MCC Podcasts
Working It Out - The Workplace As Sacrament
Today we're going to be in 1 Timothy, chapter 6. Now let me just let you in on a little bit of, let me see my time clock, a little bit of the interesting walk I had this week in preparing this message. I found myself, this isn't to apologize for the message that you're already scared. He's apologizing for it before he even starts, so I want to stay. It's just really intriguing, the journey of sermon preparation, the journey of interacting with the Word of God. When you have in one hand a plan that was made months ago, this Sunday, Ben's preaching on this text, this Sunday, Jeff's preaching on this text, this Sunday, Art's preaching on this text. And months ago, we go through the book that we're working through and we try to project what that message might be about and sort of assign it, but with some flexibility because we're not able to dig deeply into the text at that time, we dig in the week of usually, and in some cases, the Saturday before, no, not really, not really, not really. But the week of or a couple of weeks before, how we're going to approach that text. And this was a really strange and exciting week of study, because, mostly because it was just a pretty active ministry week for me, Jeff is off at marriage retreat, Ben is off to sabbatical, we often depend upon each other for thinking and discussing the text and how do you see it, how do you see it, here's what I think, here's what I... This week was a little bit of a solo trail. And I found myself all week long, trying to get to this text thinking, I don't want to preach this text. I don't want to preach about slaves and how they should handle their masters and try to figure out the relevance of that for today, which is most obviously how we deal in the workplace and those in authority over us, because I just said goodbye to a precious dear friend, Friday night, who finished his race, finished his life. This seems trivial today. I want to dig into the depth of the difference we can make in people's lives. I want to remind people to make their lives matter. I want to cry. And I want to celebrate. And I feel inspired by the strength I saw in physical weakness. And it just seems crazy to me. I'm sitting here reading the Scripture. This is crazy. This is like going to the East Coast and all the activity of that storm out there. And with all these needs and obvious things all around us getting all excited about where I might find the best ice cream in town. And so I began, I came back to the text and I'll throw it away. Come back to the text and who cares? And then I came back to the text again and found substance and found sort of an honest, obvious relevance. So walk with me through that, will you? This is as much a report as it is an expository message. We'll see what we get from this. I don't mean to illustrate a laziness about the study of the word, the exact opposite. But it's always a delicate thing to figure out. Here's the context, the immediate context from which I'm experiencing the Scripture. Here's the challenge of getting through a series and people are coming to hear something helpful and relevant. Let's let the Bible speak for itself, but all of it at the same time. And we'll do that a little bit together this morning. We'll try. Today, we're going to experience sacrament. We're going to, after this message, right toward the end of our time together or toward the last part of our time together, come up and celebrate communion. And I'll introduce that right after the message in the next 15 or 20 minutes, but that's about us being able to participate some way in a visible expression of an invisible truth. That's the idea of sacrament. It's the idea of tasting and seeing grace. We don't actually literally acquire grace through participation in the sacrament, but there's somehow a stirring in our hearts. It's an enlivened and invigorated, an intensified sense of what's true because of what we sang about, the work of Jesus. His approach to an addressing of human brokenness, our relational wandering from him and him sort of regathering scattered sheep and saying, "I am the truth if you want truth. "I am the way, I'm your hope, come and know me. "I'll take you just like you are, dirty, wool and all." And we celebrate that in communion, sacraments about that. We are going to finish our time together by dedicating a precious child. And we're going to experience the presence of God if we're paying attention in that dedication. What parents are saying, I see the picture of dependence and trust and hope that faith involves in my own child. And we're saying to this body, pay attention because we're trusting you to help us and making a promise before you that we're going to raise this child to hope in Christ. And we're going to embed this child in a community that hopes in Christ. And we're going to trust you to love child. We love like nothing else, like no one else. We're going to trust you with that. And there's a visible expression somehow of an invisible grace or at least hope of grace. Sacraments all about that. In fact, properly understood, life is sacramental. In so far, in so far as life connects with the principles behind sacrament, the idea that wherever we go, whomever we meet, whatever we do, whenever we're there, God has gone before us and wants to reveal somehow visibly the truth that isn't so easily seen. In all of these, in the sacrament with the elements, in the presentation of a child and really in all of Christianity, no matter where we live it, it