“Busy, but Not Busybodies”
Original sermon given November 13, 2022, written and delivered by Pastor Gregg Ramirez at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church
Watch the sermon live here
“Busy, but Not Busybodies”
II Thess. 3:1-13
II Thess. 3:1-13
Chinese writer Paul Lee Tan tells the story that many years ago a man conned his way into the orchestra of the Emperor of China although he could not play a note. Whenever the group practiced or performed, he would hold his flute against his lips, pretending to play but not making a sound. He received a modest salary and enjoyed a comfortable living. Then one day the emperor requested a solo from each musician. The flautist got nervous. There wasn’t enough time to learn the instrument. He pretended to be sick, but the royal physician was not fooled. On the day of his solo performance, the imposter took poison and killed himself. The explanation of his suicide led to a phrase that found its way into the English language: he refused to face the music.
To me that phrase well represents what was taking place in our epistle lesson, Paul’s second letter to the new believers in Thessalonica. Previously in his first letter, he said that it was important to mind their own business, work with their hands, and warn those who were idle not to be slackers. Why must he do that? As it turned out, some had developed the notion that Christ’s second coming was right around the corner. So they quit work, retired early, and kicked back, and in doing so became meddling busybodies with all their free time. That’s what was happening, and unfortunately, in spite of St. Paul’s admonition to get back to work, things deteriorated to the point that it was hurting the morale in the church. Faithful people were resenting the fact that they had to work while those irresponsible loafers expected the church to feed them. They were undisciplined freeloaders and it was time for them to face the music. It was time for some tough love as the Apostle said, “if you don’t work you don’t eat”. As my father used to say, “No workie, no eatie.”
That’s the essence of today’s lesson, and it leads to an issue that is so much a part of our lives, but I’ve never before talked about it in the church. It has huge implications regarding the quality of all of our lives for good or bad. Work. I think many of us were raised with the Protestant work ethic. You work hard as a means to success and prosperity in life, but there’s also many others who think differently. For them it’s about putting in your time with the goal of doing only as much as you have to do. While still in my twenties I remember driving by and seeing four utility workers with the hard hats on with one working and three standing around. It’s prevalent in some in town or state jobs. My son, David, had a job in our town’s public works department, and he remembers the guys doing rain dances so they could have the afternoon off. It’s an easy groove to fall into. However, when it comes to this issue of work or the lack of it, over the past three years my thoughts have been most focused on the Heinrich House. It’s a 12-story building that is only a block from where I served at Immanuel in Des Plaines. Heinrich is section 8 low- income housing. We helped a lot of people there and I heard their stories of being raised on welfare with the brokenness, violence, and drugs. Some didn’t even know their father, and I grieved for them. Sometimes it upset me regarding how so many knew how to get out of work, how to play the welfare system, and how to take people like me in the church. Truly, work-related issues resulted in a cycle of poverty with devastating effects on families over the generations. It’s enough to make a grown man cry or scream.
Yet, when you look at the deep background, work started out so well when God created the paradise of the Garden of Eden for human beings. We see Him getting His Hands in the dust as He formed our first parents. God was happy in His work, and work was a good thing for our first parents as they felt a sense of gratitude and fulfillment in keeping up His garden. It was to be a reward for those who are made in His image. Yet all too quickly that image was lost with the fall of our first parents after they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was like telling a child: “Don’t touch that vase or the coffee table,” or “Don’t touch that hot stove.” But that makes it forbidden fruit. You’ve got to touch it. And then came the downside. Then came the thorns and thistles in a fallen world because human beings turned from God. Then work became laborious and difficult. My youngest brother has a good job in the cargo department of Southwest Airlines where he’s been working for 30 years. But a few weeks ago, he told me how he dreads Mondays and hates his work. Of course, everybody’s not like that, but isn’t it true that all of us have moments when we love, dread, or can’t live without work. Now, all work—even for those who are prone to be workaholics like me—can be in some degree frustrating and difficult.
In your life, what is your attitude toward work – is this irreplaceable part of your humanity good, but also something that wears you down with the grind of it all? Do you really like the work you do or is it something you love to hate? Like my brother, are you prone to hate it and do only what you’ve got to do? Or for you is your attitude, “it is what it is”. You’ve got to face the music. You simply can’t live without it, but you would if you could.
But have you heard the good news? Have you discovered how Christ redeemed us from the curse of work? It’s that curse of trying to keep the do’s and the don’ts – the demands and pressures of life’s burdens – the grind and the failed expectations, the many cares, anxieties, and futility that can eventually crush the human spirit. They can multiply and make life become frustrating and difficult, but on the cross Jesus took our curse – the biting thistles and He took the crown of thorns on His head. He took the curse so we could wear the crown of eternal life. He did that so that those who believe in Him would not be stuck by ourselves with the crushing load. That’s how He could say: “Come unto Me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke and learn from Me, because I am lowly and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Do you grasp the import of these words? He's inviting you by faith to be yoked, to be connected to Him in relationship to Him. Indeed, as you would do this in the relationship of grace, He—and I say this respectfully—is the big ox and He’ll give you the relief you need and desire by letting Him do the heavy lifting.
What a precious gift! What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer! But besides Jesus redeeming us from the curse of work, He also took away its futility of the grind of seemingly meaningless toil when He said this,
“ He who receives you receives Me, and He who receives Me receives the One who sent Me.
And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is My
disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose His reward.”
Did you get that? Anything, even the smallest thing you do out of sacrificial love for one of God’s children will not be forgotten, but be rewarded. And by this, Jesus poured meaning into our everyday tasks, the stewardship of our time, talents, and possessions for the work of the Kingdom. St. Paul goes on to say,
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,
since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.”
What does this say about the work we do as the people of God? It’s all about the building up of the Kingdom and we are to do our work and as only for an audience of one – as unto the Lord Himself. N.T. Wright spells out some specifics:
“What you do in the present by painting, singing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging
wells, campaigning for justice, caring for the needy will last into God’s future.”
These acts are not simply ways of making this present life more bearable, but it’s part of building up God’s Kingdom and central to our mission of showing the world grace.
Years ago, there was a PBS series based on interviews with survivors from WWII. The soldiers recalled how they spent a particular day. One sat in a foxhole all day and once or twice shot a German tank that drove by. Others played cards, and frittered away the time. A few got into furious firefights, but mostly the day passed like any other day for an infantryman on the front. Later, however, they learned that they had just participated in one of the largest, most decisive engagements of the war, the Battle of the Bulge. It did not feel decisive to any of them at the time, because none had the big picture of what was happening elsewhere.
The moral of that story: Great victories are won when ordinary people execute their assigned tasks. And so, for those of us at First St. Paul’s as the apostle Paul reminds us there is a great battle going on for the souls of every man, woman, and child on this planet. There is a huge war that continues between the forces of the Kingdom of God and Satan’s principalities and powers of darkness in our embattled world. So, the call goes out to be faithful and for us to do the work of building up the Kingdom. A faithful person in the work of God’s Kingdom does not debate each day whether he or she is in the mood to follow the sergeant’s orders or show up at a boring job. So be diligent, be busy in your work as you serve your King – the audience of One – and as you await the time when He declares: “Well done, good and faithful servant!”