[This message was shared during worship with Friendship Lutheran Church of Amelia, Ohio on August 19, 2007. If you live in or are visiting the Cincinnati area, feel free to worship with us. We have Sunday worship at 10:00AM. Starting September 8, we'll resume our Saturday worship schedule. The Saturday service, which won't happen on September 29, incorporates the opportunity to informally discuss the Biblical texts and the life issues they address.]Luke 10:28-32
The story’s told of a couple who had decided if they had children, that only one of the parents would continue to work outside the home. The other would stay at home with the kids. In this particular family, the man kept his 9 to 5 (or 9 to 6, 9 to 7, 9 to 8) gig and the woman took primary responsibility for child-rearing and household management.
One day, the guy comes home to find total mayhem. “The kids were outside, still in their pajamas, playing in the mud and muck. There were empty food boxes and wrappers all around. As he proceeded into the house, he found an even bigger mess — dishes on the counter, dog food spilled on the floor, a broken glass under the table, and a small pile of sand by the back door. The family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing, and a lamp had been knocked over.
"He headed up the stairs, stepping over toys, to look for his wife. He was becoming worried that she may be ill, or that something had happened to her. He found her in the bedroom, still in bed with her pajamas on, reading a book. She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went."
He looked at her bewildered and asked, "What happened here today?” She again smiled and answered, “You know every day when you come home from work and ask me what I did today?” “Yes.” She answered, “Well, today I didn’t do it!”
I tell that story for a reason. You see, when some of you heard the incident involving Jesus and two of His friends, the sisters Mary and Martha, being read to you from the Bible, a little voice inside your head said, “Oh, boy, here Daniels goes again. He’s going to talk about how great it was for Mary to sit on her blessed assurance and how faithless it was for Martha to scurry around working like a madwoman while Jesus was teaching at their house.” But that’s not what I’m going to say.
At least, that’s not all I’m going to say.
I am going to say that sometimes we all feel like that stay-at-home mom did. Or like Martha did when Jesus came to visit her brother Lazarus, her sister Mary and her. Both felt that their hard work was unappreciated or underappreciated.
And there may have been times when Martha’s beef with Mary was completely warranted. When you look at another place in the New Testament where Martha and Mary figure, John, chapter 11, and you see that Martha is a person of action. Mary is more of a contemplative. Sometimes action is needed more than contemplation or rest. But not on the day our Bible lesson recounts.
If you’ve derived any kernel of Biblical truth from the first two installments of this series on Christians and Work, I hope that it would be that work is a good thing. God made us to do work. It’s part of what makes us human. It’s a way that we can worship and honor God.
Think of work as being like a fine piece of furniture, say that dining room set you scrimped and saved to buy. Now, when the delivery people arrive with it, you wouldn’t take them out the back door to the deck, where it could be exposed to the sun and the rain and all the elements, and say, “Just set it here.” That would be a complete misuse, an abuse, of a finely crafted piece meant to last for generations.
Work has its place. The work of hospitality that Martha thought she was doing, has its place. But there comes a point when work is misused and abused.
Martha had the opportunity to hear Jesus’ liberating word for repentant sinners, the Good News that we are freed from sin not by our efforts or good deeds, but solely by our trusting surrender to the Savior Who dies and rises for us.
But Martha was too busy acting important, being the linchpin who held civilization together, to pay attention to Jesus. Martha, at least in this instance, was being a workaholic. She exemplifies the lifestyle of workaholism, which always stems from a combination of personal insecurity, or a desire to be noticed, or the fear of insignificance, or idol worship, whether the idol is self, money, or power. Workaholism is never from God. And its effects can be devastating.
Some of you have heard me tell the true story of a business executive who had achieved great financial success. There was just one problem: He never saw his wife and kids. He never made his children’s school events. He only took “working vacations.” Finally, unable to take the life they were leading, his wife issued an ultimatum, “Get your workaholic lifestyle under control or I’m leaving and taking the kids with me. A divorce will only confirm the reality of our situation because right now, we're not really married. We just share a house....sometimes.”
