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THE WORKER
The Gospel According to Jacob, Part 5
Luke 12:13-21, Genesis 30:25-43
October 15, 2006
Pastor Libby Boatwright 
Turn to your neighbor and ask the question, What would be the ideal job situation? Who has the perfect job? Perfect life? I would guess if we were to canvas the congregation we’d find those who find their hours long, the workload overwhelming, the salary, if there is one, not very satisfying. And so we begin to look beyond the window, the cubicle, our front door, and believe there’s another position, another place that will bring fulfillment. In America right now there are over 450,000 people out of the workforce who have searched for work and who can’t find a suitable position. , Maybe what we’re really looking for doesn’t come in a company, or a volunteer role, or a paid commission. Perhaps what we really need is a blessing. Let’s turn to God’s word.
Genesis 30:25-43 (The Message)
After Rachel had had Joseph, Jacob spoke to Laban. “Let me go back home. Give me my wives and children for whom I’ve served you. You know how hard I’ve worked for you.”
Laban said, “If you please. I have learned through divine inquiry that God has blessed me because of you.” He went on, “So name your wages. I’ll pay you.”
Jacob replied, “You know well what my work has meant to you and how your livestock has flourished under my care. The little you had when I arrived has increased greatly; everything I did resulted in blessing for you. Isn’t it about time that I do something for my own family?”
“So what should I pay you?”
Jacob said, “You don’t have to pay me a thing. But how about this? I will go back to pasture and care for your flocks. Go through you entire flock today and take out every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages. That way you can check on my honesty when you assess my wages. If you find any goat that’s not speckled or spotted or a sheep that’s not black, you will know that I stole it.”
“Fair enough,” said Laban. “It’s a deal.”
But that very day Laban removed all the mottled and spotted Billy goats and all the speckled and spotted nanny-goats, every animal that had even a touch of white on it plus all the black sheep and placed them under the care of his sons. Then he put a three-day journey between himself and Jacob. Meanwhile Jacob went on tending what was left of Laban’s flock.
But Jacob got fresh branches from poplar, almond, and plane trees and peeled the bark, leaving white stripes on them. He stuck the peeled branches in front of the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink. When the flocks were in heat, they came to drink and mated in front of the streaked branches. Then they gave birth to young that were streaked or spotted or speckled.
Jacob placed the ewes before the dark colored animals of Laban. That way he got distinctive flocks for himself which he didn’t mix with Laban’s flocks. And when the sturdier animals were mating, Jacob placed branches at the troughs in view of the animals so that they mated in front of the branches. But he wouldn’t set up the branches before the feebler animals. That way the feeble animals went to Laban and the sturdy ones to Jacob.
The man got richer and richer, acquiring huge flocks, lots and lots of servants,
not to mention camels and donkeys.
The Word of the Lord.
It was a deal all right. Let’s see, after fourteen years, Laban’s changed Jacob’s wages ten times, he’s tricked Jacob into marrying the sister he didn’t desire, and Jacob’s worked under the unscrupulous business practices of a man he detests with nothing to show for it. Laban is so desperate to keep him, he makes weak attempts at flattering his son in law telling him “God has blessed me because of you.” He’s right there. Jacob has proved to be a shrewd manager of his flocks and Laban prospered under his watch. And wages? Jacob will work for free. Just give him the spotted and speckled goats and the black sheep and he’ll be fine. Laban loves the deal and for good reason. While the ink is still drying on the contract, and Jacob’s tending Laban’s herds, Laban steals Jacob’s promised bounty of speckled and striped flocks and gives them to his sons, three days travel away.
Let the games begin.
But Jacob has a plan. He is bound to outwit, outwork, outlast the competition. It’s Survivor, middle-eastern style! He quickly peels down the branches of almond, poplar and plane trees, exposing white strips, and places the carved pieces of wood in the ground near the feeding troughs where the animals both drink and mate. And through the miracle of Old Testament genetics he gets striped and spotted baby lambs and goats. But he doesn’t stop there, as he’s got a special way to lead the strongest and healthiest to the trough to breed together and leave the weak ones to mate with each other; those will be given to Laban. So Jacob’s tribe gets richer, finds a way to hire more servants and buys up the inventory of camels and donkeys for the trip. He finally has enough wealth and power to leave the family compound six years later. He will not be voted off the desert – he’s earned his immunity from the competition.
