Work Redeemed in the Kingdom of God: An Eschatological Hope for Our Labour in the Lord-Part 2
In part 1 I made the brief argument that we can all experience redemption in the brokenness of our work. But in order to make a strong case for this, we must first give credence to the complete breadth of the brokenness we face at work at this point in our cosmic story as well as the ascension into wholeness.
Descending Into Brokenness: A Painful Toil
For many, work is often dreadful. It is degrading, burdening, unjust, and stressful. We do a disservice to one another by romanticizing the current state of work, papering over its broken and sinful nature.[1] This is where we are now, and this is where we need to wrestle with the problems of brokenness in our work and grapple with the questions of why? and how? of its fallen state. In order to address these questions, R. Paul Stevens would advise we begin by “doing theology from below” which starts with an issue, a work, worker, or workplace issue, and contemplate it in light of Scripture until we gain God’s view of the situation and God’s wisdom on how to deal with it.[2] This type of theologizing is the approach the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes takes as he begins with a life situation and proceeds to a revelation.
Going to Work with the Professor
The writer, also known as the Professor, begins with the idea that “everything is meaningless.”[3] His starting point is right there in the brokenness, in the futility of life in the world and with work in his day. He describes this context using the words “under the sun.” Stevens suggests that the Professor is saying, “here is what life is like when viewed and experienced without any reference to a transcendent God,” and what work looks like at ground level “under the sun.”[4] Work is a terrible toil, vain and empty, a mere striving after wind.[5] But the Professor also describes work in a natural state of oscillation between restoration and brokenness. Thus, work becomes a living contradiction, both an opportunity for a meaningful vocation of ruling and subduing the earth, and a meaningless toil under the sun. On the one hand, our Christian theology tells us that our work matters to God, and yet we experience work that is often broken and pointless. We live with this tension as workers, in the workplace and in the very nature of work itself. The Apostle Paul understands this paradox as he writes about the contrast between life in the Spirit and life in the flesh which war within us as we seek to please God with our lives.[6] Stevens further suggests that the writer of Ecclesiastes invites us to think about our work in the presence of God and in the absence of God without a sacred-secular divide. When the Professor talks about a secular view of work “under the sun” without God, and the sacred view of work “under heaven” with God, the author provides no separation, but both at the same time. This means that regardless of the type of work we do, there exists both a meaninglessness under the sun and a meaningfulness under heaven concurrently.[7] What we can conclude, therefore, is that in the work of the believer is both the inevitability of God’s presence as well as broken futility. Thorns and thistles are a promise of God just as much as his very presence is.[8]
In our contemporary time, work has little to do with worship of God or with God’s demands on human life, but with worship of self.[9] We would be wise to not be hasty locating brokenness in the workplace or in the work itself before first locating it within us. One reason our work is so broken is because we ourselves are broken. When we are unhealthy, when we are not in a place of fulness in our identity with Christ, and when we fail to live into our God-given, God-designed personhood, we will bring brokenness into our workplaces.[10] Our own motives are thwarted by sin and tainted by our prideful, idolatrous hearts. As Keller and Alsdorf suggest, “we are the ones doing the thwarting. Despite our dedication and experience, we’re not as good as we’d like to be.”[11] Uli Chi warns, “we easily delude ourselves into thinking we are heroic figures doing great work sustained by our own virtues and abilities.”[12]
Going to Work with Ourselves
Sayers offers this reality check:
The distortions of sin are not just out there; they’re also inside us. Work can become distorted such that it is no longer a way to create and bring out the wonders of the created order, or to be an instrument of God’s providence, but it becomes selfish. Work can be an idol factory! We fall prey to motives of self-interest, fear, and glory seeking… If we could really be persuaded that we are miserable sinners—that the trouble is not outside us but inside us, and that therefore, by the grace of God, we can do something to put it right—we should receive that message as the most hopeful and heartening thing that one could imagine.[13]
Stevens and Ung offer us a number of ways in which our sin brings about brokenness at work: Compelled by greed, our desire for God is instead channeled for the things God has made. Lust has us trading in our heart’s deepest desires for counterfeit gods that do not satiate. Envy grips us as we begin looking around at others, cultivating self-pity as we compare ourselves to our colleagues. Acedia causes us to despise our present work circumstances leaving us on a chase for something or someone to satisfy longings we do not even know how to describe.[14] And while we know theologically that God is with us at work, we often do not feel him. Instead, we feel alone and disconnected. The imago dei, which never leaves us, becomes more and more difficult to see.[15] Brokenness in work, then, acts as a mirror that reflects back to us our own personal brokenness. It is crucial we acknowledge the sin in our personal lives and how it manifests itself in our work.
