Proverbs 6: 6-11
2nd Thessalonians 3:6-15
John 9:1-5

Several decades ago we began hearing of the “Protestant Work Ethic.” Some people thought they had come upon the notion among early-day Protestants that material prosperity was a sign, even the sign, of God’s favour. Christians were to work hard and prosper in order to secure God’s favour, or to give evidence that they had already secured it. In addition the so-called Protestant Work Ethic was supposed to have boosted the modern addiction known as “workaholism.” Workaholics don’t merely work hard; they work compulsively. (Plainly a psychiatric judgement has been rendered here, since compulsiveness is a manifestation of neuroticism.) Workaholics are obsessed with work; they work fifteen hours per day, day-in and day-out, sacrificing spouse, children and health. If they work any less they feel guilty and unworthy. Their holidays are the most stressful time of the year for them, which holidays they customarily abbreviate in order to flee back to work. They need work the way a “junkie” needs cocaine. (I want to say in passing that the so-called Protestant Work Ethic, the notion that work justifies us before God can’t be found anywhere in the thought of the Protestant Reformers.)

Some people maintain that the bad publicity surrounding the “P.W.E.” has precipitated a pendulum swing all the way over into the opposite extreme: people are reacting to work-addiction by escaping into non-work-addiction. Work is now done less well, less responsibly, less conscientiously. Work now appears often to be regarded like diphtheria: to be avoided if at all possible. The ultimate paradox and perversity, of course, is the person who works ever so hard at avoiding work.

Where do we stand as Christians?

I: — In the first place we must acknowledge that work is a divine ordinance. According to scripture God ordains that we work, men and women. (Homemaking is work; in fact it’s hugely important work, and remains work whether done by housewives or househusbands.) Work is as much a part of the God-instituted order as is the earth’s revolving around the sun. God commands us to work. His command is a blessing. Work is therefore good, and good for us in that it enhances our humanness. God has made us working creatures.

Yet not everyone has thought this to be the case. The ancient Greeks regarded work as demeaning, beneath highborn men and women. Aristotle insisted that no one be allowed citizenship unless he had forsaken trades work for at least ten years. Philosophers like Aristotle should have to do no more than reflect. In the Middle Ages in Europe work was considered beneath an aristocrat. Jesus, on the other hand, was a labourer. Paul was a tentmaker. And since King Saul, royal ruler of all Israel , was found ploughing behind oxen, it’s plain that the Greek and Hebrew minds are polar opposites with respect to work. The Hebrew mind insists that work is good; God, after all, works himself, and has constituted us working creatures whose humanness is threatened by non-work. Without work we lack something essential to human wholeness.

It’s for this reason that unemployment is so very serious. The worst consequence of unemployment isn’t poverty (dreadful as poverty is); rather it’s loss of self-esteem. As self-esteem evaporates, self-deprecation sets in. Demoralization follows. Soon the unemployed feel themselves dehumanized, even disgraced. (I noted years ago that when church members lose their job they often cease attending worship, and reconnect with church life only when they are employed once more.) Not to work, not to be able to work, not be allowed to work is to be on the road to inner fragmentation.

Admittedly, however, there are some people who don’t want to work. Work is too much bother. They’d rather be kept. They won’t work as long as they can sponge off their parents, off their children, off their disability or employment insurance, off government “goodies.” (Let me make a parenthetical comment here. In my experience the poor are rarely those who sponge off the social welfare system. The poor — who are as intelligent as anyone else — lack the social sophistication and the social contacts need to exploit the social welfare system. The poor customarily lack access to the levers that have to be “pulled” in order to make the social welfare coffers ring; lacking such access, they lack the opportunity to exploit. Those who are adept at finessing the system, I have found, are those who have the “tools” needed to pry money loose where they know it is kept. The middle class, I have discovered, is more adept at exploiting social provision than the poor.)

