Ephesians: Lecture 43
Speaker Notes
Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 6:5-9 Submission to Authority
5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
selections from Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (1964)
Chapter 5. Letter from Birmingham Jail, page 70:
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Chapter 5. Letter from Birmingham Jail, page 72:
I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Brother Lawrence Practicing the Presence of God reference
selections from Metropolitan (Archbishop) Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray (1982)
chapter 6 Two Meditations: Staretz Silouan, pages 112-114:
… He was a most remarkable man and for a long time he was in charge of the workshops of the monastery. The workshops of the monastery were manned by young Russian peasants who used to come for one year, for two years, in order to make some money, really farthing added to farthing, in order to go back to their villages with a few pounds, perhaps, at the utmost to be able to start a family by marrying, by building a hut and by buying enough to start their crops. One day other monks, who were in charge of other workshops, said ‘Father Silouan, how is it that the people who work in your workshops work so well while you never supervise them, while we spend our time looking after them and they try continuously to cheat us in their work?’ Father Silouan said ‘I don’t know. I can only tell you what I do about it. When I come in the morning, I never come without having prayed for these people and I come with my heart filled with compassion and with love for them, and when I walk into the workshop I have tears in my soul for love of them. And then I give them the task they have to perform in the day and as long as they will work I will pray for them, so I go into my cell and I begin to pray about each of them individually. … And so’, he said, ‘I spend my days, praying for each of them in turn, one after the other and when the day is over I go, I say a few words to them, we pray together and they go to their rest. And I go back to fulfil my monastic office.’
9/17/99 For $128 million, a seat in bosses' hall of fame - After sale of firm, owner splits riches, by Sharon Cohen, AP via Boston Globe, A3.
BELLEVILLE, Mich. - When Bob Thomson sold his company for $422 million, he could have chartered a jet, flown off to an island, even bought the island, perhaps. But he had a secret plan. It was only when the sale of Thompson-McCully Co., his road-building firm, was completed in July that he let all of his workers know, in a letter.
First, the good news: They would not lose their jobs.
Then, the great news: They would share in the proceeds.
The boss divided up $128 million among his 550 workers, making more than 80 of them millionaires.
"I was flabbergasted," said Rusty Stafford, a manager who opened his envelope at home, with his wife, Tammy. She tearfully said, "'Russ, I think the commas are in the wrong place,'" he recalled. "I looked at it, and kept looking, and thought the next thing I knew Ed McMahon would be knocking at our door."
But the 67-year-old Thompson is casual about his generosity. "It's sharing the good times, that's really all it is," he said.
"I don't think you can read more into it. I'm a proud person. I wanted to go out a winner and I wanted to go out doing the right thing."
If that philosophy seems like a throwback to an earlier era, consider the source: a businessman whose life reads like a Frank Capra script.
Humble guy with a soft spot for Norman Rockwell art. Starts a business in his basement with $3,500, supported by his school-teacher wife. Owns same modest house for 37 years. Expands his asphalt company into road-building juggernaut. Sells it after 40 years, collects nine-figure check. Shares the money with the salespeople and the secretaries, the folks in the gravel pits, the people who hold the road signs.
"People work exceedingly hard for us," he said. "It's a tough business and this is a demanding company." Translation: 14-hour days, six-day weeks, 99-degree sun, 300-degree asphalt.
"We're dependent on people," Thompson said, "so it would just not be fair not to do it. They've allowed me to live the way I want to live."
Actually, [the way he wanted to live] was pretty modestly. Thompson and his wife, Ellen, have a three-bedroom frame house. She still mops floors and washes windows. His [office is wood-panelled but] has no Persian rugs or oil paintings. Instead, there are photos of their three children and five grandchildren, Rockwell prints, a copy of poet John Donne's meditation that "No man is an island", and a clock with its hands frozen shy of 3 o'clock.
Thompson does not play the stock market, belong to a country club, or collect rich men's toys; the only boat he owns [is] a rowboat. His indulgences are few: He drives a Lincoln, and he and Ellen travel and take in an occasional Broadway show.
Thompson plans to give away much of what's left of the $422 million and plays down what he already has doled out. "I'm not trying to be a big shooter," he said. "A lot of people don't get the opportunity, but would if they could ... This didn't change my life a whole lot when you get right down to it."
But it did change the lives of many hundreds of others, including that of Thompson's 54-year-old administrative manager, Marlene Van Patten, who has worked for the company for 15 years and will cash in a generous annuity certificate upon retirement. (Like other employees, she took Thompson's advice and kept the amount private.)
Thompson had long planned to reward his workers, naming scores of them in his will. But in July, he sold his firm to CRH PLC, a building and construction firm based in Dublin. He says he chose it because of its record of not breaking up companies or firing workers; he will stay on to run the business.
As the sale becomes final, Thompson worked with senior staffers to develop a share-the-proceeds plan. Hourly workers, most of whom have pensions or 401(k) plans, received $2,000 for each year of service; some checks exceeded annual salaries.
Salaried workers, who do not have pensions, were given checks or annuity certificates that they can cash in at age 55 or 62. Those range from $1 million to $2 million each.
In addition, Thompson included some retirees and widows in his plan.
And he paid the taxes, which amounted to $25 million.
When the checks were distributed one recent Sunday [Sunday? why Sunday?] morning in seven Thompson offices across Michigan, it was as if dozens of co-workers had all bought winning lottery tickets: There were tears and hugs. Some folks were speechless, others chattered away.
Thompson stayed home that day, worried it might be too embarrassing and maybe too emotional. He also told supervisors he did not want to be flooded with phone calls.
Slowly workers have revealed plans for their newfound [riches]:
Furniture. A car. In-vitro fertilization. Braces for a granddaughter. College tuition for a son. Retirement homes.
But Jim McInnis, whose father also worked at the firm, echoes the thoughts of many others who say the checks did not change their work ethic. Many were back on the job at 5:30 a.m. the day after the checks were distributed. "I've always held my head up high working for this company," he said. "Now it's a little bit higher. I'm standing 10 feet tall."
Jürgen’s Blog