In 1904, Max Weber, a German economist and philosopher, began work on what became his seminal work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It is considered one of the founding works in the creation of the field of economic sociology as well as within sociology itself. Weber argued that it was the Protestant reformation which created the spirit of capitalism and drove the northern European countries to economic prominence because Protestantism imbued the idea that everyone was a minister, that everyone was called by God to be productive in life, that all had a calling, and that the ideal was no longer to be secluded in the religious life, which eschewed things like making money, and instead the ideal became working hard for the community and for yourself, with all the benefits that came from that. Weber argued that in particular this was driven by the Calvinist belief in predestination, and since you didn’t know if you were truly saved or not, the only evidence might be seen in what happened in your life, and hard work and frugality were seen as signs of election, plus if you were gaining wealth it must mean that God was blessing you, and therefore another indication that you were saved. Now it could be argued whether Weber is correct or not in his analysis, but this idea of hard work has been tied to our understanding of work, wealth and worthiness in America. And yet, some it goes back much further than Weber. It goes back to scripture, and in particular, to the views, or at least some of the views, in the book of Proverbs, and so appropriately enough for this Labor Day weekend, we are going to be looking at some of the proverbs about work and laziness.
Now, as we heard from the few passages from this morning, Proverbs wants to make a direct correlation between work and prosperity, laziness and poverty, remembering that in Proverbs it wants to present that there are two paths we can choose, the path of wisdom or the path of folly, and thus you can guess which path it is that those who are wise follow. This is also a critical piece in Proverbs of warning about consequences. That if you do x, y will happen, and thus the results of the bad things that occur are not because of outside forces, it’s not because God is punishing you for something, but because of what you have chosen, or not chosen, to do. So, for example, it could say, if you choose to step off a tall building, you will fall to your death. If you smoke for 50 years, you’re going to get cancer. While much of wisdom literature is concerned with the question of why, and in particular of asking God that question, why did this happen? Why is there suffering or evil in the world? Proverbs, for the most part isn’t concerned with that question because it knows what the answer is: Because we choose not to follow the right path.
So, today we started with one of the few proverbs that takes a lesson not from human experience, but the example of nature, and ants in particular. Although, it’s important to pay attention that this is actually not ants plural, but ant singular. The ant is not controlled, proverbs says, by any boss, but instead does the work that has to be done because she knows it has to be done. As an aside, while the NRSV puts in the pronoun it, the word ant in Hebrew is feminine, and since this portion comes from the beginning of the instruction about pursuing wisdom, who is also female, and the ant represents the wise path, I think it’s important to recognize this little ant as female. Now, obviously the writer or proverbs didn’t know all the things we now know about ants, and collective behavior, and specialization, etc., but the point still holds. The ant does the work that is necessary to do in the proper season. That is the ant is not gathering in summer and preparing in the fall, it’s not about business, or just about working harder, but about being smart about the work we do. Prepare in the right season, harvest in the right season, and although it doesn’t say it here, and we’ll come back to it, resting in the right season.
It takes work, and the right kind of work and the right time, to be productive and diligent. Remembering that these proverbs were originally written for an agricultural world, when we hear that “the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to want.” Farmers who rush through things, who don’t plan and execute properly are not going to bring in a successful harvest, but those who are diligent, who do the right work, will find abundance. It seems so simple, and that is really the brilliance of proverbs, and yet it’s so hard as well, and we need to keep hearing it. And so, we hear “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” Or as we still say about some people “all talk and no action.” There has to be diligence involved, that even “a little folding of the hands” and “poverty will come upon you like a robber.”
Now our yard is landscaped with rocks. We don’t have grass anywhere, or at least we’re not supposed to have grass, because the truth is we do have grass and other weeds. I’ll go out and pull everything, and it seems like just a few days later they’re all growing right back, and not just little growths, but huge weeds. And I have to do it all over again. And so, when I hear about the field of the one who is lazy, that is overgrown, to me it reinforces the idea of diligence over complacency. So, it’s not just outright laziness that leads to things, but sitting back and relaxing at the wrong time, or inopportune moments. Another way to think about this is that I recently read a bicyclist who said the only time they really coast is when they are headed downhill. The only time we can coast is when we are going downhill. And, obviously, that’s not the place we normally want to be. So, proverbs wants to make clear that laziness does not lead to prosperity, with laziness being identified as wanting to sleep all the time, or making excuses about why you can’t do it right now. I love the lazy person saying they can’t go out to work because “there’s a lion in the street.” That’s a great excuse. So, Proverbs wants to make the claim that if you are poor, if you are having difficulties, if you’re struggling to make ends meet, then it’s your fault because you’re lazy. If only you worked harder than you would be prosperous. We certainly still here that today, that people on welfare are obviously lazy and need to be kicked off, or as a congressman from Alabama recently said, “if you lived a good life” you wouldn’t have pre-existing medical conditions. Everything is the individual person’s fault. And proverbs says that too, except when it doesn’t.
