Sunday, March 13, 2011

Work and Idleness

Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd on March 13, 2011.

Genesis 3 is a fascinating chapter in the Bible, because there are so many things to find in it. Here's something new that I wondered about this week when I read through the Genesis passage. In Genesis 2:15 we read that God put Adam in the garden to cultivate it and keep it. He put Adam to WORK. Now, some of us think that work is something we have to do because life will just eat us up if we can't make ends meet—if we don't have security. We think of work as a punishment—something that we HAVE to do. Oh, I wish I were rich, so I could goof off all the time! I think of the song from Fiddler on the Roof: If I were a rich man, all day long I'd biddle biddle bum. A perfect life would be all leisure, right? Well, look at Adam and Eve in the garden. We've got images of them all frolicking all naked and goofing off, playing with all the animals. Children's picture books have strategically placed bushes and branches that hide the nudity, so that Adam and Eve look like hand puppets behind a screen. And the animals are behind the bushes, too, usually a giraffe and and elephant poking their heads out, being all entertaining.

In reality, it wasn't all frolicking. Adam was put to work, before the fall, not as a punishment, but because that is something God does. He works and he rests, and that is what people do, we work and we rest, because we are made in the image of God. Work is good. Cultivating the Garden was Adam's ministry.

Work is good because it focuses our minds. Sometimes it's easier to pray when working. I find that my most active prayer time is when I am doing the dishes each night. Also, work keeps us from being idle. When I say “idle,” I'm not talking about rest that is required. I'm not talking about the sabbath, the important rest. I'm talking about being idle, the time in our lives when we can get into the most trouble. The outer banks is a prime location for idleness. We have a flurry of work during the on season, and when then off season hits, we rest. Often we've made money to help us for the rest of the year. Everything shuts down for the off season, and we have lots and lots of idle time. That's when we can get into trouble.

What kind of trouble? Let's look at Genesis 3:6. Eve gives Adam the apple to eat—because he is standing right there! She doesn't have to go hunting for him. He is sitting there at her heel like a faithful dog. He didn't lift a finger to prevent her from breaking the one rule God had given them. And my new thought this week, reading the scriptures was, “Isn't he supposed to be working?” Adam is idle. And I don't think this is Adam's sabbath, because I think God would have been there if it had been Adam's sabbath. They would have rested together. No, this is goofing off time from work! This is playing on the Internet time—surfing the Web, cutting up. They're surfing the garden. Hey! What's under this rock over here? Oooh a snake! This happens to us. We get idle, temptation comes in, and we can't resist.

Now let's flash ahead to our Gospel reading: Matthew 4:1-11. Here we have Jesus' temptation, and this is not to say that this is the only time that Jesus was tempted in his ministry. Like us, he was tempted every day of his life, but this scene is important because it is the beginning of his ministry. He is about to get to work. This is really Satan's big opportunity. Jesus has not begun yet, and there is only a little window! Get in there and get tempting! Now, let's look at the temptation itself. The temptation of Jesus is the same as the temptation of Adam: a false ministry. Isn't it interesting that temptation hits us when we are idle, when we are away from work, and the temptation itself is work, or more specifically a false ministry. Adam's real ministry was cultivating the garden of Eden. The false ministry that the serpent offered to him was being like God. Adam accepted the offer, and we've been paying for it ever since. Jesus' work, the ministry that he was about to undertake, was being God! It was saving the world—through teaching and healing and then ultimately his own death on the cross and his resurrection at Easter: this was the most amazing work possible. The devil offered Jesus a false ministry of politics, worldly power and values, and miracles that would give himself the glory instead of the father.

Now, these temptations in this passage are good warnings for the church. They all look good to the church, and they look like they will help. We can feed the hungry, we can heal the sick, we can be influential in the world! Giving into these temptations may win a lot of people to the church, yes, but they are won in ways that Jesus rejected, worldly ways like using lying and trickery. Like when we we put on a good performance, or when we tell people what they want to hear instead of the truth, or when you pretend to reach out to someone but all you're trying to do is influence them to do what they want you to do. That's all politics is. We ally with the worldly powers to get what we want quick, and we can look at history to see what state-run churches look like. We must look at the false values like politics and hold them up to the true values like submission and suffering. The temptations that the devil presented to Jesus and what he rejected and what the church also must reject is this sort of false ministry.

