For days now, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of “Work as Worship.” I have to admit to feeling incredibly humbled at the prospect of having anything worthwhile to say on the matter when there are wise and poetic voices to inspire us on this topic: Brother Lawrence, Kathleen Norris, the Desert Fathers & Mothers, John O’Donohue. After reading their works, it was easier to find the presence of GOD in the tasks that would otherwise feel mundane or unglamorous.
This is such an interesting topic to me. In my pastoral experience, I’ve met so many earnest people who seek careers in ministry because of the seeming nobility of the work, the purposefulness, the “rightness.” It seems to them, at that horizon of their life, that this kind of work is somehow better or more exhilarating than an office job or the barista job at Starbucks or finishing that teacher licensure. (HA! Oh, sorry…) Any Divine call on your life for the sake of the gospel must be into vocational ministry, right? Hmmm…
The concept of “Work as Idol” is not new to us. We could sit for hours together, no doubt, and talk about the pursuit of glory in American capitalism, etc. etc. etc. It’s easier to justify to ourselves, though, when we start talking about ministry or the work we do as spiritual directors, pastors, worship curators. But I always wonder: how many of us find our Christian identity in the work we do – the title we possess, the validity of having a check from an institution – than we do from the actual process of our work? I meet just as many people inside the Church who have made their job their idol (and identity or hiding place, the list goes on) as I have met people outside the Church who seem to have sold their souls to The Man.
At the end of the day, work gets a bad rap. It was part of the curse, after all. We forget that man had work before (the tending of the garden) he just didn’t hate it, or resent it. I wonder if actually the metaphor exists to tell us that he just hadn’t yet created a hierarchy of “good work” and “bad work.” The power scheme shifted from the egalitarian, interdependence of the Garden to the hierarchy of humankind’s power and identity-making titles. In the Eden place, maybe humankind’s purposes and identity guided her decisions and actions instead of the other way around.
This same dynamic of work-as-identity happens in the worship gathering. I find that my list of volunteers who want to sing or preach or make art tends to be much, much longer than my list of people willing to set up stations, inventory altar supplies, help in the nursery, run sound or push the button on the media presentations. Ah yes, the mundane and the unglamorous.
Perhaps the problem lies in our definition of work. And maybe even in our definition of worship.
The word liturgy literally means “the work of the people.” The work. So we’ve made that to mean certain things, a certain prioritized list. Interestingly, the word came from a people who knew this to extend to the temple sweepers, to the bread makers for the feasts, to those who polished the silver in the temple, those who guarded the doors, those who cleaned up the floors after the sacrifices. They extended it to the collective voices in prayer, the active listening as Holy texts were read, to the work of gathering your sacrifice.
How inspiring. To draw a lesson from our ancients: it’s the intentionality in our work that makes it worship, not the task itself. It’s the presentness, the centeredness, and actually – this is what grates on our American sensibilities – the taming of our own ego in the process.
In whatever vocation you have been given, what would it look like for you to be present? Intentional? What would it look like for that ‘sense of presence’ to flow from your idea that GOD is at work in our work? Oh – and how can you participate and work in worship this week?
Loading ...
