Scripture Readings: 1 Corinthians 7:17-24; 1 Corinthians 12:12-26;Luke 19:11-27

Somewhere this week a perfume ad caught my eye.  Jennifer Lopez was in this wildly sexy nightgown and it said, “In the middle of the storm, I’m still Jennifer Lopez.”  That is nice to know, but some, like her husband, if she still has one, might like to know if she is still Jennifer Lopez when there is hardly a breeze in the sail?

The other night at Session, we had a conversation about finding the presence and purpose of God in tedious, menial, or repetitive work.  Going through the mail, committee meetings, laundry, cleaning the bathroom, staying faithful to one person, caring for an aging parent or a challenged child, paying taxes, collecting the trash, picking vegetables, etc, etc. 

Virtually all of our religious and political heroes tackle important, big issues in tumultuous times.  Our stars drive or are driven in luxurious cars, get out of those cars in luxurious gowns to attend luxurious balls and eat luxurious food.  All of the people who do the jobs to make everything so clean and rich and proper are nowhere to be seen. 

It is an irony of American life that we seek an ordinary, boring, middle class life, and that part of that life is the desire not to be ordinary.  The market is driven by ads, which attach fun, excitement, sex, power, freedom and individuality to a product.  If the ad succeeds with its propaganda, then we buy the product to be like those in the ad, and the product becomes ordinary.  This of course means that we are soon in need of another product to set ourselves apart like others.

But increasingly the work of the vast majority is compartmentalized and service oriented, separated from the meaning and the means of production.  And on the other hand most jobs, and life itself, entail numerous repetitive and boring tasks in order to succeed.  And in fact, some of our most spectacular people and accomplishments are the result of a long line of tedious repetitive tasks. Practice, as Alan Iverson would say.  And a healthy, free society itself depends on the teamwork, on many different people doing many different repetitive and apparently menial jobs.

As much as I love the beauty and simplicity of life in Guatemala, upon visiting, one is quickly reminded of the value of basic services like trash collection and mail service.  Here we don’t have to think twice about our trash until the trash collectors get together and decide not to come.  Then, as we have seen recently in Oakland, whether we like it or not, by sight and smell we are reminded of the value of their service.  Society, as Paul says of the church, is like a body with many parts, each with its own important function. 

The adolescent response to repetitive work or discipline is boredom and distraction.  It takes a little abstract thought to get us into an efficient groove.  The storm is more demanding, frightening and fun, but the doldrums are where we gain the knowledge and discipline to weather the storm.

On the other hand, as the Buddhist may remind us, thinking can get in the way. Contemplating the meaning and brevity of life doesn’t motivate me to go through another five credit card offers.  And I also find it painful, like a dull ache from a creaky ankle, to look through solicitations for good causes.  A significant part of any pastor's job is reading and deciding on an endless stream of charity mail, but in no other place I’ve lived do residents get such a deluge of charity solicitations in their mail boxes, or pitiful phone calls at dinner time pleading for help. Saying yes often means we also have to say no more often. And then there are the bills, which remind us of the consequence of choices we have already made.

It is humbling because, as if we didn’t already know it, we are reminded over and over again that we are not capable of saving the whole world all at once, especially on our current budget. We only have a small part to play. As Paul says, we are only one part of the body.

Dull repetition and discipline, doing our part without complaining, or without complaining too much, is tough business.  So often we want to be another part.  In the same way, it is tough to honor the less glorious tasks and parts of our lives and culture.  I would rather preach that go through the mail or unclog the commode.  But all jobs have their place; all necessary jobs are part of our vocation, our calling from God, and our service to Church, family and society. Hopefully my seminary training has taught me to do more than clean a bathroom, but it shouldn't have taught me less.

If I am sounding a bit like Calvin, you might note that Presbyterians descend from him. I'm simplifying a few thousand years of theology leaving out the dynamic interactions of economic forces and philosophy. Still the Greeks and Romans were not big on labor.  It detracted from the higher, more noble pursuits and was left primarily for slaves.  Aristotle viewed work as a corrupt waste of time.  Much of Christian thought up till the 16^th century viewed work as punishment for the fall in the Garden of Eden.

Luther helped introduce the idea that labor was a vocation, our calling from God. Nevertheless, after the peasants took his theology and revolted, he, like Paul, counseled against changing station in life, since this was part of the ordering of God.  Luther helped break down the separation between the so-called “sacredness” of monastic spiritual life and the “profane” or “secular” world of work.

Calvin, the 16^th Century French theologian who settled in Geneva, added to Luther’s take on work by viewing it as a sign of election and our part in the continuation of God’s creation and movement toward the Kingdom. 

According to Calvin, God is sovereign over all life and therefore everything is sacred.  At the same time, since God determines everything, there is nothing we can do, no work, which will assure our place in God’s Kingdom in Heaven.  Like Luther, Calvin knew that we are saved by grace alone.  And, making the logical jump, there is nothing we can do to keep ourselves from being damned to Hell if that is where the Sovereign Lord has decided to send us.

It is indeed a strange twist that Calvin’s idea of predestination in heaven helped lead to the destruction of predetermined life in the material world, and just as odd that his idea we are completely unable to earn our salvation or prevent our damnation, led people to a disciplined work life. 

But, the question naturally arose, who then were the elect? Whom had God graciously chosen?  Calvin, picking up from Paul in Romans, said that work or good works were a sign of God’s grace.  And therefore, if you are wondering whether or not you are saved, you can get an indication by looking at your works. As Jesus said, a bad tree produces bad fruit and a good tree good fruit.  Success in ones worldly work was a sign of your successful inclusion among the saved.  If one was lazy, indifferent or overly self-indulgent it was a good sign they were among the damned while a person who was active, austere and hard working showed the fruit of the saved.  The work or fruit of the elect glorified God.  No matter what our job, we can view that job as a vocation, as a calling from God, and do it to the glory of God and the service of God’s children and God’s Kingdom. So Martin Luther King picking up on his namesake and Calvin preached, "If you are a street sweeper, sweep streets like you were Michael Angelo painting the Sistine Chapel."