The apostle Paul came upon some people in Thessalonica who had decided not to work. “We hear that some of you are living in idleness,” he remarked, “mere busybodies, not doing any work.” His approach to them was blunt: “If you don’t want to work, don’t expect to eat.” God ordains work. It’s good to work.

II: — But is work good without qualification? Is work always and everywhere good? We frequently hear work spoken of as a curse. People who speak like this have seized half a truth: work itself isn’t a curse, but in a fallen world (according to Genesis 3) work lies under a curse.

When we speak of a fallen world we mean a world that rebels against God; a world that defies him, disdains his way and word and truth; a world that flaunts its disobedience of him. Such a world can’t fail to be characterized by greed and deceit, hostility and strife. In such a world work becomes an occasion of frustration, and the workplace a battleground. God intends work to be the sphere wherein humankind exercises its stewardship of the creation and cooperates under him for humankind’s well-being. In a fallen world, however, God’s purpose is contradicted, with the result that work becomes the scene of self-seeking and quarrelling, exploitation and rancour. In a fallen world the blessing of work is riddled with the curse of frustration and hostility.

We moderns have short memories. We tend to forget that only 150 years ago children worked fourteen hours per day in factories and mines under conditions so very dangerous and damaging as almost to defy description. Only 150 years ago? That long ago in Britain and continental Europe , but today in so many countries of the world children are granted no relief.

My grandfather began working for a major automaker almost from the beginning of car manufacturing — in other words, in the days before the autoworkers’ union. A car engine, weighing several hundred pounds, travelling on an overhead conveyor, would fall from time to time and crush a worker on the assembly line underneath it. When workmates bent over the bleeding pulp ( i.e., what was left of the man) a company official would hasten to the scene and snarl, “Get that thing (the mangled worker) off the line and get back to work.” My grandfather used to tell me of loading freshly painted car axles onto railway boxcars throughout the morning. By noon he had wet paint up to his elbows. At lunchtime he wasn’t allowed to wash his hands: there was no provision for washing. A company official would walk throughout the factory, and then point out to the foreman a worker whom the foreman was to suspend without pay for three weeks. The worker had done nothing wrong. The company policy, however, was to promote a “reign of terror” designed to keep workers cowering before sheer arbitrariness. (Needless to say, the suspended worker had a family to support.) When workers attempted to organize in order to protect themselves, company officials had Walter Reuther and his brother (the first leaders of the autoworkers’ union) beaten so badly they were both hospitalized for six months.

“That’s old stuff,” someone objects; “we live in a different era.” It isn’t so different that the workplace has ceased to be a scene of frustration and hostility. Ralph Nader, the American lawyer and advocate who represents consumers (he was also a presidential candidate in the last USA election), exposed dangerous defects in consumer goods only to have private detectives “tail” him night and day hoping to catch him in “compromise”; i.e., a situation with a woman which could then be used to ruin him and destroy his credibility. This operation continued for months, companies always denying it. It was only in the light of public exposure and a threatened lawsuit that Nader’s harassment ceased.

But of course extreme is always matched to extreme. If employers behave indefensibly, so do employees. We read of situations in Britain where for the slightest matter involving an employee, British workers will shut down an industrial operation completely. One of my relatives, a white-collar union steward in a Canadian business office, found employees approaching her frequently inasmuch as these employees resented being disciplined for habitual tardiness. They couldn’t seem to understand why the company was opposed to chronic lateness. (My relative, by the way, maintained that any adult who couldn’t get to work on time didn’t deserve a job. Shortly she was relieved of her steward’s position.) Few things are more frustrating, not to say costly, than hiring people to do a job only to find that their “protection” allows them to do as little as possible, as slowly as possibly, and as shabbily as possible.

Obviously it’s silly to suggest that employers as a class are demons while employees as a class are angels. In a fallen world employer and employee alike are going to be exploiters, given the opportunity. Both will tend to push their exploitation all the way to criminality. That’s why we find corruption, bribery and beatings within worker organizations supposedly pledged to the well-being of the worker.

