Fruitfulness at work

 18/1/26                  St Peter’s                                    Epiphany 2     

 Colossians 3:12-17                                                 John 1:29-42

The section of the Fruitfulness course we’ve come to this morning is ‘Making Good Work’. The author reminds us that work is part of creation, it’s part of who we are, and  although we live in a frustrating and fallen world and this affects everything we are involved in, we still can work in a way that brings glory to God.

That is true even for those of us who are no longer in paid employment. In our Gospel reading we see Jesus beginning to call his disciples - follow me - get to know me - learn from me - there’s no sense here or anywhere in scripture that this is a call that comes with a retirement age.

But what is our work - how are we to bring glory to God? In John’s gospel glory often means seeing the truth about who Jesus is. Our work then is to show as much of the truth about Jesus as we can by the way we live, it is to point to Jesus - it’s to show something of what the kingdom on earth looks like. 

This is not an easy work - Dorothy Sayers wrote ‘God underwent three great humiliations in his efforts to rescue the human race. The first was the incarnation, when he took on the confines of a human body. The second was the Cross, when he suffered the ignominy of public execution. The third humiliation is the church. In an awesome act of self-denial, God entrusted his reputation to ordinary people.’

And of course sometimes the church, made up of ordinary people, gets things disastrously wrong.

One of my first clergy jobs was as Chaplain to Birmingham Markets - based at St. Martin’s in the Bullring. Every year the Trader’s had a conference in Blackpool - and because it was quite unusual for a market to have a chaplain they used to take me along as a kind of mascot. One year I was chatting to someone who was very friendly who said he could never contemplate believing in God - he’d been to a church school - and had been regularly severely beaten - he wasn’t alone in this, it was what the priests running the place did. And of course he was right not to believe in a Jesus of brutality - for Jesus to be portrayed in this way is identity theft - if he had believed in that Jesus he would have been believing in a false God. What he had seen was the opposite of grace and compassion.

People look at the church and what they see there shapes their understanding of the nature of God.

I’m sure that what that trader went through would now be illegal, but that’s no help to him recovering a true sense of God’s love and care for him

The Greek myth of Procrustes is about an inn keeper who insisted that his guests fitted into his bed exactly - if someone was too short he stretched them on the rack till they fitted, if they were too tall he lopped off the extra bits and so he acquired their belongings. It didn’t end well for Procrustes, the hero Theseus was too much for him. 

None of us think the intentions we set out with are bad or unreasonable, nobody intends to be the villain. I imagine that the school the trader went to thought it was doing the best for its pupils  - they had an idea of the proper shape for a good christian child and believed if they weren’t quite right they could be beaten until they were a better fit. A version of Procrustes bed.

Of course their methods were wrong but so was the end they had in view. Beware of the idea that our faith is one size fits all. God meets us all differently and the response of each of us to God will differ. How could it be otherwise? No friendships are exactly the same, no marriages are exactly the same, each of the disciples had an individual relationship with Jesus - this variety is part of the glory of our faith. God has made each of us as individuals with potential to grow into a unique element in the mosaic which is the people of God.   

When I was at university the Christian Union had a network of prayer groups for different Missionary Societies which all tended to be rather niche and rather small. The one I went to was for Wycliffe Bible translators and there were three of us - one cold, wet evening - it was in Manchester - I hadn’t had a particularly good day and I was late for the start and arrived feeling particularly flat. The other two had started but when I got in they stopped for a moment to welcome me in and for some reason, that evening it was transformative for me. A trivial incident but fifty years later - though I have forgotten some details and I bet my friends don’t remember it at all, for me it is still  a moment of grace. God’s grace meets us at our particular point of need and enables us to see him more clearly. It nourishes our growth into the people he intends us to be - and the more we become those people the greater  the possibility that those outside the church will see something of the actual truth about who Jesus is.    

 Making good work Our job description then is to live and work in such a way that God is glorified, that the truth of what he is like, his grace, can be seen and known.

How do we fulfil this as individuals and as a church.  We aren’t just given a job description, In Colossians we also get a dress code Of course, God’s clothing is bespoke so not only is the way we clothe ourselves in the virtues tailor made to us, so too it will fit the person on the receiving end. 

Paul writes ‘As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, we have a high calling how can we live in a way appropriate to it

clothe yourselves with compassion, Compassion is a love that takes the initiative. It seeks to meet the need of another so they will thrive. How can we as a church put on compassion? 

kindness, what I received from my friends - how kind are we?

humility, does not mean  pretending to be rubbish, it means having a proper estimate of our own strengths and weaknesses. It means meeting others knowing they are as much the beloved creation of our Heavenly Father as we are.  

meekness, does not mean being a push over, it does mean listening to others and easing off on the assertiveness 

and patience. To quote the Psalm ‘Our times are in your hand’

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience

But we are not perfect and it is difficult - we are all equally important but uniquely made. If the church is to show God’s glory each of the facets that we all bring needs to have its place. Easy to say hard to do. Difference makes makes occasional misunderstanding inevitable

Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 

When the church is a community of forgiveness and reconciliation it is a powerful witness to what God is like. How can we make that an active part of church life.

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. 

And be thankful. 

 If we take these things seriously it won’t guarantee those moments of grace when we know God has touched us, but they will mean that they happen more often - that understanding that so much more has gone on in a conversation, or a casual meeting that we can only account for it by God’s active presence.

The course calls us to live and work in a way that brings glory to God.And that is 

as much about the relationships we build as the projects we accomplish.

It won’t always feel like work; often living a godly life - enjoying what God has given us, exercising the gifts we have in a way that is constructive will mean doing what we find most satisfying. And so His glory is seen.