The God of Wooden Plows
The Splendor of the Ordinary
If you saw the movie The Passion of the Christ, you no doubt remember the film's powerful and overwhelming depiction of Jesus' scourging and crucifixion. But the film does contain one humorous moment, which hints at the high value God places on work.
The scene, you may remember, shows Jesus at work as a carpenter, finishing a table. His mother comes over to examine it. Her opinion? The table is too high. Not to worry, Jesus responds; He'll build tall chairs to go with it. Mary is not convinced. As she walks away, she mutters, "It'll never catch on."
The scene is a reminder that Jesus spent most of His life engaged in manual labor. The Christian apologist Justin Martyr said that during his lifetime, back in Galilee in the second century it was still common to see farmers using plows made by the carpenter Jesus of Nazareth.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
In his book The Call, theologian Os Guinness reminds us that even the humblest work is important if done for God. "How intriguing," Guinness writes, "to think of Jesus' plow rather than His Cross—to wonder what it was that made His plows and yokes last and stand out." Clearly, they must have been made well if they were still in use in the second century.
Today, Christians typically exalt spiritual work above manual work. After all, what is making a plow compared with preaching to multitudes, feeding the five thousand, or raising someone from the dead? But the very fact that Jesus did make plows—and made them well—suggests that any work can be done to the glory of God.
Any work can be a genuine calling. A calling, Guinness writes, is anything we do "as a response to God's summons and service." When God calls us to do some task—even if it is something the world sees as lowly—that task is invested with what Guinness calls "the splendor of the ordinary."
"Drudgery done for ourselves or for other human audiences will always be drudgery," he writes, but "drudgery done for God is lifted and changed."
Accepting drudgery is one of the ways we practice discipleship—learning to offer it up sacrificially to God. "We look for the big things to do—[but] Jesus took a towel and washed the disciples' feet," Guinness writes. "We like to speak and act out of the rare moments of inspiration—[but] He requires our obedience in the routine, the unseen, and the thankless." We, His followers, must be willing to take on the humble and thankless tasks as well—and not become impatient with changing diapers, doing homework, or taking out the trash.
On Labor Day, we tend to relish our time off from a job we may not find significant in the grand scheme of history. But we should never forget that the second Person of the Triune Godhead spent much of His life laboring in a woodshop.
If you are frustrated in your job or think the work you have to do is beneath you, just remember that for a season the One who turned water into wine and raised the dead to life . . . also made wooden plows.
The original commentary first aired on April 7, 2004.
