By Chris Armstrong, reprinted from Humanism as a Way of Life; part two of a series.
Inhabiting Joy in our Work
But even if we find biblical reasons to trust this message, the second, practical question arises:
How are we to inhabit this joy in our own working lives? How can we face the thorns and thistles of our work in these challenging times and not lose our joy?
One way we’ve just heard: practices of gratitude, perhaps for the parts of our work that are still life-giving. Another way may be reading books and articles written by Christians that address vocational life. Some of these even offer spiritual practices designed for our work lives.
I’ll list a few of these books and practices in the next and final post.
Another promising practice for inhabiting joy is learning the parts of our own tradition that speak to vocation. Consider the biblically grounded vocational teaching of Martin Luther. Although as Keller reminded us, Luther famously strove to decouple works from faith, the great Reformer also taught that works should still overflow from the joy of our salvation –and that we in fact owe those works to our neighbors, as a fulfillment of the Lord’s Great Commandment to love them.
For Luther, that is a priestly duty which all believers share. Through all the work we do in our many vocations—not only as parent and neighbor but also as teacher, businessperson, craftsperson, salesperson—we are given the privilege of serving others with love.
How can we inhabit the joy of the Lord even as we work? In large part, by accessing once again the precious truth that all work is neighbor love.
God answers our prayer “give us this day our daily bread,” by providing for all our needs through the good work of others, as Luther said. And in the process, joyous shalom can come to both the one receiving and the one serving.
Again, reframing our work doesn’t solve all problems. But if there is a biblical promise of vocational joy, then don’t we want to reclaim it?
Spreading Joy in Our Work
Finally, it may be that a very good way for us to inhabit joy in our work is to spread it.
What if we were to study Scripture and theology on this subject and conclude that God really does intend vocational joy for us – despite the thorns and thistles of Genesis 3?
And then what if we were to pass this understanding on to others, so they can both experience vocational joy and give this same gift in turn to their own contacts? Could that also strengthen our own access to vocational joy? I think it could.
Again, many of us feel we are not experiencing the vocation we signed up for. But maybe God has us where we are “for such a time as this.” Maybe helping others through this emergency is a crucial part of our vocation right now.
Schmemann, Church as Sacrament for the World, and Joy in Work
As we conclude this subtopic, I’d like to make one more suggestion: joyous vocation will also require re-framing our work within a renewed understanding of the church’s mission. Because even if we are inclined to trust this message of joyous vocation and find ways to inhabit it and spread it, we may well wonder, “What does vocational joy have to do with the gospel—and the mission of the church gathered and scattered?”
The twentieth-century American Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann suggested an answer decades ago. Schmemann taught that if church folks lived out our vocations as service in the name and joy of the Lord, then the church would truly be “for the life of the world.” In fact, this was the title of his book.
Faith and work scholar Stephen Grabill once paraphrased the core idea of Schmemann’s For the Life of the World like this:
“The church is the body of Christ given as a gift for the life of the world.”
At the end of his book, Schmemann linked this vision of the church to vocational joy in these words:
“A Christian is . . . one who, wherever [they] look, finds Christ and rejoices in Him. And this joy transforms all [their] human plans and programs, decisions and actions, making all [their] mission . . . the world’s return to Him who is the life of the world.”
The Patient Ferment
Imagine working as Schmemann describes, with the joy of the Lord in our hearts and with our eyes on the world’s return to God.
This is in fact the story told by the late Mennonite historian Alan Kreider in his book The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, and by the late sociologist of religion Rodney Stark in his book The Rise of Christianity:
It was through proximity that the gospel spread and the church grew in its first centuries. That is, through non-Christians meeting ordinary Christians in the marketplace. It’s likely that many of those early Christians worked with care—in the sense both of diligence (which Paul preached to the Thessalonians), and of compassion.
And in the midst of all the Roman people’s suffering, the very lives of these Christians begged questions: “What is this joy you have found?” “What makes you tick?” And the Great Commission too was fulfilled as believers taught the curious and discipled them in the way of the Lord.
But those relationships seem often to have emerged first through ordinary Christian workers’ obedience to the Love Commandment in their ordinary vocations.
. . .
For some of us, to trust, inhabit, and spread this promise of joy through loving vocation may seem simply out of reach. But take heart: there are steps we can take toward joy in our work. Some I’ve already suggested, and others will be highlighted in the next post.
Finally, as we congregants go out to our places of everyday work, we can become the church for the life of the world.
The Green Room 