Cluelessness

Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. (John 4:36)

Some of this is still a little obscure and some of it is still clarifying for me.

I still don't quite see where in this story that someone is sowing except in Jesus' words to the woman. But that appears to me to be more along the line of reaping more than sowing. She was ripe for the picking for eternal life so how could that fit in as an act of sowing seed? That is the part that still seems obscure for me. But it is not absolutely necessary to know the answer to that immediately. It might be one of those questions I need to leave hanging and see if God might suddenly reveal it to me unexpectedly sometime.

But what is becoming clearer for me is that the disciples were missing out on most of the fun of this work. They simply were so out of touch with the kind of food and harvest and labor that excited Jesus and this woman that they were standing around much of the time going “huh?” and scratching their heads. But while they were trying to get up to even a slow speed about all the excitement and activity taking place and mostly missing the point, this woman saw the harvest waiting to be worked and jumped right in to help as fast as she could. And since in God's kingdom, rewards for work are paid in the currency of joy, she was already receiving wages even while she was still working which only gave her immediate incentive to work even harder.

The main purpose of wages is to act as something that motivates us to want to work. Most people are conditioned to generally only want to work if there is enough incentive in the form of wages to induce them to put out the effort. Even if the wages are not necessarily monetary in nature, there needs to be enough of a payback for us to feel motivation to do anything called work. That payback may be monetary as it is most of the time in our society, or it may be other tangible assets that will benefit us or that we can use to support our life. Work can also involve pleasure and satisfaction which can be an additional source of incentive for many people but is usually missing in most people's lives. Thus work itself has taken on a negative connotation for most of us.

This negative feeling about work that has become almost inherent in the very word creates a problem when God talks to us about work. But that's why God told Adam right after he sinned that this was going to be an issue for him the rest of his life.

Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life....by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3:17-19)

This curse was not something so much imposed on Adam as it was simply a description of the consequences that were unavoidable from Adam's choice to obey a different master and embrace a different system of government. He had relinquished his authority over the earth to another master and because of that this new master of sin would cause everything to involve resistance, extra effort to get things done and he would now live under the constant effects of everything slowly dying including his own body. Instead of being a joy to work and experience immediate and joyful results from his labor, it would now involve drudgery and sweat and soreness and discouraging outcomes.

But God's words were also an instruction to Adam that work, as hard as it was going to be now, was actually going to also be Adam's therapy. He was going to need to work harder now that he had rejected God's system of free gifting and had chosen Satan's system of works. In his new condition Adam would have to focus his efforts and energy on working very hard to help provide his needs if he was to have things to eat and the necessities of life. But in choosing to work he would also avoid the worse consequences of surrendering to laziness or indulging in debilitating pleasures. Now the very act of sweating while working would act as a cleansing process for his body as his soul would also be similarly cleansed.

But this inherent sense about work being something we don't like because of the effects of sin distorts our perceptions of how appealing heaven's work is to anyone living under God's version of reality. All of heaven is very busy in work but it does not have the same negative connotations for them as it seems to have for us. But we too can begin to be energized from the kind of work that heaven enjoys doing as we enter into fellowship with heaven and cooperate in the works of God. As we begin to synchronize with Jesus in the way and with the spirit in which He works, we will discover a new source of energy and motivation that is exponentially greater and more stimulating than any other kind of earthly compensation plan that we are used to hearing about.

Many of us work and feel that we have to endure it or maybe even survive it so that we can get paid remuneration that can then be used to do something more fun or to buy the things we need for our families to survive. But what if we could work in such a way that the things we crave to enjoy outside of work could be received directly from the job itself? How might this affect the way we think about the whole concept of work?

This is such a strange and radical idea that it may take some time to even wrap our imagination around it and figure out what this might look like. Could this involve having our physical needs like hunger be directly satisfied as a result of our work? And what about many of our other needs, could they somehow be met and satisfied also if the work we were doing was better designed to fit with them? And when we start to contemplate all of this, we are forced to go back and rethink what it is we really are working for in the first place. Why do we want the money we earn from our jobs anyway? What do we want in exchange for the money we earn that is valuable and important to us? And is it possible that those things might somehow be received in a different way besides earning or buying them? The whole system of work and compensation and needs and desires suddenly all comes up for serious review and reconsideration at this point.

But I believe that heaven's idea about working must be radically different than the way we typically think about work and the compensation is far different than the artificial and manipulative monetary systems that we are used to living under in this world. Then the next question that begins to emerge is, how realistic is it to believe that we could even get hired into this new strange kind of work if it is really as rewarding as it is starting to sound like it might be. Is this “work” something worth looking deeper into or is it simply a religious mirage that is presented in glowing terms but in the end leaves one empty and more depleted and discouraged than before? Is this work Jesus is talking about here seriously for real or is it not?

If it is really true and if it is as rewarding as it is starting to appear to be from the excitement suddenly displayed by this Samaritan woman, then why aren't more people signing up for this kind of job? And why weren't the disciples themselves jumping in to take advantage of this incredible job offer? Who is really telling the truth here? I really want to know myself, because I am getting very conflicting messages from various people in this story as to what is real and what is important and what is worth investing time and effort in focusing on with my energies and attention.

This work Jesus talks about definitely sounds intriguing, but why didn't the disciples get excited about it like everyone else? I would really like to know in very practical ways because obviously I seem to be more in sync with these disciple's view of things from the evidence in my life than I am in tune with the exciting way of working everyone else was involved in. I feel like I have been missing out on most of the fun that Jesus and this woman were into and I am getting almost upset about it. I want a piece of the action myself; I want to earn these kinds of wages myself; I want to eat more of this food and living water that was so important in Jesus' life and that got a whole town excited within a few minutes. I don't want to be on the outside of all the fun and action any longer, I don't want to miss the point and stand around scratching my head with the disciples; I want to be filled with the kind of motivation and joy that sent this woman scrambling back to town forgetful of the pots and pans that everyone else seems to consider more important.

This woman accepted the job of reaping when the disciples missed the opportunity due to their cluelessness. I'm afraid I have been with them most of my life. I don't want to stay that way, but I'm still not sure how to get there from here. Lord, save me from cluelessness!