By Tim Yearsley, reprinted from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.
Truly I say unto you, the kingdom of God is like a man who emptied six million bins.
Keith Sayers started his job in 1986, two months before I was born. Throughout my entire life, somewhere in Rushcliffe, a man has been emptying bins. During this time, Keith has traveled the equivalent of 10 laps of the world, collecting nearly a billion items.
He’s still doing it now.
Last week, Keith was celebrated for his 40 years of service to Rushcliffe Borough Council. I don’t think Keith has a LinkedIn profile to post it on. And I’m not sure LinkedIn would know what to make of him if he did. Our shared professional mythology tends to follow a familiar script: disrupt, scale, leverage, pivot, impact. By contrast, Keith told the BBC:
“I’ve just got up in the morning and I’ve done my job and life has just carried on. It’s been a great job for me, it really has.”
It all sounds like the kind of thing Jesus would point out. Like a widow’s offering of two small coins. Children that the disciples tried to shoo away. A cup of water given in his name. Because in the kingdom economy, value is weighted on different scales.
I think we all know this, deep down. You can see it in the way Keith’s story has been reported. The various articles don’t use Jesus’ kingdom language, of course. But they speak of Keith and his work in a tone close to reverence.
We know that work like Keith’s is work to be grateful for, even though we so rarely show it. Bin collection sits in that same category as the work of the person running your church’s AV desk: you barely notice it until it’s gone wrong. Anyone who remembers last year’s near-civilizational collapse from the bin collection strikes in Birmingham will agree, no doubt.
Of course, Keith’s kind of quiet, faithful work is what most of us spend most of our time doing on most days. We don’t get a certificate and a news report for sending emails, cooking family dinner, or just getting on with the job that pays our salary. But like my favourite parables, Keith’s story is one of improbable-sounding numbers that raises a delightful possibility: unseen work is worth celebrating every day. Even if it takes 40 years to get a certificate.
Whose unseen work is worth celebrating where you are?
