Recently Bloomberg News carried a sad report from China.* It
began:
Chinese banking regulator Li
Jianhua literally worked himself to death. After 26 years of “always putting
the cause of the party and the people” first, his employer said this month, the
48-year-old official died rushing to finish a report before the sun came up.
China is facing an epidemic of
overwork, to hear the state-controlled press and Chinese social media tell it.
About 600,000 Chinese a year die from working too hard, according to the China Youth Daily. China Radio
International in April reported a toll of 1,600 every day.
A similar problem exists in Japan. The Director of Asian
Studies at the Japan campus
of Temple University
in Tokyo was
asked for perspective. He said, “More than in the Anglo-American corporate
system, in Korea, China and Japan -- the countries of the
Confucian belt -- there’s a belief in total dedication. Any job worth doing is
worth doing excessively.”
What is the Gospel’s
perspective on work and rest? Look at Mark 6:1-2, 30-32:
Jesus went away from there and
came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began
to teach in the synagogue. . . .
The apostles returned to Jesus and
told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by
yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and
going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a
desolate place by themselves.
The passage provides four key perspectives.
•To follow Jesus as
Lord, we will observe the Lord’s Day Sabbath. The disciples in Mark 6
followed Jesus and did what he did on the Sabbath.
There is much in the Gospel about the Sabbath. We only have
space to make some summary observations. It was Jesus’ custom (Luke 4:6) to
keep the creation pattern of six days of labor and one day of rest and holy
convocation (public worship, public instruction from Holy Scripture). He
declared himself Lord of the Sabbath (Matt 12:8; Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5). After
his resurrection on the first day of the week (Mark 16:9), he met with his
disciples on the first day of the week (Matt 28:5-9; Mark 16:9; Luke 24:13-15,
33-26; John 20:19, 26). His disciples had their gatherings on the first day of
the week (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:1-2). In early Christian literature, the first
day of the week was called “the Lord’s Day” (Rev 1:10; The Teaching of the
Twelve [Didache] 14:1-3).
How should we observe the Lord’s Day? Mark 2: 23-28 (the
Message) counsels us:
One Sabbath day he [Jesus] was
walking through a field of ripe grain. As his disciples made a path, they
pulled off heads of grain. The Pharisees told on them to Jesus: “Look, your
disciples are breaking Sabbath rules!”
Jesus said, “Really? Haven’t you
ever read what David did when he was hungry, along with those who were with
him? How he entered the sanctuary and ate fresh bread off the altar, with the
Chief Priest Abiathar right there watching—holy bread that no one but priests
were allowed to eat—and handed it out to his companions?” Then Jesus said, “The
Sabbath was made to serve us; we weren’t made to serve the Sabbath. The Son of
Man is no lackey to the Sabbath. He’s in charge!”
•To follow Jesus as
Lord, we will care about relationships. “The apostles returned to Jesus and
told him all that they had done and taught.”
Luke 7:36-50 provides an excellent illustration of how Jesus
acted all during the weekly cycle of work and rest. On the one hand, Jesus
cared about respectable and socially connected people, and so he accepted a
dinner invitation from a Pharisee. On the other hand, Jesus cared about “the
least, the last, and the lost” – the disreputable, the marginalized, the
despised. He had the reputation of being “the friend of tax collectors and
sinners” (7:34). At the dinner party (likely of just men, based on the custom
of the time), a disreputable woman barged in, started weeping many tears on
Jesus’ feet, wiped up the tears with her hair, kissed his feet, and then poured
an expensive perfume on his feet. The respectable man thought, “If this guy is
really a prophet like I surmised he might be, he would have realized that this
woman is a ‘sinner’ and would have never let such an unclean person even touch
him, let alone be in his presence.”
Jesus told him a story (7:41-48 MSG):
“Two men were in debt to a banker.
One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay
up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?”
Simon answered, “I suppose the one
who was forgiven the most.”
“That’s right,” said Jesus. Then
turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I
came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on
my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the
time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for
freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it?
She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the
forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.”
Then he spoke to her: “I forgive
your sins.”
In work and rest, Jesus put people ahead of ceremonial laws
and artificially-constructed barriers of
class, gender, race, and religious prejudice.
•To follow Jesus as
Lord, we will work hard. “… all that they had done and taught.”
John chapter 5 provides a revealing example of this
principle. On the Sabbath Jesus publicly healed an invalid who had been forced
to lie on a mat and be carried around for 38 years. The Jewish authorities were
outraged that he was doing work on the Sabbath. His defense was: “My Father
works until now and I work” (John 5:17). This statement expresses the
commitment of God the Son to work in full unity and harmony with God the
Father’s commitment to work.
In this commitment to work, note that there is a unique
relationship between Jesus the Son and God the Father. First, this is shown by
the simple coordination of the two sayings. He does not say, “My Father is
working and therefore I am working,” but “My Father is working and I am
working,” placing Father and Son on equal footing. Second, according to Jewish
thought (Exodus Rabbah 30:9), God
alone is allowed to work on the Sabbath and Jesus is claiming the same right.
Therefore, he is making himself equal to God. His listeners understood that
implication clearly and, therefore, felt it was blasphemy and wanted to kill
him (John 5:18).
•To follow Jesus as
Lord, we will take time to rest. “Come away … and rest a while.”
In a recent radio spot of the “High Calling of Our Daily
Work,” 5/18/2014, Howard E Butt, Jr. illustrated this principle:
From 1916 to 1939, Justice Louis
Brandeis sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Once, right before the start of an
important trial, Justice Brandeis took a short vacation—and drew heavy
criticism for it. But Brandeis delivered an excellent defense. “I need rest,”
he said. “I find that I can do a year’s work in eleven months, but I can’t do
it in twelve.”
To follow Jesus as Lord at work and at rest, remember the principle
of the Lord’s Day, remember the importance of relationships, remember the obligation
of hard work, and remember the need for rest.
Source
* Shai Oster, “They’re Dying
at Their Desks in China
as Epidemic of Stress Proves Fatal,” Bloomberg 6/30/2014.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-29/is-work-killing-you-in-china-workers-die-at-their-desks.html
