Seeing Our Work As Connected to God’s Work

Scripture — Mark 6:1-6 (NRSV)

He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

Devotion

In my last devotion, I focused on Mark’s identification of Jesus as a carpenter or craftsman (tekton in Greek) and its implications for how we understand God’s view of work. In this devotion, I want to focus on the crowd’s inability to connect Jesus’s life of work to his identity as God’s Son and Israel’s messiah.

The scene in Nazareth takes place after Jesus has performed numerous healings and exorcisms in the surrounding region. After hearing about the deeds of power Jesus performed in other cities and the wisdom of his preaching, the townsfolk begin to question how their homegrown craftsman can do all these things. Surely the Jesus who built their dining room tables can’t be the same Jesus who raised a girl back to life? The people of Nazareth cannot piece together how Jesus’ life as a worker relates to his ministry of healing and preaching. Like many of us today, the people of Nazareth view the world of daily work as disconnected from the activities of God’s kingdom. Jesus is either a craftsman or the miracle-working messiah, but he can’t be both!

I sympathize with these Nazarenes because, even though I am convinced that God dignifies and calls humanity to good, daily work, I must admit that it is often hard to see God’s presence in it. Where is God when I compile financial statements, manage complex projects, coach my son’s football team, or help my kids with their homework?

To help us answer this question, let’s consider what God was doing in Jesus during the time he spent as a craftsman. Speaking of the incarnation and Christ’s two natures, theologian Kathryn Tanner beautifully describes how the salvation that God brings about in Jesus unfolds slowly over time, “from Jesus’ birth up to and through his death.” Our salvation doesn’t happen immediately at the incarnation when Jesus is born, nor does it only happen at his crucifixion. What God starts with the incarnation and accomplishes in the crucifixion is made possible because of the whole life Jesus lives.

For Tanner, throughout all of Jesus’s life, God is working to reshape and free human nature from the power of sin and death. This is possible because in Jesus, human nature has been assumed by or united with the divine nature of the Word. As the second Adam, Jesus’ every decision to obey God instead of the devil, to heal instead of hurt, to forgive instead of forsake, slowly frees human nature from its slavery to sin and death. If this is true, then we should see Jesus’ 18 years of work as an extended period of time when God was reshaping human nature away from sin and toward life.

And while this victory over sin and death has been won in Jesus, we, who are in Christ by virtue of baptism and the gift of the Spirit, can also have our sinful natures freed from the power of death, reworked and conformed to the image of Jesus the Son. This means that, like Jesus, our work can be a primary way for us to participate in God’s salvation and have our own natures reworked and freed from sin’s power.

In my life right now, I can feel this reworking and reshaping happening as I have started to manage more people in subject areas that I know little to nothing about, and to lead projects that I can’t complete on my own. This has led me to a vulnerable space of needing to trust less in my own competence and more in the skills and gifts of others. I can feel God reshaping me to lean into my vulnerability, to trust in others to make up for my weaknesses, and not to build a future on my own strength.

Throughout all of Jesus’s life, and especially during the years he spent as a craftsman, God was working to free human nature from the power of sin. And although it is often difficult to see God at work in the day-to-day tasks of our work and leadership, the promise of scripture invites us to see our work and leadership as the arenas of God’s reshaping work.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Christians in the Crafts and Trades Discuss Their Work .