Chores

Chores are responsibilities, generally of a manual and regular nature, that are basic to our everyday operating. The first biblical reference to such activities occurs in God’s injunction to “work . . . and take care of” the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15). The word most commonly brings to mind household duties such as washing, cleaning, tidying, ironing and putting out the trash, as well as a wider set of tasks such as lawn mowing, shopping, running errands and, in rural areas, work around the farm. Sometimes we use the word in other settings, for example, the workplace or voluntary service, sports or cultural events, generally referring to unglamorous and repetitive activities.

Chores as Burden and Education

Often we feel that chores are a burden we could do without, an intrusion into other more important responsibilities. Few people actually like to do chores, though some find them easier than others and occasionally a person approaches them obsessively. Where do chores fit into the divine scheme of things, including our ministry? What should be our attitude toward them, and how should we undertake them? Should they be mainly assigned to certain people while those who have more important functions to perform are exempted?

According to common wisdom, at least until recently, household chores were also undertaken by children so that they could learn responsibility and contribute to the full life of the family. Increasingly, when people can afford it, someone is hired—often a person from a minority group and frequently a woman—to look after these. Chores in the workplace are mainly undertaken by juniors so that senior employees or employers themselves are set free for more significant tasks. In mixed company on the job, women are still often expected to make coffee or convey messages.

Generally Christians with important responsibilities view chores as mundane and as peripheral. That is, chores should be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible, or left in the hands of someone else, to fulfill the work of ministry. In this case, chores are done when there is nothing more significant on the agenda or when it is imperative they be completed. They should be left as long as possible and done as quickly as possible. In other words, chores are an unfortunate, or at best second-order, necessity. Rather than being part of the Way, they only get in the way. From a biblical and theological perspective, there is much to question in this view.

Chores as a Privilege and Service

We should view our chores as opportunities to cooperate with God in the divine work of caring for the world. God is active in providentially sustaining, preserving, ordering and otherwise blessing human life. Chores are part of the way we join hands with God in this divine enterprise and are instruments through which the world is maintained and benefited. Because of their repetitious, mundane and sometimes demanding character, chores are undoubtedly a labor and are not always particularly enjoyable. But they are also vehicles for the maintenance of life and the service of others.

Just as weeding is necessary for growing flowers or vegetables, cleaning house is essential for maintaining a healthy environment and exercising hospitality, and washing clothes is required for dressing presentably and interacting with others, so chores in general are integral to a range of central functions in life. They are not just a preliminary to these but an essential part of them. If the chores are not attended to, we cannot undertake these other activities. Chores are more than a prelude to engaging in ministry, they are an aspect of ministry itself.

Chores are often a more acceptable service to God than other tasks that appear more spiritual and onerous. According to Martin Luther, “it looks like a small thing when a maid cooks and cleans and does other housework. But because God’s command is there, even such a small work must be praised as a service of God far surpassing the holiness and asceticism of all monks and nuns.” According to William Tyndale this is even true of the most important tasks connected with the work of the kingdom: “If thou compare deed and deed, there is a difference betwixt washing of dishes and preaching of the Word of God: but as touching to please God, none at all.”

Chores are also a vital service to one’s fellow Christians, to the wider society and to the environment. Our household chores are a tangible way in which we show our care for others in the family. They are concrete expressions of our love for them and of our commitment to a common life. In this area, as the saying goes, “little things mean a lot.” They are far more the touchstone of our devotion and concern than the larger, often easier, expressions of love and commitment that we make in conjunction with anniversaries and birthdays.

As we offer our chores to God, view them as part of our service of Christ and undertake them in the Spirit, they become a school or spiritual discipline through which we are further shaped into the image of Christ. In other words, they are one of the key ways in which spiritual formation takes place. We do well to remember that Jesus was one who waited upon his disciples as a servant, so modeling to them the way they should be willing to perform even menial services for one another (John 13:1-17). As we do our chores, from time to time God will speak through them to us, so turning them into a parable of some aspect of the priorities, values and dynamics of the kingdom. This was why Jesus was able to illustrate his teaching with such menial and routine tasks as sweeping the floor, putting lamps on a stand or getting up in the middle of the night to deal with a caller in order to illuminate God’s ways of operating in the world.

Toward a Spirituality of Chores

I have already drawn attention to the way in which the Reformers perceived the connection between chores and the ongoing work of God. Their approach, as well as that of the early Puritans who succeeded them, has much to offer here, especially in view of more compartmentalized evangelical approaches to ministry and spirituality. In the writings of such people, we are reminded that God spends a good deal of time doing the spiritual equivalent of weeding, cleaning, washing, preparing, in our own lives and in the church so that the divine purposes may bloom and bear fruit in the world.

The Celtic tradition of spirituality likewise has much to offer. Consider the attitude to the routine but essential household chore of stirring to life the fire banked down the night before. Through the crooning of a simple prayer and the familiar gestures that accompany it, this everyday action is transfigured into a deeper significance.

I will kindle my fire this morning

In the presence of the holy angels of heaven.

God, kindle thou in my heart within

A flame of love to my neighbor,

To my foe, my friend, to my kindred all . . .

From the lowliest thing that liveth

To the name that is highest of all.

In this way a simple chore becomes a sacramental activity, a parable of all activities and relationships through the day. The extraordinary breaks through into the ordinary; the mundane is suffused with heaven.

» See also: Allowances

» See also: Boredom

» See also: Gardening

» See also: Values

» See also: Washing

References and Resources

D. Adam, The Edge of Glory: Modern Prayers in the Celtic Tradition (London: Triangle/SPCK, 1985); E. Dreyer, Earth Crammed with Heaven: A Spirituality of Everyday Life (New York: Paulist, 1994); C. Forbes, Catching Sight of God: The Wonder of Everyday (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah, 1987); Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (Albion Park, Penn.: Hadidian, 1989); K. A. Rabuzzi, The Sacred and the Feminine: Toward a Theology of Housework (New York: Seabury, 1982).

—Robert Banks