As we begin reading Nehemiah (for those in our Reading Program), Eugene Peterson’s Introduction, as it appears in The Message Bible, has a strong word.

I’ve written the book Everyone on the Wall, a title taken from a metaphorical approach to Nehemiah’s wall building. I saw all kinds of people building the wall as a picture of everyone involved in mission. It’s not a bad metaphor.

But Peterson takes the book for what it is: the story of Nehemiah rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem (chapters 1 – 6) and Ezra challenging the people to live in accordance with God’s law (study, do, teach, remember?). It’s a story of “secular” work (wall building) and “sacred” work (preaching) cooperating. Here’s how Peterson tells it:

Separating life into distinct categories of “sacred” and “secular” damages—sometimes irreparably—any attempt to live a whole and satisfying life, a coherent life with meaning and purpose, a life lived to the glory of God. Nevertheless, the practice is widespread. But where did people come up with the habit of separating themselves and the world around them into these two camps? It surely wasn’t from the Bible. The Holy Scriptures, from beginning to end, strenuously resist such a separation.

The damage a sacred-secular split does to life is most obvious when applied to daily work. It is common for us to refer to the work of pastors, priests, and missionaries as “sacred,” and that of lawyers, farmers, and engineers as “secular.” It is also wrong. Work, by its very nature, is holy. The biblical story is dominated by people who have jobs in gardening, shepherding, the military, politics, carpentry, tent making, homemaking, fishing, and more.

Nehemiah is one of these. He started out as a government worker in the employ of a foreign king. Then he became—and this is the work he tells us of in these memoirs—a building contractor, called in to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. His coworker Ezra was a scholar and teacher working with the Scriptures. Nehemiah worked with stones and mortar. The stories of the two men are interwoven in a seamless fabric of vocational holiness. Neither job was more or less important or holy than the other. Nehemiah needed Ezra; Ezra needed Nehemiah. God’s people needed the work of both of them. We still do. – Eugene Peterson, Introduction to Nehemiah, The Message Bible

That’s really good. Forget the metaphor, Nehemiah came in as a “building contractor,” who had to build under wartime conditions. He was also a governor. All “secular” work. But work and how we do it is important, as I’ve written before.

Heaven and Earth were finished, down to the last detail. By the seventh day God had finished his work. On the seventh day he rested from all his work. God blessed the seventh day. He made it a Holy Day Because on that day he rested from his work, all the creating God had done. (Genesis 2.1, 2, MSG)

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3.17, ESV)