Having considered the brokenness within ourselves, we can then move on to grapple with the brokenness of the work itself. We must acknowledge that there are situations, such as a toxic workplace or an abusive situation, where we need to move on from rather than remain. We should not assume that “whatever is, is right,” or that “whatever is, is God’s call.”[16] There are plenty of horrible situations that would demand we depart without exception. At a structural and global level, there are many ways work is unjust, exploitative, and hostile. As Stevens comments, “we are patient revolutionaries working in structures that are groaning.”[17] Kaemingk and Willson use the term ‘workplace rituals’ paralleling the spiritual rituals we practice in the church. These rituals can be life-giving and dignifying but can also degrade and destroy which is especially true for workers who are disempowered or oppressed. By participating in them the worker can take on a dehumanized sense of self-worth as systems of injustice coerce marginalized workers to see themselves as objects of manipulation. Work can be a place with powerful idols or gods, each equipped with their own formative culture and rituals.[18] Witherington speculates about our contemporary society suggesting that “one of its worst by-products… is that we’re taught to evaluate work not on the basis of its goodness or usefulness, but on whether or not it is well remunerated. Work’s “worth” is based on its exchange value, not on its actual usefulness in God’s eyes.”[19] Work becomes broken when we treat workers as a means to an end, rather than as persons with dignity made in God’s image.
Going to Work with Good and Bad Work
But just because this is our shared reality does not mean we need to remain in work that is blatantly unjust and evil. Hamilton, based on Scripture, offers several examples of work which should cause us to pause and consider avoiding or making a change if we find ourselves in such situations:[20] Work that involves theft (covetousness), dishonesty (including all immoral, life-destroying schemes to make money), and selfishness (unwillingness to share). Work that involves disruptive discontent, meddlesome behaviour, laziness, disreputable conduct, and dependence on others. Work that involves idleness, faintheartedness/timidity, weakness, and unconcern for those who won’t work. Work that breeds idleness, rejecting apostolic teaching and example, mooching, burdening, meddlesome busy-bodying, and tolerance of what dishonours God. And finally, work that refuses to pay workers fairly.[21] There is plenty of work in the world that dishonours God and contributes to human degradation and insofar as it is within our power to avoid such work, we should do our due diligence to seek out work which aligns more closely with the character of God and that produces human flourishing. For us working in fallenness, we need to ask ourselves what our tasks are contributing to. Of course, this gets obscured when our work can cause both flourishing in one sense for some people, and degradation in another sense for others.