is in some way about receiving something other than what we have earned or what we deserve. At its core, that's what grace is about. There's in technical theological language, the idea of pre-venient grace. God distributing grace before we are aware of there is such a thing. Of a child coming and being presented, before you even know as a child that there is a God you will one day need to decide to follow or not, the grace is offered to the child. The community offers grace to the child. It's not like a, here, we're gonna give you love and grace in response to what you've lived. No, pre-venient grace, sacramental idea, wherever we go as Christians, the focus is this. We're going to express the grace of God sort of in a hope of how you'll live, as an invitation to how you should live. And everywhere we go, there's a sacramental sense in that if we're living following Christ, isn't there? It's like here, through the way you encounter me, through the way you encounter Christian community, through the words I speak, through the things I do, there's something of a picture, of something tangible, something touchable of the truth that isn't so tangible and touchable otherwise. And I've really worked hard as a Christian to think about that, so that everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, ministry, everywhere, God has gone before, everywhere, God is wandering the hallways, in every relationship, there's Jesus in that person, there's God calling from and to that person. And he wants me to somehow be a picture of what he wants to offer them, and them to be a picture of what he wants to offer me. There's this reciprocal thing going on all the time. And I've been pretty good at being able to experience that except for in one place, except for my workplace, especially my workplace before I was a pastor of a church. I've had a lot of jobs, I've had enough jobs, when I started listening to them, I got dizzy. I've been a janitor, and I used to have a little business stripping floors and redoing people's floors going in their house. I used to have a job cleaning barbershops, so I'd ride my bike four or five miles to the barbershops at the end of the day and clean everything and get paid for that. I had a job as a yardman, let's progress through the list there. So I was a janitor. I had a job as a veterinary surgical assistant when I was in high school. I used to go in and cringe as the vet did procedures on animals, and a yard man in a lumber yard, Sunnyville lumber, he'd worked there for a couple years. While I was going to barber college, so I would go to high school, go work at the lumber yard, arrange all the lumber, fill all the orders, and then on the weekends and sometimes after school, I would go to Skid Row San Jose, where there was molar barber college, and my dad thought a man ought to have a trade to fall back on, so I went to barber college. While I was in high school and became a barber and got my California barbers license. After our first son was born, I wasn't making enough money as a youth pastor, and Brenda was on maternity leave, so I took a job, I was part time out of church, and had my college degree, but I was mowing lawns. I was, in fact, a youth pastor. I really enjoyed all of that time. I was a truck driver. I had my own dump truck company, and then worked delivering in San Francisco. All kinds of freight for a while. I was on a roofing crew. I was a teacher. I was a feed store worker right after Brenda and I got married. Call your feed. I used to haul hay, fill customer's orders, and work in the feed store. I was part of the laborers union. I, in fact, worked at Protero Hills, while I was in college, worked at Protero Hills, the projects there, remodeling the projects. I was, I was, the tear-out crew. Going and rip out everything, which is a perfect match for my gifts. Deconstruction all the way around. I was a high school football coach. What else is up there? A construction labor. I worked on a framing crew in Sacramento. Boy, that's a tough job. I was a paper boy, Santa Clara Journal. We didn't even guarantee getting paid. We just delivered the papers every Wednesday and go collect a quarter once a month. And do you believe 25 cents a month, right, for your paper once a week? And people would say, I never, I never subscribed to that. Why no sir, it's a free paper. Just, if you just give 25 cents a month, I might get paid. Go away. Put delivering it to me. It was a wonderful life experience. And I was a pastor. There are a lot of jobs that I had. And nowhere was it more difficult to be sacramental than in the workplace. Every job has a sacramental call to it. Every place of employment has a sacramental element to it. Since every job, every place of employment, just like every place and experience in life, is something through which God is trying to reveal Himself to and through us. And in every one of them that I've had anyway, I've learned the hard way what Paul is trying to communicate in today's text the easy way. Let's look at it together. First Timothy 6, two, one and two. It says, all who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect. So that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered. And those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of slaves. And you might be saying, oh, that talks about slavery and masters. That's language that doesn't work today. We still have slavery, we're all aware of that, I hope. But most of us don't experience slavery in our lives. If you do, you've kept it a secret. You don't need to, by