Constructing a Faith at Work
(& Building Small Groups)
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Working among Carpenters, Gardeners, and Sweepers in the Gospels

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Introduction
(for reading to the group; leader’s notes at end)

Jesus used parables to teach the Good News of God’s love, or "gospel" message (an old word for "good news"). When we gather as Christians to reflect on God’s word in the four books we call "Gospels," Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we hear Jesus’ good news story through some very everyday examples, or parables.

Parables tell us about men building barns, women sweeping floors, and children singing and dancing. It all sounds pretty familiar. And even when the world of the parables looks a little different, it isn’t hard to imagine a truck in place of a mule when neither wants to start in the morning. Or you can see working in a vineyard then, as the shop floor or warehouse crew today.

John the Baptist was a preacher’s kid, Jesus grew up in a carpenter’s home, and James and John were sons of a sailor themselves. The work their families did shaped how they saw the world and what examples they used to describe it. We are just getting going as a small group to study the Bible and look for God’s direction in our lives. To begin, thinking about what our parents did for a living, and what we do ourselves at work is part of how we hear those verses of scripture. We can understand each other and support one another better when we listen to how different people respond to the same parables and teachings.

In each of these six sessions, after readings from the Gospels and a short prayer, some discussion questions are shown here to start a conversation. Everyone should have a chance to say their piece, but no one needs to feel like they have to talk. Remember, even a simple job can have an eternal place when Jesus talks about it, so don’t think that your story or viewpoint isn’t worth sharing because you haven’t done anything as interesting as the last person to talk! And your work or job perspective can be something you’ve done for a living, or it may be a hobby, too. The point is to bring our real world experiences into the equally real world of Jesus and the disciples 2000 years ago.

The idea is to put ourselves so completely inside the stories of the Bible that we can see ourselves, and each other, as part of them. The last step is to reflect on how being a part of this story of faith tells us where we’re going, as Christians and as part of this faith community. Let’s listen to each other, and listen to what the Living Word, Jesus himself, is saying to us right now!

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Session One – "Where Are You From?"

Readings – Mark 6:1-6; Luke 1: 57-66

Even Jesus and John the Baptist had to deal with family pressures, even from birth. We all know the story about how Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem, taking a pregnant Mary with him, because that’s where he was from. Everyone talks about how "it’s not what you know, it’s who you know," but the fact of where we’re from, and who our family is, can make problems for us, or limit how people see us as much as open new doors.

Even when we may not want it, our family and background define us and start our course through life. Our parents can also be our introduction into the adult world in ways that we never would have reached on our own.

1. What did your parents do for a living?

2. How does that show up in your speech, or your habits? Is their way of organizing the garage or setting up the kitchen still how you do it without even thinking about it? Are there phrases you use that reflect their upbringing or workplaces, like the farm or a business?

3. What did your family want you to be when you grew up? How did that work out?

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4. What do you do for a living?

5. How does your workplace affect your homelife – do you bring work home, or does work follow you there?

6. Was there, or is there, something else you’ve always wanted to try as a job?

[closing prayer]

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Session Two – "Learning a Trade"

Readings – Luke 2: 39-52; Matthew 4: 18-22

Even Jesus needed to grow, "in wisdom and in stature." We assume this included Joseph teaching him the trade of carpentry, along with his religious duties that their family observed like the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The word usually translated "carpenter" from last week’s reading is "tekton," which is a very particular craft. More than just a worker in wood, a tekton would have been the skilled craftsman who took the valuable solid timbers, so hard to find and precious in a rocky, desert environment, and made scaffolding and framing for the stoneworkers. The buildings of Jesus’ day, poor or rich, were mostly stone, but doors and archways had to each be filled with a wooden framework for the stone to fit around. Once finished, the framing would carefully be removed and quickly rebuilt for the next opening. To keep ahead of the stonemasons without wasting wood required a careful, meticulous eye and steady hard work.

There are many places in Jesus’ teaching where the mark of Joseph’s trade seems to show up (Matthew 7: 24-27, Mt. 16: 18, Luke 13: 4, Lk. 14: 28-30)*.

1. Have you ever known a real craftsman, a person, male or female, with a real talent or skill? What was it? Did you learn anything about that skill from them?

2. What did knowing that person show you about how to live? How did their skill translate into their life?

3. What talents do you think are born into a person, and which can be learned?

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4. Read over the building verses* (let four people look them up, and each read one). What is the most complicated or difficult thing you’ve ever built? (Yes, Christmas morning stories count!)