Nevertheless, merely trying to avoid such work is problematic for two reasons. The first is that for most in the world, work is a means to stay alive. There is no choice; work is a necessity, not a luxury. You simply do what is there to be done that will put a roof over our head, food on the table, and clothes on the body. Plenty of people are born or forced into destitute circumstances and relationships quite apart from their wills. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses those in the community trying to pursue some higher “spiritual” life, some even attempting to escape their embodied one. Paul offers a caution to them to remain in the situation to which God called them.[22] God’s call comes to us in the situation we are in which does not require we leave where we are.[23] We should be slow to judge or look down on someone’s work as if it is inferior to the “higher work of God’s Kingdom.” No matter how meager the job, it can be offered as worship to God. For instance, seventeenth century monk Brother Lawrence lived a humble life of servitude to his fellow priests performing “low order” tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and sandal repair after being discharged from the army due to a serious leg injury. Through his piety, wisdom, and joy, he became a highly influential spiritual leader in the community.[24] In his book The Practice of the Presence of God he writes: “I turn my little omelet in the pan for the love of God. The time of business does not differ from the time of prayer. In the noise and clutter of my kitchen… I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were on my knees at communion.”[25] If this does not make the point, Warren reminds us that for decades Jesus spent time building as a tradesman, a tekton who used his hands.[26] God came to earth incarnated as a man at a time in history when no prophets were raised and God revealed nothing to his people for hundreds of years and the God-man thought it worthwhile to spend time building things. In a world where people were dying, the poor were suffering, and injustice raged across a violent empire, God became flesh and built some furniture. And during this time, he was not preaching, healing, or clearing out temples. He was not calling disciples or starting a movement or raising the dead. “The light came into the darkness and did very ordinary work.”[27]
The second reason simply avoiding “bad” work is problematic is that it becomes difficult to draw a definitive line between which type of work falls within this category so neatly. Certainly, if your job is human trafficking or drug dealing it would be extremely difficult to glorify God with your day-to-day tasks and we should strive in the direction of work that produces human flourishing rather than obvious human degradation. In fact, John Stott defines work as “the expenditure of energy (manual, mental, or both) in the service of others, which brings fulfillment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God,”[28] which would disqualify trafficking and drug dealing as true work. But if we use Stott’s definition, suppose the work is not fulfilling to the worker, does this mean it is not true work? Even “good” work inevitably causes us to become dissatisfied, joyless, weary, resentful, selfish, sleepless, ineffective, arrogant. These thoughts all plumb the depths of our experience of work, felt by people at the end of a hard day or week or month, whether in the field, at the office, in the home, or by professionals who discover the fruit of their successful careers are mere vanity and emptiness.[29] We must acknowledge the presence of brokenness in all work, no matter how “holy” it may be or appear. There are times in work when we are obligated to choose between the lesser of two evils with our best judgement and conscience. We cannot always do everything with completely clean hands and an absolutely pure heart. Even work that we consider to be good can have a dark side that must be done in this world out of necessity to preserve the possibility for good and godly work to continue, such as advising clients in a corrupted financial system that benefits the rich over the poor, or defending the oppressed as a soldier in the military that involves warfare against other image-bearers.[30] The difficulty of discerning which parts of our work participate in God’s renewal is why the Psalms teach us that “unless the Lord builds our house, our labour is in vain” and to pray and ask that the Lord would “establish the work of our hands” and “to make it of lasting value.”[31] J.R.R. Tolkien’s short story Leaf by Niggle shows us that our deepest aspirations for work will only come to full fruition in the age to come. Anticipating work in the paradise of God’s future means that our work will always fall short on this side of eternity.[32]
Going to Work with Jesus
