What Difference Does Jesus Make in our Workplace?

My friend, Mark Labberton, who pastors the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, was walking down Telegraph Avenue and he was stopped by a young man who had recently attended his church, recognized him and introduced himself. He had a very Berkeley-esque look with lots of tattoos, a former professional rock musician now in graduate school trying to figure out what to do with his life.

He admitted to Mark that he was a religious skeptic with an anti-Christian bias, but he had lots of questions about truth, love and justice and he was trying to find a church that would welcome him and his questions. "So far," he said, "the churches that match my politics haven’t helped me with what I wonder about most: Is there really a God? Can we know if Jesus was God in human flesh? What difference would it make to follow Jesus?"

"I think if I got clearer on some of that, I would know why my life matters and how I am supposed to live. I can find lots of people in this town that are like me. What I need instead is to find some people that are like Jesus." He looked at Mark and asked, "Is your church that kind of place? ¹

Good question. Is our church that kind of place? If it’s not, then why are we here?

The first letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to one of the first churches he started was concerned with these same questions. Who is Jesus and what does it look like to follow him?

When Paul first introduced the believers in Thessalonica to Jesus (Acts 17:1ff), he was quickly run out of town by those who fiercely opposed his message, and he didn’t have enough time to properly educate them. So these new Christians with their new faith were still living in the midst of all that fierce opposition while they were trying to figure out their faith.

They desperately needed more teaching, and Paul sends it to them in this letter. In our passage he sends them a general set of instructions, a sort of mini-catechism, that he sent to other churches too (Rom. 12). But he tailors it for the Thessalonians, especially the part that had to do with work. For some reason, maybe because they all expected Jesus to come back any moment, some of them had just stopped working and they were becoming a burden to the rest of the community.

So Paul writes this letter to help this church do what every church is called to do: to help people know Jesus and become more like him in everything we do, including our work.

I Thessalonians 5:12-24

By the power of God’s Spirit, quickened in us by our life together, our lives will demonstrate the truth, love and justice of Jesus Christ. Our work will demonstrate the truth, love and justice of Jesus Christ. That is why we are here.

William grew up in a wealthy family in Britain. In fact, he was a spoiled brat. His father died young and he spent some of his growing up years in the home of his aunt and uncle who took him to church where he was introduced to Jesus Christ. But once he went away to school in Cambridge he left his Christian faith behind, partied with the best of them and behaved just like everybody else.

When he graduated from college he became one of the youngest Members of Parliament at age 21, and he discovered that he was a natural at politics. Five years into his political career he went through a profound conversion experience and he went from being extremely self-centered to being extremely God-centered. In fact, Jesus Christ made such a difference in his life that he considered leaving politics altogether and going into ministry.

After struggling with this for some time, the pastor that his aunt and uncle had introduced him to years earlier, John Newton, convinced him to stay in Parliament and to stay in politics because God had important work for him to do there. So, it was in his work as a politician that William Wilberforce demonstrated the love and justice of Jesus Christ.

You’ve heard that name because he is the man who spent his whole political career, 43 years, crusading in the British parliament to abolish the barbaric African slave trade in 1807 and then to abolish slavery itself in 1833 (right before he died). Praise God that he did not leave his work to serve Christ, but served Christ in his work!

William Wilberforce did what Paul is telling the Thessalonian church members to do: abstain from every form of evil, hold fast to what is good…always seek to do good to one another and to all… May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely… spirit and soul and body… so that you may be blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The world is looking at the church (not the building, but the people, you and me) and wondering what that young man in Berkeley was wondering: "What difference would it make to follow Jesus? I can find lots of people in this town that are like me. What I need instead is to find some people that are like Jesus. Is your church that kind of place?"

Are we? Are we admonishing one another the way John Newton admonished William Wilberforce back in the 18th century, to demonstrate the truth, love and justice of Jesus Christ where we live our lives every day? If our Christian faith shows up only when we are church, what good is that?

When Gary Haugen was a student at Harvard University, he got involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and it changed the way he practiced his faith. "I moved from being a naïve and rather narrow Christian to one concerned about God’s greater purposes in the world."

Haugen graduated from Harvard, then law school at the University of Chicago, and immediately plunged himself into international law and addressing human rights abuses, first in South Africa, then the Philippines. Then he was hired to work for the Department of Justice in Washington DC and was sent to Rwanda to investigate the human rights abuses there.

