WHAT DOES GOD THINK OF HOCKEY?
Luke 19:1-10 Colossians 3:23-24 Deuteronomy 25:14-16
Sermon presented on January 11, 2009
The question posed by the title of this sermon, “What Does God Think About Hockey?” appeared as a headline recently in the Washington Post. Washington Capitals’ defenseman Brian Pothier is a practicing Christian, “definitely not [in] the majority in the hockey world,” he says. Hearing of this, Post religion writer Kathy Orton interviewed Pothier, hoping to find-out how he relates his faith to his work. Later-on I’ll say a thing or two about how he answered her questions, but for the moment I’d like to broaden the question, so that it takes-in all of us. For Brian Pothier, hockey is a job. It’s what he does for work. So the larger question is: what does God think about whatever it is we do for work? What does God think about our vocations? I invite you to take the sermon title, and change the word hockey to the word that fits you. What does God think about . . . sales? What does God think about . . . teaching? What does God think about . . . engineering, or homemaking; office work, or medicine? construction, or retirement? business, or social service? And so forth. Is your vocation related to your faith in some way; or is it a part of life you see as wholly separate from, and perhaps even at odds with, your faith?
There are many different reasons why we spend the days of our lives as we do. Most practically, we need to earn a living, of course. And in this present world it’s not only money we’re after, but benefits, as well, like health care and retirement, which may be as important as cash salary. Sometimes people may feel forced into one kind of work or another by factors beyond their control — by family obligations, say, which limit mobility, or by health considerations, and so forth. And there are periods of time when larger or macro-economic forces come into play, when a person’s just happy to have a job, any job. My Grandfather Raum sold vanilla extract door-to-door during the Depression. He died before I was born, so I never had a chance to ask him, but I’m guessing he wasn’t responding to some higher call to be a vanilla extract salesman, but rather scrambling to provide for his family in tough times. And while our present economic malaise is certainly not of the depth of the 1930s, yet increasingly there are people now, and perhaps some of you, who find themselves scrambling these days. For reasons such as these I always want to be slow to talk in lofty terms about vocation, or about rising to one’s calling or fulfilling one’s destiny. When you can’t pay the VISA bill, the person on the other of the line is unlikely to have interest in such ideas, however sublime.
But, when you consider how much of our lives is spent at work — just count-up the hours, the days, the years of our lives – clearly, God cares about this major part of our lives. What kind of God what it be who doesn’t care about what we do from 1/3 to a ½ of our time here on earth? Whatever kind of God that might be, it’s not the God of scripture.
Certainly not the God who charged Adam to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,” a charge which, in the words of theologian Nancy Pearcey, represents . . .
. . . what we might call the first job description: to develop
the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities,
governments, laws . . . to harness the natural world: plant
crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music . . .
[and] to create cultures and build civilizations – nothing less.
Nor the God who in Jesus Christ met and befriended people in the workplace: farmers and fishermen, homemakers and academics, wine stewards and vineyard workers, shepherds and temple employees, soldiers and civil servants, parents being parents and children being children. Jesus also told parables featuring ordinary people engaged in the everyday work of their everyday lives.
Nor do we see indifference to work in the God who declares in the New Testament: “You know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (I Cor. 15:58). And certainly not the God who counsels in Scripture: “Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord” (Col. 3:23).
Rabbi Jeffrey K, Salkin tells this story, about a move his family made.
The boss of the moving crew was a delightful, crusty
gentleman [Salkin writes], a dead ringer for Willie Nelson.
I had never met anyone so enthusiastic about his or her work,
and I asked him the source of his enthusiasm.
“Well, you see, I’m a religious man,” he answered, “and my
work is part of my religious mission.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, it’s like this. Moving is hard for most people. It’s a
very vulnerable time for them. People are nervous about
going to a new community, and about having strangers pack
their most precious possessions. So, I think God wants me
to treat my customers with love, and to make them feel that
I care about their things and their life. God wants me to help
make their changes go smoothly. If I can be happy about it,
maybe they can be, too.”
Brian Pothier, the hockey player, said pretty much the same thing. “I don’t walk into the training room with a Bible in my hand and start” talking about religion, he told the interviewer. Rather, “the best way for me to show guys what I believe, or how I believe, is just to live it out.”