As we talked about two weeks ago, proverbs, both ancient and modern, often contradict each other because life is too complicated, to complex, to be summarized and contained in just one statement. That there are, in fact, often a multiplicity of truths, they are just true at different times and in different circumstances. So, proverbs says that if you are sleeping all the time, and remember they had no concept of depression or other mental illnesses, and there is help available if you are feeling these things, or if you are just lazy and you don’t want to do the work, then, more than likely, you are not going to be prosperous, you are not going to get ahead. Laziness, foolishness, can frustrate even talent, position, wealth and power. But what proverbs also says is that you can work your butt off and still not get ahead. Proverbs 13:23 says “a poor person’s farm may produce much food, but injustice sweeps it away.” That is poor people can be working as hard, or even harder, than others but because of things beyond their control, they remain poor. They remain repressed. They remain unfortunate. But it’s not their fault, and so quoting one of the other proverbs back at them, or telling them if only they worked harder, or worked at all, does not reach the truth of the situation. It doesn’t account for the injustices, which proverbs doesn’t elucidate because it varies by situation, that exist in the world, or the truly hard work that many people do. Just think of migrant workers in fields, doing back breaking labor day after day, but will never reach a level of economic prosperity. Or when natural disasters strike, who are the ones who suffer the most, or at least have the longest time recovering? It’s the poor, who don’t have the resources or opportunities that come with some economic stability. It’s not just about not working hard, there are other factors that come into play, and scripture, and the proverbs, have a lot to say about how we treat the poor, which we’ll return too much more over the next two weeks as we look at money and righteousness.
But I want to conclude by something that proverbs doesn’t really address, and that is rest. Proverbs does say that there are more important things then wealth, including wisdom which is said to be better than gold or silver or rubies, and so it’s not just that we are called to only work. We, of course, have our own proverbs about this, “all work and no play, makes jack a dull boy.” But notice that these two things go together, work and play. We are told in Exodus when the idea of sabbath is introduced that we are to work on six days, but the seventh day is a day of rest, even during planting or harvesting time this was to be a day of rest. That is, we can’t say, “I have too much work to do” or “resting will come later.” This was a forced rest. And it wasn’t just humans that were supposed to rest, but everyone and everything in our household was to be given a rest, including work animals. And it wasn’t just another set of rules that we were supposed to obey, but genuinely a time to be rest, to be refreshed, to be re-created. Or as Jesus said, we were not made for the sabbath, the sabbath was made for us, because we can’t keep going and going and going. Not only cannot we sustain that, but we can’t have the abundant life that Jesus called for us to claim.
So, while we do need to talk about work, and the power of work, and there is importance in work and in diligence, but in our hyper-rushed world it’s probably even more important to emphasize the need for rest, and this is true even for those who are retired, because I know some retired people who work more now than they did before. Sabbath not only allows us to rest, but it allows God to work in us. It allows God to remind us that nothing we do, no work we do, can cause God to love us any more, that nothing we produce, nothing we create, none of our possessions, none of our stress and tension, is about our relationship with the God who loves us, and most importantly, it helps us to remember that it’s not about us and we are not ultimately in control. In the first week, we discussed proverbs claim that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and that fear was not about being terrified, but about awe and reverence, about bowing down to God. So, laboring for six days, and then resting for one is because God has told us that’s what we need, regardless of what we think we need, or need to do, and so taking time for rest is to say that we are going to turn our lives over to God, and listen to what God says. So, labor for six days, be productive and diligent in the world, God says, but for one day a week we are to rest, to rest from work, to rest from our phones, to rest from labor, to rest and allow God to rest in us. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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