At first, the exec was dumbfounded. He thought his wife was being ungrateful. Here he had provided every material thing anyone could want and she was talking about divorce!
But his wife stood firm. The next morning, he astounded his family by calling his office, clearing his calendar and telling them that he was taking the day off. He took the kids to school and spent the day talking with his wife.
At the end of the day, he came to an astounding decision. He would leave his job and use their savings to buy a little marina in northern Michigan. “We’ll work and play together,” he declared. “There’ll be no pressures or deadlines.”
Wife and kids were happy and within weeks, they’d made their move. But it didn’t take long for the old workaholic ways to re-emerge. The guy expanded the marina, added a restaurant, and built time share condos. He was at it from dawn to beyond dusk. One night, he returned home to an empty house. There was a brief note from his wife. This time, she would divorce him.
A few months later, an old acquaintance visited the guy at his empire by the lake. The exec took him for a spin in his boat. The acquaintance looked at all the exec's holdings that set on the shore and said, “When you look at all that, you must feel very proud.” “Frankly,” the executive said, “when I look at it, it makes me sick to my stomach.” Within days, he died of a massive heart attack. He was in his mid-forties.
Once workaholism has a person in its grips, it becomes a monster that needs constant feeding. It kills people’s relationships with God and others. It eventually kills the person never freed from it. It kills them spiritually and then it kills them physically.
So, can we be free of workaholism, free of work as an addiction?
I think that if we go back to that incident in Bethany again, we can find Jesus’ prescription for workaholism.
Remember what happened? Martha is busily serving. The workaholic executive who worked too many hours and did way more than was necessary for doing an excellent job, was resentful of his wife’s criticism. Martha is just like him. Doing way more than excellent hospitality demands, she resents her sister’s decision to sit and listen to the Lord. Seeing herself as a martyr and a model of good citizenship, Martha runs to Jesus and, in effect, upbraids Him for His insenstivity.
“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”
Jesus responds, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Workaholism is all about choices. Hard work and a commitment to excellence are good choices. But work to prove our self-worth or to call attention to ourselves are very bad choices. Martha was making a bad choice. Mary was choosing the Savior Jesus, a gift that could never be taken from her!
The child of God, the person who has turned from sin and believes in Jesus Christ, will want to work hard at the right times for the right reasons.
And this same child of God knows that she or he has nothing to prove to God or to the world. God has already given His approval to their lives.
They know that it’s okay to relax, that it’s even okay to sometimes says, “No” when the church asks them to take on a job.
Children of God relish the realities...
- that they are of central importance to God;
- that God created this world for them to enjoy; and
- that to prevent them from experiencing eternal separation from God, the rightful punishment for our sin, God became human, died for us, and rose to give us eternity with God. You are worthy. God says so. The shed blood of Jesus on the cross says so!
God’s antidote to the combination of self-hatred, self-worship, the need to be in control, and personal insecurity that expresses itself in workaholism, is embodied by Jesus.
Jesus brings us what the Bible calls grace, God’s charitable acceptance of repentant sinners offered to us through Christ.
The New Testament tells us, “by the free gift of Jesus Christ...” we are set free. With nothing left to prove, the follower of Christ is set free to move toward being who God made us to be. We're liberated by the realization that we aren't human doings, but human beings.
And there’s another freedom that God gives to us.
I read once about a fellow who had a strange habit. On Monday mornings, as a good friend was just sitting down at his desk for a new work week, he made a phone call. When his friend answered, the guy dispensed with small talk. All he said was, “This is God. You have the freedom to fail. I’ll still love you if you do.” Then he hung up.
When we belong to Jesus Christ, we have the freedom to fail. We have the freedom to do our best, fall flat on our faces, and know that we still have value. And know that if God gives us tomorrow, we can try again. We have the freedom to fail because God never fails to love us, stand by us, or bring the people and support we need to keep on keepin’ on whatever life brings.
God never fails to love you. Today, I challenge you to believe that, to latch onto Jesus Christ, and know, success or failure, God will never let go of you.
[The story about the messy house and yard are from HomileticsOnline.com. The true story of the Michigan business executive is one I heard Bill Hybels tell more than twenty years ago.]
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