So, I’ve put a number of Biblical ideas about work on the table this morning. Let’s gather them up, and see how these ideas come into play in the life and work of one particular Bible character, Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus “was a wee little man/a wee little man was he,” as we used to sing in Bible School. He was a tax collector, but he might as well have been a hockey player, or anything else, for that matter – butcher, baker, candlestick maker — because the primary problem with Zacchaeus wasn’t what he did but how he did it. Now, to be sure, in the world governed by imperial Rome, a tax collector – or, Bible scholars note, “toll collector” is probably a better translation, that Zacchaeus’ job was to assess fees from toll booths situated at transport and commercial centers – this was work people despised, naturally, and they looked down on those who did it. We have not only the witness of scripture, but reports from other places around the Roman world, as well, that those who collected taxes were scorned everywhere. Taxes created financial hardship, of course, but more than that, it was humiliating and degrading to pay taxes imposed by an occupying power. “Taxation with representation,” would come the cry centuries later, from a people also occupied by an imperial across the sea. So, all this is true, but it’s not what’s principally at stake here. This may surprise you, but look closely at the text and you’ll see that at no point does Jesus tell Zacchaeus to stop working as a tax collector, like he tells the woman at the well, for example, to “go and sin no more.” No, he says nothing like that to Zacchaeus. The work of tax collecting in itself seems not to be counted by Jesus as unworthy work. What’s the problem, then?
The problem was the way Zacchaeus performed his work. He defrauded people. God had given his opinion about unscrupulous business practices centuries earlier, in his indictment of those who conned unsuspecting farmers by the use of rigged scales. “You shall have a perfect and just weight,” it is written, “a perfect and just measure.” Those who practice business dishonestly “are abhorrent to the Lord,” the passage continues (Deut. 25:15, 16). Zacchaeus was abhorrent to the Lord. But Christ saw in him, as he sees in all of us, the possibility of change. He looked-up at Zacchaeus, in the tree. “Zacchaeus, come down,” he said, “for today I must stay at your house.” We need to talk. Zacchaeus resolved to payback victims all he’d embezzled from them, with interest, and to commit the rest of his life to the service of the poor. It’s not clear why Zaccchaeus made such an immediate change, anymore than it’s clear why earlier Simon and Andrew immediately left their nets behind and followed Jesus. Some come to Jesus slowly, over time, while for others the call of Christ claims and compels the personality wholly. As for Zacchaeus, his soul was redeemed and renewed, and perhaps his new character might impress others at work and inspire them to change, as well.
2009 is the 500th year of John Calvin’s birth. It’s being marked variously all over the world, with a number of worthy events happening in Grand Rapids. Here at Forest Hills Laura and I are team-teaching a class on Calvinism as Calvin’s ideas are expressed in the Westminster Catechism. And from time-to-time in sermons this year, I intend to highlight themes that are characteristic of Calvin’s thought. Today’s is one of them.
Historians David Hall and David Vaughan write:
One of the culture-changing aspects of Calvin’s leadership
was his emphasis on the sacredness of ordinary vocations.
Prior to his time [they continue], workers felt little sense of
Calling unless entering the priesthood. Vocation was
restricted to ecclesiastical callings. [But] Calvin thought
that any area of work – farming, teaching, governing,
business – could be a valid calling from God, every bit as
sacred as a minister. This was a radical change in worldview
. . . He taught that a person could serve God in any labor and
glorify him . . . that all callings are important.
It’s a thoroughly Calvinist notion – and more important than that, a faithfully Biblical one – to imagine Zacchaeus returning to his job, knowing now . . .
+ that God cares about what he does and how he does it;
+ that God is glorified or demeaned by his actions and attitudes in the workplace;
+ and that God regards all work as holy work if it is done excellently, ethically, caringly and enthusiastically.
And so we may think of our work, as well.
So, back one last time to our hockey player. Does God really care about who wins and loses hockey games? Of course not, Brian Pothier answers. “You win some, you lose some,” he adds. It’s all “part of the grand plan of developing and cultivating who you are as a person.” He’s suggesting that work – what we do and how we do it – is not something set-apart from our spiritual growth, but part of it; it’s an arena in which we reflect and transmit the love of God in Jesus Christ, and are strengthened and supported in that love.
May God bless each of us in our work, so that through it we may be a blessing.
