I chose today s Gospel reading for two reasons, the first is that the passage contains the verse that has become increasingly important to me in my faith journey (Jn 10:10) - I have come that they may have life and have it to the full - I will return to this verse later, but the second reason I chose this passage is to reflect on v.12, 13 about the hired hand. As I thought about this morning s theme of work in John s Gospel I was struck by the figure of the hired hand . The hired hand in Chapter 10 is not the hero of the tale. The hired hand has no loyalty and does not care about the work. When trouble comes, the hired hand abandons the task and runs away. For most people in our world now, who are hired hands who work in return for wages or a salary, this is a difficult part of John s Gospel. As I was preparing this I was going to say for most of us , but then I realised that strictly, I do not receive wages or a salary, but a stipend. I realised why the recent debate on whether clergy should receive a salary or a stipend was so important to some. Stipendiary clergy receive a stipend, which is not wages for work done, but a kind of living allowance . The debate about whether or not this should be changed was not explicitly about the nature of work, but important issues were there under the surface.

Is our work unworthy if we are paid for it? This seems to me to be the crux of the matter. In today s Gospel passage we are presented with the contrast of doing something for love, and doing it for money. Perhaps the saddest example I have had of someone becoming a hired hand in this negative sense was a cellist in a professional orchestra. I don t know the full story, but the woman, who was a gifted cellist, became disillusioned with the musical world, and reached the point where she no longer gained any pleasure from playing her cello, and would only play if she was being paid for it. But this story helps us to see that it is not the wages in themselves that devalue the work, but rather our motivation in doing our work that it is important. That woman had turned her musical gift into a commodity to be sold, and that was unworthy. This does not mean that no one should ever be paid as a professional musician.

Some years ago I undertook a study about the attitude of Christians to their paid work. I wanted to find out how Christians made sense of being hired hands , how they related their working lives to their Christian faith. To explore these questions further, I interviewed fourteen Christians, who worked in retailing. The two companies I chose were the John Lewis Partnership, which owns a large number of department stores and the Waitrose supermarket chain, and Tesco. First of all I wanted to learn about the working experience of these men and women and secondly I wanted to know how and in what way they made connections between their working lives in retailing and their Christian discipleship and how they were helped by their local churches to work at these issues.

The people I talked to had a varied working experience. There were men and women, full time and part time workers, and their jobs were varied in terms of seniority in the organisation - ranging from check out and warehousing to the most senior management. They didn t all get the same degree of satisfaction from their work, but for all of them work was a significant and meaningful activity in their live. Here are some comments from interviewees:-

• Woman on the check out - work gives a framework to my life, companionship and a sense of achievement.
• Man in middle management - work gives an identity, and most satisfaction and achievement comes through work. It would be awful to lose it.
• A woman who had recently been bereaved - work gives me a reason for getting up in the morning. I enjoy meeting people and using my brain.
• A man in senior management - I love my work, it gives me a huge sense of fulfilment.

Those at lower levels of responsibility often did not find the work itself very interesting, but a sense of doing something worthwhile and useful, and the relationships with colleagues were very important. At higher levels of seniority, the most common experience was that the work itself was challenging and fulfilling. Not one person I interviewed rated financial reward as the most important reason for working, although obviously it is important, and this importance is greater for those who earn least. Despite the importance of work in their lives, two thirds of the people I talked to made no connections between their working lives and their Christian faith. Neither did they feel on the whole that their working lives were affirmed in their local churches. If retailing were ever mentioned in sermons, which most of the time it wasn t, it was only in the context of denunciations of rampant consumerism. In the intercessions, those who worked in the caring professions were prayed for, but not usually those who worked in the marketplace. Skills developed in the workplace were only really valued in terms of how they could be useful in the church community, which is why accountants find it almost impossible not to end up as PCC treasurers.

Those who worked for Tesco found it more difficult to see their work as being in harmony with their Christian faith, and there was a real sense of wanting to keep faith and work apart, because to bring them together would lead to conflict in their lives. The cultures of John Lewis and Tesco are very different. Some of you may know far more about these organisations than I do, but from an outsider s perspective, it seemed to me that the John Lewis Partnership is a paternalistic democracy if that makes sense. There is no doubt the staff feel valued. There is real participation by all the partner employees, but also a sense that the Partnership itself is a powerful force that seeks to look after the partners, and decides what s best for them. I have to say that I encountered a certain smugness in the Partnership - thank God we are not as other retailers are . This led to an uncritical acceptance of the corporate ethos.

The Tesco culture on the other hand, is more openly competitive, and dominated by a market ethos. The Tesco employees I interviewed largely felt that this competitive ethos put the company beyond the pale as fare as Christian faith was concerned. It was as if there were two worlds, separated by a great gulf, that could never be bridged. The only way one man survived living in two worlds was, as he expressed it to put my faith in the deep freeze on Monday morning. .

So where do we go from here? Well that depends on what we believe about God. If we believe that God is to be found and encountered primarily within the church and that the church is the focus of God s activity, then we don t need to do much at all.

On this understanding, it doesn t really matter if we put our faith in the deep freeze on Monday morning, provided we that we thaw it out on Friday evening and are prepared to commit ourselves fully to an involvement in the life of the church.

If however, we believe, as I passionately do, that the world is the primary focus of God s activity and care and concern, and we return to John 10:10 I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full then we have a challenge facing us. And that challenge is to find God in, amongst other places, our work, our ergon., even if, perhaps especially if, we are paid for doing it.

The extent to which we succeed in helping one another to make connections between our work and our faith, ironically largely depends not on what happens in the workplace, but on what happens in the local church. To find God in our work, we need the support of a local church community where we discover that we are valued for the whole of ourselves and that includes our working lives. We will not have life in all its fullness or share that life with others if we do anything less than offer the whole of our selves, the whole of our lives to God.

I will end with a prayer, as prayer takes us closer to the heart of the mystery than sermons can ever do.

• What is this work to which I submit daily?
• What is this work that demands my energy, my time, my very self?
• What is this work that tells me something of who I am in the world?
• What is this work that tells me something of who I choose not to be?

• Where is this work that attracts my attention?
• Where is this work that calls me to its presence?
• Where is this work that beckons both gently and forcibly?
• Where is this work that seeks a response?

• For whom is this work that warrants my regard?
• For whom is this work that draws me into its domain?
• With whom is this work that causes me to grapple and despair?
• With whom is this work that causes me to rejoice and move forward?

• Glory be to God who commissions me as a worker for the Kingdom.
• Glory be to God whose power working in me is beyond my imagination.
• Glory be to God whose potential is infinite and incomprehensible,
• Glory be to God who has called me by name as servant and friend.

(Prayer for Parish Groups Donal Harrington and Julie Kavonah)