III: — Where does all this find us as Christians? We know that God ordains work to be a human good, an essential ingredient in our humanness, even as we are aware of hostility and conflict in the workplace. Then what expression does our witness assume?

i] The first aspect of our Christian witness is both plain and simple: we are to do as good a job as we can. Integrity in the workplace is bedrock. A day’s work is to be rendered for a day’s pay, or else our “witness” is no witness at all and we are merely part of the problem. Paul tells Timothy, a much younger man, that work done should be work of which a worker need never be ashamed. This kind of work, the apostle continues, “adorns the doctrine of God our Saviour.” It’s a most unusual notion, isn’t it: what we do conscientiously, consistently, competently in the workplace “adorns the doctrine of God our Saviour.” The quality of our work lends attractiveness and credibility to the truth of God by which we are known. Integrity in the workplace is bedrock.

Are you aware that the chartered banks write off millions of dollars every year? Bank employees pilfer it. (Please note that the banks lose vastly more money to employee theft than they lose to “hold ups.”) The manager of a department store in suburban Toronto tells me that every year $600,000 in cash and merchandise disappears from the store. Little of it is shoplifted by customers; nearly all of it finds its way into the pockets of employees. A foreman working on the Trans Canada Pipeline tells me that at the beginning of the year he purchases twelve dozen pipe wrenches, and by year’s end his crew has stolen all 144 of them.

We mustn’t think that integrity pertains only to money and goods. Integrity pertains to time and attitude and diligence as well. Today employers wince when they think of the outlook of so many who make up the work pool. They wince when they think of the carelessness, slovenliness and indifference that pretends to be doing a job. The Christian’s work is to be conscientious, consistent, competent — and therein “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour.”

ii] There is yet another Christian responsibility: we must try to understand the situation of those whose work is especially stress-riddled, or whose work is especially unfulfilling, boring, even mind-bending. Some of us work at jobs we find stimulating and rewarding. We are very fortunate; we are also very few. Most people work at jobs that don’t use anywhere near their resources and abilities. For this reason they crave more holidays and earlier retirement. We must endeavour to understand the plea of these people when they speak of the dehumanization and danger peculiar to their job.

Red Storey, an outstanding hockey referee of yesteryear, says he refereed when every NHL game was “survival night.” Recently I have found more and more schoolteachers, for instance, describing their situation in terms of survival. The public has become largely impatient with teachers, perhaps with some justification. At the same time, test after test has indicated that inner-city elementary schoolteaching is the most stressful job in North America . In addition, the public doesn’t know, among other things, that boards of education have asked newspapers not to write up incidences of classroom assault on teachers for one reason: it was found that whenever classroom assaults on teachers were printed in the news media, such assaults increased.

Think of the people who work at jobs that are mind numbing. When I was a university student I had a summer job I shall never forget. I sat at a table where I picked up one sheet from each of three piles (i.e., I was collating them), pushed the packet under an electric stapler (“kerchunk”), and set the stapled item aside. One day I stapled 10,000 units. I didn’t count them. By the end of the day I was in no condition to count. I happened to have used an entire box of staples, and there were 10,000 staples per box. My mother tells me that when I arrived home after work, anyone who so much as looked at me risked annihilation. Some people are consigned to jobs like this throughout their entire working life, with individual and domestic and social consequences that are not to be dismissed.