the way, you can come and talk to us. We don't experience that, not at least in the classic sense. But you've got to understand who Paul was talking to and what he was talking to Timothy, but what they were talking about. Slave in this reference meant more than the classic, our classic understanding. It could have been somebody who is under the yoke of slavery because of a conquest. So when there was a conquest by a nation, they would take slaves and it was like our classic understanding of slavery. But there are also nuances of this. So for instance, there might be a child whose parents needed income and knew that the child needed to serve an apprenticeship, rather rough, but it was an apprenticeship of sorts and learned a career. And so they would say to a master, you have this child for the next 15 years or 10 years or five years. They're yours. We give them, you pay us to have that child, but that child is now your slave, teach them a trade. Or you might have a person, this might refer to a person who was bound because they had a debt. So they had incurred debt, no ability to pay it off. And so they're sort of a pretty rough barter system. Well, you can pay it off by being an indentured servant or pay off your family's debt for them, young man, because you're strong and your dad's not and he has to pay it, but you can pay it for him. So you have a period of time where you're an indentured servant. So it's a vast understanding of slavery here. I don't mean to imply that it's ever good, but it's not necessarily the classic sense of slavery. There is a sense in which this parallels to an employer, employee situation. And here's one of the tough lessons that I've learned that Paul was trying to teach the easy way in this text. And this is your takeaway for today. Remember, sacrament, workplace as sacrament. Grace before it's earned. Every moment of life, and somehow sacramental. Paul says, "All who are under the yoke of slavery, all who have a master of any kind over them, whether permanent or temporary in its setting, should and hear the prevenient grace in this, should consider their masters worthy of full respect." Here in that, this, you consider them worthy of full respect, whether they are or not. You consider them worthy of full respect preveniently. I am going to show you respect and kindness. Now, we're not talking about exaggerated sense of self abuse and oppression here, but engine. Because I'm a follower of Jesus, and because I live constantly with the awareness of sacramental settings, that Jesus wants to reveal something about himself through me, and wants me to learn something about himself from you to me, then you get, like I did, what you don't deserve, just like I did, Grace. And here's the lesson. And it's really learned in the second part of the text. What you do with your faith will always trump what you say about your faith. Think of yourself at work. Think of the challenge that Paul is offering here to those who are under authority. He's saying, in so many words, our attitudes and our actions are our most lasting witness. What you do with your faith will always trump what you say about your faith. That's true in every aspect of life, but perhaps nowhere more obviously true than in the workplace as it is in this particular text. And look what Paul attaches to that first section of the scripture when he says, treat them as worthy of full respect, your masters or those, your supervisors or your employers or whoever it might be. Whether they deserve it or not, absolutely. Why? Then he says this toward the end of the prickly. So that God's name and teaching will not be slandered. Do you see what's going on logically there? Paul is saying, dude, you go in and you're always smart enough. You're the laziest worker. You're the one in the round in the coffee talking about how nasty the company is and how they want to take everything away. And our boss always expects this and that. I think he's a jerk anyway. And I can say what I want because my union is protecting me, but there's no kind. We are to be above that. That's a person who doesn't understand the sacramental options of every moment of life. Certainly not in the workplace. Paul is saying, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Paul is saying, remember the words of Jesus and represent them. He loved us while we were yet sinners. He was ahead of, he was loving in hope. He was acting toward us in a way that would invite us into something better. Even before we deserved it, and if your life was anything like my wife, my life, not my wife, if your life was anything like my wife, you're a blessed person. If your life's anything like my life, I got way better than I deserved. While we were yet sinners, Christ died blessed. The idea of sacrament, prevenient grace, somehow being a representation of what God hopes for and longs for in every person. And I've found that there's no place more difficult to live that than at work. Truck driver, roofer, imagine how some of these things went. Construction crew, frame or barbershop talk. You've got other texts that talk about these attitudes too. Like in first Timothy, you've got the idea of consider them worthy even if they're not. In Ephesians 6, this is all the same genre of discussion. Ephesians 6, we're told to respect those masters, those in authority over us. Not just out of duty, but the reference there is with sincerity of heart. So somehow, allow your heart, dip it in everything that will allow it, the reconstructive process of showing that respect before somebody