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Christian in Business, Preparing Space"

THE CHRISTIAN IN BUSINESS

Preparing a Space for God

July 20, 2008

Text: 2 Kings 4:1-7

2 Kings 4:1-7

Now the wife of a member of the company of prophets cried to Elisha, "Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the LORD, but a creditor has come to take my two children as slaves." Elisha said to her, "What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?" She answered, "Your servant has nothing in the house, except a jar of oil ." He said, "Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not just a few. Then go in, and shut the door behind you and your children, and start pouring into all these vessels; when each is full, set it aside." So she left him and shut the door behind her and her children; they kept bringing vessels to her, and she kept pouring. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another vessel." But he said to her, "There are no more." Then the oil stopped flowing. She came and told the man of God, and he said, "Go sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your children can live on the rest." NRSV

Intro:

One morning I was at the St. Louis Bread Company…

…having a large dark-roast coffee, eating a cobblestone muffin, and reading the sports page.

It was devotion time.

At a nearby table was a group of “suits.” You know. Well dressed, well manicured business folks.

I couldn’t help overhearing snippets of their conversation. Things like:

“We really kicked…” [you can fill in the blank with your imagination]

“Pull a fast one.”

“I can be as shady as anyone.”

“All the drinks we had that night came out to only $300.”

My hunch is they were a sales team for some company, telling war stories.

It made me imagine what it’s like for so many of you, listening to this sermon.

The business world. An arena of fierce competition driven by the bottom line. In tough economic times like the one we’re living in, you have to keep your job at all costs, because it’s a “bosses’ market,” not a worker’s. Keeping a job without being “as shady as anyone” may be difficult, because it seems like your co-workers may not have any hesitancy living in the shade. To keep a job in a company that may care for you, but cares more for the stockholders and thus may jeopardize your position—that’s really not a warm, fuzzy feeling: just ask anybody who works for Anheuser-Busch—InBev.

Being a Christian in business must be tough—I say “must be” because I’m not in your shoes. But from the tales you tell me, that fierce, competitive arena is where your faith is tested.

Today, and next Sunday, I’d like to make a couple of suggestions, drawn from the Bible, that hopefully may help give you “keep the faith” when it’s so tempting to relax your grip on it during the week. As a footnote, if you’re not in the business world, I hope that what I say is translatable in the school world, or family world, or social world as well.

The story I’d like to lift up to you today doesn’t sound, at first, like it’d have anything to do with work-place stress and the Christian. Look more closely, though, and you might be surprised.

I. The prophet Elisha was presented with a problem.

A. “My husband has died,” the widow says. “I’m in debt, and they’ve come

to take away my sons as slaves, to pay it off.”

Can you translate that?

“We’re losing our customer base, and we’re facing bankruptcy.”

“My job’s on the line, and I’m facing unemployment, and I’m already

behind in the mortgage payments.”

The woman is desperate, stressed out, scared.

“Elisha, prophet of God, HELP ME!”

B. How’d Elisha respond?

His response was filled with practical advice. He gave her a business

plan, a timeline for strategic initiatives, and contacts with a debt

consolidation firm.

Right? Of course not.

Here is Elisha’s response to this woman facing foreclosure on her

children:

“Get some empty jars, ‘cause God’s going to fill them with oil.”

It’s not recorded, but the woman must have gone away thinking to herself, “You MUST be kidding me! I wanted solutions, strategies, something practical. What I get is ‘collect some empty jars and wait for God.’ RIGHT!”

C. But maybe Elisha’s onto something. When faced with a dilemma, don’t

start scrambling and panicking and anticipating the worst. If you believe in God—if you believe God loves you, cares for you, knows the number of hairs on your head, has plans for you. If you believe in God—if you’ve put your life into God’s hands and truly pray, “Your will be done:” THEN ACT LIKE IT! Call on your faith, believing that if you hold true to your faith, something amazing will happen.

Elisha is doing the first thing a believer should do when faced with a difficult situation:

MAKE A CREATIVE, RISKY FAITH STATEMENT.

What would it be like if, when your colleagues talk “the end justifies the means” strategy, you talk “jars”?

Go back to the St. Louis Bread Company scene. What if you’re one of the “suits.” When your colleagues brag about a $300 bar bill, getting clients lubricated in order to make the sale: what would it sound like to say, “Isn’t there some better way to close the deal than to get the client plastered?”

Imagine your colleagues’ reaction. Silence? A snicker? Just like the audience who heard Elisha?

The point is, in times of panic in the office, in times when you’re pressured to cave in to practices that go against your values: THOSE TIMES are opportunities for you to put your faith into action. You make a crazy faith statement, you call God into the situation, and see what happens.

