Sixth Sunday: How to make your boss happy? Be engaged in your work!

kjbkibhlnljn The percentage of "engaged" workers in the U.S., according to the Gallup Poll on the workplace, is now 34%, tying its highest level since 2000. An ‘engaged worker’ is enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. On the other hand, 16.5% of workers are "actively disengaged.". The remaining 53% of workers are in the "not engaged" category – they may be satisfied or not, with their work. They are the ones who show up, do the minimum required and quickly leave for a slightly better offer with another employer. So why do we get engaged in our work. This is OVC
 
Workplace engagement
In the Church we have a legacy of men who became priests to make their mom or dad happy.  It doesn’t generally work out. You can’t spend a lifetime of doing work you don’t want to do in order to make someone else happy. Adam M. Grant is an American psychologist and author who is currently a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania specializing in organizational psychology. Good psychology usually makes some sense. He says that engagement in the workplace is built around a few things:

1. You have enough autonomy that your dignity as a human being is not compromised. The boss can’t always be breathing down your throat and belittling. That does not result in happiness. 
2. Find a place where you like the people, have shared values and trust. Working with people who undermine you or constantly make you do their job undermines workplace engagement.
3. Ultimately, you have to be believe that your work is useful and challenging. In practical terms, you ought to believe that your work is meaningful to others and that you learning something from the challenge.

So the rules for a happy workplace are good leadership, some personal autonomy and a sense of meaning to your work. People want some community and work that challenges them. That actually sounds pretty good. How many workplaces have some combination of these factors? Well apparently wherever 36% of the American workforce is employed.
 
So what happens if you think of your faith like a job? Every day you get up, your boots hit the ground and you start working with the Lord. Today’s Gospel describes what our job looks like.
 
The Sermon on the Mount: The Anti-thesis
Do you remember that Jesus’ criticism of the scribes and Pharisees is that they are concerned about appearances not the interior reality of the person. Today, the Lord’s teaching begins, “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  This is at the heart of the old controversy about faith and works. What is the person’s interior reality. Do you love God and the Torah because intrinsically it is beautiful? Or, possibly, do you love God and the Torah because you can get something out of it. It is the difference between an intrinsic and extrinsic reward.
 
Jesus uses an anti-thesis to make his point about the intrinsic reward. An anti-thesis is to first describe the thesis, for instance, “You have heard it said”, and then describe the anti-thesis “but I say to you…” In each case, Jesus describes the ideal interior state of the person. He has four of them.
 

1. “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; The exterior act versus the interior disposition. So, it really isn’t good enough that we didn’t murder anyone today. Jesus points to the angry disposition that is part of the act of murder. He goes on.
2. “You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So you haven’t slept with someone’s else spouse, you just obsess about it.
3. “It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife -  unless the marriage is unlawful - causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
4. “Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow. But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,' and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.”  

The Lord is describing our affection for sin that we guard in our heart. Can we let that go? When we engage with evil in our mind and heart, we are guilty because, in essence, we love evil although we may not act out for a variety of reasons.  People refrain from bad behavior because, for instance, they are afraid of being caught. On the outside they look like they follow Christ, but on the inside, they entertain evil. St. Francis de Sales counseled:

“Foremost, among the soul’s affections is love. Love is the ruler of every motion of the heart; drawing all to itself, and making us like to that we love. Beware, then, my daughter, of harboring any evil affection, or you too will become evil.” Saint Francis de Sales. Introduction to the Devout Life . Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition.

 We become what we love, good or evil.
 
Showing up for Work
We are the same person in both our spiritual life, our work life, our free time and our time spent with family and friends. In the context of work, many studies have been done about a worker’s motivations. There are intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.

1. Intrinsic motivation: For instance, a child may love playing with a toy, because they love the toy itself.
2. Extrinsic motivation:  If you try to get a child to play with a toy by giving them an extrinsic motivation, maybe a chocolate chip cookie, they will end up playing with the favorite toy less and wanting the cookie.
3. We have a higher sense of satisfaction if we love what we are doing because we love the thing we are doing. Jobs are more satisfying to us if we love the job, that is, whether we are motivated to work by something intrinsic to the work.

Jesus is describing human fulfillment
Is heaven something you are doing to please God, but it doesn’t much please you? So in your heart, do you love being a peacemaker? Do you love chastity? Or,is heaven like a cookie, an extrinsic reward, that awaits you if you do things right here? It is essentially the difference between kids who only behave when someone is watching, versus kids who try to do it right no matter who is watching.
 
The path to Heaven is the love of goodness, beauty and truth. Heaven is not a chocolate chip cookie. That is what today’s Gospel is about. Heaven is not possible if you don’t love what is good, true and beautiful. In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he is directing us to examine our motivations for action.
 
Anger
Anger seems to be the big concern right now. We are closing in on the elections and it looks like it could get hotter before the year is out. How do you have a calm conversation within the family or at work about politics?  If your job as a Christian is to be a peacemaker, how does that look when you are so committed to what you think is best for the community and this other person just doesn’t get it. How do you make room for love of the other whose ideas are repellant to you.

1. Avoid the narrow occasion of sin: We ought to avoid to those situations that stoke our sense of outrage. Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor, calls the cable news industry the outrage industrial complex. The outrage industrial complex constantly stokes angry feelings to encourage viewers to tune in.  Twitter and other social media seems to perpetuate the angry assaults on other people. So, tune out. If you want to be happy in your Christian work, why seek out people that disturb you. If this was a like a factory job, probably you would not go out of your way looking for people who brought the worst out in you. There are people out there that just want to manipulate you; don’t play along.
2. Practice warm-heartedness towards other people:  This is America; people get to disagree. We are built on the idea that open discussion of differing ideas will work towards the greatest good of the community. We should practice more than tolerance towards other people, we should learn to love them and respect their human dignity even when they are terribly wrong-headed. That is the Christian job.

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You can learn more about how to overcome anger in your life arising out of political disagreement by watching these three short films by Dr. Arthur C. Brooks, Ph. D

1. Disagree better, not less;
2. Be an authoritative leader;
3. Say no to contempt.

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I recognize that there are some very troubling issues out there.  Abortion and euthanasia are always a hot-button topics for Catholics and should be the cause of tremendous concern. America has always struggled with what it means to be a human being. Americans imported slaves, bred them like livestock and sold their children. Abortion was illegal though. Americans  executed about 150 Apache woman, children and old men about 60 miles north of here while they were under the protection of the United States Army at Camp Grant, because they wanted to make Arizona civilized. Abortion, at the time however, was illegal. The issue of who gets to be a human is an ugly part of the American story and still is. This is a fallen world, not heaven; it is always going to be something.
 
It is amazing to me that unemployment is at a low, engagement at work is at a high and people are so angry. If you want to follow Christ, American is a tough work place. You have to decide whether you want the job for the intrinsic value it offers. Do you like the community that you work in the Catholic Church? Do you think Jesus is a good boss? Do you want to serve people? Do you find the work of discipleship challenging? If you don’t see the intrinsic value of your work, what kind of reward could you possibly hope for that Christ offers?
 
Our interior disposition to anger and other sins is like workplace disengagement. We will begin to hate what we should love and, if Francis de Sales is right, become what we hate. The moral life that Jesus describes is learning to love what God loves because it is beautiful, good and true, not because it is convenient.   Political issues come and go. Our job is to pay attention to what is motivating us. Don’t worry about what happens after you die. Direct your attention to being engaged in the spiritual life you are living now and the future takes care of itself. Yes, if you learn to love what is good, the future takes care of itself.

Listen to Arthur Brooks on How to Love Your Enemies