As a teenager I worked in a grocery store doing anything that needed doing, whether bagging, cashiering, stocking produce, or even painting the kick spaces on the shelves. How many times a day will customers say, “Laying down on the job, Aye!” while painting those spaces? Many, indeed. I laughed each time to please them.
One day, my job was to hang sales announcements in the front windows. As I got the first one up I noticed that it read “On SALE! Porterhorse Steaks 98¢ a pound.” My boss told me to leave it. He wanted to see how many people noticed, and, perhaps, how many were disappointed to discover it was just regular beef.
It reminds me of those memes on social media that capture the results of a poorly done job… so poorly done that one is forced to stop in awe that someone walked away from it saying, “That should take care of that.” One has a street line painter who painted the lines out around a branch on the road. Another left a kid’s bouncy house slide set to launch kids from above into a recessed highway backing the property. One had a birthday cake that read “Happy Birthday, Jimmy in Italics.” The caption for these usually runs, “You had one job to do.”
We all know that life is filled with jobs to do and few have only one, but we also know that some responsibilities stand tall as supreme commission in the taking of a job. This includes being a Christian.
In Genesis man was made in God’s image. While many debate all the implications of this origin, one things stands supreme… it is a commission to be filled with the Spirit of God and to work in this world as His regent… i.e. kings accountable to a higher king.
Man falls through rebellion, but is renewed to this call in the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. Jesus anticipates this renewal numerous times in the Gospels and announces in Acts 1:8 where, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
In this role, Jesus calls us Salt and Light… preservers and illumined guides to that which is rotting and lost in the darkness of both the human heart and the corrupt societies that human hearts build together. Matthew 5:13-16, declares, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
The work of the Church is manifold. There are many jobs to do in teaching, preaching, evangelism, administration, discipline, training leaders, and building up the faithful to do the work of the ministry. We are each called to care for family, raise children in the Lord, cultivate strong marriages, to moral restraint, ethical living, and helping the less fortunate. We are called to spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, Christlikeness, worship, Bible Study. We are all called, in one way or another, to fulfill the purposes of Christ in us so that He can do the work of the Divine Kingdom through us.
Even so, one job stands tall among all the things we are called to as Believers—we are called to be witnesses. Jesus recognizes the centrality of this “you will be my witnesses” mission without dismissing the diverse work of Church and discipleship in Matthew 28:18-20, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
There is a popular but anonymous saying often accredited to St. Francis of Assisi that goes, “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.” It highlights the need for our lives to back up our words… which St. Francis did say… “No brother should preach contrary to the form and regulations of the holy Church… All the Friars … should preach by their deeds.”[1] But this poignant statement is often wrongly used to suggest that a good life without preaching is preferred to actual preaching. Both Assisi and Paul would disagree.
In fact, Paul says in Romans 10:13-15“everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Rom 10:14 “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
It may take time to find your voice, and your style and your particular area of strength, but whether by hook or by crook you have been called to be salt and light in a rotting and dark world. You have been called to witness for Christ. Pray therefore that Christ may guide you on your way, and be bold.
~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD
[1]The Rule, 1221, Chapter XII,
