[AI translation] On this Sunday, when work is celebrated everywhere in the country and in many places around the world, let us also remember our daily work, as God's Word teaches us. It will therefore be a question on which we spend most of our lives. Everyone has to work to make a living at all. Almost all of our lives are one uninterrupted, often arduous, work. How then, in the light of God's Word, are we to see our own work renewed every day? This is what I want to talk about.First of all, I would like to clear up a common misunderstanding, not for the first time in this pulpit: many people think that the Bible speaks of work as something inferior. They want to think of that particular paradise as some fairyland where the roast dove simply flies into the mouth of the resting man. But that is not the description of Paradise in the Bible - which, of course, must also be taken in a symbolic sense. Paradise represents man's primordial state of creation, the state that God has ordained for man, the state that God created man for. The primordial will of God for man's way of life. Well, the paradise, or general eternal vocation of man, is described in the Bible as follows: God placed man there to "cultivate and keep" the Garden of Eden. In other words, God originally created man as a labourer. Idleness was already "the devil's pillow" in the so-called Paradise. And it still is today!
Then the other misunderstanding is that after the Fall, when God casts Adam and Eve out of Paradise, He "curses" work! As if work is a consequence of a divine curse on man! Again, this is not what God's Word says, but "by laborious toil you shall live out of the ground, which of itself produces for you only thistles and thorns". It is as if he is saying: create for yourself a culture in this land, which will not come easily, but will involve much toil and hard work. And this is true. It is true! Anyone who wants even a flower garden around their house knows that. - So work is precisely what man brought with him from Paradise, which is a way of life belonging to man's ancient order of creation as conceived by God. And God's order is always a gift, never a curse!
Work, then, is a gift from God: a gift from God that remains for man who has fallen into sin. Only those who can no longer work know what a gift it is. I heard someone say this good saying the other day: 'I have health and I can work', two gifts that would make many people happy. - Work is the very thing that reflects a faint ray of man's creation in the image of God. Of God, Jesus says: "My Father is at work all the days of my life, and I am at work!" This, then, is another of the traits in which man's kinship with God is expressed. It is in the very act of working that something of man's original nobility and dignity remains. It is a gift of grace with which God has blessed even man who has turned away from Him.
In principle, then, that is what the Bible teaches about work. God's gifts are often corrupted, worn out or even become a dangerous instrument in the hands of man. This can also happen with work. The curse is not on the work, but on sin - and because man is a sinner, work can become a bitter, nerve-wracking, life-draining power over him. And that is why there is so little real desire to work in men. Let us be honest: there is not much of this kind of joy - the joy of work - on earth! People work, of course, because they have to make a living, but how much joy do they get out of what they do? How much joy can one have in a job that one always feels is not what one is meant to do, that one is meant for something more. It's not what you want to do, but it has to be done. Or how much joy can one have on a treadmill, where for eight hours you do the same one movement, like a machine, without a soul? Or in a dusty, dark office with boring files? Or adding up endless figures? Or on a bus, arguing with nervous passengers? Or constantly washing other people's laundry? Or in a huge factory, where you yourself become an almost inanimate part of a vast apparatus? Every job has its hard and boring side, but there is also a job that has only a hard and boring side! Can it then be done with pleasure and joy? - Isn't it rather the case that you really start to feel like it when the working hours are over and you quit? Sometimes they try to make monotonous work more pleasant, for example by music, sanitary equipment, nice espressos at the workplace, rewards, pay rises - and all of this is right; and a lot has happened in this area compared with the past, but has it increased the desire to work? If only money, rewards or a pleasant environment make you want to do your job, you are not very keen - however important money and a pleasant environment may be!
This is where the verse I have read out really takes on great significance. Let me read it again after this, listen carefully, for it needs almost no explanation: 'You servants, obey your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the uprightness of your hearts, as to Christ. Not serving the eye, as those who would please men, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God in spirit, with a good will, as those who serve the Lord and not men." The main point here is this: as servants of Christ; and this: as serving the Lord. What does this mean? In another place in the passage we read, "Do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus." In the name of the Lord Jesus: so, where you do your daily work, you are there not only in your own name, but primarily in the name of the Lord Jesus. And this is the same as saying: feel yourself there as if Jesus himself were present through you. Yes, there! As if with your hand He were making that routine movement on that dreadful conveyor belt, or mopping the floor, or handling that rattling machine, or picking up that annoying telephone a thousand times; as if with your mouth He were saying, "Please redeem your tickets," as if He were smiling at the customer and asking, "How many decimals of this can I give you...?" It's easy, but try - as if... Yes, as if you were Him, as if He were in your place! Impossible? But isn't that why we're Christians? Didn't the Apostle Paul once say, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me"?! Isn't that the whole point of our Christian life, that Christ lives in us?! Well, that's what He wants - and if you try to want the same thing, you will see that He does: He succeeds!
