For the readings for this Sunday, click here.
Back in 2019, I began to realize something was wrong with me. Usually a person that likes to be creative with language, I frequently struggled to find even the most common words to communicate. I was constantly exhausted, taking whatever spare time I could to nap at work so I could have enough energy to engage my students during activities and meet the most basic demands of my job as campus pastor. My brain fog was intense.
I went to the doctor and they ran a bunch of tests. Turns out, my body was no longer producing norepinephrine, cortisol, epinephrine – stress hormones – correctly. I had, more or less, overworked myself into having nothing more to give, quite literally. My doctor told me I needed to take six months off from work to recover. I laughed and told her I could take two. So I took two months of paid medical leave from my call to begin to heal.
For the first two weeks, I slept. Relieved from the stress of work, my body collapsed. Then I was met with a new challenge – the stress of being unemployed. For the next month I had to work on something I never imagined I would have to do – separating myself from my employment status. I had not realized how entirely my identity – and my worth – had become intertwined with my work. I had daily meditations to remind myself my work was not my worth and to remind myself – or rediscover – who I was outside of being a campus pastor. I had thought this wouldn’t happen to me. After watching my father give up his joy for corporate recognition, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t be like this. I would put my life first. And yet, here I was. I broke myself for my job.
The thing is, it is really, really difficult to not do this in our culture. We are, implicitly and explicitly, taught to value ourselves – and others – by what we do for a living. What’s one of the first things we ask people we have just met? What do you do? What’s near the top of the list of the way most of us introduce ourselves? Our job. This is why so many people have crises when they leave the workforce to be a stay at home parent or when they retire - and probably why so many people I know come out of retirement at least once before retiring fully. All too often, we don’t know who we are if we are not working.
Our value, to ourselves and others, is wound up in our work. Our larger culture is obvious as to how various work is valued. The work that is valued the most gets paid the most. In our cultural economy, Hollywood actors, athletes, influencers, CEO’s and people who have money to invest and invest it well are the people of highest value. It doesn’t matter how ethical or moral you are, it simply matters how much capital you produce or how well you entertain. While we give lip service to valuing the work of teachers, nurses, and the people who make and build, if we truly valued them (according to how we measure worth), we would pay them more. Next on the list are the people who work in the service industry and people who clean up after us. But for all of these people, while they may be valued more or less depending on the work they do (and their own smaller cultural context), at least they work. Because what we value least of all, is those who – for whatever reason – don’t work.
Being out of work can send most of us into a void of meaninglessness and lack of worth. A lack of worth we all too often project onto others. From the derision towards stay-at-home parents to the outright disgust so many show towards the unhoused, we tie peoples worth to their employment statues. And if you’re thinking that you don’t do that, maybe you don’t, but I want to challenge you to pay attention when conversations around you are about the unhoused, the disabled, people on public assistance, even the people around us that work minimum wage jobs. Most of us still have narratives running in our heads we don’t even notice until we really pay attention.
In today’s gospel reading, we have Jesus attending a dinner at a Pharisees house, and he tells two parables. I want to focus on the second, very short parable. He tells the host that when he gathers people for a meal, to not invite his friends or brothers or sisters, relatives or rich neighbors just so that they might invite him in return and get repaid, but to invite the poor and the disabled who cannot repay him. This is both an instruction to the host (and all listening) about how they should conduct themselves and a description of God’s table. To God, it doesn’t matter if she will be repaid. God’s kingdom is not dependent on who can repay God, all are welcome – especially those who are marginalized in this world.
In short, our work, our economic production, our status is not our worth.
We have incalculable worth to God simply because we exist.
And so does everyone else.
My work, what I can produce, is not my worth. And it’s not your worth. And it’s not the worth of CEO’s or fast food workers, athletes or homeless people, smart investors or people on public assistance.
And this sounds super simple, but it can be quite difficult to internalize. To truly believe that we are loved just simply for being. That’s it. We don’t have to do ANYTHING to be loved.
Lutheran theology tells us that we are saved by grace – that there is nothing we can do to earn Gods love, that there’s no scoreboard or tally in heaven. This is the beauty of what Martin Luther did, he released people from a theology that made people feel constantly afraid of damnation.
However, Lutheran theology also calls us to respond to God’s grace, to do as Jesus asks in response to this love we have been given. It’s how we love God back. Thanks to God’s grace, we don’t need to do this perfectly, we don’t need to do this at all, but it is how we can respond to God’s love – with love. And we live in a world that is short on love.
We live in a culture that values I more than we, that prioritizes our own perception of safety and freedom over the safety and freedom of others, that values punishment over healing, and what’s in someone bank account over what’s in someone hearts. We live in a culture that watches children get killed in schools, adults in their workplaces, and people get bombed in hospitals, offers thoughts and prayers, but seemingly refuses to take any action that might ask a sacrifice from some for the good of the whole, and action that might be costly.
Jesus turns all of the priorities of this culture upside down.
In today’s reading from Hebrews, the author of Hebrews reminds the people to whom they are writing that what is important is brotherly love, hospitality to strangers, caring for those in prison, fidelity in relationships, and not being in love with money. For Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and always. Jesus’ values do not change over time. Which means we are infinitely valued yesterday, today, and always. In God’s economy, your worth is not your work
You are valued and loved even if you do absolutely nothing to produce capital. And so is everyone else.
Amen.
