Sermon: Work, Labor, Endurance

Text: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Date: October 16, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

Jennifer and I went to hear Jim Wallis speak in Seattle a couple of weeks ago (he’s the author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It). For part of his speech he was snapping every three seconds. Let’s try that—I’ll attempt to lead even though I am rhythmically challenged.

Why every three seconds? That’s how often a child somewhere in the world dies of hunger or hunger-related disease. Think on that while we snap a little longer.

Every…three…seconds a child dies of hunger. Three-quarters of the people who die of starvation nowadays—about 24,000 people per day--are children. Doesn’t contemplating that just wear you out? If you tried to keep on snapping every three seconds for the rest of the day or even the rest of the hour what do you think would peter out first—the physical strength in your fingers, or the psychic strength to imagine a child dying every time you snapped?

Psychic strength does give out, doesn’t it? Just a few days ago the Seattle Times had an article headlined “Frequent disasters take a toll on American psyche.”[1] The subheading read, “The numerous natural disasters—not to mention war and famine—in the past 10 months have prompted ‘calamity fatigue’ in some.” I’ve heard of “compassion fatigue” before, but this is the first time I’ve heard the phrase “calamity fatigue” used. There’s a good reason why calamity fatigue might be on the rise. In the last ten months, the world has experienced the Southeast Asia tsunami, Gulf Coast hurricanes Katrina and Rita, mudslides and flooding in Guatemala, the earthquake in Pakistan and India that has taken an estimated 23,000 lives, not to mention an unending series of war-related deaths, and a steady occurrence of planes crashing, boats sinking, etc.

This news article points out that the tendency to start to shut down in the face of so much calamity is a natural human defense mechanism. Susan Hawkins, Seattle University’s counseling director, says “You can’t feel intensely everything that’s going on all the time and still continue to function.” That is so true. A certain amount of emotional distancing is normal and probably even necessary.

The newspaper offered tips for dealing with calamity from mental-health experts: “Talk to friends and family about what you’re feeling or call a crisis hot line; avoid information overload by turning off 24-hour news coverage; take care of yourself by meditating and by avoiding excessive use of alcohol; surround yourself with positive support.” Lovely.

There is something just a little dramatic about that, isn’t there? Oh, I have “calamity fatigue”—suddenly the focus is off the victims and on to ME. I need mental-health help because the suffering of my neighbors is just too gruesome for me to think about. It’s just a bit twisted.

How to avoid calamity fatigue or compassion fatigue or whatever you want to call it? We can shut out far-away suffering altogether; pretty easy to do when we live in such magnificent place with a multitude of pleasant distractions at our fingertips. But there’s something rather dodgy about that technique for Christians. Is there a way to deal with fatigue before it overtakes us? The same way an athlete does, perhaps, by getting in shape through disciplined means before running the race?

I want to highlight some of the words from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. There are some powerful words in the third verse: faith, love, and hope. When you hear them mentioned together you most likely think of the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians: “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” 1 Thessalonians was probably written quite a while before that letter to the church in Corinth. Paul was in the early stages of developing his message. You can see throughout his career as an apostle and theologian that faith and hope and love were at the heart of his descriptions of the Christian life.

What I found intriguing in this reading of the epistle was the words he paired with faith, love, and hope as he gave thanks for the church in Thessalonica. Did you notice them? The words were work, labor, and endurance (translated “steadfastness” in the NRSV). Work, labor, endurance. Paul gives thanks for the Thessalonians’ work of faith, labor of love, endurance of hope.

Our Bible study curriculum this week called attention to these unique pairings of belief words with what you might call “grunt” words with this set of questions: “In what ways is it ‘work’ to live in faith? In what ways is it ‘labor’ to practice love? In what ways is it ‘endurance’ to maintain hope?” We had some interesting conversation about those questions in our study circle. I think it would be fair to say that although we might not have put those words, “faith, love and hope” together with “work, labor and endurance” on our own, they illuminated each other. Sometimes it is hard work to live in faith. Sometimes love takes labor to keep it alive. Sometimes hope is purely the product of endurance.

Nothing wrong with bringing that out into the open. It would be a shame if Christians gave the impression that living in faith and practicing love and maintaining hope came so easily that those who have to work, labor, and endure along the faith journey just don’t get it. It would be a shame if Christians gave the impression that once your salvation was assured there was nothing else to work for. I for one am happy to see these tough, muscular words connected with the Christian life because they reflect my experience. While I was in New Zealand last summer I worshiped in several Anglican churches. I was surprised that during each service the priests mentioned either in the prayers or the sermon or both the struggle to be faithful. I think they were mostly referencing the painful division in the worldwide Anglican church over the consecration of a gay bishop; but it was very interesting to me to notice my own relief whenever the struggle to be faithful was voiced. Something like this rolled through my mind: yes, struggle; whew, I’m not the only one who finds it so!

It’s refreshing the way Paul embraces these tough, brawny words when he talks about the way the Thessalonians were living the Christian life. If I were illustrating my Bible the way the artist-scholars who first hand-copied Bibles did, I might put a little picture of Rosie the Riveter next to this text. You know the one I mean? The woman who shows her well-developed muscle over the phrase, “We can do it!” You see, “work, labor and endurance,” though they might not be among words we would choose as the most beautiful in the English language, can be quite inspiring. Ask any athlete who puts a lot of time and energy into training. It is through the sheer sweaty work that endurance builds and victory is eventually won. The labor of training is what fends off premature fatigue.

