november 25, 2007 [pm]
"Whatever You Do"
Colossians 3:12–17
(To read the Scripture, click here.)
Here’s hoping you had a nice Thanksgiving. We did. Good food, good weather. I always like Thanksgiving though I have to confess it’s not because of the giving thanks part. Maybe it’s just me, but I always have trouble with the whole going around the table and saying what we’re thankful for tradition. It makes me feel so self-conscious. Maybe it’s some sort of performance anxiety thing. Like somehow as a minister I’m supposed to be poetic and profound. As if my family didn’t know better. Still, I squirm to come up with something that doesn’t sound too canned, you know, like how I’m thankful for my health and for the food on the table that we should hurry and eat before it gets cold. Maybe my problem is that I don’t express my gratitude enough on other days. I have so much to be thankful for, but I spend more time thinking about the things I don’t have but wish I did. I need to be more grateful. I’m convinced that about 90% of the discontentment we feel in life could be eliminated if we just learned how to be regularly thankful.
Fortunately Violet was born in October, so I was able to say I was thankful for her. Got me off the hook this year. In fact, it got most of us in our family off the hook this year. Aside from eating and groaning afterwards, we spent the largest part of Thanksgiving day cooing over Violet. The next largest part was spent listening to my sister-in-law describe a new job opportunity. Discontented with her work as a customer service rep, she’s eager to move on to something more meaningful and more in line with what she believes God wants for her life.
Work is one of those places where discontentment often surfaces. We all like to imagine that out there somewhere lies the perfect vocation divinely tailored for us which can be ours if only we’ll rightly discern it. Unfortunately, such ideas lead many to agonize over what God wants them to do with their life. This is not something that the Bible encourages. In fact, if it’s specificity you want, the Bible is not where you should look at all. The best career advice it offers is found here in our passage tonight: “Whatever you do, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Paul’s point seems to be that God cares less about your particular vocation than he does about the way in which you do it. As long as you approach your work as though you were working for Jesus and not for management, as Paul will put it later in verse 23, your career can be whatever you want it be. On the one hand this is really good news. You’re free to pick your career without violating some divine plan. But on the other hand, what does it mean to do whatever you do in Jesus’ name? Does it mean that you can do whatever you want however you want to do it as long as you do it for the Lord?
Not necessarily. The late Catholic writer Henri Nouwen, in a little book he wrote entitled In the Name of Jesus asserted that, “The way of the Christian is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on a cross. This might sound morbid and masochistic, but for those who have heard the voice of Christ and said yes to it, the downward-moving way of Jesus is the way to the joy and the peace of God, a joy and peace that is not of this world. To follow Christ is to follow in weakness and humility wherein the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest. I am not speaking about a psychological weakness in which Christians are simply the passive victims of the manipulations of their milieu. No, I am speaking of a weakness whereby human power is constantly abandoned in favor of love. True followers of Christ are people so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow him wherever, always trusting that with him, they will find life and find it abundantly.”
The name of Jesus is a weighty appellation. In Biblical times, a name was more than merely what you were called, your name was your calling. We may boast how a person has “made a name for himself,” but in ancient times, your name made you. Abram, meaning “exalted father,” became Abraham “father of many nations.” Simon meaning “one who hears” became Peter, the “rock” on which Christ built his church. Saul, meaning “longed for” humbled into Paul “the least.” For the Colossians, the name of Jesus meant they were now “chosen, holy and dearly beloved,” adjectives used of Jesus himself. “Jesus” literally means “God saves,” which is exactly what God in Christ had done. “You were dead in your sins,” Paul wrote in chapter 2, “but God made you alive with Christ. He forgave you all your sins. He took them all away and nailed them to the cross.” Jesus saves his people not because we deserve saving, but because that’s his name. And not only that, having been saved by Christ into Christ, his life is now our life, his name is our name. “You died,” Paul wrote in chapter verse 3, “and now your real life is safe with Christ in God.”
Which is why Paul then said we must kill off whatever belonged to our dead lives and put on our new resurrected lives. We now wear the name of Jesus. Thus, in a world where corners are routinely cut to pad the bottom line and lies are the grease of career advancement, to do whatever you do in Jesus’ name is to conduct your business affairs with honesty and integrity, even if it means missing out on the promotion. In a world where high self-esteem is the highest virtue and learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all, to do whatever you do in Jesus’ name is to lose yourself for the gospel and its grace, serving your customers as if serving Christ. In a world where war rages, poverty abounds, climate changes and money does all the talking, to do whatever you do in Jesus’ name is to strive for peace and compassion and good stewardship and simplicity. To do whatever you do in Jesus’ name is to do whatever you do as Jesus.
The name of Jesus is a high calling. It’s a hard calling. We’re chosen and beloved, Paul writes in verse 12, but as God’s chosen people we’re also holy. In Leviticus, God commanded his chosen people to “be holy because I am holy.” The same applies to us. We’re to be holy because Jesus is holy—the difference being that because we are now alive in Christ, holiness is no longer an unreachable ideal. This is why Paul lists what holiness looks like. This is how we’re supposed to live in the name of Jesus: no lust, no greed, no revenge, no lying. But then, just so you know that holiness is more than sin avoidance, Paul lists the positives too: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, peace, thankfulness. He actually mentions being thankful three times. Maybe he understood how tough being thankful can be. But this is what’s so sad. Even for us Christians, being holy can sometimes feel as impossible as it must have felt for the Israelites. If I can’t be thankful on Thanksgiving, what chance do I have at any of the rest of it?
