What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
Pastor David L. Hansen
Lectionary 22 (September 2), 2007
Labor Day Weekend
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Grace and peace to you in the Name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.
Tomorrow is the national holiday of Labor Day.
Some poetically call it the “wistful end of summer” – that last long weekend before school really gets going and all of the activities of Fall start up.
Others, remembering how the holiday began, call Labor Day national tribute to the American worker.
For many churches Labor Day marks the beginning of our program year, which matches up with the school year.
But, for most of us, the most important thing about Labor Day is that it means we don’t have to get up and go to work on Monday morning.
It seems that there is no day which is more reviled than Monday. The very word, Monday, evokes negative feelings in most of us. Monday is the day we head back to work, the day that we have to resume that project that we joyfully left behind on Friday afternoon.
Quite simply, you aren’t likely to find a restaurant named TGIM – thank goodness it’s Monday – unless, of course, you are like my recently retired father, who likes to remind me that Monday for him now means sleeping in and playing golf when no one else is on the course. But that’s not the case for most of us.
In fact, we get so upset about Mondays that you are more likely to have a stroke on Monday than on any other day of the week (for those of you who are keeping score, Sunday is the statistically safest day of the week).
It’s amazing, really.
We spend the first third of our life preparing for work.
We go to elementary school through high school, all the while talking about “what I want to be when I grow up.” Then many of us go to college or vocational school – there’s another 4 years, or maybe five or six, right there. We pick out a major, something that will help us land that job that we always dreamed of, so that we can become the thing we wanted to be when we grew up.
And then, for most of us, sometime in our twenties, we get that job. We’ve finally made it! After spending our entire lifetime up to that point in anticipation, saying “When I grow up …” we finally have that job...
…And we dread getting out of bed on Monday morning and going to that job.
It makes me think that maybe we have thought about that question – “what do you want to be when you grow up?” – the wrong way our entire lives.
It’s like the child who got asked by his Teacher one day in class, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Johnny?” To which the little boy replied, “I want to follow in my father's footsteps and be a police man!”
“Really,” said the teacher, “I didn't know your father was a policeman.”
“He isn't!” said Johnny, “He's a steals cars!”
I want you to close your eyes for a moment. Close your eyes and think back to when you were eight or ten. Now, remember the things you wanted at that age. And remember your answer to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Get that thing, whatever it is, set in your mind, and open your eyes.
I’ll never forget that question. It was in the third grade, when Mrs. Lundy asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. She then had us dress up the next day as the thing we wanted to be. The next day, I came to work, dressed in black pants and one of my dad’s short-sleeve clergy shirts with the tab white collar.
But here’s the thing about what I wanted to be when I grew up – and I’m willing to bet about the thing that you what you wanted to be as well; here’s the reason we spent the first third of our lives preparing to go to work and then the second third dreading going to work on Mondays:
We were taught that when someone asks us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” we should answer with a job – teacher, lawyer, police office, pastor.
No one wants to be a job. It may be what we do, but it is not who we are. And God doesn’t want that from you either.
Ultimately, if we try to be a job – if we make what we do into who we are – we wind up unhappy and tired. And we dread going back to work on Monday.
God wants you to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. That is who you are. A beloved child of God, and a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Our value, our worth, is not what we do. We are not less important if we have a “less important” job, or if we make a mistake at work. We have value and importance because of who we are.
That’s why God told the people to rest from their labors every seventh day, the Sabbath. Even our government knows this, and that’s why we don’t work on Labor day.
Because whatever you do – whether you work the farm, go into the office, or work on the jobsite – it is not who you are.
Today’s lesson has some recommendations for things we can do to think more about who we are and less about what we do.
The author of Hebrews tells us to show hospitality to strangers and to visit and pray for those in prison. If all we are concerned about it “business as usual”, we are what we do, all we will care about are customers and people who can do something for us in return. But we are called to be children of God and disciples of Christ.
The lesson from Hebrews goes on to tell us to spend time with our spouses if we are married, to make sure that our marriage is in good shape. We have all heard stories about people who went to work early, came home late, and woke up twenty years later and didn’t know the person in the bed with them. If we are what we do, it does not matter what our marriage is like, as long as we get that next promotion and the bigger salary. But we are called to be children of God and disciples of Christ.
Finally, the author of Hebrews tells us to stop worrying about money. You can make more money if you will just spend less time with your family and more time at work. You can indeed make more money if you are willing to bend the rules and compromise your morals. But we are called to be children of God and disciples of Christ.
If we get our thinking right about that one question – what do you want to be – it will change the way we do everything else.
Be a disciple of Christ and a child of God, and it will change how you parent your children and live into your marriage.
Be a disciple of Christ and a child of God, and it will change how you relate to your friends and even those you have never met.
Be a disciple of Christ and a child of God, and it will change how you do your work.
Be a disciple of Christ and a child of God, and it will even change how you go into work on Monday morning.
And so, dear friends, on this Labor Day let me ask you once more that age old question:
What do you want to be when you grow up?