II. Notice something else in the story, that Elisha does.

A. Tell me if this happened. After he tells her to get jars from her neighbors, he goes with her. On the way he explains why he said what he said. He helps her pick out just the right jars, helps her carry them back. They fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after.

Fact, or fiction?

Fiction.

Elisha made the risky faith statement, then he got out of the way. He went to the McHebrews for a Big and Tasty, and let God do the work.

B. When you make that statement in your office, or around that table in STL Bread Co,

DON’T GET IN GOD’S WAY.

I don’t know about you, but if I stood up for my faith around that St. Louis Bread Company table, challenging the “get client drunk” tactic, and I heard their laughing at me, I’d be tempted to continue talking. I’d want to say something to be accepted by them, to show them I’m not crazy. I’d want to show them I’m still one of the team, I’m still OK regardless of the wild statement I’d made. I’d try to clarify in some way what I said.

In other words, my “I,” my ego, would get in the way.

Get your ego out of the way. Make the faith statement, then be quiet.

Sure it’s uncomfortable. But it’s the right thing to do—you’re standing on your “scruples.”

Ever heard that phrase before? “You must stand on your scruples?” I assumed that meant standing on your principles. But a scruple is a small, sharp stone. The sense of it is being bothered by that rock in your shoe, but standing there anyway. [–Sue Monk Kidd]

You make your faith statement, you’re standing on your scruples—it’s supposed to be painful. It’s not like God hasn’t done anything painful on your behalf before, right?

[trans]

So, for the Christian in business, it’s important to make a bold faith statement at the right time. You make it, even though you might look bad. And then you’re quiet—you don’t get in God’s way…

…Because God is about to do something amazing, because of your statement.

III. Elisha expected something wonderful to happen. He had no doubt God would come through.

A. Here’s exactly what he said:

"Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not just a few.”

God responds to your faith statement not with, “I’ll just fill up one jar. I’ll just help the woman get by for a while.” No. God is an abundant God. God is going to bless that woman, and bless that woman, and BLESS that woman. The jars are just going to keep filling up, and filling up, and filling up.

B. When you make your faith statement, when you stick by it, then:

EXPECT ABUNDANCE.

When you say what you say to the group of suits in St. Louis Bread Co., imagine that one person didn’t snicker. That one person had been tired by living the motto, “we kicked…” That one person had been tired out by the clawing, the struggling. That person had let outside standards of success drive them to inside feelings of failure and disappointment.

And now, that person is intrigued by what you just said. It took a lot of guts to make a statement like you made. That person starts wondering if this Christian thing is really real. And so that person asks you about your faith, later on in private. And he/she starts asking deeper questions. What happens if I treat people the way I’d like to be treated? How can I live a successful life regardless of the profit I do or don’t produce? How can I find meaning in my life, whether I’m filling out a sales report or punching a time clock? How do I know there is a God, and that God has a purpose and direction for my life? Who is Jesus, and what does he mean to me?

You see what happens? By what you said, life has opened up to another person. They’re asking questions. And God will supply the answers. God will give grace abundant—which that person will then share with another, who will share with another, who will share with another.

God’s oil supply is endless—the more God pours out, the more God has to give.

[conclusion:]

Make a faith statement.

Don’t get in God’s way.

Expect abundance.

[look at list]

There’s a fable told of a village, long ago, caught in a terrible drought. Crops failed, livestock died, drinking water rationed.

The villagers tried everything. Relentless worship services. Sacrifices. Hiring rainmakers.

Nothing worked. The villagers were desperate. Then one day an old man entered the village. “I will help you,” he said. “Just give me a small place to stay, and leave me alone for three days.”

The tribal elders thought it couldn’t hurt anything, so they gave him space in an old hut that used to be a chicken roost.

One day passed. Nothing. A second day. Nothing. But when the villagers awoke on the third day, something was different. A cool breeze. A gathering of dark clouds. And soon cool, refreshing, life-giving rain.

The villagers were beside themselves with joy. They remembered the old man, and found him on a road, walking away from the village.

“Don’t go! You saved us! How in the world did you do it? What’s your magic?”

“There is no magic,” he replied. “The rain is always with you. But if you fill your world with noise and activity and worry and stress, the rain cannot gather itself from its hiding place, to produce a storm. All I did was provide an empty space, where the rain could gather itself and fall on its own terms.”

All God asks of you at work is that you provide a small, empty space for Him. From there, God will work on His own terms. From there, God will fill empty glasses to overflowing with the water of life. [pour]

And you will taste it. [taste] And it will be…GOOD!