By Reverend Laurie DeMott

“What are people for?” This is a question that the poet Wendall Berry posed as he considered the state of our society today.

“What is humankind made for?” This is the question posed by the Westminster Catechism in its exploration of the meaning of human life.

“Is humankind worth saving?” This is the question posed by Captain Adama following a nuclear attack on humanity by the mechanical Cylons in the Sci-Fi series “Battlestar Galactica.”

Now, you may not recognize that last reference, or for that matter any of my references, but the question at least is a familiar one. It is a question posed in the very first chapter of Genesis in the story of creation and the Garden of Eden. “What are we here for?” the storytellers ask. “What is the purpose of life? What gives human life value and meaning?” A childhood friend of mine gave me his answer to that question when he said that he believed the meaning of life is to make as much money as you can spending the least amount of time doing it. His goal was to work his way up the corporate ladder securing jobs that had ever increasing salaries and provided ever increasing vacation time. The ultimate nirvana that he pursued would be to be paid millions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing. That, he thought, would be Paradise.

And, of course, all of us fantasize about such a possibility. In most people’s minds, Paradise is a place where all of our needs are taken care of magically without requiring any effort on our parts, a place where we can stroll lazily without worry about schedules or meetings, a bountiful garden where the only people invited in are those people whom we enjoy and demand nothing of us. The tourist industry banks on this longing by promising us vacations free from the stresses of everyday life: “Come on our Carnival Cruise,” the commercials sing out, “and we will feed you, pamper you, entertain you, and even transform your truculent children into cherubs beaming sunshine so that you will be completely fulfilled in every way without lifting a finger.” The tourist industry knows that for most people, Paradise and work are polar opposites. Like my childhood friend, most Americans believe that the less we have to work, the closer we are to Eden. After all, isn’t work the punishment God visited upon Adam and Eve when he evicted them from the garden? “[Because you] have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’” God says to them, “cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; .... By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.” Or to put it in the blunt phrases of the spiritual “Dem Bones” – “so they took a pick and they took a plow and that’s why we’re all working now.”

For many Americans, we see the need to work as the result of living in a fallen world and so whatever meaning can be squeezed out of human life, we think, must be found in the times we manage to escape from our work. And no wonder, we feel that way: a national poll found that 95% of Americans hate their jobs. Another study revealed that the greatest incidence of heart attacks takes place between 8:00 and 9:00 am on Monday mornings. Just the thought of going back to work for another week is enough to literally kill some people. And hating your job is nothing new under the sun: the grim author of the book of Ecclesiastes, writing almost three thousand years ago, asked, “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.” That feels pretty familiar, doesn’t it? Three thousand years and nothing’s changed. For all of those people who hate their jobs, getting paid millions of dollars to do absolutely nothing sounds like paradise indeed.

And yet, isn't it also a familiar story to hear that winners of lotteries often head back to work after collecting their millions? And how many people do we know who longed for retirement only to find that kicking around the house with nothing to do but watch reruns of “Law and Order” turned out to be very unsatisfying? Sure, there will always be a few who take to the couch potato life with ease – Robert Frost said that there are two kinds of people in the world, those willing to work and those willing to let them – but for the majority of human beings, constant leisure turns out to be no more satisfying than our jobs. While Ecclesiastes acknowledges that some work can feel like a burden, the Bible also tells us that the need to work is actually bred into our bones. When God created humankind, the storytellers say, God placed the man and the woman in the garden and asked them to till it. Eden as conceived by the biblical writers turns out not to be a place where we lounge under apple trees with nothing to do but watch the birds while our investment portfolios clink away. Eden is a place where we spend our days working. In Paradise, we till the soil, we plant the seeds, and we tend the harvest.

Genesis declares that the answer to the question: “What are people for?” is, “God created people to work.” In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, one of the main characters, Janie Crawford, tells her best friend, "Ah wants to utilize mahself all over." After being raised in a family where her life was very narrow and prescribed, Janie sees freedom as the ability to be useful in as many ways and to as many people as possible. Janie has seen life without purpose and found it wanting and now she is anxious to get out there in the world where she can put her hand to the plow and help with tilling the field, planting the seeds, and tending the harvest and be a part of the work. She wants to “utilize herself all over!” Or as the great Protestant Reformer, John Calvin said, “The Christian vocation can be summed up as the effort simply to be useful.”

What is the meaning of life? Throw away the volumes of philosophy, throw away centuries of anguished speculation over this question, and tack up Calvin’s blunt statement on your refrigerator door: “The Christian is called simply to be useful.”

The scriptures declare that work is part of what makes us fully human because it gives us the opportunity to be useful. Carnival Cruises are fun and rejuvenating but it is a mistake to think that the meaning of our lives will be found there. Work was built into Paradise from the start and so to be fully human is to learn how to embrace our call to till the land and bring forth life from the efforts of our hands and hearts.

If, then, you hate your job – if the work you are doing feels more life destroying than life giving – maybe your job isn’t satisfying your inherent call to be useful. Work that is pointless, work that is dehumanizing, work that is poorly suited to our skills is work that will fail to fulfill that need and so can leave us empty and despondent. Or maybe it is not the job itself that is the problem but your failure to recognize that your restlessness arises from that unsatisfied longing to be useful and once you understand what work you are called to, you will be able to see your job as a means to an end. That not very exciting job becomes easier to endure when you know that it is giving you the paycheck you need to allow you to pursue your real work as a father or as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity or whatever labor God calls you to. The apostle Paul held a job as a tentmaker but tentmaking was not his work. He made tents so that he would pursue his vocation preaching the gospel and shepherding the churches.

In Eden, Isaiah says, “people will no longer work and have nothing come of it. My chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.” Paradise is not the absence of work. Paradise is work that makes us feel we are useful people. Paradise is a lifetime spent laboring in the garden of God, tilling the land and planting the seeds, so that a great harvest may blossom forth and we will have the satisfaction of knowing that it has been made possible because of the work of our hands.