If Jesus had accepted that offer, the devil actually would have been in charge of things forever. Sometimes it seems today like Satan is in charge, doesn't it? But the reality is, Jesus won the battle on that cross. He cleaned up the mess that Adam had allowed into the world. How Satan is no longer in power but seems like he is—that's another sermon, but we have faith that Jesus has done the work that the Father commissioned him to do, and it was successful, and he has undone the damage that Adam did.

Now, we may have heard before how Jesus is the second Adam, but exactly what is the connection between the two? Well, Jesus is regaining what Adam lost for all of mankind—a relationship with God. Adam lost this relationship through idleness, and Jesus regained it through work: his ministry, up through his crucifixion and resurrection, is geared toward putting us right with God.

George Muller is this great missionary who relied entirely on prayer to run an orphanage. I'm reading a biography of George Muller to Rose, and this week we had an Adam/Jesus story. George is in school. His job, his work, is to study and get good grades. He does this, but he also used to lead a life of drinking and gambling. He has put it all behind him, and he is now studying all the time. However, in this chapter of his story, all it takes is just one person to invite him out to a bar, and then it's all downhill. You've heard the phrase falling off the wagon? He somersaulted off that wagon, and he was losing money, and borrowing money, and getting in debt all over the place.

What it took was someone else inviting him to a bible meeting. He came to the meeting for fun, so that he could tell some funny stories to his drinking buddies, but when he went to the meeting, the gospel message hit home—right between the eyes. He didn't just get back onto the wagon, he got onto a brand new wagon with reinforced sides and Jesus Christ at the reigns. It took only one man to lead George Muller astray, but it also only took one man to bring him into a relationship with God.

It took one man, Adam, to bring sin into the world—into our world—because we are born into sin and with sin comes death. But it only takes one man, the God-man Jesus Christ, to defeat death and take our sins away. As our passage in Romans says, we share in Adam's sin. What do you think about when you hear that? You know what I think? I think, No Fair! We didn't do anything wrong! Why do we all have to share in the sin of one guy, just because he screwed up?

But when we hear the other side, that we also share in Christ's life, his defeat of death, do we ever hear anyone saying, No fair! Why not? We didn't do anything to deserve it, either. We always say “no fair” when we are told we share in Adam's sin, but we never say “no fair” when we are told we share in Christ's gift. There is a difference, though. Adam's sin is like a curse or a disease, extending to all mankind whether we like it or not. The result of this disease is death. Christ's everlasting life is a gift, extended to all, but it must be accepted, accepted by each individual like a gift. The result of this gift is life.

Adam's sin is like the trunk of an enormous tree with billions of branches. Think of Adam being the trunk and we are all those little twigs and branches, all attached to that family tree of sin. Now, your everyday lumberjack would say that to stop this spread of sin, you hit the trunk, but that would kill the whole tree. That would be like God giving up on us all. Think of a world-wide flood where not even Noah and his family were spared. God has that option, yes, he could wipe everything out tomorrow, because he created it, he can destroy it. But God decided from the beginning that destroying everything and starting over was never an option.

What God chooses to do instead is astonishing, and Paul's letter shows us the amazing universal range of the power of the Gospel. Jesus' death and resurrection does not hit the trunk of the family tree of sin, it hits every single one of those billions of branches. Jesus' ministry is so powerful that it touches every single individual who ever lived and who ever will live. It's not the easy fix of cutting down the whole tree, wiping out the whole Earth. No, Jesus' is the hard work of healing every scrape and scratch of the human condition on an individual basis. He cares as much about the sin you committed this morning as the world-shattering sins that change the face of history.

Jesus worked really hard on this gift that he wants to give everyone. He worked on it with his two hands, and he worked on it with his feet, too. Those are the places where the nails were driven. He worked on this gift with his life, with his death, and with his life again. The world is his garden, and he still cultivates it today, working for each person to grow in Him. You may remember that cultivating a garden was Adam's work. Adam dropped that work, and Jesus Christ picked it up again.

As the church, let's think about how we can help Christ in his work, and as individuals, let's think about how we can accept the gift Christ has given us.

1 comment:

  1. Great sermon, Fred, but I feel like we have all taken a bite of that apple. It's being human. I mean, look at our little ones. I know mine would go after something I told her not to, if I turned my back for a few minutes, at least once or twice.

    Good for you doing the dishes. I am going to let my husband know what an opportune prayer time he is passing up :o)- Heidi

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