“God’s Business”
September 10, 2017
Last Sunday I preached about work and workers and Labor Day approached. As was preparing for that sermon back in the early summer, I realized that I rarely preach about business.
So my ears perked up when I heard a podcast conversation in which the theologian Harvey Cox asked: “What business is God in?” He then answered his own question by saying: “The world is God’s business.” And I thought that would be good direction to go in on this Sunday after Labor Day.
The world is God’s business.
I like that.
Then a couple weeks ago I heard that phrase “God’s business” used again.
There was a news report of a baker in California who refused to bake a cake for a same sex wedding reception. This is not really an Iowa City problem as far as I know. I don’t think any of the couples who have been married here in our sanctuary had trouble getting a cake.
So I thought we’d moved beyond this. But there it was in Bakersfield, California.
Two couples were turned away from a bakery when the owner, Cathy Miller found out they were looking for cakes for their weddings. Miller offered to transfer their orders to another bakery, but she wasn’t going to make them.
In an interview, Miller stated that her Christian faith would not allow her to participate in things that she feels are wrong.
“Our business is God’s business. We work for him,” Miller said.[i]
What struck me, of course, was how Miller justified her discrimination and her refusal to offer a public service to all the public: “Our business is God’s business.”
And I thought: That’s a strange business for God to be in—baking cakes and denying cakes.
What is God’s business?
Not cakes. Certainly not cakes and discrimination.
“The world—the world is God’s business.”
What this means is that God is interested in all creation. God is interested in all that goes on in the world. God is interested in all that we humans are up to here on earth. God is interested in human flourishing and the well-being of all creation.
And scripture seems to suggest that God has handed over most of this business to us.
In the first account of creation in Genesis, God puts human beings in charge of the good earth, giving men and women dominion over all living things. It is a great responsibility. Created in the image of God, humans are to mirror God to the world, or, as one Old Testament scholar puts it, “to be God as God would be to the non-human.”
While our understanding of the word “dominion” has been twisted for millennia—and especially in the last, what, two hundred years or so—into suggesting a domineering and exploitative use of creation, the Hebrew word, rada should be understood as requiring care-giving and nurturing. “As the image of God, human beings should relate to the nonhuman as God relates to them”—with care, with actions that support well-being. In the same way, “subduing” the earth carries with it the suggestion of development and stewardship, not coercion and waste.
Our task, then, is to care for the earth and all that is in it as stewards—caretakers—of what belongs not to us but to God.
The Psalm that we read together reminds us: The heavens are God’s heavens; but God has entrusted the earth to human beings.” It’s hard to get more straightforward than that.
And in the Gospel of John, Jesus is a little more specific, saying of his followers in particular: “I am sending them out into the world.” The privacy and isolation of the upper room is not the dwelling place for those who follow Jesus. We are sent into the world where everyone else is. We are sent into the world where we discover that our business is God’s business.
And so, each Sunday, as our worship ends, I tell you: “Get out of here.” Oh, I’m a little kinder than that, saying, “Go out into the world in peace.” Join with all of the other followers of Jesus who are sent into the world.
The world is God’s business.
The world is our business.
Was it Peter Drucker who said that the two most important questions anyone in business should as are: “What business are you in?” and “How’s business?”
Along with God, we are in the world business.
So—how’s business?
Well, business—the world—isn’t great, is it?
Climate change—we are told—climate change is not causing the great storms and catastrophic destruction we have seen this summer in Bangladesh, Nepal, Puerto Rico, and yes, even here in the United States. But human-caused climate change—our refusal to be stewards of the earth—is causing the storms to be much worse, which is just what the scientific models predicted.
There are increasing signs of the rise of white nationalism in our nation and in Europe, taking the forms of race-based animosity, anti-immigrant/anti-refugee sentiment, and a desire for authoritarian leaders.
Evangelical Christians, some of whom serve as close religious advisors to the president, recently published the “Nashville Statement,” a vile, unscientific, theologically unsound manifesto that sees to undo vast improvements in the lives of many LGBTQ people, turning the clock back on hard-won changes in public attitudes of acceptance.