Would this logic apply to the spiritual life? It seems to me that it would. We are much less likely to succumb to “calamity fatigue” or other such hazards of modern life if we had regularly been engaged in the work of faith, the labor of love, and the endurance of hope. How would that be accomplished? One classical model of a kind of Christian “workout” is suggested in John Wesley’s General Rules for the Methodist church. There are three broad categories of the rule. The first is to do no harm and to avoid doing evil of every sort. The second is to do good; to be kind and merciful, to do “every possible sort of good” to all people. The third is to “attend to the ordinances of God:” public worship, the ministry of the Word, family and private prayer, searching the scripture, taking part in communion, and fasting or abstinence. Such practices certainly add up to work, labor, and endurance; but Wesley was confident they would result in stronger faith, love, and hope.

Besides the interior work needed for a strong faith, work, labor and endurance are needed when discipleship intersects with this calamitous world. The work of faith, the labor of love, and the endurance of hope are the best response to the snap…snap…snap of a child dying of hunger or hunger related disease every three seconds. The only response, really, since we serve a living God who asks us to be imitators of Christ.

This weekend EHCC along with many other congregations are celebrating the Children’s Sabbath, recalling the gifts and needs of children. There are a plethora of problems faced by children in America:

The State of Children in America’s Union

• An American child is abused or neglected every 36 seconds; 556,000 children

are in our foster care system; 131,000 of them are waiting for adoptive families.

• An American child is born into poverty every 41 seconds; one in five children is poor

during the first three years of life—the time of greatest brain development.

• An American child is born without health insurance every 59 seconds; 90 percent

of our more than nine million uninsured children live in working families.

• An American child or teen is killed by gunfire every 3 hours—eight every day; 90,000

children and teens have been killed by guns since 1979.

• Millions of American children start school not ready to learn, and millions more

lack safe, affordable, quality child care and early childhood education when their

parents work.

• A majority of American fourth graders can’t read or do math at a proficient level.

• More than seven million children are home alone on a regular basis without adult

supervision after school when they are at greatest risk of getting into trouble.

• Nearly 12 million children are poor, and millions are hungry, at risk of hunger, living

in worst case housing, or homeless. Almost three out of four poor children live in

working families.[2]

Does it wear you out just to listen to such facts? Understandable. But what is the appropriate response for imitators of Christ? The work of faith, the labor of love, the endurance of hope.

Here we need to put the emphasis back on the faith, love, and hope side of Paul’s phraseology. We have faith in a God who is tirelessly trying to protect all her children, endlessly urging his servants to do right. We have love that is supercharged by the power of the Holy Spirit, which bolsters our own ability to sustain compassion over the long haul. We have hope that Creation is still being perfected by our Creator, that we will ultimately experience the harmony God planned for us. Faith, love and hope, all gifts of God, are joined by what we can offer: work, labor, and endurance.

Discipline in addressing social problems is key, just as discipline in athletic training contributes to the success of the athlete. We can’t rely on our feelings to motivate us to do what is right. Our feelings are too fickle, too volatile. Making a commitment and sticking with it regardless of how we feel will be much more effective than waiting on the ebb and flow of feelings of pity or compassion.

The Children’s Defense Fund is promoting a program they call Wednesdays in Washington or Wednesdays at Home. The point of it is to encourage people to commit to making a contact with a legislator every single Wednesday to urge them to do what’s best for children, specifically targeting various legislative goals set out by the Children’s Defense Fund. I like that idea. I like the coincidence of the contact day being Wednesday, since that’s when our wonderful youth show up at church so for me it would be that much easier to remember to do it. If you were interested in taking on such a discipline, there are plenty of knowledgeable agencies—the Children’s Defense Fund, Bread for the World, the UCC Faith Action network, to name a few--who could help you decide what goals you would want to pursue and how best to pursue them. Many Christian advocacy groups are interested in the Millennium Development Goals, which are an international effort to eliminate extreme poverty in the space of the next ten years. Encouraging our leaders to get behind these goals with United States resources could slow that every…three…seconds snap to one so infrequent you’d forget when to snap the next time.

Can we as a nation afford to take on social problems like hunger or health insurance for the poor? That all depends on what we think is important as a nation. Marian Wright Edelman, leader of the Children’s Defense fund, is fond of saying that we don’t have a money problem in this country, we have a moral values problem. The legislation they are pursuing adds up to a cost of $75 billion annually. How to pay for it? Her October 7 column reads in part, “Repealing the tax cuts just for the top 1 percent of wealthiest Americans could provide $57 billion of it. A portion of this tax cut repeal could lift every child from poverty. Decreasing the military budget by 5 percent could provide the rest. One week of the military budget spending would provide every child health and mental health coverage with 100% federal funding.”[3]

I like to mention advocacy for new national priorities because I feel that in a democracy participating in government is part of the work of faith and labor of love. But I know advocacy is not for everyone. You might want to do some kind of direct service as a discipline in addition to or instead of advocacy—tutoring, cooking for the youth group, volunteering at the parent-child center, running through multiplication flash cards at a third grade classroom near you. If you couldn’t do it every week, commit to once a month or once a year. If you can’t do it Wednesday, pick another day. Choose your own labor of love.

There’s no doubt that the Christian life involves a struggle—both interior and exterior. That’s life, real life. Listen to what Frederick Douglass wrote generations ago as he engaged in his work of seeking freedom, justice and equality for all races:

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor

freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up

the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean

without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it

may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a

struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.[4]

We are not alone in our struggle. We serve a living and true God who loves us and has chosen us to be bearers of faith, love and hope to our generation. Work. Labor. Endure. Be the good news.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Turnbull, Lornet The Seattle Times Thursday, October 13

[2] Children’s Defense Fund, http://www.cdfactioncouncil.org/actionguide/2003.pdf

[3] http://www.childrensdefense.org/childwatch/051007.aspx

[4] Frederick Douglass, West India Emancipation speech, August 4, 1857