I readily admit that I know little of industrial relations; I know little of the research done concerning the social and psychological and domestic effects of different kinds of work. But if the church is ever going to attract someone besides the upwardly socially mobile, then we shall have to learn to listen to people whose work experience is very different from that of the professional types who tend to assume that everyone’s on-the-job rewards parallel theirs.

iii] A third responsibility is that our congregation must reflect the gospel truth that work is what people do; work is not who people are. We must never be seduced into the mentality that sees people as more valuable or less valuable just because the job they do is paid more money or less. Paul insists that in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free. For “neither slave nor free” read “neither minimum wage-earner nor company executive.” In his Corinthian correspondence (2nd Cor. 5:16 ) he states that Christians are to “regard no one from a human point of view.” The “human point of view” is the attitude that ignores someone who earns $20,000 per year but flatters someone who receives $200,000 (the sort of person we are extraordinarily pleased to see affiliate with our congregation.) This attitude has no place in the Christian fellowship.

Several years ago I attended a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous where a newcomer, a university professor, newly rendered sober through the AA movement, needed a sponsor. A sponsor is an AA friend of greater maturity and wisdom who can steer a newcomer around the pitfalls that might trip up his newfound sobriety. The sponsor assigned to this professor happened to be a truck driver. And the professor wasn’t ashamed to admit that the truck driver possessed a maturity, wisdom, discernment and experience in this area of life that he lacked. Surely the Christian fellowship can’t be found wanting here, when to us is entrusted the truth, “In Christ there is neither slave nor free.”

Perhaps you are thinking that the three points I have made concerning our Christian responsibility don’t go very far in overturning the turbulence in the work world. Still, they give us a starting point for understanding God’s mandate concerning work and the world in which we have to work. In any case, as our seventeenth Century Quaker foreparents liked to say, it’s always better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

Victor Shepherd
September 2006

Workshop Teachings
or
More than a Carpenter

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Ephesians 4:25-30
Matthew 7:1-5

If there’s to be a national holiday for Queen Victoria ‘s birthday and Canada Day and “civic” whatever, how much more important is it that there be a national holiday that honours labour. On Labour Day Canadians wisely acknowledge the place of work in our nation as a whole and in our individual lives. We work not merely because we have to in order to survive; we work inasmuch as God has ordained us to work. His command enjoining work is prior to the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. In other words, regardless of what frustration or pain or seeming futility might arise with respect to work in the wake of the Fall, work itself is good. God’s command is always and everywhere good, always and everywhere attended with blessing. In recognizing work on Labour Day we are gladly owning the dignity of labour; we are saying that humankind is meant to work, is honoured through work, is to find work fulfilling. We are also saying, by contrast, that there’s nothing demeaning about work, hard work.

We should know this in any case, for Jesus himself worked. Prior to the work of his public ministry he worked with his father in their “rough carpentry” business, “Joseph and Son”, in Nazareth . From what we glean here and there in the gospels the two men made large, functional items like ox-yokes and ploughs. When Jesus begins his work of preaching and teaching, those who hear him are astonished and say, “Where did this fellow get his wisdom? He’s only a carpenter, isn’t he?” Yes, he is a carpenter from a sleepy town in Galilee , yet he’s more than a carpenter. He has more to say to us than up-to-the-minute woodworking advice. At the same time, the “more” that he has to say to us is all the more credible just because we know he isn’t an armchair wordsmith. His workshop days have given him down-to-earth, workshop wisdom.

I: — Think about his pithy comment concerning plank and sawdust. Sawdust is always blowing around in a workshop. Sooner or later a speck finds its way into someone’s eye. It’s bothersome, and work can’t continue until the speck is removed. A fellow-worker who means well (of course), whose intentions are the best (of course) immediately offers help: “Here, let me take the speck of sawdust out of your eye, and then you’ll be able to see better” — all the while forgetting that he himself has a two-by-four, ten feet long, sticking out of his own eye. “First take the plank out of your own eye”, our Lord insists, “then you might be able to do something to help your neighbour with his sawdust-speck.”

Jesus insists that we, his disciples, mustn’t fall into the habit of fault-finding, carping, nit-picking, ceaseless criticism of matters small and smaller still, as we whittle our neighbour down until she has the stature of a toothpick (we think) when, by contrast, we appear larger than life ourselves, gigantic even, in our inflated self-estimation. The habit, the deep rut of constant, niggling criticism, is a habit that is as self-intensifying as any addiction. It’s a habit easy to fall into just because we all want to think highly of ourselves, and the surest way of building ourselves up is to grind someone else down.

