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Paul wakes in the middle of the night with a vision—or perhaps from a dream. Either way, he is inspired to heed the request to “come over to Macedonia and help.” Paul goes; it is his job, after all. He is an evangelist for the resurrected Jesus. It is what he does.
Today’s sermon is about jobs and the work we do.
As Paul sails to Troas, then travels to Samothrace and Neapolis, finally arriving in Philippi, I wonder who he meets along the way. Certainly merchants, buying things in one place and selling in another. There were likely men who rowed him across rivers. He probably passed Roman soldiers guarding and laborers building. Perhaps Paul stayed in a lodge. He would’ve certainly engaged shopkeepers for food, maybe a cobbler to fix his sandals, or a tentmaker to patch his bag. And in the fields, he would have seen people bundling grain, pruning vines, or picking fruit.
Then he arrives at the Gangites River outside Philippi, where he encounters people worshiping their gods. It seems he has arrived at a sacred place—set apart—where people gathered on a specific day to engage the gods that lived in the trees and rocks and river.
The impulse behind these pagan practices reflects a deep, hardwired intuition that there is a living force woven into the very fabric of creation. And if so, then it is a force worthy of acknowledging—and indeed worshiping—in gratitude for being allowed to live within the vitality of these trees and rocks and rivers.
This impulse to worship is distinctly human. There is no period within the known record that does not include worship as a pattern of human behavior. In fact, a careful reading of the first creation story in the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1, suggests that the very purpose of humanity is as a mediator between God and creation.
Worship is a technique, a vehicle, a unique activity done only by humans. It is our work—our job. In fact, the very name assigned to worship, liturgy, means “the work of the people.” Worship draws back the curtain between the temporal and eternal, the material and spiritual, the physical and metaphysical.
We are hybrid beings—made like God, souls eternal—but also embodied to walk the earth for a time. With voice, we are designed to make the point that this place, this world, exists because of God. We are designed to say thank you—not because God is needy, but in gratitude for living within the embrace of the trees and the rocks and the rivers. This is not just a Christian characteristic, nor solely a monotheistic impulse.
Had Paul arrived in the Pacific Northwest, he would have met the Coast Salish nation, whose work each summer was harvesting the returning salmon. The first fish caught would be ritually cooked, and its bones ceremonially returned to the water as a sacrament to honor their gods. It was their work.
Work has been on my mind a lot lately. I know quite a few people who have recently lost jobs, but I also see how jobs are changing. The merchant no longer needs to travel. Rowing people across water is now a form of exercise. Guards have been replaced by doorbell cameras. Homes are built by robots, modularly, and snapped together like Legos. Soon we won’t need people to drive bulldozers or backhoes, or manage imaging machines at the doctor’s office.
Jobs are changing as technology accelerates toward the synthesis of generative artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and quantum computing.
It will not be long before we find ourselves living in a world where we just don’t need to do a lot of the things that humans have always done—and this is going to cause serious disruption. It will change the rules of the economy, maybe in ways even more radical than when free human labor was wrestled out of the hands of slave owners 160 years ago.
There will be all sorts of opinions about new technology, from the retrograde Luddites to people trying to download their brains. It will be a wild ride, and it is coming. And we, as Christians, are ready—because we know our jobs.
Paul helps get us there. His encounter with Lydia at the riverbank is instructive. Paul met her when she was worshiping, but Lydia had another job. She was a dealer in purple dye, excreted from the glands of the murex sea snails. No easy task, and it was smelly, I hear. But it was a job of significance. Purple dye provided kings with color. It was expensive and profitable and made Lydia a person of influence.
Paul sits down with her and her cohort and probably says something similar to what he wrote to the Colossians:
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Jesus you are serving.” (Colossians 3:23–24, NIV)
And so, if this is the case, all work done is connected to the same purpose: serving God within the networked nature of creation.
It is this network that Lydia and her friends were perceiving and seeking from the trees and the rocks and the river. Paul acknowledges this, and then points to the thing behind the thing: to the one God who made everything. The one God who is in creation and beyond creation. The one God who has a steady-state presence in the past, present, and future—now and forever—irrespective of the changes that take place in the world we live in.
And this one God, who stepped out from behind the curtain, has a name—Jesus.
Paul wrote again to the Colossians:
“In Jesus all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible… all things have been created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:15–17, NRSV)
And so, if the tree is blown over, Jesus is there. If the rock crumbles, Jesus is there. If the river changes its course, Jesus is there. If a bulldozer drives itself, Jesus is there. If a machine picks the apples, Jesus is there. If a cyborg reads our X-ray, Jesus is there—even if work is no longer done out of necessity. Even if we no longer need to exchange time for money. Even if we no longer need to work to make things or service others—we will work.
Because our purpose for being is as mediators between God and creation. That is our work, and it can happen through any job we do.
We are bridge beings. We are Imago Dei. The role we are designed to do is not dependent on the definition of the job. Any job can be sacramental, and all jobs have the same title.
Peter, in his first letter, defines it this way:
“You are a chosen race, a Royal Priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9, NRSV)
Our title is also our common identity: the Royal Priesthood, owned by those who strive to live sacramentally within the framework of their current lives. Every job has meaning because God is, God was, and God is yet to come.
Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century Carmelite monk who lived in France, is a solid role model. He spent most of his life working in the monastery kitchen, performing mundane tasks like cooking and cleaning. He became famous after he died, when someone found his journal. It was full of theological writings that reflected his belief that every task, no matter how humble, could be a place of communion with God.
He taught that we can meet God in the midst of our daily work, if we do it with love and intention.
His most famous line comes from the book The Practice of the Presence of God, where he wrote:
“The time of work does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen… I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”
Brother Lawrence reminds us that the sacred is not reserved for the sanctuary—it’s found in the sink, the stove, the broom, when our heart is turned toward God.
And yet, for whatever reason, it seems the sense of the sacred has been expunged from our culture. Maybe because we’ve monetized everything. Maybe because we think we are in control of the things around us. Maybe because we’ve forgotten that we are eternal souls, woven into a common tapestry by a loving God. But deep in our bones, we know better.
We know that we were made in the image and likeness of God to be the voice that transcends creation, that names our perpetual encounter with God. That is our work.
That is our destiny, and it cannot be taken away from us, because it is not defined by the jobs we do. It is who we are.
We are made to worship—it is our work.
The invitation, then, is to do the job—our job, whatever that job may be—as an act of sacramental living, knowing that we have been set in this world to give voice, whether in word or deed, to a creation fully infused by a personal God, known by the name of Jesus.