In addition for Calvin, work was no longer punishment for the sin of humanity, no longer a pain we endured just enough to make do. It became a service whose profits should be diligently maximized and reinvested.  God gives us these gifts of body and mind, social and earthly resources and we shouldn’t bury them in the ground but should reinvest them.  In perhaps Calvin’s greatest contribution to our religion and society, he parted from Luther, (and Paul apparently), by approving departure and improvement of an individual's station in life.  If by God’s grace and hard work you see a different way to produce good fruit, if God entrusts you with one pound and you see a way to invest it and make it ten, then go for it.  By God’s grace, if you have the discipline and diligence and intelligence to change your way of life to be more productive and successful, then do it. 

As Calvin developed this thinking, he wrapped it into “covenant theology.”  God’s part of the covenant was to elect to save us by grace.  Our part was to choose or elect to invest our gifts in an ethical way to produce fruit, and the fruit shows God’s gracious election working through us. If God is sovereign over all of life, and all of life is sacred, then not only may all work be a sacred vocation, but all life is a vocation, a sacred work for the elect.  That is, if by God’s grace I can take one pound and make it ten, then perhaps God would have me oversee ten cities.  If I can advance from peasant to merchant, then perhaps God would have me move from merchant into politics.  If elders can take the place of priest, then perhaps peasants can rise to the place of kings, not by inheritance but by merit.  If it was to serve as evidence of divine calling, both to individuals and to the world at large, “work” could not be confined to a job but had to embrace all of life. Spiritual election could thus be demonstrated not only in tasks that brought financial reward but also by political activism.

So in a strange twist, the notion that there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation led to the idea that work is our part of a sacred covenant with a gracious God.  And, this idea that whatever work we are called to do is sacred work, and therefore we should not complain but do it with discipline and diligence beyond even what our boss requires, led to the idea that maybe your current job doesn’t need to be your job forever, and perhaps your boss shouldn’t forever be your boss, and that perhaps your king shouldn’t forever rule.  Maybe the king and his Lords are the ones who don’t want God to rule; and if we are God’s instruments, doing God’s work, maybe we should have a revolution.

Calvin’s idea that those who were diligent, thrifty and hard working showed signs of God’s gracious election was, as Weber and Marx pointed out, hard on the lowest and highest classes who could not get work, or those who did their best to avoid it, and those whose hard work didn’t produce personal fruit they could show as evidence of their election.  For now not only were the poorest of the poor without work, or without the fruits of their labor, as Micah and Marx would say, they were considered to be outside of God’s gracious election.  If the Catholic and agrarian worldview was highly stratified, at least the poor lower classes had a place in the Roman Catholic kingdom.  They could be forgiven and blessed by the holy priest, and the land owning lord was responsible for, if not just, with his serfs.  But in the protestant world, as those who felt elect formed their own in-crowd business and religious communities, the poor were on their own.

There is some irony here as the Catholics who emphasized works for salvation still saved a place for those whose works could not save them in this world, while the Protestants who emphasized salvation by grace evolved into communities which excluded those whose works they judged unworthy or unchristian. The individualism that brought freedom from cast and stirred up universal education, democracy, and justice movements also promoted a self-centered worldview where fallen creation and fallen humans were to be climbed over and trampled on.

So, for example, as Octovio Paz points out, the Spanish Catholic latifundios provided a place for the indigenous at the bottom of the social ladder, and all classes and races mixed, and amidst the egalitarian ideology of North America, the indigenous were simply eliminated.

 This sermon went a place I wasn’t planning on taking it, so I’m going to have to jump to a conclusion.  It would appear that the Hindus have a flexible view of heaven as they climb the ladder of incarnation, and a rigid caste system on Earth. Those who handle material contaminated with bodily fluids or rotting flesh are considered untouchable for life.  I don’t yet know what the connection is, if there is one, between our view of heaven and life on earth.  So I will have to leave that as a question.  What we do know is that the liberator of India cleaned latrines and sewed and washed clothes.  And Mother Teresa had the magic gift of touch.

We know that the Spirit in this life finds value in all work, that God wants us to do the best we can with the gifts we have been given and the situation we find ourselves.  When there is wind we hoist the sails.  In the storm we batten down the hatches.  In the doldrums we mop the deck and clean the latrine. May we do it all with joy, never thinking ourselves less or more than anyone else, especially if we are Christian and they are not.  If we are certain that Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the light, then we will be washing feet, and making great sacrifice for justice and creation, and worshipping God both regularly in the temple and in the wilderness.  We have a covenant to be good stewards with what we have been given, and that includes not just our money and mind, but the community and the earth.

At the same time, if we are saved by grace, perhaps we are entitled to complain some of the time and not fear we are among the damned. And maybe we can even give up and move on to greener pastures.  Dream big and work to make the dream a reality.  But let that dream include love and care of others; let it include justice and peace.  “May God give us the courage to change the things that should be changed, the grace to accept the things that cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

If we are saved by grace then certainly we can stop and smell the flowers, or sit in a hammock and eat a mango, enjoy a wonderful dinner, make love to our spouse, drive like mad out to Point Reyes, or sleep an extra hour every once in a while.

As Ecclesiastes said, “There is a time for everything under heaven.”  And later in Chapter 9, “A live dog is better than a dead lion… Go eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking from your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol…”