Here at St John's Hospital there is a young man. He has graduated with honours, he's going to medical school, but he won't be admitted until next year. Until then, he'll be doing the most menial work in the laboratory. In the mornings he collects the least luscious things from the wards, the patients' test material. All day long they send him out, they send him off - and he goes about his business cheerfully, smiling at everyone, being welcomed, loved, appreciated... He is a young man of faith, serving the Lord. He is there in the name of Jesus!
If you will do the work you are called to do in the name of the Lord Jesus, you will one day realize some great and welcome truths. For the value of a job does not depend on the kind of work you do: whether you do what you feel like doing - few people usually do - nor on how much you are paid, nor whether it is a generous, executive job or a very pared-down detail, a tiny, fussy job, but on your attitude. All work depends on the attitude of the person who does it, the attitude of the person who does it.
They say there are two kinds of work: mental and physical. Let me say a third word: spiritual! This does not mean a third kind of work, but the quality of work. Both spiritual and physical work can be done in a spiritual way: with the soul - and both without the soul. Spiritually, that is, with the spirit of doing it in the name of Jesus. The Word says: "In the uprightness of your heart." - And so: "doing the will of God in the Spirit". For this is the great thing, that he who is truly a servant of Christ, as our Word says, is a liberated man. He is freed not only from sin, but also from the soul-destroying, robotic nature of work. Paul is writing to slaves in this passage we have heard. The slave in Christ is spiritually liberated. The slave of labor is also set free in Christ. He doesn't feel like a slave because he is one where the machines are whirring or where nervous people are waiting for him: He is a slave of Christ. To be a slave of Jesus is the greatest dignity. He serves the Lord, the supreme Lord. All his work is service, service to Christ, that is, worship. The worship of every day... It can be done with the same spirit with which you sit here and pray, or with which I share communion. It is for the glory of God, just as a job well done is always for the glory of God. So do it consciously for the glory of God: with heart, with soul! Even the soulless machine will be inspired under your hand. Try it! Your work will be different. Its value will change.
But the whole meaning of the work will change. The work you do becomes meaningful, however meaningless it may seem. Think: you serve the Lord! And in practice, that means serving people. He who serves the Lord sees the people around him. Again, not just numbers and robots, but people. People who need him. He sees behind his work his family: the face of a smiling child, a faithful, kind wife, whose bread is made from that work; and he sees behind his work God, who is working ceaselessly to save and redeem this world from the full triumph of sin, from chaos - and to whom you are a co-worker in this work, in your own small or great place! Let me tell you a little story you may have heard: once five men were working on some kind of building. All five of them were asked: what do you do? One said: I carve stones. Another said: I work like a slave. The third: I earn pennies... The fourth: I work for my family. Finally, the fifth answered, with a solemn music in his voice: we are building a cathedral!
So, how do we see our work? Do we see it only as a soul-sucking, tiring robot? Or are we so dryly materialistic that we see only the pennies, the forints behind it, mammon-servants, dull money-worshippers? Can we see behind it the other people for whom we work, and, most importantly, can we see ourselves as one with all the other people around us, from boss to servant, and believe that, however insignificant the detail work we do, we are God's co-workers in a world that begs for a little love, justice, peace, honesty? We are building a cathedral! Yes! We are laying, stacking the bricks of God's coming kingdom, knowing that our work is not in vain in the Lord! It makes sense. We serve the Lord.
And finally, that consciousness makes a difference in the whole way we do our work. I said before: we do spiritual work. Let me say the same now: we are conscientious about the work we do! Thus says the apostle, so eloquently, "Not serving the eye, as those who would please men, but as those who serve the Lord." - Not to the eye! To the Lord! We are controlled by the eye of the Lord, not the boss. Conscientiously: knowing that One sees and knows all things, sees with me and knows with me. You are accountable to Jesus! Not more so if you are tipped, if you are paid extra - for it is from us that Jesus asks for an account of what and how we have worked!
So here is how our daily work can truly be a blessing. Joy! What can be done in the name of Jesus, serving Jesus, by a believer in Jesus. This is precisely the point where we can bring something new and truly good into this world.
So let us sing it now:
Servants of the Lord, all of you,
Praise the Lord with joy,
Who in his house by night
Watching, ye are faithful.
(Psalm 134 verse 1)
Amen.
Date: 1 May 1966.