Jacob has found success, but has he found significance? Craig Barnes says “we are created with a deep yearning to live a significant life…a life that, even in some small way, makes a difference.” The problem is, many of us used to get that significance from our families, from our communities, where we were known and cared for. But family has taken on a new role. It’s something we visit at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s gotten so bad that recently there was a campaign to promote “family meals.” There was actually a social agency and a local grocery store offering tips of what could be served and what you might talk about and how frequently you might want to have these “programs.” Have we wandered so far from family time that we have to have a national campaign to promote what we should be doing every day? While some have found significance in family, other of us search for significance in our work, like Jacob.
Being Necessary
Jacob had put in a lot of overtime with Laban, but he still didn’t feel fulfilled; his life hadn’t amounted to much at all. He’s enjoyed feeling “necessary” and probably appreciated the fact that Laban couldn’t make it without him. But he was losing his life, watching it slip away. He didn’t need more hours and a raise, he needed a blessing. How often do we feel this way? Working harder than ever, but enjoying it less. It’s life in the cubicle, where your meals are brought in because you’ll never make it home; it’s the 28 percent of Americans work more than 40 hours a week and 8 % more than 60 hours a week. We think that no one else can do this thing the way we do, or we’re scared that if we don’t someone else will. And so we overexert and stress in our homes and at the office and in our volunteering and burn out. Barnes’ professor would say, “Your life is too important to be necessary. You deserve to be loved. It’s a way of ascribing value, of placing our hearts in someone hands. We settle for being needed when we yearn to be loved. The blessing is realizing that your friends and family and God choose to love you. But when you make yourself indispensable, you rob people of the blessing that can only be received and not earned.
Being Prosperous
So we make a lot of deals with people like Laban. We work long hours, accept promotions that send us across the country, retain a job that is on the road most of the time, impress others with lavish get-togethers to prove we know how to do it right. We assume if we can gain the whole world and lose our souls in the process we’ll still be o.k., because with the house, the car, the perfect schools, the exotic vacations and adventures, we will have made it. But does this prosperity bring us happiness? Maybe a little. But here’s the problem. You will never collect enough to buy a blessing. And like the passage in Luke, we build bigger barns to house all the stuff. But since our barn can never be full enough of the stuff we care the most about, we are never satisfied; we concentrate on the things that are missing. Jesus said “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. ” It consists in the abundance of blessings, which can never be possessed.
The Calling
And so maybe it’s time to see our work as a calling, since the word vocation comes from the Latin, vocare – to call. I tell people when we are between positions, we are looking for a job, when it’s a calling, God looks for you. Jesus called the comfortable because he knew they were only involved with tasks. What Jesus gave his disciples was a true vocation that their hearts had always longed for; they wanted significance.
Bob Buford, in his book, Halftime, talks about the majority of professionals who spend a lot of time accumulating things in the first part of their lives without much joy. Then comes halftime, when we begin to search for significance and purpose, and the second part of life has renewed focus. Moses found this true in his own mid-life crisis. He’d lived a pretty comfortable life until God showed up; he’d passed that same bush every day, minding his business and the flocks, and then God called out his name, and the bush began to burn. “Moses, Moses, remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” It forced him to decide if he wanted to stay in his predictable place, or join the adventure God had ordained for his life. Frank and I faced that decision about three and a half years ago. Frank was settled in his work at Kaiser, I was about to be given a new directorship for a marriage and family ministry at a mega church. But I was also about to finish seminary and was looking for a call as a pastor. The easy thing would be to take the offer, stay in our nice comfy home, and for Frank to continue at the hospital. But God called us here. It meant uprooting to a place neither of us had really seen, it meant moving away from friends and family, it meant uncertainty for his work and leaving fragile parents. But this was our holy ground. So the question should not be not, “What do I have to do to get that job”, or “What if I lose this job,” but “Who do I really work for?” The good news is we work for God.