Wage inequality continues. My new, unexpected hero here is the businessman and one-time Michigan Governor George Romney, who, as chairman of American Motors turned down several big annual bonuses. He did so, he told his company’s board, because he believed that no executive should make more than $225,000 a year (which translates into almost $2 million today).
He worried that “the temptations of success” could distract people from more important matters. This belief seems to have stemmed from both Romney’s Mormon faith and a culture of financial restraint that was once commonplace in this country.[ii] I don’t know if anyone is following that example anymore or if it is taught across the street at the College of Business. So we see the gap—the chasm—between the haves and the have-nots expanding.
Add to all of these examples of how poor business is the fact that no one—no one seems to have any idea about what to do with a nuclear North Korea.
Business—this world—isn’t too good.
Much of the problem, of course, is due to who’s minding the store.
The words of Harvey Cox at the beginning of the bulletin: “From the beginning, the Bible says, God has shared his power and tried to enlist us in continuing his creation and in caring for it,” continue with this honest assessment: “Instead, we have messed it up badly more often than we have gotten it right.”
That’s the bad news.
The good news is to be found in the prayer of Jesus found near the end of the Gospel of John that we heard this morning. On the night of his betrayal and arrest, while sharing a meal with his disciples, Jesus tells those who follow him what life for them will be like after his death and resurrection. He gives them a message of hope: they will to not be left alone, left to their own resources. The very Spirit of God will come to them, to strengthen and encourage them. Yes, there will be trouble and persecution, but they are to abide in Jesus and his love. He likened this to a vine and its branches, telling his followers: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.”
Then, as John puts it, “After Jesus had spoken these words, he look up to heaven and prayed.”
No longer are the disciples addressed, exhorted, and encouraged directly.
No longer are we who have been listening in addressed, exhorted, and encouraged for our lives in our time.
Jesus speaks to God alone—and along with his earliest followers, we today are able to overhear what is not spoken directly to us. After talking at some length to his followers—all of us—Jesus does not continue by telling us that the future is in our hands. Instead, Jesus gives the future of his followers over to God.
Something beautiful and something powerful is happening here. One of the great living scholars of John’s Gospel, Gail O’Day, puts it like this: “By positioning Jesus’ last words as a prayer, the Gospel of John makes it possible for all generations of believers to hear and experience the love that Jesus and God have for them. To successive generations of believers, this prayer communicates the theological vision that lies at the heart of the life of faith. Jesus hands those whom he loves back to God and holds God to God’s promises for this community….”
She concludes: “Jesus prays that God will be present in the life and mission of the faith community.”
Let that sink in for a moment: Jesus prays that God will be present in the life and mission of the faith community.
How might our self-understanding change, how might our approach to the business of the world change if we take as our starting point that we are a community for whom Jesus prays?
Throughout his ministry, Jesus has spoken of himself as the one whom God had sent into the world. Now as he nears the conclusion of that ministry and the conclusion of his prayer he says to God: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Now we have a part in the work that God gave Jesus to do.
We do this work—we are involved in the business of God—not out of our own strength, certainly not out of our own goodness or our own wisdom. Which is why we gather here each week.
We do the work that comes to us, we take on the calling that we hear in our time both in our individual lives and in our common life as a congregation out of the faith that the Christ who loves us and who prays for us the Christ who sends us into the world. Success is not guaranteed—but the One who prays for us gives us the hope that our work might bear good fruit that will increase the love, joy, and hope that is in this world.
The California baker, Cathy Miller, was right in one sense—our business is God’s business. In faith we affirm that we are called to care for the earth and all that dwell in it. We are to do the things that make for peace. We are to show the love of God to all people, not just those we think are worthy of that love.
The world is God’s business.
By the grace of Christ, we are sent into the world to do the work that God has set for us in these days.
With joy and with hope, let us take on this calling.
[i] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-bakery-gay-wedding-cake_us_59a5ad31e4b084581a13adcd?section=us_religion
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/opinion/rich-getting-richer-taxes.html?mcubz=1