Function and Worth

A dear friend of mine and I were talking about a sermon he was preparing and a critique he received was that he seemed to be making Jesus out as somehow lesser than the Father - part of his references were to Jesus being obedient to the Father. For me the narrative in John 8 comes to mind, “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.” (John 8:28b ESV) So for some who hear this verse their thought is that “see Jesus is less than God because He can only do what He was told by God” or for the more literal minded among us, their thought is “heresy for a pastor to imply Jesus is less than God.” For the few who read this blog you know that I'm really firm on the idea that obedience is the good work as opposed to saying hey we are being faithful, look at all the good works we've done.

I know there are a lot of theological arguments that can be raised here, like immanent trinity and economic trinity, and Rahner's argument that there is no difference, and such things, but to me the crux of the matter really is all about how we impose our value system on others and on God.

But I have to ask, why does function have anything to do with essence? We have been steeped in a cultural code that our function is a reflection of our worth. Back in the day, ideas like housework is a women's job (okay please don't throw that stuff at me) and such things, but the idea behind that phrase was how we men had the mis-notion that such labor was simply not something men were designed to do because we had a more important role to fill, or how moving up in the world meant we were making enough money so you could hire a maid to do the menial chores. Or, the statement on the immigration issue that goes something like if we seal off the borders, who will do the labor intensive work of harvesting as we won't have any migrants to do that anymore. I'm sure we all can come up with instances where we judge a person by their function or lack thereof.

I began this thinking about my one friend who is a pastor, and at the end I am thinking of my other friend who is a pastor. He gave up a lucrative career and business (I’m thinking he could have likely afforded a maid) and gave it all up and now pastors in East St. Louis. Some may say foolish and he stepped down to do a "good" thing, but I think the real question is how could he have done anything other than obey? Likewise my other friend stepped out of a lucrative career to pastor young people. For both of my pastor friends, thinking it is likely Jesus is saying they stepped up.

So, what does function have to do with worth?