The Mission
A few weeks ago, Bob gave us a profound picture of the stairway to heaven, and noted that Jesus is that stairway. Christ has seen and heard the cries of his people and comes down to us. But as we work for God, he calls us to go down into those places as well; to the inner city, to the outer villages in Africa, to the co-worker who has just been downsized, to the neighbor who has just been abandoned. We go down to the places where there are lost people and bring them home to God. The problem is, no one wants to be called to the assignment. But God calls you everyday to make a difference in the lives of others – in our homes, the workplace, in our leisure. What you may not realize is that Jacob gets a call too. You might miss it, but Jacob has a vision, a flashback, in Genesis 31:10 when he says, “In the breeding season I once had a dream in which I looked up and saw that the male goats mating with the flock were streaked, speckled or spotted. The angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob.” I answered ‘Here I am.’ And he said, “Look up and see that all the male goats mating with the flock are streaked, speckled or spotted, for I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now leave this land at once and go back to your native land.” Up to this point, Jacob had pretty much been on his own speed. But now he’s got a commission from God, and it’s the end of the dance with Laban. He’s changed supervisors, and will work within the confines of where he is. And isn’t that our call, too, to find meaning and purpose right where we are? The Bible tells us we are all part of the “royal priesthood of believers, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” It means the priesthood belongs to all of us. It means we can take our faith to our places of labor and be that light that others are drawn to. Our mission is not really about what we do, but about what God is doing through us. It isn’t about fixing the broken world and coming up with some kind of self-help formula. It’s about being the person God has called you to be, in the position God has chosen for you.
Second Best May be God’s Choice
But let’s say you’ve prayed, searched the scriptures and sought counsel and understand your gifts, and you’ve done your homework. You’re still going to have to make a choice where you will serve. But what if it doesn’t work out? What if we make the wrong choice and find we have to settle for second best? We need to rejoice in some of those second choices, because it may be God’s choice. We need to have the freedom to move in a different direction. Jacob’s life was full of Plan B’s – Leah instead of Rachel, homelessness instead of enjoying the blessing, working for Laban when he wanted to be his own boss. If I had stuck with my first choice I might be a doctor or a college professor. Instead, I started as a diagnostic teacher for special education, taught high school, college and university classes, worked in professional opera, theatre and radio, was a full time registered investment advisor and financial planner and director for Children and family ministries and Singles long before I came to Oregon. These were all Plan B’s – not first choices. And every one of them required risks, but they weren’t mistakes. God used them as part of my call to serve Christ. Making mistakes isn’t condemned in the Bible, only refusing to take risks.
My former boss, Gilman Robinson, was a risk taker. His first choice would have been to run a business and engineering firm, but he chose to create a start up brokerage firm of financial planners when it wasn’t even a profession. His plan was to be a light in the rather difficult and not always honest world of traders and due diligence. And he ran a very frugal business. Formica tables and out-of-date desks graced most of the offices. He encouraged potlucks instead of lavish lunches and sponsored a family camp every year in lieu of overpriced hotel gatherings, so he could get to know their families and thank them. And he lived his life well under his peers with an outdated car that was paid for, and worked out payment plans for others who had no cars, or found a way to get a car donated. Integrity and honesty were his hallmark. He sat on numerous NASD boards, instigated the first due diligence panel for research into the infamous limited partnerships of the 80’s. When asked, he shared his faith in an open and unassuming way. His generosity meant that in lean years we were paid a fair wage, in better years, a bonus and a shared profit. The Christmas company pool went to pay for food boxes and presents for people in need. People flocked to our doors, begging to be clients and the business grew until the market crash of 1987 when things were tight, and Gilman decided to pay us from his own pocket so we would have jobs. I can honestly say, Gilman was often the only Bible people ever read and he led many to reexamine their faith, and find God. He knew his boss was Christ and everything he had, belonged to Him. We knew we worked on holy ground.
Holy Ground
And so after many years of labor, God reaches down and offers Jacob hope. That same dreaded plain where he’s toiled for years will now be his place of refuge, a holy ground where God resides. God sees his pain, understands his need to leave Laban and take his family to a safe place. But until that time, God will protect him, and allow him to prosper under His watchful eye. Maybe you came today and your life is a little chaotic, and there’s no job and resources are tight, or maybe you work for Laban, and it’s all you can do to stay another month in the workplace without losing your mind. Or maybe you’re o.k. where you are, you simply need a way to know God’s will and find the significance to stay fresh. Our position in life, our labor isn’t ever perfect. But we can call on God to make it Holy Ground; we can ask Him to redefine our vocation, our mission and carry out His will to be light in the dark places. We can rejoice in the plan B’s and the changes that we didn’t expect. It’s then we realize that we are His – our identity rests in Him and not in a title. We can be the person God has called to find meaning and ministry right where we are and know his blessing.
Let’s pray: Come into our place of labor Lord, and make it holy ground, change our heart, allow us to see you as our supervisor. AMEN
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