,

“that is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wemmick?”

And Mr. Wemmick replies,

“That is my deliberate opinion in this office.”

“Ah,” says Pip, “but would that be your opinion at (home)?”

“Mr. Pip,” he replies, “Home is one place, and this office is another….they must not be confounded together. My home sentiments must be taken at home; none but my official sentiments can be taken in this office.”

At that, Pip resolves to go visit Wemmick later at his home. And what he finds is that away from the office, Wemmick is quite a different character, with different opinions. He does in fact, agree to help Pip help his friend, and in fact expresses great admiration for Pip’s desire to do so.

I first read this book perhaps way back in high school, but I have never forgotten about Mr. Wemmick. I think the big struggle for most of us living in this society that is too fast, too full, too fragmented…is holding our life together as a whole. God has made us as whole people. Yet we are continually fragmented into being specialists on parenting, marriage, work, career, time management, volunteerism, friendship, retirement planning, physical conditioning, staying up on current issues, maintaining healthy friendships, growing in the spiritual life.

How easy it is to feel like life is fragmented. When I go to church on Sunday, I’ll put my worship clothes on. When I go to work on Monday, I’ll wear my work outfit. When I come home, I’ll relax and be myself. It’s an unsatisfying way to live, but it is very easy to be two or more people like Mr. Wemmick. It’s much harder to consider that we might be one person and worship God in all we do.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

What happens, when we get so fragmented, is that work becomes very utilitarian. If the only reason we work is to make money (and don’t get me wrong, to make a living is a very important thing), we are quickly dissatisfied. We tend to watch the clock. We live for the weekends. We hold our breath for vacation. We keep both eyes on retirement, which means that well over half our lives are essentially spent waiting and somewhat divorced from who we are.

Our biggest problems with work tend to be when we misuse it by trying to make it do things it wasn’t intended to do. Work wasn’t designed by God to earn favor, or buy love or acquire status. Those are shallow reasons that try to use work to become someone rather than be who we are vocationally called to be…people called to worship God in all we do.

So who are you at work? Let me ask you a couple of questions.

1. Are you someone doing good work? In Dorothy Sayers’ words, are you making good tables? Are you serving others with your labor? That’s not at all dependent on the social status of your job, but how you come to your work. I found myself thinking this week about the different jobs I’ve had. I put myself through about half of my college education by taking care of yards. I had a series of yards not far from SPU, mostly owned by senior citizens who took great pleasure in having their yards neat and trim, and I spent hours and hours there. And more than many things I have done, it felt very good to have my hands in God’s earth, to see the progress I made from moment to moment, and to know the pleasure it gave my employers.

When we lived in Minnesota, we were legally required to start listening to Garrison Keillor on NPR, and if you’ve ever heard his “Writer’s Almanac” on the radio, you know that his signature sign-off is “Be well … do good work … and keep in touch.” Doing good work helps keep us whole.

2. Are you someone who notices the people around you? If it’s true that you’ll spend more time at work than almost anywhere else, with those people, do you know them? Do you know the people you work with? I don’t mean are you acquainted, or do you know about them, but do you really know them?

Work has to be the most amazing opportunity to share with others as a Christian. I’m not talking about hitting people over the head with a Bible, or standing on top of the water cooler to preach at break time. I’m talking about the people. People you are with over a long period of time. People who watch you. People who, in this day of megamergers and job instability and downsizing continually hear the message: “you are expendable…,” but we have the opportunity to live out, speak, pray, care and say to others (as God says to us), “You are of the utmost importance.”

Noticing the people God puts around us helps keep us whole.

3. Are you using your gifts at work? This probably sounds funny. You may immediately think of your special aptitudes, but I started thinking about the spiritual gifts listed out in the New Testament that are present in the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, 1 Peter 4, Ephesians 4 all have overlapping lists of gifts.

Some are more charismatic, like speaking in tongues or prophesying. But there are also things like hospitality, service, leadership, administration, teaching. Maybe some aren’t too applicable. You might rightly find it hard to imagine exercising the gift of speaking in tongues in your workplace! But how about leadership? Administration? Teaching? Service?

I have a friend who has wrestled with years over the significance of his work, and he has come to some measure of peace that God has called him to be use his pastoral gifts to care for some of his colleagues around him in his workplace. People in hard and ordinary situations of child-raising, divorce, health problems, looking for significance.

Are you using your God-given gifts in the marketplace? To do so helps keep us whole.

4. Are you authentically yourself at work? If the product of your labor is ethically questionable, or your work environment is full of fear and egos, I wonder if you’ll be there long. When I was in the auto parts business I had a friend named Scott who held my same job at a large company back East. Scott’s company required all management people to work on Saturdays, every Saturday. Scott did that, despite a heavy travel schedule. But his boss also worked on Sundays, and several times Scott would come to work on Monday morning and find a note on his desk from his boss about something he wasn’t happy about. And several times, the note ended with “If this happens again, you will be looking for another job” (and it wasn’t signed “Love, the boss”).

Such a horrible atmosphere. I think it was time for Scott to leave there. But that’s more far more the exception than the rule. Generally, I think our challenge as Christians is to learn to worship God in our work rather than always looking for a different and better environment.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

“Whatever you do, in word or deed…” It’s a very interesting thing to look into that word “deed.” Most Bibles translate the word as “deed,” and that seems by context to be the best interpretation. But it is interesting that it is the same word that is translated “work” in many places. If that was the case, we could read “Whatever you do, in word or work…do it in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

As followers of Christ, we have the opportunity to participate in the restoration of work to what God intended it to be: good. We do that by being whole people, and including our work in our worship of God.

When that happens, when our very work says, “Lord you are God of all things, I recognize your presence and am thankful for your goodness and I glorify You…,” when that happens then the ground that we stand on which just a minute ago felt like an ordinary classroom floor or office carpet or muddy construction site…shows itself to be holy ground. And when we gather here on Sunday morning in the sanctuary, it is not to practice a different part of life…but to continue our worship of God.