The Economics of the Kingdom…To Till and to Keep

Genesis 2:8–15, Ecclesiastes 2:18–26

​“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). In other words, from the very beginning God meant for us to work. And notice: this happens before the fall. Work is not a punishment; it is part of paradise.

Scripture tells us work is a blessing from God. In Ecclesiastes 2:24 we learn that there is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in their work, for this too is from the hand of God.

So work is a blessing. But this is not the whole story.

Listen to Ecclesiastes 2:11: “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” And again, in Ecclesiastes 4:4: “Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from one person’s envy of another. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.”

I imagine all of us at one time or another have felt like our work is a blessing and it has brought us tremendous joy. There is nothing quite like working a long day, whether it’s in the hot sun or behind a computer, feeling as if you have accomplished something, and then kicking up your feet, enjoying a nice meal and some time with friends.

And I imagine we have also all felt at one time or another like our work is simply toil.

Toil comes on the other side of paradise. After the fall, God says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17). It is part of the fallen world when the labor of our hands doesn’t bring forth productivity, but rather anguish and misery. In fact, the Hebrew word Ecclesiastes uses for “vanity,” hevel, means something like a breath or a puff of smoke that disappears into nothingness, as if we put forth all this tremendous effort and at the end have nothing to show for it.

In our stewardship sermon last week we discovered that money was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It was all in how it is used. And this week we discover the same thing about work. It can be a true blessing or mere toil; the difference is not the work itself but the spirit in which we do it.

It’s toil when we feel like a cog in a machine. Modern economic practice largely values workers by what economists call the “marginal revenue product of labor”: the revenue each worker brings in, weighed against the wage they cost. In other words, a person’s value is determined by their productivity.

But one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age, Immanuel Kant, persuasively argued that a human being’s value is intrinsic; it springs from our rational nature, and so we must never treat another as simply a means to an end. This is one formulation of what Kant called the categorical imperative. Human dignity cannot be bought, sold, or traded for any price.

As Kant put it, objects have a price, whether it’s a painting or a hammer. We can put a monetary worth on them, whereas rational beings have dignity, an inner worth that is priceless and absolute. And this notion flows directly from the very first chapter of Genesis, which tells us that every one of us is created in the image of God.

Under Pharaoh, the Israelites were treated simply as a tool to build his cities, and so their work was toil and devoid of dignity. So what lends dignity to our work? What makes labor noble?

Stewardship.

We have varied professions represented in this community: venture capitalists, sextons, medical doctors, mechanics, teachers, and more. But all of us have the same job from God—to be a steward.

The Greek for steward, oikonomos, literally means “house manager,” and the steward was a servant of the household charged with the finances, the property, and the people—essentially all that was most dear to the master. It is the word from which we get our English word “economy.” The economics of the kingdom is, quite literally, the work of stewards.

When Adam was charged “to till and to keep” creation, God tasked us to be caretakers, that is, to be stewards of that which is most dear to the heart of God.

To keep: we are to preserve and to protect this beautiful creation and these wonderful people. And to till, that is, to develop the land and ourselves, using the gift of the mind and the imagination.

When we till, that is, when we develop, we become co-creators with God. We do not create out of nothing, as God does, but we bring into being something that did not exist before, whether it’s a novel, a building that rises over the city, or a sublime piece of music. The Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty are all monuments to what God-given talent can create.

A warning: we must be careful not to believe our worth is tied to the loftiness of our production. It doesn’t matter how elevated our labor is. When our work becomes our primary source of self-worth, when we try to earn our respect in society solely through our profession, we are building on something that can be taken away. The company can go under. The job can be lost. The reputation can be smeared. And the bank account can be emptied.

Ecclesiastes, once again, puts it to us plainly: “As they came from their mother’s womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came; they shall take nothing for their toil, which they may carry away with their hands” (Ecclesiastes 5:15).

This is the ancient version of “You can’t take it with you.”

The steward works for a different reason. Not to gain favor or respect from society, but out of thanksgiving.

We can’t work to gain God’s favor, period. Grace comes to us freely from God’s loving forgiveness in Jesus Christ. We cannot earn our place in God’s kingdom. It only comes as a gift. And so our work becomes stewardship when it is a response of joy for all that God has done for us. We want to do something for God to show our thanks. But thanks to God can feel abstract.

We know we’re supposed to love God and love our neighbor, but it’s not always easy to know whether we are truly loving God. Saint Teresa of Avila, that wonderful Catholic mystic, had a profound insight. In The Interior Castle she writes, “We cannot be sure if we are loving God, although we may have good reason to believe that we are, but we can know quite well if we are loving our neighbor. And be certain that, the farther advanced you find you are in this, the greater the love you will have for God.” In other words, the more we love our neighbor, the more purely we love God.

And one of the primary ways we love our neighbor is through our work. When we labor, when we work hard out of love for our family, out of love for humanity as a whole, we become more like God. And in becoming more like God, we become more attuned to the presence of God all around us.

There is something profoundly soul-enriching about work done for the right reasons.

We see this so clearly in little children. They love jobs. They love having work to do. Every Thursday, three different times, 10, 10:15, and 1 o’clock, I lead chapel for the children along with Director Marie Fabian, Liz Richter and Pastor Sarah. And at every chapel, the children have jobs: to light the candles, to help lead a prayer, to ring a bell, and to join in the blessing. They believe—no, they know—that they are doing this for God. You can see it in their faces.

As we reflect on this year’s stewardship theme, Heavenly Treasures, Jesus reminds us,

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

And so the call that God first gave in the garden is still ours today: to till and to keep. May we do our work not as toil but as stewards, with grateful hearts, for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor. Amen.