Inaugural Sermon for Valley Christian Church
Our house here in the Birmingham area opens right into the living room—no mudroom or front closet—which lends an immediacy to arriving home at the end of the day. There is no transition or in-between space; you are just right in the thick of bookshelves and toy bins. Our television and record player sit across the room, and against the other wall, overlooking the scene, is the couch.
It feels like home. It feels satisfying, even charming in its own idiosyncratic way.
It was in that feeling of comfort and charm where I learned that Chadwick Boseman—the actor you probably know as Black Panther, but also as Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, and more—had died at just 43 years of age from a four-year bout of colon cancer. And in that moment, my world felt just a bit more uncomfortable and less charismatic.
Boseman gave us so much in his acting while suffering from an illness none of us knew he had until he died. His labor for me was one of love because of his obvious passion for what he did, but it was also a labor for love in that it well and truly made the world a better place. He gave that to us until he literally could not give anymore, and I think knowing that made his death all the sadder for me.
This weekend, we are asked to set aside a day as Labor Day. The word ‘labor,’ like so many words, means many things to many people. It is what mothers undergo to bring their children into the world. It is what workers commit to, day in and day out, to undertake all the tasks that make us a society and a civilization. It is something that has been stolen away in the form of slavery, paid for lavishly for a fortunate few, and for most of us pays the bills and puts food on the table. And it is something that we choose to set ourselves to, each day when we wake up, in some form or fashion, whether we are paid for it or whether it is what we would call a labor of love.
Colloquially, the term “a labor of love” tends to refer to something we are doing out of sheer passion, without thought of recompense or recognition. Yet labors of love within the church take all forms—paid and volunteer, recognized and, sometimes, unrecognized. And a labor of love, even when it is compensated, does not have to stop being a labor of love—it can become a labor for love.
This dynamic is how Paul describes Timothy here. A son who worked for his father in the ancient Near East was not doing so purely out of filial piety or selfless familial love—the son would work for the father as a sort of apprentice, as part of an economic bargain struck to ensure that the family’s livelihood would outlive the father. Timothy is working for Paul to ensure that Paul’s work for the church outlives Paul. And it did. It still does.
Paul’s work outlived him in no small part because of Timothy’s love—for him, for the nascent church, for God as revealed through Jesus Christ. Labor creates things that are meant to endure, sometimes far beyond your or my lifetimes. We need those things we create with our labor to be for love, rather than simply for ourselves. Because while we are fleeting, love remains. We are temporary, but love endures. We are the momentary heroes, but love is the monument we leave behind.
Ralph Chaplin, the songsmith of the labor movement of the early twentieth century, wrote in his anthem Solidarity Forever, “We have laid the wide foundations, built it skyward stone by stone/It ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.” On a weekend in which we are asked to set aside a day to honor the contributions of labor not merely through sales and discounts, but with reflection and prayer, I think those lyrics have an extra meaning for us as Christians.Chaplin’s words can invoke for us the imagery of the church—the church’s foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, built skyward stone by stone with the ministry of one generation after another. And we need to master our command of that story, that history, as part of our own labor of love and for love to be this generation’s church that testifies for labor and the financial security and dignity it is designed by God to provide, but in our unsparing economy too often does not provide.
These are weighty things, I realize, to be diving straight into with an inaugural sermon. But this is a weighty season, a weighty year, in our lifetimes, and it is up to us as the church to rise to meet the moment with the Word of God. I don’t need to tell you about how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted each of us. We are voters in a deeply divisive presidential general campaign. Across the country, whether in Minneapolis, or Kenosha, or Louisville, justice continues to be sought for Black lives. And just a couple of states across from us, our neighbors and siblings in Christ are facing down the long work of rebuilding their lives in Hurricane Laura’s wake.
But none of these are things we must labor about in alone.
Labors of love may be only for our own personal passions—although they
certainly need not be, and oftentimes ought not be. But labors for love are inherently
for God, because God is love. Labors for love must then also be for the people
of God. As Paul writes, “All the others put their own business ahead of Jesus
Christ’s business.” It is acceptable—healthy, even—for your own business to
include a labor of love. But to become a labor for love, it cannot be only your
business. It must involve others, and it must be led by God. Your labor for love must be God's business.
God, through the Holy Spirit, has led us together to take part in this labor together—labor that is of love because it is borne from our own personal passions, and labor that is for love, because that passion is a passion for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the same passion which drove Timothy to labor so assiduously for Paul.
That assiduous pursuit of excellence in one’s labors for love is what I saw, and see, in the work of Chadwick Boseman, but I also saw in the news of his death another pattern around our labor, that sometimes we expect of a celebrity like Boseman: to work while also suffering in silence, without the rest of the world knowing. I saw that in a number of folks’ reactions on social media, mourning his loss—imagine what he was experiencing, putting out all this work for a world
That may be something you are familiar with yourself, in some form or fashion—laboring day-in and day-out for a world that does not know what you are suffering and experiencing. Paul, I think, hints at something like this at different points in his various letters as he mentions his anguish over this thing or that thing. He was in and out of prison, harassed and arrested. That all takes a very real toll on a person, no matter how holy and sacred their labor.
Yet for Paul, such treatment was never a reason to cease his labors. And that, more than anything, is what I take from the example of him and Timothy. Being descended from genocide survivors, I sometimes find myself in this neurotic and nonsensical feedback loop that says I should get over whatever negativity I am experiencing because, after all, my great-grandparents escaped a bloody genocide, and what do my own trials amount to in the face of that? But that isn’t helpful; it is taking other peoples’ sufferings—my family’s sufferings—and making them All About Me. It is my own devils talking to me, trying to tempt me to deal unhealthily with suffering. And that ultimately makes me a less effective laborer for God, which is exactly what my devils would want.
This is a heck of a year to be feeling that, though—and perhaps it has crossed some of your minds as well, that feeling of, “Why should I complain when nearly 900,000 people have died from covid-19?” or “What do I have to mope about when so many people are out of work?” Maybe you have felt that, and I understand why. Yet that takes a very real crisis that we are experiencing collectively, together, and making it about you in a way that is more about shaming you rather than calling you to labor on behalf of God. And it is so easy for the shame to keep us from doing good and being good.
That is such an important thing for us to remember right now, as we begin our time together by worshiping in a way none of us thought we would be worshiping when y’all began your search process. The world has come crashing down around all of us a bit this year, and we do not know entirely what the next several months are going to be like. It is tough work for us as a church to come up with vision statements and vision-casting and vision-this and vision-that when anyone’s crystal ball for the future is as murky and opaque as pea soup.
Navigating all these circumstances—a global pandemic, a moment for racial reconciliation and justice, widespread economic hardship, the aftermath of a natural disaster, all simultaneously, not knowing what shoe could possibly drop next—is labor. Maybe that sounds so profoundly obvious to not even be worth saying, yet it still very much needs to be said. This is work, and how could it not be? But together, you, me, all of us, we can make our ministry together a labor of love and for love. In this work, may we find our hope—hope enough for today, hope enough for tomorrow. Filled with passion for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a call to share the Gospel in word and deed, we can make known the liberating love of God because we will be doing so out of love, for love.
And skyward stone by stone, we can build God’s kingdom here.
With the grace of God, let us begin.
May it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
September 6, 2020