WELCOME | Tap Tree & Pentecost Sunday
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And tongues as of fire appeared to them, distributed among them, and rested on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1-3)
CALL TO WORSHIP | Psalm 104:23-30
Then people go out to their work, to their labor until evening. How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, their spirit, they die and return to the dust. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
Song #1 - A Thousand Hallelujahs by Brooke Lighterwood
Song #2 – Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle
Dismiss Kids
SERMON | Getting Out of Work a Whole & Holy Life
Everything changed for our faith on the day of Pentecost. What was a promise long-awaited, became the very reality in which we live and move and have our being.
Life with God, a life, good; was not merely an aspirational hope but an obediential potency through which we can “’rest in the ordinary’… in the midst of becoming who we are.”[1] For, as Peter’s sermon on Pentecost concludes:
“And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” (Acts 2:38-39)
It is the gifting of the Holy Spirit that makes us whole and holy humans, ones who are made in “the image and likeness of God”:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness.’” (Genesis 1:26)
For, as one of the earliest church fathers, Irenaeus reports,
“When the Spirit is missing from the soul, you have a being which, though truly animal and carnal, is incomplete. It may have the ‘image’ in the shaped clay [body and soul], but it lacks the ‘likeness’ given by the Spirit. Such a being is incomplete… It can no longer be thought of as a man, but as either part of a man or something other than a man. The shaped clay of the flesh is not, on its own, a complete man, but just the body of a man, a part of a man. Similarly, the soul, on its own, is not a man, but just the soul of a man, a part of a man. And the Spirit is not a man: Spirit is called ‘Spirit’, not ‘man.’ It is, then, the mixture and union of all these things which makes the complete man. Thus the apostle in his first letter to the Thessalonians, explains that the redeemed man is the complete and spiritual man: ‘May the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole being, spirit and soul and body, be kept blameless [holy] at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Thess. 5:23).”[2]
So we can say, with the Scriptures and tradition, that “man is made up essentially of three parts: body, soul, and spirit,” and that it is this Spirit which makes man whole and holy, for, as theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar concludes, “Spirit is the thing in man that is essentially more than man, something which does not ‘rise from below’ but ‘comes down from above.’”[3] To “be spiritual,” then, is “by definition to be moved by the Spirit of the Logos,”[4] Christ our Beginning, our Salvation, our End.
And so, what happened on that particular Pentecost day, and continues now for all the generations that follow, has changed everything for you and me. For, as commentator Mikeal Parsons contends, Peter’s closing remarks are reality-altering.
“The invitation of salvation is reciprocal: those ‘who call upon the name of the Lord’ (2:21) will be those whom ‘the Lord our God calls to himself’ (2:29)… i.e., a relational partnership, a covenant for the common good [which is our] salvation [and what we are saved into].”[5]
“a relational partnership… for the common good,” isn’t that what work, rightly, biblically understood is? At least, haven’t we been contending, along with pastor Tom Nelson, that,
“Our work, whether we are paid for it [or not], is our specific human contribution to God’s ongoing creation and to the common good.” [6]
Work, as we have come to see it through the profoundly insightful and convictingly succinct exhortation of Dorothy Sayers,
“[work is]…not a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but a way of life in which the nature of humanity should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God…
…not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he [or she] finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he [or she] offers [them]self to God.”[7]
As such, work—everything we do in word or deed to make life, good—should be done
“in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to [acknowledge the effectiveness of the good design of] God the Father through him,” (Col. 3:17) and so, whatever our specific work might be, we are to “work from the soul, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:21).
With a Spirited soul and body, our mind of work is renewed, not acculturated and conformed to reductionistic and twisted understandings of work, so, we can, with Sayers, "serve the work," as "the medium in which one offers oneself to God."
As embodied souls and spirits, following Paul's exhortation in Romans 12, we can submit our wills through our work, "offering our bodies as a living sacrifice" through our work, this being our “spiritual worship.” We do not offer our work to God but rather offer our whole selves through our work. We can do this because, as we saw a couple of weeks ago in Matthew 11, our work is not our own but something made for us to share in.
Indeed, as soul-body-spirit beings, we can take up the roles and responsibilities before us with Christ, as the work of Christ, His yoke, well-fitted for us to share in as a means of rest for our souls. Resting in our work as we learn (are trained) to have the same heart for work that Jesus has, a heart that is gentle or meek—not volatile but stable, possessing prudence with a disposition toward compassion, patience, and forgiveness—and lowly—a heart fully possessed by another.
Rather than striving to get out of working or to get out of work something we do not have but want (identity, prosperity, purpose), as is the norm, we are born again—“born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5)—into the good of work, by the Spirit, who has been gifted to us to make us complete and set us apart (whole and holy). We are able to get out of work the life we are made for, and that is made for us. For indeed we have been crafted and saved for this:
“…we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.” (Ephesians 2:9-10)
Great! If that is what work is and what it can be, how? How can we get out of work the whole and holiness for which we are made? Well, the too-simple-yet-not-reductionist answer is: habits. More specifically, the scheduled habits of entering the roles and responsibilities we are given, recollecting ourselves within them, and exiting our daily labors into the rest of what is finished.
