It is never hard to connect the presence of our Lord and Master Jesus
Christ with our Sabbaths and our hours of worship. If ever Christ comes
near us in spirit at all, we say, it is when in the quiet of the
sanctuary we reach out hands of prayer and desire to Him. The link
between our worship and our Lord is strong and obvious. But, when the
din of business shuts out all else, when the hard, toilsome duty of the
ordinary day is to be done, when we are at work amid surroundings that
have no suggestion of sacredness or of God about them--what of the link
with Christ then? It is much harder then, is it not? to imagine any
thinkable and workable connection that our Lord has with that sphere of
life, broad and extensive as it is. There are many indeed who forget
that there is any, and live as if there were none. And yet the solemn
truth is that if that link is not strong and real, we don't know what
religion means. We have hardly the right to call ourselves Christian
men and women unless we can relate our week-day labours to the fact of
Christ.
So let us try to strengthen that link. Let us look at our daily work in
the light of religion.
First, let me remind you that our work is by divine commandment. It is
not something that God allows us to do when we are not worshipping. It
is His ordinance that we should all work at something. The business of
life is labour of some sort. I do not know if we all realise how the
Fourth Commandment begins--"Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy
work." And the man who is inexcusably idle, or who belittles his work,
even in the interest, as he thinks, of religion, is breaking this
commandment as truly as he who neglects the other half of it and
dishonours the Sabbath day.
No one will accuse the Apostle Paul of any indifference or lukewarmness
where true religion was concerned. Yet it was this Apostle who ordered
the Thessalonians to go on with their daily occupations even though they
believed, as so many did at that time, that the Return of the Lord to
earth was just at hand. By our daily work we serve the Lord as truly as
when we gather to His worship. Let us get out of our heads, then, the
false and foolish idea that all the working part of our week is the part
at which God looks askance. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and one
of the ways of doing that is by being loyal to the duties of each hour
whatever they may be.
Secondly, I would ask you to think of those quiet, unrecorded years of
our Lord's life on earth before His public ministry. The Gospels give
no details, but the fact is perfectly certain that up till His thirtieth
year Jesus of Nazareth worked at His trade as a carpenter. If only we
would let that fact soak into us, it would alter our whole idea of the
relation of our daily work to religion. Jesus worked Himself.
And we have, as has been pointed out, interesting indirect proof as to
what manner of life He lived on those workaday levels that we all know
so much about. For, to this Carpenter of Nazareth there came a day
when, in Nazareth itself, He stood forth as representative of a morality
and religion higher than ever was proclaimed before. He spoke to men
about the true way to live like one having authority. And there were
many who so resented what they deemed His presumption that anything that
reflected on His claims or belittled His authority would gladly have
been seized upon and made the most of. Had there been in Nazareth a bit
of botched work of His doing, "a door of unseasoned wood or a badly made
chest," don't you think it would have been produced to discredit His
mission? If any one could have been found with whom the Carpenter had
not dealt honourably and justly, if, as He walked the streets of His
native town and lived His humble daily life in the sight of all men,
there had been anything that weakened His claim to guide and teach His
brethren, don't you think they would have found it out and taxed Him
with it?
There was nothing of that. Jesus faced His fellows with His daily duty
behind Him, and it reinforced every word He said. His message to men
was backed up by His daily life. He spoke of religion as no other son
of man ever did, but He lived it long before He ever opened His mouth.
He brought religion down to the workshop and the street, and showed men
what it meant there. And unless He had done that, it is difficult to
conceive that His public ministry of itself would have satisfied men
that He was indeed One sent from God.
Do you see, then, from this point of view, what a great and vital part
of religion our day's work is, and the way we do it, our life at home,
our ordinary contact with our fellow-men? It is that that gives weight
to any profession we may make. If in our daily life we are not
exhibiting our religion, nothing that we can profess or say on Sunday
will make up for that defect. It is what we are on Monday and Tuesday
that underlines and emphasises the claims we make at church on the
Sunday. Behind all our prayer and profession lies the everyday life.
Third, our daily work is sanctified by the fact that our Lord and Master
is with us, to help and strengthen us there, as truly as when we pray.
Jesus Christ is not far away, as we so pitifully misconceive it, amid
the dust of business, when we must keep our temper and follow conscience
along the hard way and deal honourably with all men. He is near us
there also, ready and willing to help us to be true to God and man on
that road which once He trod Himself.
There is a famous unwritten saying of Christ which puts memorably what
the Gospels likewise testify. "Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me.
Cleave the wood and there am I." Christ is as near us in our daily work
as that! When Peter and his friends went a-fishing, you remember, with
heavy hearts because the Master had gone away from them, He met them by
the lake as they plied their ordinary calling. So does He wait, my
brother, to meet you and me wherever the duty of the hour may take us.
For our working life is not outside of His interest nor out with His
care and guidance. With reverent imagination Van Dyke has seemed to
hear the Christ speak thus--and the words may perhaps further weld the
link for some of us between our everyday duty and the Christ whom we
worship and seek to serve:
"They who tread the path of labour follow where My feet have
trod;
They who work without complaining do the holy will of God.
Where the many toil together, there am I among my own;
Where the tired workman sleepeth, there am I with Him alone.
I, the peace that passeth knowledge, dwell amid the daily
strife,
I, the bread of heaven, am broken in the sacrament of life.
Every task, however simple, sets the soul that does it free,
Every deed of love and mercy done to man is done to Me.
Nevermore thou needest seek Me; I am with thee everywhere--
Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me, cleave the wood and I am
there."