Therefore, the Christian response to brokenness in work ought not be one of nihilistic futility, nor of “faith-filled” ascendency, but of descending directly into the brokenness as an emulation of Christ in the incarnation—taking on the full burden, joining in the suffering of humanity to help bear its weight. When Christ says, “my burden is easy and my yoke is light,” he is not suggesting that the yoke is removed and we no longer need to labour arduously, but rather we now work unto the Lord where Jesus himself, the one who carries our yoke with us, invites us to be his “yokefellow.”[33] Christians become burden sharers, not burden bearers.[34] The Apostle Paul said his own work was “filling up the sufferings of Christ.”[35] And since we have been baptised into the body of Christ, not only do we have Christ himself as our support, but we also have the community of God’s family to bear our burdens with us, and us with theirs.[36] Johnson comfortingly reminds us that “at the same pace of the avalanche of sin that covered every part of our earthly existence, is the grace of God, coming near, sustaining, and redeeming that which was broken.”[37] When work seems like drudgery, if it is directed towards God’s glory, good character, and the edification of others, it is at the very least divine drudgery, not mere toil, not mere activity. It has meaning, purpose, and direction. It is Kingdom-bringing. N.T. Wright offers us some encouragement as we navigate the inescapable brokenness of work here and now:
Shaping our world… is a matter of sharing and bearing the pain and puzzlement of the world so that the crucified love of God in Christ may be brought to bear healingly upon the world at exactly that point. Because following him involves taking up our cross, we should expect that to build on his foundation will be to find the cross etched into the pattern of our life and work over and over again.[38]
Ascending From the Brokenness: An Eschatological Hope
In the previous section I make the argument that all workers are fated to encounter brokenness, whether in themselves, at the workplace, or in the work itself. In this section I argue that, just as all work is destined to produce some level of brokenness, God’s redemption of said brokenness is also available and made possible by the eschatological hope in the renewal of all things. In this “already-not-yet” Kingdom, though we do not experience the consummation and full renewal of creation, we live in the age of the Spirit. After Jesus ascended into heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit and began the inauguration of the Kingdom of heaven bringing flourishing to the world now (partly) and in the end (fully).[39] Redemption in work is not as certain as brokenness is but becomes unlocked as we deliberate and experience “work as it can be” in God’s Kingdom. Note that the use of the word “can” denotes potential rather than assurance. This is not “work as it always is” now that Christ has come, rather it is the potential for what it can be—what God, by his grace, allows it to be. This begs the question, what is this potential hinging on? I would agree with Stevens when he suggests that “perhaps why so many Christians are overwhelmed by the drudgery, brokenness, and toil of their work is because they haven’t been given a Christian vision for work in the world.”[40] There are a number of implications the Christian vision for work provides to help us experience redemption in work.
Being a Co-Kingdom Bringer
We can begin to discover the response to work’s brokenness by knowing where we are seated and where we are planted as co-Kingdom-bringers. God inaugurated the coming of his Kingdom in Christ, which he will consummate in the age to come—but in the meantime, how does the Kingdom of God come? We are taught to pray, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”[41] Is this prayer merely asking for God to speed up the process and do what he plans to do at the resurrection? God could bring his Kingdom entirely himself whenever he pleases, yet he chooses instead to patiently use us to join in the work. This can be mysterious at times, as we are not always certain if what we are doing is truly advancing the Kingdom or not. Nevertheless, God invites us to partner with him in making all things new, which is a long journey—one that spans over our entire lives and will continue on into eternity.[42] As Wright suggests, “Christians are not just to be a sign and foretaste of the ultimate salvation: they are to be part of the means by which God makes this happen in both the present and the future.”[43] Colossians 3:1-4 teaches us that we are seated in heavenly places with Christ and we are to set our minds and our lives, which are now in Christ, on the Kingdom of God. If we think about and believe that we are seated with Christ in the highest position of power in our day-to-day work, that is going to change things. When Paul instructs the Colossians to set their minds on things above rather than on earthly things, he is not asking them to cut their ties and evade their responsibilities in the world (as we saw earlier with his warning to the Corinthians). In the same way, Paul expects the Colossian church to remain planted in their communities, families, and jobs, teaching them about their positions both with God and in the world.[44] Since the Kingdom of God is at hand, we set our minds on the Kingdom which has already made its way to earth.[45] Therefore, with an imagination fixed in heaven and feet planted on earth, we have the opportunity to connect the resources of the Kingdom to the realities in our world. This will inform how we see and experience the upside-down way in which Christ brings his Kingdom to earth. With our feet planted firmly in the earth, we yearn compassionately in our shared human vulnerability and brokenness. But by knowing where we are seated, we live right in the depths of this shared humanity with access to the authority and power of the One who is over all and through all and in all.[46] And being seated with Christ is not a passive seating but an active one. We are called to action—to work. Our response is, in part, to seek and to mitigate the brokenness, bringing more beauty, justice, truth, healing, flourishing, and shalom of God through the work of our hands. Warren beautifully describes the worker’s position of being both seated in heaven and planted on earth:
