26th
Sunday after Pentecost
November
17, 2013
2
Thessalonians 3:6-13
Hamster
Wheels
There
are a handful of truths in this world that are universal – the sun will rise in
the east, Jesus will always love you, and hamsters make terrible cab
drivers. They have no opposable thumbs,
which makes steering difficult. They’re
only three or four inches tall, so they struggle to reach the gas pedal. And, most importantly (to our topic, at
least), they lack the sense of purpose a cab driver needs to do her job. The cab driver spends her day purposefully
shuttling people from point A to point B, wherever those points may be. In contrast, the hamster spends his day
running in place, going… nowhere, on a hamster wheel. The hamster wheel spins in place, and while
the hamster can run for miles and miles on it, it will never get him from one
end of his cage to the other.
Now, one of
Isabel’s current favorite books is a bilingual counting book.[1] Among her favorite pages are “dos caras
mojadas, two wet faces,” where she loves to look at the two babies in the
picture, “nueve animales de granja ruidosos, nine noisy farm animals,” where we
make the different animal noises, and “diez bebés ocupados, ten busy babies,”
where she just stares at the picture of all these babies busy playing. She knows something about that, she herself
is a busy baby. At fourteen months old,
Isabel is now constantly on the move when she’s awake. She’s looking at her books, she’s playing
with the stackable rings, she’s up and down the stairs, she’s pulling her
clothes out of her dresser drawer, she’s dunking a toy in the dog’s water bowl,
she’s pulling her socks off her feet… she’s always up to something. And there’s a reason behind her busyness:
she’s exploring her environment. She’s
learning about how things work, including her body and her muscles and seeing
what happens when she does something.
Babies aren’t busy for the sake of being busy. They’re busy with a purpose. They’re not just running on a hamster wheel
going nowhere but are busy learning and growing synapses and exploring their
world. It really is hard work being a
baby, there’s so much to do!
So
what can we learn from hamster wheels and busy babies? There is a vast difference between busy work
and purposeful work. Hamsters are busy
running on their wheels, but not productive.
Babies are busy, and they grow and accomplish new things in their
busyness. And by now you’re probably
thinking, well, wait, they’re both busy, which means they’re not idle, which
was what Paul was warning against in the passage we just read. However, look closer at verse 11. What Paul’s getting at isn’t idleness like
sloth and laziness, but people who are busybodies, meddlers, and overall
disruptive. There’s work that is
pointless, like spinning a hamster wheel, there’s work that is purposeful and
good, like a baby exploring their world, and then there’s work that is
disruptive, disorderly, and only stirs up trouble and that’s what busybodies
do. They do not work toward the good of
their community; instead they actually tear down the sense of community. Their work is meddling and they actively work
for trouble and mischief, whether they realize it or not. It’s like the neighbor who takes the HOA
covenants a little too seriously and makes it their life’s mission to make sure
everyone in the neighborhood is following every single rule to the letter. This is the person who will come over while
you’re at work and measure the length of the grass in your front yard with a
ruler, or, true story from a friend of mine, complain to the HOA that the
flower pots on your front porch are not the correct shade of blue. Friends, this kind of work is not fruitful
and does not work toward the shalom, the peace, of your community. Instead, if you are busy doing good things,
if you’re busy building up your community, then you don’t have time for all
this negative stuff.
And work is inherently good. You know why?
First, because God is a worker.
God works. “In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth.”[2] And even now God is still creating, bringing
about his kingdom on earth. Second, God
calls us to work. This goes all the way
back to the Garden of Eden when God put Adam in the garden to take care of it.[3] Moreover, we are co-workers with God when we
are about the work God has called us to do.
God has called, is calling, you to a specific work. It may be your day job or it may be that your
day job provides you with the resources to do God’s work. Either way, discerning your vocation is
important. God is calling you to
something, I promise you that. If you’d
like help listening, Pastor Ken and I are always available, as are the rest of
our staff, and really, any leader in this church can help and
give you some focus and direction. The work
God is calling you to is good work.
It is not aimlessly running on a wheel and it is not causing
trouble.
