Scripture Readings:  Isaiah 65:17-25 and Luke 18:1-8

Today I do a little review of the development of what Weber called the Protestant work ethic, the reformed, or Presbyterian view of work. It helps to know how we got to the view we hold today. A couple of weeks ago I noted that Greeks and Romans had a less than favorable view of work.  For this reason it was left primarily to slaves.  Much of Christian thought up until 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. But like Paul, Luther counseled against changing your 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 and is known as the founding father of Presbyterianism, 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 action on our part, no work, which will assure our place in Gods kingdom in heaven.  Like Luther, Calvin insisted that we are saved by God’s 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. Today I refrain from a full examination of the doctrine of predestination.  We may choose to differ with Calvin on the degree of free will and the extreme idea that everything, including holocausts and hurricanes are an orchestrated part of God's plan. But the doctrine of predestination developed from the sovereignty of God, and as we shall see in part today, this has powerful implications for human life. It is indeed an odd twist that Calvin’s idea of predestination in heaven led to the destruction of predetermined life in the material world, and just as odd that this idea that we are completely unable to earn our salvation or prevent our damnation led people to the disciplined work life.

But the question naturally arose, who then were the elect?  Who had God graciously chosen?  Calvin, picking up from Paul in Romans, said that work, good works were a sign of God’s grace.  And therefore, if you were wondering whether or not you are saved, you could get an indication by looking at your works, your fruit as Jesus would say.  A bad tree produces bad fruit and a good tree good fruit.  Success in one's worldly work was sign of your successful inclusion among the saved.  If one was lazy, indifferent or overly self indulgent, this was a good sign one was among the damned.  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 your 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.

Work was no longer punishment for the sin of humanity, no longer a pain we endured enough to make due, it became a service whose profits should be diligently maximized and reinvested.  God give 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 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, you should 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 calling for the elect.  That is, if by God’s grace I can advance from surf 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.

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 way, the notion that there is nothing we can do, no works we can perform, to earn our salvation led to the idea that work is our part of a sacred covenant with a gracious God.  And, the 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 self indulgent, non-working 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 and create a representative government.

While Calvin’s theology promoted good hard work for personal advancement and political activism, this freedom also helped to individualize our social perspective of both our spiritual and work life, and further separated the middle from the working class.  For the hard work of the laborers often didn’t produce fruit they could show as evidence of their election.  Thus their material poverty became evidence of their spiritual poverty.  This placed the poor in a catch 22.  If they are spiritually poor, then why should the middle class individual care about their material poverty? 

This individualistic moral and materialistic worldview continues to permeate our church and society in America today, and this makes it difficult for laborers to organize or draw sympathy for the injustices, which they endure. 

But the positives of Calvin’s theology endure as well.  If all productive and helpful work can be our vocation, then all such work deserves the dignity and respect of a decent wage.  And if we are not just enduring to survive in a fallen world, but instead copartners in covenant with God and humans to advance the kingdom, then justice and right relationship themselves become our ultimate vocation.  Complaining and hearing complaints for justice becomes our vocation as well.

Certainly the protestant work ethic, prudence, simple living and hard work without complaining, has made a very significant contribution toward the greatness of American society, and to the advancement of many an individual and family.  But it remains equally true that we do not all start at the same place, equal opportunity remains an ideal rather than the reality.  Differences in ability and function do help originate inequalities of privilege, but they certainly don’t justify the degree of inequality which exits. 

Wal-Mart company documents reveal that CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr., made $17,543,739 in total compensation last year.  Meanwhile, the firm’s full-time U.S. employees earn on average $9.68 per hour.

According to a University of California lawsuit report on Enron, Jeffrey K. Skilling served as a director of the Enron. Skilling also served as the Company's President and Chief Operating Officer until February 2001, when he became Chief Executive Officer. During the Class Period, Skilling sold 1,119,958 shares of his Enron stock for insider trading proceeds of $66.9 million. Skilling also received bonus payments of $10.8 million, in addition to his salary, for 1998, 1999 and 2000 based on Enron's financial reports.

And, according to the investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, the energy giant - once the US' seventh largest firm - paid no income tax between 1996 and 1999.

Niebuhr points out that “The most common form of hypocrisy among the privileged classes is to assume that their privileges are the just payments with which society rewards specially useful or meritorious functions…The educational advantages which privilege buys, and the opportunities for the exercise of authority which come with privileged social position, develop capacities which are easily attributed to innate endowment.  The presence of able men among the privileged is allowed to obscure the number of instances in which hereditary privilege is associated with knavery and incompetence.  On the other hand it has always been the habit of privileged groups to deny the oppressed classes every opportunity for cultivation of innate capacities and then to accuse them of lacking what they have been denied the right to acquire.”

There is no question that the poor woman in Jesus parable has a legitimate complaint. The question is how long will it take the selfish, disrespectful judge to listen?  The answer is until she makes enough noise.  Labor organization provides a way to step up and sustain the volume. Next Jesus says that God is listening and God will grant justice.

Another Calvinist doctrine is the authority of the Scripture. The biblical vision of the Kingdom to which we are called is one where all are healthy and live long lives, they have housing and enough to eat, and they enjoy the work of their hands.  They will not build and another inhabit.  They will not plant and go hungry while another eats.  They will not labor in vain.

If we are God’s covenant people, if we are Christians who honor the Bible with its vision of the kingdom of God, then it is our vocation, our sacred labor to work for equality and justice, for the respect for all work and people. It is our vocation to work toward a day when all people, can enjoy and share the fruits of their labor.  This is not what will save us.  We are saved by grace.  But our work for justice is the fruit of grace, the sign that we have been saved.  Our expectation that justice will be done is a sign to God that there is faith on earth.