Pastor's Corner: Christians' work is never done

We are launching into the three-day weekend that unofficially marks the end of summer.

I know, I know … it doesn’t officially end until Sept. 22.

Yet I will cite the “proof” I learned in grade school in Mr. Olsen’s music class. The Robert Goulet ditty “Summer Sounds” we learned to sing and xylophone along with emphatically proclaims “June, July and August play a symphony/Under starry skies above, Happy summer sounds/The summer sounds I love.”

There is no mention of September.

As a kid, I can’t ever remember a September that didn’t seem like the hottest month of the year. Growing up in western Washington, I would also lament it regularly seemed the sunniest. Little more than a week would go by, even in the middle of summer, without a rain shower across the Puget Sound. Our classrooms did not need air conditioning the rest of the year (save for maybe that last week or two of May/June before the break). So they did not have air conditioning. Hot, bothered by being back indoors, re-learning what had been forgotten during the three months off, September served as something of a “lost month” each school year.

Come high school, September also meant the beginning of football season, and our South Whidbey Falcons weren’t much good. So there were typically three of four games lost to go along with the theme before we rang in October.

We enter this fall of 2020, many of us feeling like we have now endured a lost spring and summer. A lost sense of normalcy, predictability and relative comfort. Fall presents this year so many unknowns: whether the novel coronavirus will spike an unmanageable level of cases or mellow out, whether school will remain open or need to close, how precautions may change or not and whether football (and for that matter, volleyball and cross country) seasons begun will be permitted to finish.

Taking things one day at a time has become exhausting and yet we keep doing it. We keep plugging away in hope of a better tomorrow.

The reason for the season (or at least an extended weekend) is Monday’s commemoration of Labor Day. It is the day on the calendar set aside the last 226 years in the United States to recognize the contributions of labor, the work that we do.

In this often seemingly “lost” time, the lamenting words of Qoheleth may resonate with many of us (Eccl. 2: 22, CEV): “What do we really gain from all of our hard work? Our bodies ache during the day, and work is torture. Then at night our thoughts are troubled. It just doesn’t make sense.”

I want to draw on Martin Luther’s teachings about vocation to gain a greater sense this Labor Day that all our toil is not indeed in vain.

Luther wrote often of vocation, which for a Christian does not merely consist of the “jobs” we do. Though our careers can and often do play a significant role. It is a lifelong devotion to Christian service. Service for the good of our neighbors and our community. It is often hard work. It is often thankless. It is also necessary.

“If he is a Christian tailor, he will say: I make these clothes because God has bidden me do so, so that I can earn a living, so that I can help and serve my neighbor,” Luther wrote. “When a Christian does not serve the other, God is not present; that is not Christian living.”

Ultimately, our labor is not for our own benefit, nor our family’s, but intended for the service of others. I believe it is a wonderful thing that we take at least one day to celebrate it. Sadly, not all who labor will be permitted to rest on Labor Day from their work. I think of my own father, a package delivery driver, for whom work these last five months has been “like a never-ending Christmas season.” He means that not in a joyous, festive sense but in a demanding workload sense. Hence the requirement to work the holiday. The flow has not stopped or reduced. His work is officially deemed “essential.”

Christians, our work is not done. It is never done.

The tasks before us proceed from Jesus’ direction (Matt. 28:19-20 NRSV): “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The Lord be with you this weekend, this season and forevermore.

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The Rev. Sean Janssen is pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Havre and Christ Lutheran Church in Big Sandy.