I have learned that many people perceive the wisdom and force of our Lord’s teaching yet are confused about its application. At the same time as they hear Jesus speaking of plank and sawdust they also hear him saying, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Confusion arises when such people mistake judging (in the sense of hyper-critical faultfinding) with making sound judgements. The two shouldn’t be confused: disdainful judgementalism has nothing to do with the formation of sound judgements.

Everywhere in scripture God’s people are commanded to form sound judgements. God isn’t honoured when his people remain naïve, readily victimized or fooled or “fished in.” We have to discriminate between what enriches us profoundly and what appears to enrich but actually impoverishes. We have to discern what can be welcomed and what must be shunned. We do everything in our power to foster such discrimination in our youngsters just because we know what disasters await those who lack sound judgement. To lack sound judgement anywhere in life renders people tragic concerning themselves and dangerous concerning others. Jesus tells us we have to be as wise as serpents. His apostles tell us we have to test the spirits, since not all spirits are holy. Once we understand the distinction between our Lord’s command to form sound judgements concerning ourselves and his prohibition of a contemptuous attitude concerning others; once we understand this distinction, confusion evaporates.

Jesus Christ speaks so very vehemently on this matter because he knows our hearts. He knows, for instance, our capacity for unconscious rationalization. You and I can insist with genuine sincerity, genuine, conscious sincerity, that is, that the sawdust speck in someone else is real while the plank in our own eye is only imaginary.

A few years ago I was asked to conduct an afternoon communion service and to preach at Emmanuel College , U of T, the seminary where I was prepared for the ministry of Word, Sacrament and Pastoral Care. I took unusual pains with the sermon because I knew that theology students come to chapel with their sermon-dissecting knives super-sharp. And besides, I wanted to impress the students with an uncommonly fine sermon. The week had been exceptionally busy. The morning had brought several pastoral upheavals before me. The traffic on the way to Toronto was heavier than usual. And then of course I had to scramble for a parking spot. Still, as I walked into the building I felt I was ready to meet the students and show them a thing or two. Out of a student body of 150, six came to the service. I preached and administered Holy Communion as scheduled. After the service a student who had attended said to me, gently, “You were hostile this afternoon.” “I was not!”, I told her, “I’m not the slightest….” “Victor, you were hostile today.” “I may have been upset, but I wasn’t hostile.” There’s the rationalization, as sincere as the day is long: when other people are hostile, they are hostile for sure and hostile without excuse; when I appear hostile, however, I am in truth merely upset. Our unconscious capacity to rationalize is so vast that we can magnify our neighbour’s sawdust-speck into an oak tree, even as we shrink our plank to a twig. In it all we seem not to know how ridiculous we appear; more than ridiculous, how cruel.

Again our Lord speaks so vehemently on this matter because he knows that berating someone for her sawdust-speck often discourages her, then depresses her, and even immobilizes her. In the face of relentless criticism she feels she can’t acquit herself. She gives up trying. She is simply crushed into immobility.

Our Lord knows too that our habit of faultfinding drives the person faulted farther and farther into self-righteousness (how else can he protect himself?), whereupon, of course, we fault him for being self-righteous. When our constant criticism drills him like a woodpecker’s beak drilling into tree bark until it finds the insect it’s looking for, he insists that he’s a better person than he’s made out to be. What else can he do to ward off our painful pecking? As he defends himself we find our approach to him confirmed, for now it’s plain that he can’t stand the truth about himself. We forget that his self-righteousness swelled only in response to our savagery.

The worst consequence of our carping, however, is that it forces the victim to retaliate in kind. Carping begets carping, pecking pecking, savagery savagery. Psychologically fragile people may crumble when ceaselessly faulted; the psychologically resilient, however, fight back.

