Whose Work? Which Economy?
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 16:2-15 or Jonah 3:10-4:11
Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45 or Psalm 145:1-8
Can every part of our lives be truly sacred?
Can work be more than a Sisyphean uphill slog chasing meaning and financial security only to have economic upheaval, leadership failures and institutional decay leave our labor in tatters?
Or, after the Fall, is work doomed to be fruitless toil, thorns and thistles, and living by the sweat of our brow until death takes us?
Is work cursed?
These are my everyday questions as I work in technology after decades of pastoral ministry, and perhaps the questions facing those around us in a time of rising labor disputes and economic pressures.
So Paul’s declaration that life in the flesh means “fruitful labor” (Philippians 1:22) is jolting. And all the more when it dawns on us that Paul writes to the Philippian congregation while he is languishing in prison (vv. 7, 13, 17). Imprisoned for the subversive proclamation of a Lord and Savior not named Caesar and a hair’s breadth away from literal termination (i.e. losing his life, not just his job), Paul nevertheless asserts that his work will bear fruit as God ordained in the beginning.
Given that he is in a dead-end situation, where does Paul’s confidence about work come from?
Paul’s assertion springs out of a dilemma. “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (v. 21). Paul faces death because his enemies believe it would be better if he were dead. And Paul concurs! Death will lead him to “be with Christ” – the highest joy for one who is in Christ. On the other hand, if Paul continues to live in the flesh, he can continue building up the Philippian congregation, which is “more necessary” for them.
Despite his imprisonment, Paul does have a choice. He can remain silent at his trial as Jesus did and suffer execution. Or he can mount the kind of vigorous defense Acts depicts on multiple occasions. The former leads to death and Paul’s gain, Paul’s advantage. The latter leads to life in the flesh and the Philippians’ “progress and joy in faith” (v. 25). Although Paul claims to not know which he prefers, his clear desire is to die and be with Christ.
But in the end, Paul presents a pattern of behavior which he expects the Philippian community to follow. Paul is talking about making a choice, against his own preference, for the sake of others. He expects his readers to do the same (Craig Wansink, cited in Philippians by Stephen E. Fowl).
The apostle’s choice is nonsensical in our economy of insecurity that motivates us to accumulate as much leverage as possible, apply to and enroll at schools with the best reputations, or find significance in ever higher salaries and prominence. To restrict one’s school choices to the lesser, local options, choose a lesser paying job, remain rooted instead of assuming our only option is to climb the academic, corporate or ecclesiastical ladder – these all make little sense if the goal is to secure our lives by what we accumulate or derive meaning by what we accomplish.
Clearly, Paul inhabits a different story from the one that Mammon and the Market tell us. That story actually comes in Philippians 2 (next week’s Epistle text). There Paul extols the way Christ did not regard his equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself of divine advantage. Paul operates out of God’s economy, the ever-expanding economy of redemption inaugurated and sourced by Christ’s self-emptying on the cross. When Paul speaks of the fruitful “labor” he anticipates, it is the same Greek word ergon that he employs a few verses earlier when expressing his confidence that God who “began a good work [ergon] among you will bring it to completion” (1:6).
Paul’s labor is fruitful because it is work that did not begin with him and it does not depend on him for completion. Work is always God’s before it is ours, and God is the one who will finish it. When Paul follows Christ’s way of self-emptying love by choosing to live for the benefit of the Philippians, he joins in the work that God has already begun. The apostle may be in chains, seemingly deprived of options. But Paul demonstrates that even a dead-end vocation can be the context of abundantly fruitful work. Caesar, Mammon, and the Market are powerless to halt our work of self-giving love, our labor in the economy of redemption.
Work can thus become a gift and not a curse when it participates in God’s economy, in Christ’s way of self-emptying on the cross.
It may seem like a stretch to connect Paul’s work with our own. What do apostolic labors have to do with preparing budgets and grading papers, planting crops and caring for aging parents? But Paul himself urges the Philippians to recognize that they are sharing in the same struggle he has (1:30). Paul wants the believers to see themselves caught up into God’s economy of salvation. This is not just his individual struggle as an apostle. It’s bigger than any one individual’s work.
The Market would have us believe that it’s all about what each of us does. I am what I earn, what I accomplish, what legacy I leave behind as an individual. In this way, the market economy threatens and disheartens us by reducing us to individual units of production and consumption. Thus atomized, we are left isolated and vulnerable to forces greater than us.
Paul, in contrast, exhorts the Philippians to see their work, their struggle, their striving side by side as part of a whole, a larger economy: the commonwealth of heaven (3:20). And by following Paul’s (and Christ’s) example of choosing self-giving over self-seeking, the Philippians engage in an economy their opponents cannot shake.
Time does not permit us to speak of the way that Jesus’ parable of the workers reimagines the economy as the place where God’s generosity overwhelms meritocracy and the leverage of the strong. Or to find ourselves scandalized by God’s generosity alongside Jonah because we are convinced our hard work has earned us status. Or to be filled with wonder like those who gather manna and discover that everyone had just as much as they needed. In each case, God’s economy puts our work in its proper place and gives it new purpose and new coherence with God’s justice and God’s people.
We live in a world in which work is God’s gift and grace to us because it can be participation in cruciform generosity.