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Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had cleansed the land and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the house of the Lord his God. They came to Hilkiah the high priest and gave him the money that had been brought into the house of God, which the Levites, the keepers of the threshold, had collected from Manasseh and Ephraim and from all the remnant of Israel and from all Judah and Benjamin and from the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And they gave it to the workmen who were working in the house of the Lord. And the workmen who were working in the house of the Lord gave it for repairing and restoring the house. They gave it to the carpenters and the builders to buy quarried stone, and timber for binders and beams for the buildings that the kings of Judah had let go to ruin. And the men did the work faithfully. Over them were set Jahath and Obadiah the Levites, of the sons of Merari, and Zechariah and Meshullam, of the sons of the Kohathites, to have oversight. The Levites, all who were skillful with instruments of music, were over the burden-bearers and directed all who did work in every kind of service, and some of the Levites were scribes and officials and gatekeepers.
II Chron. 34:8-13 Probably many of you merely skimmed the above paragraph from II Chronicles. It is one of the many boring paragraphs in the Old Testament that people who want to read the Bible stories tend not to pay much attention to. It is filled with humdrum details about the nuts and bolts of religious life. It reads like the minutes of a church council meeting, which is sort of what the Chronicles were. This paragraph never comes up in church services. Plus, it has a lot of names of people that most people have never heard of and that are hard to pronounce, so nobody ever volunteers to read these paragraphs aloud in Bible studies, either. What the above paragraph does for us, however is to help us realize that God works in both wondrous and tedious ways. God uses famous people and obscure people. His people do dramatic things in amazing ways, and they do everyday things in a workaday manner. Even Solomon’s Temple faced the people with organizational issues. They had stewardship campaigns, job descriptions, committees and organizational charts, and had to deal with payroll issues involved with hiring laborers to do basic things like make general repairs. It might disillusion us to think of people serving the Lord by punching a clock, but those people made serving the Lord possible for everyone. The Temple and its purpose was fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Christ. The Romans utterly destroyed the building (per Jesus’s prediction) about forty years later, in A.D. 70. Our churches today are not exactly the same kind of thing as the Temple in Jerusalem about 2650 years ago as described in this passage from Chronicles. But worshiping God and receiving the fulfillment of the Temple in His gifts of Word and Sacrament still involves committees, organizational charts, stewardship campaign, payrolls, building maintenance, and so forth. Sometimes we might get the impression that such things have no place in a truly spiritual, religious life, but the fact is that they do and always have. Kings and Chronicles explain how Temple worship went through all kinds of ups and downs of disrepair and restoration through the centuries. The same is true of congregations and church buildings. Right now, of course, we face a lot of uncertainty as we go through the regular fall routine of trying to put together a budget for next year. We’re going to have stewardship emphasis this fall as we seek to emerge from the pandemic without having to curtail our ministries or let things fall into disrepair. Your own spiritual life probably goes through ups and downs as well. Sometimes your prayers uplift your soul, other times you feel like you’re just going through the motions. Sometimes you can almost feel the Spirit’s presence in worship, and other times you’re bored and checking your watch. But God never gives up on you. His gifts are real and true no matter they feel like, and the Spirit works through them. And your participation, your input, and your offerings make this ministry possible for everybody whether it seems like you’re part of a bold, amazing story, like some parts of Kings and Chronicles, or just keeping things clean and helping to make payroll, like other parts of Kings and Chronicles. Christ is King, and all of history, the exciting and the boring, is the chronicle of His salvation and grace toward sinners like you and me. In Christ, Pastor Speckhard
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And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Col. 3:17
The day after Labor Day used to be a smaller version of New Year’s Day, at least in terms of the cultural calendar. It marked a distinct change from one season to another. Traditionally it is/was the first day of the school year. It marked the end of “the season” in touristy and resort areas. It was the day after which fashionable people no longer wore white and changed over to their earth-toned, autumn wardrobe. Of course, some of those traditions no longer apply. We start school in August. We tend to vacation earlier in the summer, and wear whatever colors we want. There is no right or wrong to these traditions and our observance of them or lack thereof. But we ought to know why we do what we do. And this shows how there can be spiritual, Christian significance to a perfectly secular holiday like Labor Day. Labor Day got started in the late 19th Century as a celebration promoted by the labor movement, which was behind the unionizing of the labor force in the aftermath of last stages of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, when we think of it in deeper terms than a three day weekend and chance to barbecue, we usually think of it in terms of blue collar labor particularly. And in secular terms the holiday does focus on large scale manual labor in factories. But what we Christians can celebrate, should we choose, is better understood as our vocations. Our labor is whatever God has given us to do—as individuals, family members, church members, employers and employees. Maybe we should call it Vocation Day. Most of your vocations get covered in the Table of Duties in your catechism. That is, what does the Bible say about how you should be clergy or laity, a husband or wife, parent of child, government official and/or citizen, employers or employee, neighbor, and so forth? It references various verses that talk about how to fulfill those roles in God-pleasing ways. But I really like the catch-all phrase from Colossians—“whatever you do.” God doesn’t send you a daily to-do list, at least not with any specificity to it. We all have different jobs, interests, and obligations. But whatever we do, we are to do in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can’t cheat people, insult them, belittle them, take advantage of them, ignore their needs, or anything like that in the name in the Jesus. Whatever your job is, and whomever you interact with, you are to speak and act as though you are sent to bring Christ to the situation. You’re doing it for Him, in His Name. As you head into a new season and year (sort of, in a way) celebrate the work God has given you to do. Give thanks for the opportunity to serve. Look at even the most boring or mundane parts of your routine as a means of serving the Lord. We have a holiday called Labor Day, the real labor of being Christians takes no holidays; it is the thing the holidays celebrate. In Christ, Pastor Speckhard |
AuthorRev. Peter Speckhard, Senior Pastor at St. Paul's Ev. Lutheran Church, Munster, Indiana 
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