Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

This morning I wrap up the little mini-series on meeting God in the everyday, outside these walls. The temptation is to think that we some how bring him with us out into the world when in fact he meets us in the parking lot as we leave those church doors, he sends us from this place feed by the word of God so that we might act it out…LIVE it in our lives. We are sent out not into a world that needs God, but into his Kingdom were he is alive and real everyday calling us into our unique vocations.

But for some of you that everyday is not something to get too excited about. Each of us has those low moments that we don’t look forward too. Think of the name of that friend, the one that vent to you, that when you see their number on the caller ID you think to yourself here we go again. You know it is going to be a long talk and you may not get them to see the light at the end of the tunnel before the conversation is over. Do you have the face of that friend in your mind?

Maybe your imagining how a friend might react to this series or in the back of your mind you thinking. “Pr. Kurt this vocation series is Great and all, but if this is my place to make a difference in the world, if God is there why then are there parts of my day that just plain feel like suffering? Why do I dread going into work on Monday morning? Why do I see people mistreated everyday? I am suffering at work! Is that really what God wants?”

To which I can only respond with the image and example of Christ who in every situation gave a piece of himself so that others might have life. Jesus Christ who gave his entire being so that he might be alive in our service as well, constantly pushing us toward the neighbor and the stranger that we might find meaning in life, having given up our lives. Being aware of God not in spite of our sufferings, but precisely through our sufferings as we experience the life he modeled.

Tell me if this is your Job (or the complaint you hear from those who vent to you)

1) You don’t have a name. You are just a cog in the human machine. Perhaps the tools you work with is more valuable to the company then you are. The company is so big that you are on the two-hundred and third rung on the ladder. Sometimes, it feels like you have no influence over the mission or purpose of your business and you may have some legitimate concerns over the motivation of their actions. Instead of being placed in this world with unique position, leverage, gifts and talents to make a difference for others you are afraid the company just might be more motivated by greed or power. You are in a job or a class where the professor or your boss may not know your name.

Have you heard this complaint in the back of your head or from others?

2) You are taken advantage of. Your daily life and service is not as valued as it should or could be. You and what you do is taken for granted. Your job, your relationship is not what you expected it to be. Things changed somewhere along the line and you feel like you where duped into work you didn’t ask or volunteer for. Maybe there is more and more work and less people to do it and so, guess what, you just have more on your plate to get done and less time to do it. Or maybe it’s something as simple as that one rotten job you always get stuck with or that just needs to be done. How in the world can God be present in taking out the trash or cleaning the bathroom? Or maybe it’s much more of a spiritual pain? Where is God when you have to let someone go or when a job is taken from you. When your whole life is changed and you didn’t have a say in it.

My uncle John has written a couple of books, one of them you may have heard of it was on the best seller list for a while. “How to work for an Idiot.” Maybe that is the kindest way to describe what can make a good day into a day of suffering?

3) You work for an idiot. My uncle wrote a couple of books on the idiot theme. And he picked exactly the right word. Did you know that Jesus called people idiots? - right to their face in public. That doesn’t sound like a very Christian thing to do? (You might say Jesus loves you and I’m trying ?, but an idiot? The word Idiot comes from the Greek word ‘Ideos’ which describes when something belongs to you, it’s yours, it’s private. A form of the word is also used to describe the difference between someone trained and untrained. An idiot doesn’t have the skills for the job. Or in the way we perhaps use (or should use) the word and the way my uncle uses it to describe some of those we work with – to be an idiot is (as the Greek lexicon says) to ‘not be knowledgeable about a particular groups experience.’ An idiot in the truest sense of the word is unable to put themselves in another persons shoes. They think they are always right. It is literally hard for them to understand things from your point of view. (You don’t work with anyone like that do you? We have to be careful though some times we are the idiot’s, right?)

Can your job be suffering because some where in the chain of command … or some valued customer with whom you have no choice but to grin and nod… somewhere there is an idiot that you have to deal with everyday. That pompous, know it all that when it doesn’t happen his or her way they throw a fit like a little child. And the scary thing is that this child who is having a tantrum right there in public before you has more power in this community or in your work place then you have ever imagined. It really does make you wonder if this is God’s kingdom or not. And if it is what in the world is he doing through this, well idiot.

Does that describe some of the not so fun aspects of your everyday callings in family, work, and the community (we won’t go into politics?). Have you ever felt unnamed, taken advantage of, your boss throws tantrums?

Let me introduce you to Naaman’s servant girl. She was probably a teenager, taken from her home and family, when the Syrian army under Naaman’s command pillaged her village. She is unnamed in the bible, taken advantage of enslaved for life at an age when her future was wide open. Though there were less callings open to a Jewish girl in that day and age then there will be for my daughter. I can promise you she did not chose the calling of slave over that of wife, mother, farmer, retailer…

She literally is unnamed in the bible, we only know her as the servant of Naaman’s wife. She is taken advantage of and forced into a life she never hopped or asked for. And her boss was the idiot who threw a tantrum, because things didn’t go the way he had planned, because God had given him something simple to do. Faith in something outside his control.

And yet in spite of her suffering, in spite of having every right to reject her place in the world…when she should have least been able to see God active in her life! She still finds the ability to live her life not out of fear, or greed…but lives her life for the sake of those she served even though she had not chosen to serve them. She could have said nothing in the face of her idiot bosses troubles. But instead she offers the help of the one man who can help him - Elisha the prophet.

*When our lives are calm and stable, we may be oblivious to the presence of God. Often we are awakened in our times of suffering. Martin Luther distinguished between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross. A theology of glory [is when we think] God’s presence is experienced only through the highs of life, the peaks experiences like a dramatic healing, a phenomenal success, the perfect job that usour every talent, a dramatic supernatural experience. Although a theology of the cross does not deny that such “highs” sometimes happen to some people, it declares that the more common way to experience God is through the ordinary, natural events of everyday life. More than that, a theology of the cross even says that we may experience God most clearly in the “lows” of life, the brokenness and failures, even the [rock bottoms] at which we are helpless to do anything for ourselves. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

You are theologians of the cross in a community that leans toward glory. Through the suffering (however large or small it may be) of your lives you are able to identify and feel the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. You are able to see in your calling the Christian calling to service. It is in suffering that you literally give up your lives for others just as Jesus gave up his life for you. You are aware of God not in spite of your sufferings, but it is precisely through your sufferings that God presence comes alive in you.

*This paragraph is borrowed from Jack Fortin’s The Centered Life, pg. 32.