Through [work] we love others in embodied and practical ways. The call to alleviate suffering is integral to many of our jobs, from parenting, to firefighting, to teaching, to politics, to medicine, to social work. And we do this as a church. For millennia, Christians have formed hospitals, orphanages, homes for the disabled and poor, schools and universities. But good work, in the face of brokenness and vulnerability, is not only done to alleviate suffering, but also to defy it, to make beauty from ashes.[47]
Worshipping at Work
Another way we reconcile the brokenness in work is through expanding our lived understanding of worship and its connection to work. Genesis 2:15 says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” The word translated here as “work” in Hebrew is abad which, in addition to “work” is sometimes translated as “service.” So work is service—to God, to people, and to the earth itself. But abad is also translated numerous times throughout the Old Testament as “worship.” Thus, work and worship are not two separate ideas, but are two translations of the same Hebrew word, connected and interrelated.[48] Andy Crouch suggests that “work is not a secular activity; it is a sacred one originally ordained by God, and so it must be undertaken in holy ways.”[49] Dorothy Sayers, reverberating the call to worship with our whole beings in Romans 12:1, describes work “as a way of life where the nature of man finds his proper exercise and delight to the glory of God where the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction, is the medium in which he offers himself to God.”[50] Kaemingk and Willson suggest we bring the spiritual intimacy and power of Sunday worship into work with us on Monday, while also bringing our work into Sunday worship and dialoguing with God about it. At Sunday worship we have the opportunity to carry our frustrations from the workplace into the sanctuary. Inhabiting our worship as a worker opens our awareness to something, perhaps from a song or prayer or sermon, that directly ministers to our work struggles.[51] Wolterstorff offers three helpful mediums to articulate our stories to God in worship: trumpets, ashes, and tears. Through trumpets we carry our praise and thanksgiving. Through ashes we bring our confessions and sins. Through tears we bring our laments, confusions, and anger. Here we cultivate a conversation between God and workers, faith and work, the sanctuary and the workplace.[52] Then, having spoken with God, we return to work, inhabiting our workplaces differently, with a sense of courage and awareness of God’s imminent presence and comfort. In the same way that the workplace can have rituals that degrade and destroy, we also can build and foster worship rituals that bring life and awaken us to a divine power that we are prone to forget. Work, then, has the opportunity to become one of the primary if not the primary places for discipleship—the context and crucible in which Christ shapes us, our character, prayer life, and mission.
Locating our Work in the New World Coming
A third way to respond to work’s brokenness is by locating the full fruition of work in eternity. As Miroslav Volf says, “our eschatology must shape our vision of our work.”[53] With all good Kingdom work, we will likely not see its fruitfulness for a long time, and even then the reward will be in the next life.[54] But we have hope today in the eschatological reality we wait for, that work itself will be made new. In God’s new heavens and new earth, labor is no longer marked by toil.[55] Not that work will end—we will not spend eternity sitting around eating all day or singing in a perpetual church service. Our labour will no longer be in vain.[56] The eschatological visions of Isaiah and Zechariah give us a picture not of a workless kingdom, but of a warless existence in which we enjoy all the fruit of our labour. When Isaiah envisions the final state of affairs, his vision of shalom, well-being, peace, and ultimate flourishing is not in a workless paradise. It is in a world at peace worshipping the one true God working together rather than warring against each other.[57] Lesslie Newbigin observes that in addition to our bodies being raised, so also will our work: “All the faithful labour of God’s servants which time seems to have buried in the dirt of failure, will be raised up, will be found to be there, transfigured, in the new Kingdom. Their labour was not lost, it has found its place in the completed Kingdom.”[58] In light of this destiny, our work emerges as a source of flourishing, blessedness, and abundance that ripples through all eternity. As we wait for God to renew all things, we work through the brokenness and futility, with the limited gifts, influence, and capacity God has given us for the renewal of work itself along with its systems and structures in the world.[59]