“How we spend our days,” contends Annie Dillard, “is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”[8]
I’ve shared this quote a couple of times in the series, in part as an argument that work, what we are doing to make life good, is indeed our life; not an addition to it or something to get over, past, or through to get to life on the other side. I’d like to extend her quote a bit and make a slight adjustment, if you’ll allow. Dillard continues,
“A schedule [scheduled habits] defends from chaos and whim. They are a net for catching days. They are scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. Scheduled habits are a mock-up of reason and order… a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time… a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”[9]
There is an old wisdom here, one known by our faith for millennia. We cannot get out of work its essential goodness without intentionality, without structured, scheduled habits of entering, recollecting, and exiting. To presume otherwise is to be tossed about in the chaos and whim of whatever and whomever we find ourselves with.
While there is no shortage of habits, rules, and liturgies handed down through the centuries by our faithful foreparents to give structure to our days, I’d like to suggest three to help you, me, and us find wholeness and holiness in our working into Sabbath and Sabbathing into working.
How we enter the day matters. In the Jewish tradition, the day starts not at dawn but at dusk. After all, Genesis begins this way,
“And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (Genesis 1:5)
Every morning begins with receiving the rest of the night, the sustaining that came not from labor but from the care of another, and so each morning is a gift, like the whole and holy life we have in the Spirit. Therefore, everything that comes after is giving back what has been given… getting to work with the talents gifted, if your will.
When: At the beginning of your “quiet time” or before you check your phone, start packing lunches, perhaps before you roll out of bed.
What: The Lord’s Prayer for Work
Our Father in heaven, let your name be treated with reverence.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done, through me, in my place as it is in heaven.
I give my whole self to you through the work you have given me this day.
Give us this day our bread for tomorrow,
and forgive us our debts =, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever,
which you share with me through Christ.
Amen.
How we start matters, and you’ll notice (as my students do in the end-of-course project). But we all know that it is mid-race, midday when we feel the chaos and whims of others pulling us off course. So we recollect… re-collect “the soul to itself from a state of phenomenal distraction… a centripetal movement, in accord with the soul’s natural gravity, countering the centrifugal movement, which tends to pull it away from itself, to the point of disintegration and dissipation.”[10]
David, in Psalm 139, discovers the fundamental reality of his existence. That he is known by God, formed y God, set apart by God, caught up, as it were, in the very center of the life of God; which is naturally beyond the scope of full comprehension, like trying to count all “the sand” on the earth. Nevertheless, such a beautific vision is not a dream, for, David says, “I awake, and I am still with you.” (Psalm 139:18).
It is this vision of being known, being found, being caught up in this very moment in the life of God, being and doing exactly what you are made for, that brings us back to reality, that centers our body-soul-spirit in its proper place.
What: A Centering Prayer at Work
Breathing In: “I am…”
Breathing Out: “…still with you.”
When: Traditionally @ 9, 12, 3. But when for you? After drop off? Before meetings? During data entry? Schedule it differently each day… the habit of scheduling…
How we start matters, how we stay centered in the middle matters, but so too does how we exit the labors of the day into the rest of the night, made new.
What: The Examen
Like David, we ask the Spirit to examine us, helping us see where our work was out of step with Jesus (so we can repent and receive the grace that His mercies are sufficient and new each morning), and where our work was in rhythm with Jesus (affirming the effectiveness of God’s grace and good design), and to let the Spirit lead us into rest for body and soul.
When: Before you fall asleep? Before you go to bed?
While we are not quite at the end of the day, we are at the end of the series, so let’s conclude our time together to do the examen as a means of entering into the rest of the day made for us, and letting that rest enter into us.
REFLECTION |
Consider & Attend
Where did I work out of step with Jesus today?
Where did I work in rhythm with Jesus today?
CORPORATE CONFESSION & COMMUNION[11] |
By your ever-restful grace,
allow us to enter your Sabbath rest
as your Sabbath rest enters into us.
For...
Jesus has done good work for us.
The Holy Spirit is doing a good work in us.
And God our Father equips and calls each of us to go out and do good works, works he has prepared in advance for us to do, and that he alone,
by his power and his Spirit,
will bring to completion through us.
For all the promises of God find their Yes in Jesus.
That is why it is through Jesus we utter our Amen
to God for his glory.
Hallelujah! Amen.
Song #3 – I Know You Jesus by Young Oceans
Song #4 – Never Let Go by John van Deusen
BENEDICTION | 1 Thessalonians 5:23
As we rest in the day made for us, we prepare to enter into the work for which we are made [LIGHT THE CANDLE], praising and praying:
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[1] John Betz, Christ, The Logos of Creation: an essay in analogical metaphysics, 316.
[2] Ireneaus, Against the Heresies, 5.6.1.
[3] Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus against the heresies, 94.
[4] Betz, 296.
[5] Mikeal Parsons, Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament, Acts, 47.
[6] Tom Nelson, Work Matters: connecting Sunday worship to Monday work, 24.
[7] Dorothy Sayers, quoted in, Schwehn and Bass, Leading Lives That Matter: what we should do and who we should be, 200.
[8] Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 32.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Betz, 277.
[11] Adapted from Common Prayer: a liturgy for ordinary radicals, 554, & Every Moment Holy, Vol 3, xv.