5. Where did you turn for help?

6. What did you learn as you worked and after you finished?

[closing prayer]

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Session Three – "In the Garden"

Readings -- Luke 13: 6-9; John 20: 1, 11-17

We tend to see spiritual growth as pretty much like developing physical fitness. More exercise, increased activity, walking farther (or running!) is what leads to growth in physical fitness. So we expect spiritual growth to result from more prayer, more Bible readings, getting more books on spirituality (look at how many are on sale these days), and just plain doing more.

But the Biblical model of spiritual growth is "fruitfulness." Images of gardens and gardening run through all the Bible, from the Garden of Eden to the Tree of Life in Revelation. In Jesus’ teaching, we "bear good fruit" like a well tended olive tree or healthy grape vine when our spirit is in line with God’s purposes.

How to develop this part of our lives is seen in the image of the gardener. Gardening is the single most popular hobby in America today, but for men and women in Bible times it was not a hobby but part of feeding your family. Fruitfulness was life or death in the countryside, so learning the skill of encouraging fruitfulness was for everyone.

Tending vines and olive trees involved a great deal of pruning, or cutting back the unproductive parts of a plant (see John 15: 1-11 for a very practical description). And manure whether from mules or cows or wherever – don’t ask! – was a precious commodity for promoting growth in thin and dry soil. Did it smell? Yes, but how they felt about the smell was very different than we do in a drive through the country today.

1. When have you felt the need to "prune back" your life?

2. Do you feel like you run yours or your family’s schedule, or does your schedule run you? How does that happen, and what can you do about it?

3. Has there been a time when you felt really good about getting out of a rut, or stopping a bad habit? Do you just replace one thing with another, or could you just "prune it back"?

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4. Do you remember a time when some "manure" in your life led to new growth – something that seemed bad at the time, but turned out for good?

5. Has there been a project or practice that you really didn’t look forward to, but once you got into it, became really rewarding?

6. Does a spiritual discipline have to be hard or demanding? Can it just be fun?

[closing prayer]

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Session Four – "A Clean Sweep"

Readings – Luke 13: 10-17, Lk. 15: 1-10

Nowadays, both women and men have a share in housekeeping. Modern schedules and fast moving families need everyone to pitch in sometimes whether it’s with cooking or laundry, mowing the lawn or checking the tire pressure.

Women have a special role in the home as mothers, and often particular tasks go along with that role. In Bible times, women were much more likely to sweep than men, and men were more likely to go out and pick the ripe olives. But ancient books show that not only did roles sometimes switch, but many jobs tied to the seasons were shared. Grape stomping and grain threshing called on the entire household to the fields or barns.

All of scripture is intended for everyone, even if particular passages might strike home better for some than others. Jesus knew that while we might not do each others’ chores, we were aware of them and knew something about how they were performed. Parables about housework and homemaking work in this way for all of us.

1. What is the biggest clean-up job you’ve ever been involved with? What made it so big, or hard? How did you get it done?

2. What’s the biggest meal you’ve ever been involved in: in your home, and then anywhere (but think about both kinds of meal). What role did you play, & how did it go?

3. How do men and women split the household tasks in your house now, and/or in the home you grew up in? (And how does that shape the way you read these verses?)

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4. Read Luke 10: 38-42; when are you Mary, and when are you more of a Martha?

5. Talk about some Marys and Marthas you’ve known: which example comes easier, and why do you think that is?

6. Is this story more about how we should be like both Mary and Martha, or that we should figure out which one we’re like and just learn to be happy with who we are?

[closing prayer]

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Session Five – "Doing the Dirty Work"

Readings – Luke 2: 8-20, Matthew 20: 1-16

Shepherds are charming figures in robes with crook-ended staffs wandering among the little white sheep, right? That’s the image we have after years of Christmas pageants and pictures in children’s books.

But in Jesus’ day, shepherds were about the lowest of the low, the most unclean of the ritually filthy, and the bottom of the social totem pole. Even tax collectors and prostitutes had more status than nasty, stinky, ignorant sheepherders. The Temple folk saw them as wilderness dwellers, far from proper washing facilities, so they couldn’t maintain any degree of ritual purity for prayer and religious observance (you hear another echo of this with John the Baptist), and they were poor enough to not even be able to afford simple sacrifices like a pair of pigeons. The sheep they herded were generally not their own, so they were usually hired help, but even with their own herds the profit margin was small.

Yet shepherds were who first heard the "Good News," or Gospel, out in their fields, watching their flocks by night. Away from official buildings, unable to keep the purity laws of their faith, and after darkness fell no less: this is as far as you can get from priests and temples and the official way of doing things in the light of day.