The final goal of God’s redemptive work is the New Jerusalem—a material creation restored, not escaped.[60] This New Jerusalem brings with it the culture of the Kingdom of God. With any change, there must be death and disruption to what was to make room for what will be. If all things were broken because of sin, then God’s redemptive plan will disrupt sin and bring it to its ultimate death to make way for all things to be made new. Crouch observes:
When we think of the ultimate end of sin, even sin at work, death is what we inevitably come to. There is no greater burden or enemy of all that is good and true and beautiful than death itself. But the work of Christ at Easter renders the ultimatum of sin powerless; Christ overcame death! This means we’re invited to experience work, in light of Easter, as life-giving rather than death-dealing.[61]
Hence, as heirs of this promise there is no end to our opportunities to restore and reconcile. Every industry, workplace, or task offers us an avenue through which we can become a restorer and a reconciler. What matters more than the job itself are the workers involved. Even the sweatshop worker can advocate for the suffering of herself and her colleagues, and even if it does not lead to radical change or justice in this life, it will be carried out in the next. Barbara Brown Taylor reflects on asking God about her calling once she completed seminary. After finding the proper place and posture to be alone with God, she finally heard his answer: “Anything that pleases you. And belong to me.”[62] You see, for the one whose devotion is completely to God, whose mind is renewed, whose soul is saved, and whose heart is surrendered, what pleases this person will please also God. Taylor concludes, “whatever I decided to do for a living, it was not what but how I did it that mattered. God had suggested an overall purpose but was not going to supply the particulars for me.”[63] With or without us, his redemption plan will succeed, and he has given us the how (belonging to Christ) to participate in good works wherever we are.[64]
Christ’s work of salvation not only accomplishes the saving of souls but also the re-creation of the world. In Christ, we are given another attempt at the cultural mandate, reinstated as God’s stewards of the earth, given back the opportunity to live into our design which bears the image of the Creator and Ruler, Sustainer and Redeemer, wired to make something more of what we have been given. Culture creating, as Andy Crouch argues, is in our DNA. The question is whether we as Christians will meaningfully engage in such activities as part of our work and realize that through it we are creating a new world, one in which we actively bring the Kingdom of God.[65] “When Jesus came to earth, he was not just delivering “good news.” He inaugurated the coming of the Kingdom of God to earth as the ultimate culture forming event that will ever happen on earth. This coming would touch every sphere and every scale of culture… the remaking of humankind.”[66] Christ’s work reshaped marriages and families, church praxis and doxologies, the social standing of society’s outcasts, resistance to oppressive authoritarian regimes, integrity in business, etc. Crouch presses:
Are we creating and cultivating things that have a chance of furnishing the New Jerusalem? Will the cultural goods we work for be identified as the glory and honour of our cultural traditions? While it is good to ask questions of our work like, will my work be noticed? Will my business have a profitable quarter? Will this contract be accepted? etc. How much more should we consider a more long-term evaluation of our work in light of God’s redemptive purpose for the world?[67]
Since Christ inaugurated a new era when he ascended and sent the Holy Spirit, he made life in the Spirit determine the entire life, spiritual as well as embodied, of the Christian. Therefore, work for the believer is invited to be done under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and in the light of the forthcoming New Jerusalem.[68]
Conclusion: Our Response
Our work weaves us together, dependent and interconnected, each one relying on the work of others. Today’s globalized civilization is a web of billions of people working together in the spirit of collaboration, each bringing their own unique contribution.[69] God could send us manna from heaven in response to our prayer for daily bread, but instead he chooses to use us to serve and provide for one another through human farming, agriculture and trade.[70] The ideal of self-sufficiency is a myth founded on the even bigger myth of radical individualism—all work is interconnected in some way, whether we see it or not.[71] As Robert Bellah observes of Western culture, “we are moving to an ever greater validation of the sacredness of the individual person, [but the] social fabric that would hold individuals together is vanishing… The sacredness of the individual is not balanced by any sense of the whole or concern for the common good.”[72] God made us to need and depend upon each other in more ways than our cultural myths lead us to believe. “We should pay careful attention to and express gratitude for the community we are part of and are called to serve. Our work was never meant to be done for ourselves, but in partnership with God and one another.”[73] Recognizing that work was created for connectedness helps us push against the self-idolizing lure of culture and live into the greater, communal value of our work. It is far easier for the farm labourer to feel the drudgery of harvesting fruit when they cannot see the nourishment it provides to the end consumer. Keeping our sights on the metaphorical or literal fruit of our labour helps us see the flourishing that will array the New Jerusalem. Bearing this in mind, if we looked retrospectively on our journey, we might be able to see and identify ways in which God has already worked providentially in our jobs to serve and provide for others in ways we had not previously considered. Maybe there were times when God was weaving a kind of supernatural thread in his redemptive activity that produced fruit we had never seen or thought of before. This exercise might give us insight and foresight into how God’s redemption has and will continue to work itself out in the successes and failures, profits and losses, and pleasures and pains of our collective labour.[74]
