Retirement Does Not Apply To Our Christian Work – Think ‘Reassignment’
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(23) The Lord said to Moses, (24) “This applies to the Levites: Men twenty-five years old or more shall come to take part in the work at the tent of meeting, (25) but at the age of fifty, they must retire from their regular service and work no longer. (26) They may assist their brothers in performing their duties at the tent of meeting, but they themselves must not do the work. This, then, is how you are to assign the responsibilities of the Levites.”’ (Numbers 8:23-26)
Retirement is a personal decision, but often an employer or a government edict may provide a specific date or age for people to retire. For example, US airline pilots by Federal law have a mandatory retirement age of 65 from flying commercial jets. It is recognized that as we get older our stamina and reflexes start to fade a bit, and it may not be a good idea to have a geriatric pilot in the cockpit when an emergency maneuver (like landing a plane in the Hudson River in New York City) is needed. However, those ‘retired’ pilots can still work; their physical skills may not allow them to fly commercially but their expertise and experience allows them (if they so desire) to teach younger pilots how to fly, in flight simulators or as in-flight ‘coaches’.
The Lord provides such directions to the Levites during the set up of the Tent of Meeting. The young Levites, when they turned 25 and were ready for the responsibilities of the work in the Tabernacle, did the work. Those who turned 50 gave up those tasks to the younger Levites, but God allowed these seasoned Levites to continue assisting the younger Levites, to allow the old guys to teach the young ‘kids’ how to do the work to keep the Tabernacle activities going as the Lord commanded.
If one had to perform a sacrifice of a bull, for example, one needs to know how to do it properly or the bull may not be happy if you don’t kill it but hurt it. The bull, hurt but very much alive, may not appreciate his situation and begin to exact retribution. It would be wise for a young Levite to learn from an old and experienced Levite how to safely and effectively put a bull down without getting gored or trampled on.
Not every industry has mandatory retirement ages set. In the realm of government contracting, I know of several people working well into their 70s. Some simply enjoy the work they do or have the need to stay busy, others have a need to work to make ends meet. Most retire from their occupations and either do some consulting or part-time work or stay away from ‘work’ altogether. What God makes clear in Numbers 8:23-26 and later in Paul’s Epistles is there is no retirement age for the Christian in terms of serving the Lord.
The roles that we perform now we may need to one day retire from; a pastor or a Life Group leader may need to ‘retire’ if they can no longer read Scriptures due to fading eyesight. However, like in Numbers, the role may change from being ‘active’ to ‘advisor’, where someone young can learn from the experiences of the older Christian. Titus 2:4-6 discusses older women, who may be widowed and no longer of child-bearing age, teaching the younger women how to be good wives and mothers. This also applies to older men showing younger men how to be good husbands and fathers.
Being a Christian, even when one cannot serve in the fashion as performed when younger, can (and should) still witness, advise and counsel others toward the Gospel of Christ. At an assisted living facility I taught at on Sundays many years ago, a woman who was 95 and in a wheelchair, asked what she could do. I told her that she could still pray for people, hold the door open for others to pass, and she could talk and listen when someone needed a sounding board. She did so, and I saw before I stopping teaching there, she became someone who was sharing her Faith and her empathy to her neighbors. Retirement is something we will face (or for some already have faced) for our vocation. However, we should never think retirement from our Christian work, only ‘reassignment’ to do other tasks for the cause of Christ!
