25 September

Dear Friends,

In their book Leading Worship for Workers, Matthew Kaemingk and Kathryn Roelofs tell the beautiful apocryphal story of Pope Gregory the Great:

“It was the sixth century and Pope Gregory himself was going to be presiding over the local Mass. This was a big deal and the townspeople knew it. They gathered together in reverence and nervous anticipation. As the people processed down the aisle, a woman joined the line and made her way to the front. When it was her turn to kneel, the great pontiff declared that this is ‘the body of Christ, broken for you.’ The woman looked down at the bread and cracked a smile. And then—according to some reports—the woman burst out in uncontrollable laughter.

Naturally, this was upsetting to everyone involved. After all, this was the pope and he was holding the body of Christ. Here—at the most special, most holy moment of Christian worship—a woman was laughing hysterically. 

Having calmed down, the woman had to offer some sort of explanation for her outburst. Collecting herself, the woman replied that the loaf of bread resting in the pope’s hands was actually her bread. She had made it herself, in her little kitchen, with her little oven. Right there in the hands of the pope was the work of her hands. 

This is the body of Christ, given for you. 

Here at the Lord’s Table, the woman experienced a collision of two seemingly very separate realities. Her daily work at her little kitchen table was somehow being connected to the holy work of Christ at his table. The connection between her work and his was simply too much to bear.”

Do you see the connection between your work and the work of Christ? And let’s not be restrictive about it. We all work. Whether we’re retired or still at school. Some workers are paid and others are not. We all put in effort, improve our skill, and carry a sense of responsibility for our neighbours and our world. As Kaemingk and Roelofs write, whether you are changing diapers, studying algebra, washing dishes, painting a landscape, organising a Zoom meeting, volunteering in a soup kitchen, or caring for grandchildren, your labour can be a worthy offering of worship to the Lord. And so, we all need to face this question: can my work really become worship, as in the case of the woman before Pope Gregory? How can our secular work become sacred worship in God’s hands?

As we celebrate our annual Harvest Festival this coming Sunday, may this question continue to stir in your heart. In the traditional sense, Harvest Festival would offer a community’s shared labour to God and ask God to bless their labour for the coming season. In the old days, these folk were mostly farmers, bakers, and artisans of different kinds. No doubt it looks different today. And yet, at the heart of what we will do on Sunday, we acknowledge that the work is not nothing. It is also not our own. It is part and parcel of God’s work in the world. Grace Assad says it so well in her poem prayer 

“In the Deep”:

every tree starts as seed

and beneath the soil grows

a hidden work, not any eye can see

yet roots reach down, deep in the ground

and grasp from waters deep

the hum of life without making a sound

who would notice quiet, deep, dark work…

in the mundane, ordinary things?

folding clothes

crafting sentences

drawing up meds

giving baths

and waking up to do it all again

the glory of a seed

lies in its quiet growing

according to its Maker’s call

may we revel in the doing

far beyond another’s noticing

and honor our Maker most of all

who am I to know?

maybe this life’s work was all underground

and eternity begins when shoots ascend

our flourishing only then to be found.

-

May God strengthen the work of our hands today

Marius