Brokenness typically leaves a mark. It is rare that we go through significant pain unscathed. But perhaps the scars from the brokenness we experience in work makes the forthcoming renewal even more glorious than if it was never broken in the first place. What if the pain we bear now is what allows for such a great redemption in the future? This is the idea behind kintsugi, a Japanese art form that involves repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer mixed with gold or other metals. Kintsugi is built on the notion that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art. The breakage is part of the history of the object, rather than considering it something to disguise. Every break is unique and instead of repairing an item like new, the technique actually highlights the "scars" as a part of the design.[75] There is no attempt to hide the damage, the repair is highlighted. Maybe this is why Jesus’ resurrected body still had the scars from his crucifixion which he readily chose to show his disciples.[76] We would likely assume that a glorified, resurrected body would not have scars. At first thought, scars seem like an odd feature of perfected, new-world humanity—but scars were God’s idea to begin with. He made human skin heal this way from significant injury which tells a story, sometimes to our shame or to our glory depending on the injury. That the gospel writers testify so plainly to Jesus’s resurrection scars must mean the scars are not a defect, but a glory. [77] His scars tell us that he knows our pain. God became fully human, suffering with us and for us, as he carried our human sins to die in our place, demonstrating his great love for us.[78] As healed wounds, Jesus’ scars forever tell us of our final victory in him. The book of Revelation unveils the ultimate triumph, that it is our scarred Savior, "the Lamb who was slain,” who sits on the throne of the universe.[79] Is this not characteristic of God’s upside-down Kingdom—where the meek inherit the earth, where suffering produces endurance, and where Christ’s wounds provide our healing?[80] God making all things new is not a reversal back to the garden, nor is it a complete restart, but a renewed continuation of what was, bearing the healed marks of the past in the new reality.
“Despite the fact that work can be a potent reminder (and even an amplifier) of the curse of sin on all things, it is not itself a curse. We were built for it and freed by it.”[81] While brokenness is an inevitability of work on this side of eternity, God invites everyone to experience redemption and freedom by participating in bringing the Kingdom of heaven to earth through work. While certain work will ultimately afford us more opportunity for the latter, entrance into the brokenness is unavoidable, regardless of job or industry. But ascendance from it is also available to the one working wholeheartedly for the Kingdom of God where their true reward awaits.[82] “Our work—paid or not, drudgery or a joy, skilled or common—makes a difference. Done well, it adds truth, beauty, and goodness to the world.”[83] When we maintain the mindset that our work falls squarely in the “broken category” because of the fallen, sinful structures it exists in, we take on a hopeless reality that fails to embrace the redemptive outcome of Christ’s work on us as the worker. Conversely, if we exclusively take on the mentality of complete ascension from brokenness, we live in an escapist, fabricated reality supported by a triumphalist faith that disengages from the pain and suffering that comes with sin, rejecting the fallen state of work and life. We would be wise to acknowledge both realities simultaneously—both a fruitless toil under the sun and a fruitful vocation under heaven, fluxing and flowing to various degrees in different seasons. Sometimes it becomes worse before it becomes better, sometimes we need to leave where we are, or persevere through it, but the principle remains: no matter the brokenness, the pain and suffering, there is always the possibility for redemption and renewal in God’s Kingdom.
References:
[1] Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Willson, Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 12.
[2] R. Paul Stevens, Working Blessedly Forever (Prepublication Manuscript, 2023).
[3] Eccl 1:1.
[4] Stevens, Working Blessedly Forever.
[5] Leland Ryken, “Work, Worker” in The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove: InterVarsity 1998), 966.
[6] Rom 8:5-9.
[7] Stevens, Working Blessedly Forever.
[8] Gen 3:18; Heb 13:5.
[9] Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 129.
[10] Ross Hastings, Missional Church and Marketplace Mission (prepublication manuscript, 2023).
