St. John’s United Church

Reeling in the FISH! Philosophy

If you hear the message and don’t obey it, you are like people who stare at themselves in a mirror and forget what they look like as soon as they leave.
But you must never stop looking at the perfect law that sets you free.
God will bless you in everything you do, if you listen and obey,
and don’t just hear and forget. (James 1:23-25)

According to Greek mythology, Sisyphus was once a cruel King of Corinth. And when he died, he was eternally condemned to push a giant boulder to the top of a steep hill. The closer he got to the top, the steeper the hill became, and the harder it was to push the boulder. Every time he had almost gotten the boulder to the top of the hill, he would lose control of it. It would roll over him and down to the bottom of the hill, where he would have to start all over again.

On this Labour Day weekend, I hope that none of you are feeling like Sisyphus. I hope that you don’t wake up every morning feeling like you have to push a giant boulder up a hill. According to a story in USA TODAY, excuses for being absent or late to work are becoming more creative. Accountemps, a New York temporary help firm, polled executives about the most bizarre excuses they’ve heard. Some of the winners were: “My favourite actress just got married, and I needed time alone;” “I had to sort my socks;” “The wind was blowing against me;” “A plane landed on the highway;” “There was a bear on my street;” and, opting for honesty, one employee wrote, “I just forgot to come to work.” Or, for many who do go to work, they crack down the windows of their cars in the corporate parking lot in the summer, not to save the upholstery from the heat, but because only 60% of them goes into that place, and the rest of them stays in the car all day and must breathe out there.

Work is an important part of our lives. It takes a great part of our time and most of our energy. As someone has said, things are so hectic nowadays that we are no longer human beings, but human doings. People spend about 75% of their adult waking hours doing work related activities – getting ready for work, travelling to work, working, contemplating work, and winding down after work. If we spend that much time in that part of our lives, we ought to enjoy it and be energized by it. And yet, too many people are trading time on the job to satisfy needs elsewhere. “Thank God It’s Friday!” is still a way of life for many people. However, if we choose to love the work we do, we can catch our limit of happiness, meaning and fulfillment every day.

It’s fashionable today to believe that we should not settle for anything less than doing what we love – write poetry, travel the world on a sailboat, paint – do whatever you love - and the money will follow. We tell ourselves that life is too short to spend our waking hours doing anything less than the ideal, and so, we continue our search for the perfect workplace. The danger is that, if our quest for ideal work focuses us on the future, we will miss the amazingly wonderful life that is available today, in this moment. The fact is that, in the real world, there are conditions that prevent us from chasing the perfect, ideal job. Many of us have significant responsibilities to family members or to a way of life. For others, a true calling hasn’t made itself visible yet. Unfortunately, others are under so much stress in their personal lives that there is literally no time or energy to seek a new line of work.

FISH! Is a parable by Stephen Lundin and Harry Paul and John Christensen, about finding the deep source of energy, creativity and passion that exists inside each of us by learning to “love what we do, even if, at the moment, we may not be doing exactly what we love.” There is always a choice about the way we do our work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself. We can choose the attitude we bring to our work. We can bring a moody attitude and have a depressing day. We can bring a grouchy attitude and irritate our co-workers and customers. Or, we can bring a sunny, playful, cheerful attitude and have a great day. We can choose the kind of day we will have.

We know Jesus worked hard. Indeed, Work followed him everywhere he went. He cherished getting away for a little rest and spiritual nourishment just like we do - a time for personal retreat, for prayer and reflection, for rest and renewal. But he always returned to work. This Labour Day weekend, we need to remind ourselves that Jesus is still working. He is looking for people who are hurting, people who are lonely, people who are bound by addictions of every kind. And he is telling them, “Come to me. I can help you. I can help you today.”

One of the hardest lessons we learn is that the Gospel is about loving people. All people. Everywhere. God’s love is universal. When we reach out to others we are doing the work of God. Mama Hale did just that. Her story appeared in Reader’s Digest some years back. This is the bold introduction to the article: “The baby will not stop screaming. On the third floor of a brownstone in New York City’s Harlem, a woman holds the two-week-old infant in her arms. The little body trembles and twitches with pain, but Clara Hale has no medicine to offer against that agony, unless you count love. In an old bentwood rocker, she soothes the hurting child. “I love you and God loves you,” she promises. “Your mother loves you too, but she’s sick right now, like you are.” She coaxes the baby to nurse at a bottle. She bathes the child, croons softly and tries a little patty-cake game. “After a while, maybe you get a smile,” she tells a visitor, “so you know the baby’s trying too. You keep loving it — and you wait.” Clara Hale is 79 years old, a tiny, birdlike woman with nut-brown skin and a curling halo of white hair. “The baby craves something he doesn’t understand,” she explains. The “something” is heroin, and it may take a month before the baby is cleansed of the addiction that began in his mother’s womb. A physician, a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a social worker have examined the infant and written a prescription. It’s the same one Mrs. Hale found by instinct 15 years ago, when she started cradling such drug-poisoned babies: lots of patience and calm, mixed with mega doses of love. Her cure works, but that is just the beginning of being one of “Mama Hale’s children.” It’s a moving story that tells of Clara Hale spending a lifetime caring for other women’s children. In a fifth-floor walk-up, she raised 40 foster children as well as three of her own. And now she operates a place called Hale House, a unique haven in the heart of the drug darkness of New York’s Harlem. The time the article was written, she had cared for 487 babies of addicts.