The difficulties inherent in so high a calling may explain why so few of you responded to my challenge last Sunday to live the month of January according to the book of Leviticus. Because we don’t always know what to do with this part of God’s word devoted to animal sacrifice and infectious sin diseases, I thought I’d launch a sermon series on Leviticus in January in an effort to make sense of what God meant when he said “be holy because I am holy, keep all my laws and decrees.” But rather than just have me do all the talking, I thought I’d try a reality sermon series and invite ten of you to join Walter Kim and myself as Levitical guinea pigs for a one month experiment. The idea is to live according to the book of Leviticus, wherever that happens to be, interpreting it and experiencing it as best we can, getting a taste of holiness as Leviticus describes it.
I got the idea from a book I recently read entitled The Year of Living Biblically. The author, A. J. Jacobs, a self-described agnostic Jew, determined to abide by all the strictures of Scripture, Old Testament and New, for an entire year, taking it as plainly as warranted, just to see what happened. In an online interview, Jacobs was asked whether he found living by the Bible hard to do. He said, “It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. This project affected everything I did—the way I ate, the way I walked, the way I talked, the way I dressed. The way I interacted with other people—even the way I touched my wife. It was an extreme religious makeover.” Daunting to be sure, but for Christians, isn’t an extreme religious makeover precisely what we’re all about? Though dead in our sins we’ve been raised back to life in Christ. What more of a makeover can there be? As resurrected people already, living by the book should be the good life. Sure, it’s not always easy, but the way I figure it, if we can manage Leviticus as Christians, Colossians should be cake.
The only catch in my Levitical challenge was that you be willing to document your efforts. As a reality sermon series, it has to be a public. We’ll be keeping daily logs on Facebook and the church blog and website, along with some video, all of which we’ll publish online so that everybody else can participate and comment as we learn together. Now I thought surely there’d be at least ten eager exhibitionists in this congregation. But all I got so far is 4 to join me and Walter. Jacobs is right. Following God is the hardest thing he’d ever done. But as Christians, should it be so hard for us?
Maybe if you’re trying to do it all by yourself. One of the things I’ve been stressing during this series in Colossians is the corporate nature of obedience. As members of the one body of Christ, we’re all in this together by design. While your salvation is through Christ alone, your life as a Christian is not lived alone. We have to work together to make it work. This is why Paul says “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” The “your” is a plural pronoun. He’s talking to the whole body, the church. Verse 15: “You were called as one body to this peace.” By peace Paul does not mean peace of mind or a peaceful easy feeling, but rather peace as the fruit of reconciliation, the absence of strife and division. The same with verse 13: “Bear with one another and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” The “one another” is the whole church. If we can’t forgive each other here, how can we call ourselves the body of Christ? In verse 9 Paul writes, “do not lie to one another.” Again, the “one another” is the church. The church is signature of Jesus, we’re the place where his peace and grace and truth are writ large.
And by church Paul does not just mean the church service. Sure, gathering on Sundays is a part of what we do together. Paul goes on in verse 16 to instruct us to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly as we teach and wisely advise one another, and to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God, all elements of church. But praising God and teaching one another is only part of our life together. There are these so many other “one anothers” in play. Here’s the question: Who are the others you turn to put up with your struggles and forgive you when you screw up? Who are the others with whom you can honestly share your shortcomings and who will lovingly speak into your life? Who are the others you call when you’re in trouble, ashamed or scared, when you’re sick or you’ve lost your job and need money for rent? Who do you turn to when you need help and encouragement? That’s your church. And if that church is this church, the people you also worship with, then we all have a lot for which to be thankful.
At the end of verse 17, “do whatever you do in the name of the Lord Jesus,” Paul adds this: “giving thanks to God the Father through him.” It’s as if living a holy life together is one way you can thank God for saving your life. At the end of his year of living Biblically, Jacobs was asked what stuck with him. He admitted that he’s still agnostic as far as God goes (though he now describes himself as a “reverent agnostic.”). He’s also gone back to wearing mixed fibers and eating shrimp cocktail. But, he said, “I do continue to say my prayers of thanksgiving [and show my gratitude]. The biblical idea of gratefulness has totally sunk in and changed me.”
In his book he wrote how he loved saying prayers of thanksgiving because it made him more grateful for life. But, he acknowledged, he had trouble giving all the glory to God. His rabbi told him he needed to stop looking at the Bible as some sort of self-help book. Jacobs admitted that this was the way he looked at it a lot of the time. “I ask myself, ‘How can religion make me more joyous? How can it give my life more meaning? How can it help me raise my son so he won’t end up a criminal? But religion is more than that,” he realized. “It’s about serving God.’”
Jacobs’ rabbi went on to tell him this story that I think may apply to us: “Two men pray daily thanksgiving prayers while at work. One spends twenty minutes in his office behind a closed door and afterward feels refreshed and uplifted, like he just had a therapy session. The other is so busy he can squeeze in only a five-minute prayer session between phone calls. He recites his thanksgiving prayers super fast in a supply closet. Who has done the better thing?” the rabbi asked. Jacobs replied, “The first.” But the rabbi says, “No, the second. The second guy is doing it only for God. There was no benefit to himself [except perhaps for a reinforcement of perspective]. In the midst of his demanding life, he was making sure to thank the Lord.” Thank you Lord.