earns it and it's a natural thing for us to do. So we're naturally and consistently sacramental in our approach to life. Not just for show, Colossians 3, gives some practical help, gives some perspective. There it says, do this remembering that the Lord is your real master. Really, you're the servant of the Lord. This is a temporary authority somebody has over you. And Titus 2, it talks about how if we do that, if we treat those in authority over us with respect, whether they deserve it or not, ahead of time respecting them and being good employees where we work, we adorn the gospel, think of hanging jewels on it, make it more beautiful. We adorn the gospel and the name of God with our actions. Conversely, when we're always bickering and never really on time and not giving a good, hard days work and so on and so on and so on, we take jewels off of the name of Christ. We don't see our workplace as a sacramental option, a sacramental investment, a sacramental opportunity, we're missing out. And in 1 Peter, so it's not all Paul, 1 Peter says, submit to your authority even when they're unreasonable. Now, I don't think Peter meant to say even when there is gross oppression involved. We're not talking about that. But even when they're unreasonable, how is our attitude when the one who's paying the bills and paying us to work X amount of dollars for X amount of hours and then asking us to do something that we know ahead of time, isn't gonna be productive, isn't gonna be helpful, is really unreasonable to ask, still within the workday, but it's an unreasonable request you're making of me. And the one in the third, he says, yes, but I'm still making it and I'm not asking for your opinion. I wanna get it done. They're not even reasonable. Paul is saying, how is your attitude then? Can you be sacramental in your attitude? Can you before they even deserve it, show some expression of grace? So that in the alone moments, when God's got hold of somebody's heart and they start thinking about what they experienced on that day, that boss would say, you know what, every single time I demand something of her, she's got a great attitude. I kinda wanna be around her. Work as sacraments. The attitudes and actions that we express, paint a picture of God and increase the perception of viability for the gospel in somebody's life. What you do with your faith will always trump what you say about your faith. Our attitudes and actions are our most lasting witness. When I was driving my dump truck, 10 wheeler dump truck, we were building Marriott's Great America here in Santa Clara. And I had a sweet gig. I had a job in that park that didn't use much gasoline. I got to sit with my engine off and they were loading my 10 wheeler dump truck with a backhoe with a very small bucket. I mean, it would take an hour to load my truck. And I loved that because the longer my engine's off and I'm still on the clock, the less fuel I'm building burning and the less fuel I'm burning, the more money I'm making, I loved this. And I was a brand new Christian back in those days. And so full of fervor and verbal witness. Tellin' everybody about Jesus, what the difference he can make in your life. This truck driver over here, he's a Christian truck driver. When you look at me on the, and I remember one day the supervisor came and said, "Hey, Junior, we need to pull you off of this "and we're gonna send you over to the big loader "hauling rock from one side of the park "to the other side of the park." I went from burning no fuel to burning maximum fuel. Minimum trips to lots of trips. Eyeling up and down hills, back and forth. And I said to him, "Oh, come on, man. "Let somebody with less seniority do that. "I don't wanna do that. "Come on." And I'll never forget his response. Ready for it? Oh, I see. You're one of those Sunday only Christians. I see. Yeah, ouch. What we do with our faith, we'll always trump what we say about our faith. Sometimes we can accidentally, because of our attitudes and actions, especially at work. Create an environment where the notion of us being people of faith is laughable. Not because of what we actually believe, but because of what we act out. I wanna finish by relating to some of you who may watch the show called "The Office." There's a character in the show "The Office" named Angela Martin. Angela is the Christian on the show. She's the evangelical on the show. So Angela's favorite book, she'll talk about the purpose driven life. She talks about how God would want this standard and this moral standard and this moral standard. But she is arrogant and she's rude. And her character is hypocritical. She loves her cats more than she loves her coworkers. And the idea of her faith is the basis for some of the most unguarded laughter in the show, but it's a painful laughter. It's because it's as though the statement is being made. When you come and talk this at work, but live this and express these attitudes. The idea that you could be a follower of Jesus and even more importantly, that I would ever want to be one because of what I experienced in you is comical. But Paul is saying, is this, masters be good to your servants. Slaves show respect for your masters. Even before they deserve it and implied in all of that. Is when you do that and when work is a sacrament and your place of work is a place where God roams always and you're aware of it, you are living out and whispering through actions and attitudes, the hope of what somebody could rise to instead of the complaints of what they've fallen to. [BLANK_AUDIO]