When Jesus speaks to us about faultfinding he uses strong language: “hypocrite.” Hupokrites is the Greek word for the actor who wore a false face. When we see the speck in our neighbour’s eye but not the plank in our own we are phonies. We have forgotten that we too are fallen creatures, as warped in mind and heart as the person in front of us whose depravity we find glaring.

Jesus ends his workshop teaching bluntly: “First take the plank out of your own eye; then you will see clearly to take the sawdust-speck out of your neighbour’s eye.” It is only as we admit frankly, even fearfully, our own inner depravity and corruption, and it is only as we do something about it that we will ever be able to help, correct and encourage our brother or sister. To pretend anything else is to be a phoney, hupokrites.

II: — Another workshop saying, this time less severe and more comforting: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus made yokes every day. He knew that if the yoke were made well and were well fitted to the animal’s neck, the ox could pull the heaviest load efficiently and with minimal discomfort. If, on the other hand, the yoke were poorly made, it would rub the animal’s neck raw. Pulling the load would be a torment. Trying to pull the load might even strangle the animal.

Our Lord knew that some loads in life we simply cannot avoid. We must pull them. “Since there are some loads in life you must pull”, he says, “why not pull them with a yoke that fits well? A yoke made by anyone other than me will only torment you, perhaps choke you. My yoke is easy.” When he says, “Come to me all who labour and are heavy-laden”, the word he uses for “labour” isn’t the normal word for “work.” The word he uses for “labour” has about it the air of frustration, grief, weariness, the matter of being worn-down and worn-out, tired to the point of being utterly fatigued and fed up.

Earlier in the sermon I said that work as such is not a sign of the Fall but rather an instance of God’s blessing. Frustration at work, however, grief over work, futility and self-alienation and frenzy: these are a sign of the Fall. And all of us are fallen creatures living in a fallen world. Therefore there is an element of frustration and futility and self-contradiction in the matters we “labour over” throughout life.

The ten year-old wants to be a firefighter or a police officer or physician or ballerina. The ten year-old can’t see anything negative about these jobs. Why, working at any one of these jobs is tantamount to endless glamour and play. The same person, now 40 years old, has found more frustration in the job than he thinks he can endure. Now he wants to get away from it all and raise beef cattle or write novels — as if beef farming were without frustration and the literary world were without treachery! The truth is, frustration and fatigue won’t disappear with the next job. They have to be pulled along throughout life. Then with whose yoke do we pull them? Jesus insists that his yoke fits best, for only his yoke lets us pull life’s burdens without torment or strangulation.

Think about grief. The only way we can avoid grief at the loss of someone dear to us is not to have anyone dear to us. The only way to avoid grief is to avoid love. But to protect ourselves in this manner against losing someone dear to us is to have lost everything already. In other words, to love is to ensure grief. Then grief is another of life’s burdens that can’t be dropped.

As for burdens, one of the cruellest myths floated in our society is the myth that life can be burden-free. The myth survives for one reason: everyone wants to believe it. In our silliness we often think that our life is burden-riddled, but so many others’ is burden-free. The truth is, no one’s life is burden-free. There is no magic formula which, recited frequently and believed ardently, will evaporate burdens overnight.

Our carpenter-friend doesn’t specialize in magic formulas or mantras. He specializes in yokes. His yoke allows the burden that must be pulled to be pulled without tormenting us or ruining us. But there’s something more. Not only were oxen yoked to the burden they had to pull, oxen were always yoked to each other. Ox-yokes are always made in pairs. At the same that we are yoked to the load we have to pull, we are always yoked to someone who pulls alongside us.

Who? To whom are we yoked as our companion throughout life’s burden-pulling? Christ’s people are forever yoked to him. The yoke he fits to us he fits to himself as well. In other words, there is no burden known to you and me that isn’t his burden as well. His yoke is easy, then, in two senses: one, the yoke he makes for us fits well; two, the yoke he makes for us he makes for himself in addition. He has bound himself to us in all of life’s struggles.

