This is part 3 in the sermon series titled “Monday Matters”, an exploration of work, value and living out God’s call.
How does love affect our work, and what are the deeper implications of this? The implications of love on our work go beyond ethics and morality, beyond the right and wrong of the matter. While they’re good questions to ask, the gospel brings up implications that are far better to ask. The story of the cross is one of Jesus’ obedience to his father and his love for the father and for us. And that has a bearing on our work that goes far beyond simple right and simple wrong.
The greatest commandment
“28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.””
What is the greatest commandment, a teacher of the law asked Jesus. Jesus says, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul and all your mind and with all of your strength. And love your neighbour as yourself.” We love ourselves, don’t we? We treat ourselves well, we feed ourselves, we take care of ourselves. And Jesus sets *this* up as the standard for love. “Others as you would yourself”. And this is a convicting message when you bring it into work: we don’t often think of love as the rule by which we do our work. We think in terms of right and wrong, and career paths and passion and fit, in terms of the morality of the work people do (from prostitution to making moonshine, from investment banking to private equity, for example).
Why are we doing our work, and what are we working for?
Timothy Keller says in “Every Good Endeavour” that Christians must understand that we were made for love. That even the trinity is a symbol of love amongst the three. Love then occupies a supreme place in the Christian imagination. As Jesus said, to be fully human boils down to loving God and loving our neighbour. _Everything else_, our accomplishments, our successes, even our feelings _is a distant second_. This understanding of the nature of reality will have a huge impact on how we view our work. For instance, are relationships a means to acquire power and wealth, or is wealth a way for us to honour the relationships we have with love?
A discussion like this can easily become very idealistic in the sense that we can just talk of how we need to love the people around us more. That would be a good start, but that would remain idealistic: it would be an ideal that’s good to listen to but is easy to ignore because of the impracticality of it. A generic “good thing to say” that never actually comes to life in our lives. We’d just go back to saying “business is business”, and make decisions that will hurt other people because, y’know, business is business. But if love for our neighbour is one of the highest values in our Christian life, then it’s not as easy as saying that business is business.
How do we actually bring love into this? How do you bring in love into your leadership? Into tough things like letting go of people. This is not easy. More often than not, we separate our Christian lives from our work lives, and don’t let this greatest of commands guide and inform our actions. A lot of the times, we act the way the world acts, and we don’t think of the implications of bringing love into our work day, at our work desk, into our work discussions, breathing life into our work relationships.
And everyone around us can see this. We can’t just invite folks to church or to Christmas service when they know who we really are at work. Do we bring Godly and neighbourly love into our work? This is not easy. And it’s actually a wrestle.
The rich young ruler
“16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
18 “Which ones?” he inquired.
Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.”
This young ruler wants to engage with Jesus in an ethical and moral dimension. But Jesus doesn’t operate in that framework. His whole framework was love: look at him and the Cross, it’s clearly not just about right and wrong and social mores. In this discussion, he ends it with this commandment: “love your neighbour as yourself”. The smart young ruler instantly responds with a shrug: I’ve already done all this, so what am I lacking? Jesus answers, “if you want to be perfect, sell all your possessions and give to the poor, and then come follow me”. Jesus tells him this because that’s the ultimate thing the ruler would have to give up to truly love his neighbour. The young ruler thinks he owns money, but sadly it’s clear that money owns him. That’s what Jesus’ statement boils down to. The young ruler leaves with sadness at the end of this conversation because he wasn’t willing to engage in the wrestle of truly bringing love into his life.
What does engaging in the wrestle look like?
We love the “love God” part of the greatest commandment, don’t we? “Let’s just go to church and not worry about the people at church”. If we could just have me and God, we’d all be such amazing saints, wouldn’t we? But it’s in the relationships that you see how Christ is really at work in a church.
Sometimes we walk away from God because we don’t want to engage in the implications of the gospel on our life, and more often that not we see this behaviour at work. “That’s church life, that’s for Sundays, but this is Monday. We have to be practical”. Not bringing in love into our Mondays is the easy way out, but that is just us walking away from God, isn’t it?
Look then at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26. Look at verse 39 and Jesus’ prayer, and contrast this with the rich young ruler. Both faced the challenge of obedience, both had a cost attached to this obedience. And in Jesus’ case, the cost of obedience was much more, but he engaged in the wrestle. For us as well, the cost of obedience will be high, but we can’t shy away from engaging in the wrestle. There will be debate, there will be struggle, there will be doubt, there will be pain, there will be discomfort. “I don’t want to do it this way, I don’t want to take the long way to the goal, I don’t want to engage with this person, I don’t want to return hatred with love”. The beauty of the gospel is that he died on our behalf and he rose again, and for us, we die at the cross when we choose his way. Our will must die at the cross. And in that there is life.
At the end of the rich young ruler’s conversation, the disciples get really messed up (it’s mentioned in Mark). They were distraught: how can anyone follow you, Jesus? The price you’re asking us to pay is too much. But Jesus tells them anyone who gives up *anything* for him will be rewarded in heaven.
We have to die to our own will at the cross, and we will then experience resurrection at work. We will experience pain, grief, loss. We might miss out on simple things and things complex. But the reward of the wrestle is clear.
The implications of bringing love into our Mondays
The implications of love are many, not just for our personal lives but for our work lives as well. We tend to box our work life and pigeonhole it separately, and in doing so, we lose out on lots of opportunities to bring glory to God. Beyond sharing your testimony, beyond talking of God, do you show God in your work? Christians, how can we be known as ruthless out there in our work lives? What of grace, what of love? As believers, the way we treat others who are competing with us, the way we show them love, that is the wrestle. How do we treat those who have wronged us or wronged our companies? Is there grace in the way we treat people whom you have been given responsibility for? Are you generous at work, and how is that informed by love? Jesus’s life was an act of generosity towards humankind. Quid pro quo, is that what generosity means to us in our work context? Do we engage with the people at work as humans, and not just as “contacts”? Are we willing to let these relationships get messy in love? Do we go into the storm as calm as a lamb, or do we let the winds and the rain drive us into a frenzy? Are we the ones panicking, or are we the ones with the strength that comes from the Holy Spirit? Are we non-sectarian at work, do we refuse to let groups and membership impact our choices? Do we favour Christians at work, or do we understand that Jesus gave his life for all of us, not just Christians? Jesus came to break the ghettos down, not to build more insular tribes.
Not being graceless, not ruthless, not panicking in the storm, not engaging in sectarianism. All this is really inconvenient, make no mistake. But these are the implications of the gospel, of bringing love into our work life and our Mondays.
There is no clear and easy resolution at the end of this discussion. I’m leaving you with uncomfortable questions, and a real wrestle. A wrestle that will free us, a wrestle that will allow us to bring order into the chaos of the world with the work of our hands. A wrestle that will allow us to be true salt and light in our work days, every work day of every week. In His name, not ours.
Read part one here: Monday Matters
Read part two here: Empires and Emperors
How does love affect our work, and what are the deeper implications of this? The implications of love on our work go beyond ethics and morality, beyond the right and wrong of the matter.