Village Shepherd

I took the funeral of a 94 year old lady recently. She was a country person who had lived in this area for her entire life, and had been married to a farm labourer, so the two of them never had much money. During the course of the marriage (which lasted for 69 years - her husband died at the age of 93) they had ten children, all of whom are still living. But as well as bringing up ten children in a tiny farm cottage and on a farm labourer's wage, this lady took in huge amounts of washing and went fruit picking and potato picking and flax picking to make ends meet. And she would think nothing of walking six or seven miles with the pram and several children for an afternoon, walking back in time to get the tea. Needless to say, she did all her own washing and cleaning and cooking, and still found time to welcome other children into her home, for she would never turn anyone away. And all this before the days of washing machines or food processors ar any other labour saving device.

There is no doubt that in times gone by people worked extremely hard, just to survive. In some parts of the world people still work extremely hard just to survive, but for most of us in the West, life has become considerably easier over the last fifty years or so. We enjoy so many labour-saving devices that we no longer have to work hard just to survive. That's not to say that nobody works hard in our present generation. Of course they do, but it's a different kind of work. In a way we've had a return to the days of long working hours, although now people work long hours not to keep body and soul together, but to earn more money, and in many cases, to keep their job. These days, people are often expected to put in hours of overtime and to stay at work until the job is finished, even if that means that the individual and their family suffer.

One of the current health problems is stress, and it often arises because people are working too hard, or rather, working under too much pressure. Seventy years ago, when my parishioner was bringing up her own family under such gruelling conditions, nobody had ever heard of stress. Even during the first world war, when young men suffered so badly from shell shock and battle fatigue that they couldn't take any more and deserted, their medical condition went unrecognised and they were shot by their own side as cowards. Thank goodness we've moved on from there and do now recognise the effects of stress. But is it simply because stress is now recognised that there is such a huge increase in cases of stress, or is it that seventy years ago even though people worked extremely hard, they didn't really work under the same kinds of pressure and so didn't suffer in the same way from stress?

Is it the type of work that brings on stress, or is it meeting the perhaps unrealistic expectations of demanding bosses that causes stress? Or is it the working conditions, or relationships at work, or trying to juggle several jobs and a family all at the same time? When people claim, as they sometimes do, that hard work never hurt anyone, are they thinking back to a bygone age when there was very little opportunity for leisure for anyone and everybody worked hard to survive, or are they thinking of today with all the stresses and strains of very fast modern life?

The writer of the second letter to the Thessalonians made it very clear that Christians are expected to work for their living. He had no time for the members of the congregation who thought Jesus would return at any moment, and who therefore sat back and did nothing, expecting other people to feed them. And clearly the writer had never heard of the Welfare State for the Christian hierarchy had already laid down a pretty harsh rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." Obviously this wasn't directed at those who couldn't work for any reason, but at those who sat idly by, expecting other people to offer them handouts. The Jews had a proud tradition of caring for widows and orphans since the early days of the Old Testament, and that tradition continued. But it wasn't to be extended to those who who were capable of working but who chose to be idle.

Honest labour and hard work have been hallmarks of a Christian community ever since, and when Protestantism grew after the Reformation, the Protestant work ethic - that you always work for what you get - was firmly etched on people's hearts. One of the Christian objections to gambling has always been the idea that it's wrong to receive something for nothing.

But perhaps all this has had an unfortunate knock-on effect for Christians. Some people have been brought up to believe that hard work is so important that those people find it almost impossible to sit down and relax. They can't allow themselves ever to sit and do nothing, because they feel they should always be doing something.

This means that there's no time just to sit and be with God, which in turn is a pretty effective way of keeping God out. And those people who believe you should never have something for nothing, find it very difficult to accept gifts, even God's good and gracious gifts, for free. Such people are always trying to earn God's favour by doing more and more and fail to realise that none of us can earn God's favour, we have to receive it as a gift. All we can do is accept God's forgiveness and his love freely offered and feel overwhelming gratitude for his goodness to us.

It is certainly important that Christians work for a living, and the idea of non-stipendiary priests and ordained local priests is exactly in keeping with this letter to the Thessalonians. Both non-stipendiary priests and Ordained Local Ministers are volunteers, and receive no payment whatsoever for their ministry. They support themselves by working in some other field, and give their leisure time to God for his Church.

And this, of course, is what all lay Christians do. Church people work for a living but give their leisure time in the service of Christ, exactly as instructed in this letter to the Thessalonians. But anyone who really wants to be in a close relationship with God and with Jesus must also be like Mary, Martha's sister. Mary sat at the feet of Jesus and listened to him, despite her sister Martha's disgust and anger because Martha was left to do all the hard work on her own. But Jesus defended Mary's choice, because there are times in everybody's life when it's important just to sit and listen to him.

And once we get the balance right between hard work for Jesus and taking time out to listen to him, then our spiritual life and our relationship with God really takes off.