After the horror of all that he uncovered there, the Spirit and passion of Jesus Christ led him to start International Justice Mission in 1997, an organization committed to organizing lawyers and local communities around the world to fight modern day slavery and injustice.

Last month Prison Fellowship gave Gary Haugen the 2007 William Wilberforce Award to honor his work in fighting the modern day slave trade. He used it as an opportunity to invite all Christians to get involved. In a recent issue of Christianity Today he wrote:

"When Wilberforce sought to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, about 50,000 new slaves a year were being boarded onto British ships. While that was a nightmarishly large number for its day, there are far more children sold into sex slavery every year in the 21st century—to say nothing of the millions of adults held in other forms of slavery in the mines, rock quarries, brick factories, plantations, and rice mills of our world."

"What a tragedy it would be if amidst all the movies and memorials celebrating the life of Wilberforce in 2007, Christians missed out on the chance to actually be Wilberforce in 2007—to be used of God to set slaves free, to bring an end to slavery in this generation, and to bring honor to the mission of Christ in the world. William Wilberforce and a vibrant movement of middle-class Christian abolitionists didn't miss their opportunity in 1807. So what will it take for us not to miss our opportunity in 2007?" ²

What will it take for us not to miss our opportunity to actually be Jesus in 2007? Will it mean leaving what you are doing now to go into full time ministry? Probably not. It will mean seeing where you are right now as your place of full time ministry, and letting Jesus minister there through you.

And it will not happen on your own steam, but by the power of God’s Spirit ("Do not quench the Spirit"). And you and I can’t figure out what God’s Spirit is leading us to do on our own. It takes the teaching and encouragement and admonishment of the church. In worship together, in the Word together, in prayer constantly – that’s how it happened for William Wilberforce, for Gary Haugen, for Paul and the Thessalonians. We need one another to live Christ’s life in the world.

Christ’s life is radically different than the ways of the world, and it takes a lot of support to go that way. "Do not repay evil for evil, but seek to do good to all." That is radically different than the ways of the world.

We have seen it recently in the Amish community in Nickle Mines, Pennsylvania, after the shooting in their school that killed five of their children and injured five others. They did not talk anger and revenge, but forgiveness. When they received contributions for their bereaved families, they sent part of what they got to the family members of the gunman who shot and killed himself.

That is the difference that Jesus makes, by his Spirit, shaping us through our Christian communities so that every inch of our lives demonstrates the truth and love and justice of Jesus Christ.

I love the Abraham Kuyper quote that Josh put at the top of our sermon series: "There is not an inch, not an inch in the entire domain of our human life of which Christ, who is sovereign of all, does not proclaim ‘Mine.’" Do you think of yourselves that way?

Every inch of your lives sanctified entirely for Jesus – students and teachers, patients and nurses and doctors and all of you in the medical and biopharmaceutical professions, computer programmers and those who sit in front of a computer all day, mothers and fathers and caregivers everywhere, lawyers and judges, police officers

and firefighters, politicians and voters, chief cooks and bottle washers – wherever you are living your life you are sanctified entirely, all of you for Jesus, in all circumstances for all people, including your enemies.

You might see the movie "Amazing Grace" and think like I did, "I’m certainly not William Wilberforce." I’m not a Gary Haugen or a Jennifer Sereda. I’m not doing anything nearly as meaningful as they are. A lot of people in the church could think that way.

I suppose Ruben Carlos, our custodian, could say the same thing about his life, but you all know as well as I do how that man embodies the joy and love and kindness of Jesus Christ in his work here. And he definitely "prays without ceasing."

Our nursery school teachers could say the same thing, but their work with the pre-school children and their parents, their partnership with the pre-school in East Palo Alto and in Romania – what a demonstration of the love and justice of Jesus Christ in this world!

The world is looking at the church (you and me) and wondering, "What difference does it make to follow Jesus? I can find lots of people in this town that are like me. What I need is to find some people that are like Jesus. Is your church that kind of place?"

Are we? Are we admonishing one another, the way Paul admonished the Thessalonians back in the first century, the way John Newton admonished William Wilberforce back in the 18th century, the way InterVarsity admonished Gary Haugen in the 20th century, the way Gary Haugen admonishes the church today, to live every inch of our lives for Jesus? Are we admonishing one another to demonstrate the truth, love and justice of Jesus Christ in everything we do, everywhere, every day?

If not, then why are we here?

Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church.