It’s
important to realize that you may not see the results of your work. This
is the discouraging part, the frustrating part, the hard part. Even when you’re about God’s work, you
don’t always get to see the fruit of your labor. It’s like when Paul addressed the divisions
in the Corinthian church because there were different factions according to who
had baptized them, or who was pastor when they joined the church. Paul wrote, “What then is Apollos? What is
Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to
each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God
gave the growth.”[4] You may be the one who sows the seed and you
never know what happens to it. Or you
may water the seed someone else planted, but still don’t see the final
product. Or you may have the privilege
of reaping what others sowed and watered, not knowing who those others were and
just what they did, but enjoying the harvest.
I think that’s certainly true for many of us at Orange. Many of us are not related to the saints of
Orange who have gone before us, who dreamed and planned and built this church
and this building, but we are reaping the benefit of their planning and
dreaming. With the Vision Team, we are
now doing our own dreaming and planning for the future of this church,
regardless of whether we are still here to enjoy it whenever it comes to
fruition. When you encourage someone in
Christ, when you share your faith with someone, when you quietly do the work
that God has given you to do, which probably doesn’t include a lot of fanfare
or public recognition, you may not get to see the fruit that comes of it. You have to trust that God will use it, that
when you are about God’s work nothing is futile or pointless or menial. It may be a thankless task that is
unrecognized by many. Guess what? God doesn’t call you to fame, he calls you to faithfulness. There is a purpose to his
work, even when we don’t always know what it is.
Finally,
we, the church, are more fruitful in our work with you. As in, working with you makes our work
more fruitful. One of my favorite bible
passages over the years has been Ecclesiastes chapter 4, which talks about the
importance of community: “Two are better than one, because they have a good
return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other
up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie
down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one
may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not
quickly broken.”[5] Work is done better when done with
others. The more people who serve at
IFC, the more who are involved in Homestart or Angel Trees or youth, the easier
the work is, the quicker it goes, and the more enjoyable it is. Sharing the burden, sharing the work, makes
it better, makes it easier to recognize the purpose and when more people
participate, there is less frustration and less burn-out. When everyone has a role to play and a task
to fulfill and it all works together, what a wonderful example of God’s kingdom
come!
You’ve
been hearing a lot lately from our Finance team because their role to play is
to put together our church budget. As
you saw from the skit, our church budget affects… everything. And while priority is given to things like
the electric bill, it also helps other areas like youth and children and
outreach to be able to plan on some funds for the year. In Luke chapter 14, Jesus asks, “Who would
begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if
there is enough money to finish it? Otherwise, you might complete only the
foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at
you. They would say, ‘There’s the person
who started that building and couldn’t afford to finish it!’”[6] That’s what your pledge cards tell us. The pledge cards let us know if we will have
the funds to carry out the ministries we have planned for next year. It lets the youth know if they can go to
Pilgrimage, an annual event with thousands of youth from around our Conference,
and which 18 of our youth attended last weekend. It lets the children know if they have the
funds to put on The Zone performance twice a year. It lets missions know which service projects
they can plan for next year. It lets our
Financial Secretary and our Treasurer know if we’re going to be able to meet
our budget or if they’re going to be extra-stressed this coming year. That’s what your pledge cards do. That’s why our work as a church is more
fruitful, more vital, and more faithful when you are also involved in it, and
not just financially, but also with your presence, your prayers, your service,
and your witness.
We are about to
enter a time of the year that is often described as “happy” and “busy.” The church calendar fills up. Your personal calendar fills up. There are parties and get-togethers and big
meals and the church Cantata and The Zone performance on the same day this
year! “Busy” is what categorizes the
next six weeks. So take a moment and
evaluate what you are busy doing.
Are they activities that build up the kingdom of God or are they
troublesome? What kind of work do these
activities do? Are you running on a
hamster wheel or are you learning about your environment and about God? Are you busy because you’re supposed to be
because it’s that season, or busy being a busybody, or are you busy being about
good things, being about God things, doing the work that God is calling
you to do and the work that God is calling this church to do?