God clearly is sending a message here about who’s in and who’s out. We need to keep rethinking this message for our own time.

1. What jobs seem most awful to you; what job would you least like to have, and why?

2. What is the worst job you’ve ever had, and what did you dislike about it?

3. How can you keep God present at work, no matter what the job?

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4. Read over Mt. 20: 1-16; have you ever been cheated of your fair pay on a job?

5. Have you ever seen someone else get a better deal than you that seemed unfair; how did you deal with that situation, in your work, and with that person?

6. Is there any work that God can’t be part of? Are some jobs just plain harder to keep God close to?

[closing prayer]

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Session Six – "The Hardest Work There Is"

Readings – Mark 3: 31-35; John 19: 23-30

Mothers and fathers and parenting (and sometimes grandparenting) is, beyond a doubt, the hardest job there is. We know the story about Abraham and Isaac in Genesis (chpt. 22), and while we wonder about the faith that Abraham showed, most parents know that it can feel like a sacrifice every time we send our children out the front door, whether to school, sports, or off on their own. There is a feeling of pain or heartsickness that comes with watching our children experience hurt or rejection or failure.

We can barely imagine how God must experience the world’s response to Jesus in these terms. But the other side of this problem is that, as there are few challenges more difficult than parenting, there are also no joys greater than watching a child under your care learn and grow and develop.

For many of us, the experience of having and raising children also makes us re-visit what our parents must have gone through with us. Taking on the new perspective of parent changes many other perspectives we thought were settled, and can help us understand our childhood and our raising from a new angle.

1. Did you ever get told "wait ‘til you have children of your own!"? What do you think that means?

2. One of the Ten Commandments is "honor your father and mother;" how do you do that when you find you have to disagree with them? What does Mk. 3:31-35 say to you?

3. How does your understanding of parenting affect your understanding of who God is?

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4. Read the passage from John again; what is Jesus saying from the cross about parents and children in the church?

5. How do you see Mary’s role in the story of Jesus? What does her life say to you?

6. When you read Paul’s letters to the first Christian communities, he speaks often about "adoption" as a model for who we become in faith, as brothers and sisters to one another, and as children of God. How does the idea of adoption work for you as a way to understand what God is doing in Jesus?

7. How has your relationship changed with the members of this small group over the six sessions? Do you feel more like co-workers, like adopted kids in a household, like re-united family members, or something else?

[closing prayer]

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For the leader:

This small group outline is designed with two main purposes in mind: to create a basis for a small group, with prayer, discussion, and sharing all a natural outgrowth of the group sessions; and to give all participants a good overview of the four Gospels as they do so. The themes and questions focus on a very basic area of life – work -- and how our jobs or roles shape the way we see the world, and read the Bible. They are intended to give everyone a chance to hear how others do so, from their own perspective, in different ways.

The time spent on the material itself, with time for the readings, discussion questions, and prayer celebrations & concerns at the end, should be 20 to no more than 45 minutes; each may actually be done in two parts if you like, for 12 sessions together. Ideally, your group has another activity which is before or after the study time, whether it’s sewing or cycling, eating or exercising, serving or ministering in your group’s particular style. You could be the Repairs on Wheels fix-it squad, the Jocks for Jesus group playing basketball, the Christian Motorcycle Riders just before a run into the hills, or a Mother’s Day Out on second Saturdays of the month.

Our goal is to give participants a chance to see what small group sharing is like in a fairly comfortable setting, and to encourage them in continuing with spiritual growth in this kind of group. Basic Bible skills, like where the Gospels are and how the stories in them parallel and reinforce each other, will also support continued study and involvement.

After these six sessions, whether over six months, six weeks, or whatever your meeting frequency, the group and the members should be ready to decide what kind of group they want to be (prayer & study, mission-focused, program support for the church, etc.) and look for material to support a continued pattern of group-building.

From "A Life With Purpose," a book about Rick Warren and the work that has come from "The Purpose-Driven Life," these words about fellowship and small group sharing:

"Traditionally, fellowship means "shared experience." Although for many it may stand for chit-chat and a cup of coffee, according to Rick (Warren) it should signify much more than being a church member and faithful attendee. True fellowship emerges out of the formation of small groups, no larger than ten, who open themselves up to honest, soul-baring discussions. . .true fellowship means trusting one another enough to risk hurt and humiliation by being completely open, but knowing that your brothers and sisters won’t judge you." (pp. 146-7)