[11] Tim Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 83-84.
[12] Uli Chi, The Wise Leader (Prepublication Manuscript, 2022), 73.
[13] Dorothy Sayers, “Why Work?” in Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949), 48.
[14] R. Paul Stevens and Alvin Ung, Taking Your Soul to Work: Overcoming the Nine Deadly Sins of the Workplace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) 22-57.
[15] Kaemingk and Willson, 45.
[16] Ben Witherington, 163.
[17] Stevens, Working Blessedly Forever.
[18] Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship, 42-43.
[19] Ben Witherington, Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 131.
[20] Hamilton, Work and Our Labor in the Lord, 75-83.
[21] Eph 4:28; 1 Thes 4:11-12, 5:14; 2 Thes 3:6-15; Jas 5:4.
[22] 1 Cor 7:17, 20, 24.
[23] R. Paul Stevens, The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work and Ministry in Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 74.
[24] Alec Hill, Living in Bonus Time (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2020), 27.
[25] Brother Lawrence and Harold Myra, The Practice of the Presence of God (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 2017), 135.
[26] Mark 6:3.
[27] Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021), 76.
[28] John Stott, Issues Facing Christians Today (London: Marshall Pickering, 1984), 162.
[29] Stevens, Working Blessedly Forever.
[30] Witherington, Work, 51.
[31] Psa 90:17; Psa 127:1.
[32] J. R. R. Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle (Dublin: HarperCollins, 2016).
[33] Matt 11:30.
[34] Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship, 64.
[35] Col 1:24.
[36] 1 Cor 12:13; Gal 6:2.
[37] Darrell W. Johnson, The Story that Makes Sense of Our Stories (Vancouver: Canadian Church Leaders Network, 2022), 93-94.
38 N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2015), 188-189.
39 R. Paul Stevens, The Kingdom of God in Working Clothes: The Marketplace and the Reign of God (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2022).
[40] Stevens, Working Blessedly Forever.
[41] Matt 6:10.
[42] 2 Cor 5:18-20; Rom 8:21; Rev 21:5; 1 Cor 15:52; Acts 24:15.
[43] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperCollins), 200.
[44] John 17:15-16.
[45] Mark 1:5.
[46] Eph 4:6.
[47] Warren, Prayer in the Night, 67.
[48] John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 57-58.
Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2008), 15.
[50] Dorothy Sayers, “Why Work” Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949), 92.
[51] Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship, 46.
[52] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), Ch 1.
[53] Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work (Eugene OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001), 85.
[54] Stevens, Working Blessedly Forever.
[55] Isa 65:21-23.
[56] Warren, Prayer in the Night, 69.
[57] Isa 2:2-5, 65:20-25; Zec 8:10-12.
[58] Lesslie Newbigin and Geoffrey Wainwright, Signs amid the Rubble (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 47.
[59] Warren, Prayer in the Night, 70.
[60] Rev 21:2.
[61] Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 64-65.
[62] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), 110.
[63] Taylor, An Altar in the World, 110.
[64] Eph 2:10.
[65] Crouch, Culture Making, 23.
[66] Crouch, Culture Making, 138.
[67] Crouch, Culture Making, 170.
[68] Volf, Work in the Spirit, 79.
[69] John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015.
[70] Gene Veith, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 2002), 13-14.
[71] Witherington, Work, 139.
[72] Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California, 1985), 287.
[73] Uli Chi, The Wise Leader (prepublication manuscript, 2022), 73.
[74] Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000)
Denise Daniels and Shannon Vandewarker Working in the Presence of God: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Work (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2019), 5.
[76] John 20:27
[77] David Mathis, “His Scars Will Never Fade,” May 18, 2019, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/his- scars-will-never-fade.
[78] Heb 2:17; Rom 5:8.
[79] Rev 5:12, 7:9–10, 15, 17; 22:1, 3.
[80] Matt 5:5; Js 1:3; Rom 5:3; Is 53:5.
[81] Keller and Alsdorf, Every Good Endeavor, 30.
[82] Col 3:23-24.
[83] Warren, Prayer in the Night, 65.