III: — The last workshop teaching we shall examine today, a stark one this time: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God .” There’s urgency about entering the kingdom through faith in the king himself. There’s urgency about moving ahead in the kingdom, undeflected by distractions great or little. There has to be resolve, determination, to enter the company of the king and remain in it. Anyone who puts his hand to the plough and looks back ploughs a furrow that meanders in all directions, a hit-and-miss matter that would shame any farmer. Anyone who puts his hand to the plough and looks back resembles Lot ‘s wife: she looked back to the city she was leaving in that she thought there was greater security in what she was leaving behind than there was in what she was journeying towards. Under God, however, in God, there is always greater security in what we are journeying towards than in what we are leaving behind. The automobile driver who persisted in looking in the rear-view mirror alone would crack up in no time and go nowhere.

Jesus comes upon a man who gushes that he’d like nothing more than to be a disciple. “Then follow me”, says Jesus, “Follow me now.”

“I’ll follow as soon as I’ve buried my father”, the man replies, “I have domestic matters to attend to before I can begin following.”

“That’s an evasion”, says our Lord, “it’s a delaying tactic. Let the dead bury their dead. You come with me. If you put your hand to the plough and start looking around at this and that, the “this and that” will take you over and the kingdom will pass you by. You’ll disqualify yourself.”

It’s difficult for us modern folk to appreciate our Lord’s urgency. We don’t grasp why his invitation to join him always has “RSVP” on it and why we mustn’t dawdle or delay. We overlook something that Jesus found transparently obvious and undeniable; namely, we can always delay making up our mind, but we can never delay making up our life. The man who says he hasn’t made up his mind about getting married is a bachelor. The woman who says she hasn’t made up her mind as to whether or not she should have children doesn’t have any. The student who says he hasn’t decided whether he should study tonight or take the night off isn’t studying. And those who have not yet made up their mind about following Jesus have not begun to follow. We can always delay making up our mind; we can never delay making up our life. Jesus won’t allow anyone he meets to deny this truth or forget it. Again and again he stresses the urgency of entering the kingdom as we abandon ourselves to the king himself.

This third carpenter teaching, the starkest of the three we have probed today, has much to do with the first two, the ones about sawdust and yokes. It is only as we put our hand to the plough and do not look back; it is only as we resolve to live in the company of Jesus Christ and never reconsider; it is only as we continue to love him rather than fritter our affection on trifles and toys; it is only as we are instant and constant where he is concerned that we find ourselves free to hear and heed his word about sawdust and planks and the phoniness that laps at all of us; free to hear his word, we should note, and no less eager to do something about it.

In the same way it is only as we are serious about the yoke-maker, serious enough to move from detached mulling to ardent embracing of the one who has already embraced us; it is only when we are this serious that we find ourselves proving in our experience that his yoke is easier than any other, that what life compels us to pull is pulled better when his yoke both connects us to our burden and connects us to him.

We can always avoid making up our mind; we can never avoid making up our life. Either our hand is on the plough and we are looking ahead or we are looking around elsewhere, distracted, preoccupied with everything but him, perhaps majoring on minors, perhaps concerned with much that is good but with nothing that is godly.

Yes, our Lord was a carpenter. He knew about work, about salty sweat and sore muscles and slivers. But he is also more than a carpenter. He is the incarnate Son of God. With the ring of authority, therefore, he urges us to come to him and never forsake him. In this we shall find ourselves both corrected and comforted. Corrected when his sawdust-reminder challenges us to drop our carping born of pseudo-superiority; comforted when he yokes himself to us and pulls with us the burden that would otherwise torment us or strangle us.

Knowing all of this, today we should bind ourselves to him anew, and never, ever look back.

Victor Shepherd
September 2005