Mama Hale would understand the lessons from James. She puts it into practice. James is an unequivocal champion of works. He minces no words: “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
If you hear the message and don’t obey it, you are like people who stare at themselves in a mirror and forget what they look like as soon as they leave.
But you must never stop looking at the perfect law that sets you free.
God will bless you in everything you do, if you listen and obey,
and don’t just hear and forget. (James 1:23-25)
We must be doers of the word and not hearers only.

Many retired people are giving their time to others. Some plant gardens. Some find ways to help around the church or in the community. Few of us who are able-bodied would be content to sit inside watching television all the time. Most of us are working at something. The question is, “For what are we working?” Some people don’t even know. Money? Power? Recognition? Some of us would answer simply: “survival.” Columnist Herb Caen wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle; when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” Some of us can identify with that. We’ve got bills to pay, college to prepare for, old age to think about. Some of us are overwhelmed with the cost of just getting by.

But there are other reasons for working that have nothing to do with survival. For example, there is the pride of excelling, giving our best. Coach Gene Stallings tells of an incident when he was defensive backfield coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Two AllPro players, Charlie Waters and Cliff Harris, were sitting in front of their lockers after playing a tough game against the Washington Redskins. They were still in their uniforms, and their heads were bowed in exhaustion. Waters turned to Harris and asked, “By the way, Cliff, what was the final score?”

Pride in what you do and how you do it are powerful motivators. There are people in this world who work just for the pride of doing what they can do as well as they are able. They are often given increases in salary, but it is not money that motivates them. They receive appreciation and recognition, but again, that is not what pushes their button. Something internal pushes them to give their best. The world would be a much poorer world without such folks. I know our church would be poorer without them. Every conscientious teacher, choir member, and church officer is made of such stuff. They give their best regardless of what they are engaged in.

There are other people who are motivated by simply being part of something bigger than themselves. There was an article in the newspapers recently about a man named Elmer Booze. Booze is a professional page-turner for concert pianists. His job is to follow the score that the performer is playing and turn pages at the proper times. He is supposed to be as unobtrusive as possible, working quickly and without obscuring the performer’s vision. Booze does this well enough to be referred to as “the ghost.” A good page-turner should help make the performer successful. The page-turner doesn’t share the bows; nor is he or she listed in the program. He/She has done his/her job if he/she has enabled the performer to perform uninterrupted and if he/she has remained unnoticed. Elmer Booze is content to make his anonymous contribution to something bigger than himself.

Again, that is the motivation that drives many people in our church. Think how many tasks, from teaching Sunday School to preparing the flowers on the altar, are done by people who ask no recognition for themselves. They are content knowing that this is God’s work and they are thankful to be part of it.

There are all kinds of motivations for working. Still, they all fall short of Jesus’ standards. “Do not labour for the food which perishes,” he says, “but for the food which endures for eternal life….” There are people who are sweating blood, working their hearts out, driving themselves to early graves, who will one day have nothing to show for their labours. They will leave this world just as empty handed as they came into it. There will be not a single mark on their canvas, because everything they work for is perishable. They have missed the whole point of living.

These past two weeks, I have had the opportunity to attend meetings with four of our leadership groups at St. John’s. All are gearing up to work hard at their particular ministry here at St. John’s and in the wider community. The FunRai$er$ have an exciting Fall planned with cheese sales, an Anniversary Dinner, a new form of the Christmas Bazaar – a Food festival – as well as a “shopping programme.” The Christian Education team is working hard to ensure that all ages are included in learning about God in fun, creative ways. Karen MacNaull did a wonderful job of putting together an evening to explain the Duty of Care guidelines (as outlined by the United Church of Canada) to those working with our youngest members. The Church Council met on Wednesday to tie up any looses ends from last year, and to lay plans for a busy Fall season. Everyone appeared well rested after the summer and eager to embrace the work – the ministry – before us. Each group is reeling in the FISH! philosophy by choosing a positive attitude, having fun, involving others, and being fully present (engaged) in their work. As September gets underway, there will be opportunities for all of us to work at the ministry to which God is calling us. I’m ready to begin. What about you?

God will bless you in everything you do, if you listen and obey,
and don’t just hear and forget. (James 1:23-25)

Acknowledgements: Bass Mitchell; James Moore; Brett Blair; Maxie Dunnam; King Duncan;

A meditation preached by the rev. Myra Garvin at St. John’s United Church, Brockville
Sunday September 3, 2006 – Pentecost 13B - Labour Day Weekend