Why Should We Work?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Do you ever think about why you work? Why do you do the job you do every day? What makes you continue to farm or sell groceries or deliver mail or teach? Would you rather not do what you do?

Long ago, King Solomon considered these questions in his search for knowledge and wisdom. And we heard his conclusions in today's Old Testament lesson: “I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is a vanity.”

Sometimes our work seems like vanity or meaningless. We do the same things over and over and over again, to what end? The same cow needs milking every day. The same field needs planting every year, and then harvesting. The same dishes need washing, and the same clothes need washing.

It would be easy to slip into deep despair, as Solomon did, over this seemingly endless state of repetition. And of course, we all think that it would be lovely to sit around and spend our time in leisure. But just ask a newly retired person – you can only sit around so long, and then you need something to do. And so work finds you again, one way or another.

Albrecht of Mainz once said that the human heart is like a millstone. If you keep pouring grain into it, it will keep going around and around and crushing the grain into flour. But if you stop supplying the grain, the stone will still turn, wearing itself down, until it gets thinner and thinner, and finally wastes away for lack of work. In the same way, the heart yearns for a calling and occupation. When one is well-occupied, the heart and mind are healthy and active, but when one sits idle, the heart and mind turn in on themselves, and the devil sees an occasion to inject all sorts of harm into the works and wears down the heart until it wastes away.

Laziness is its own form of idolatry, because it means that we think that somehow we will get what we need without any work. We tempt God with our inaction, since He has commanded us to toil for our daily bread. An old English proverb says, “God does give every bird its food, but He does not throw the food into the nest.”

Lord, have mercy upon us!

On the other hand, there are some among us who work and toil almost unceasingly, and their work yields a great increase, or so it seems. These are like the rich man in Jesus' parable we hear today: “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax eat, drink, be merry.'”

This man failed to realize a few things. First, he considered the abundance of his crops to be the work of his own hands. The parable says nothing about his labor or the sweat of his brow or the toil of his hands. Rather, Jesus simply says that his fields produced plentifully.

As any farmer would agree, the yield of the fields is not simply a matter of human labor. The best-tended fields can be devastated by a single storm, and the most lazy farmer can still bring in a harvest. All the work and care in the world cannot bring abundance out of poor soil, and neither can human work or intentions cause crops to grow. Likewise, the farmer cannot cause the yields to be high simply by hard work. We plant the seed, and God grants the increase.

The farmer in the parable failed to see that his work was not the cause of his abundance. God had blessed him with a plentiful harvest and abundance from the earth. Therefore, he had plenty to store up for later.

That led to his other problem – the lack of storage space. The farmer brought in his harvest, and he saw that he did not have enough space to store his high-yielding harvest. So what does he do? He decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones.

He failed to realize that the abundance given to him was not simply for him to hoard. In hoarding and storing away his abundance, he was isolating himself, because he could not share in the joy of the harvest without letting go of some of his wealth.

If you have too much stuff, is the best solution to get a bigger house? If you harvest more than your bins will hold, should you build bigger bins? The human heart would naturally answer “Yes!” After all, who does not want to keep the stuff he worked for, the crops he sweated over? But the better solution is to share your abundance with those who lack. Why not donate some of that bulging closet of clothes to the second-hand store? Why not contribute to food banks and homeless shelters? Why not give of what you have to those who have none?

After all, the work that makes you rich has already been done for you! Your riches have been secured by Jesus Christ. On the cross, with His agony and death, Jesus secured for you all the riches of heaven, and made each of you an heir to the joys of heaven at the throne of our heavenly Father. Your death, your failures, your greed and selfishness, your idolatry – these were all taken from you and put onto Christ. In exchange, He gives you His life, His righteousness, His rightful entrance into heaven before God, His joy and light. He gives you the Holy Spirit, who does the work of creating and sustaining faith within you, now and throughout your days. And because of that faith worked in you, the works that you do are now called good for the sake of Christ Jesus. This is the richness you have toward God, the richness that guarantees your forgiveness, life, and salvation.

So why do we work? Solomon tells us, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.” And how does one find enjoyment in toil? By sharing his riches with his neighbor. We do good works because they naturally flow from the hearts and hands that God has cleansed with the blood of the Lamb, from the bodies and souls which He feeds with His holy and precious Body and Blood.

God works in and through each of us for our own benefit and for the good of our neighbors. Clothed with Christ, we become masks behind which God works to accomplish His will on earth and to help those poor, sick, and in need.

So come now to this Table – eat and drink of the abundant riches of God! Then go, be merry on your way, for the God who began a good work in you will surely bring it to completion on the Day of His coming.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

 

Rev. Ryan McDermott

St. Peter Lutheran Church

Elma, IA

Proper 13C – 1 August 2010