It
is Labor Day weekend. Like most American holidays, that has come to mean little
more than three days off. But, like with most American holidays, there was once
upon a time when it really meant something about our national values. The first
Labor Day was celebrated in 1882. Soon the first Monday in September was
established as the official day to recognize working men and women. The holiday
was once dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.
It was intended to be an annual national tribute to the contributions workers
have made to the strength, prosperity, and well being of our country.
There was a time when the names of
labor leaders were cheered and they were revered. My father was a miner and a
truck driver. Jimmy Hoffa’s name has been turned into a symbol of corruption
but around our house in the 1950s, Hoffa’s name meant workers getting a fair
deal. He was proud of that Teamster’s badge.
Remember names like John L. Lewis
of the United Mine Workers, Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers, Samuel Gompers,
the longtime leader of the American Federation of Labor and one of the great
organizers of the American Labor movement of the last years of the 19th century
and the 20th. Albert Shanker - until Shanker's time
teachers…and most all public sector employees…were forbidden to strike. Albert
Shanker fought for the rights of educators to earn a decent living and partake
of benefits reflective of their worth to society. Then there was Caesar Chavez
who founded the National Farm Workers Association that later became the United
Farm Workers. Cesar led the disenfranchised against the profit-hungry grape
growers.
Caesar, Samuel, Shanker…Caesar
Chavez, Samuel Gompers, Al Shanker…But the greatest worker organizer and
advocate in history was Moses. Like all of those other names…Gompers, Lewis,
Shanker, Reuther, Hoffa, Chavez…Moses represented underpaid and exploited
workers. Like the pharaoh before them, the industrial and business leaders
feared and disdained those who represented the working poor.
But Moses was the first in history
willing to stand up against the economic and political powers. Moses never
intended to be a leader, didn’t want to have that role. Moses was simply
negotiating justice for his people. He wasn’t asking for something for
nothing…he wasn’t asking for a handout, Moses was asking for justice.
As we read Deuteronomy this
morning, we know the negotiations failed. Moses has led his people out, they
went on strike, God promised them a better deal, a better contract…the
strike-breakers went after them with their spears and chariots and God took
care of that.
All God wants for God’s people is
freedom, the freedom to be themselves, to take care of their families, to be a
part of the community. God gave the Israelites their freedom just as God gave
all humans their freedom in the Garden of Eden. God led them to the Promised
Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. God asks only that they remember and
never forget that they were once slaves, once illegal immigrants, once hungry
and poor and struggling.
Take care, God says, “take care and
watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes
have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life.”
God saw everything
that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. It was all good…humans for
relationships, animals for companionship, water for life, every plant yielding
seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its
fruit; you shall have them for food.
So what happened?
* Every day, approx.
29,000 people in the world die of hunger, or hunger related diseases.
* 80 million children
between the ages of 10-14 work for low wages in often dangerous conditions to
supply inexpensive products for citizens of wealthier nations to consume.
* 100 million
children from 6-11 years of age are receiving no education and they will likely
soon join the 900 million adults who are illiterate round the world.
* 1 billion children
do not have clean water or sanitary waste disposal (that’s 1/6th of
the world’s population, and that’s just the children!)
* The wealthiest 345
people in the world possess the wealth equivalent to that held by the poorest
40% of the world’s people – that’s over 2 billion people!
* If we were to join
the ranks of the 1.5 billion people, half of them children, who are constantly
hungry, our diets would consist of 2 oz. of rice a day.
These are today’s
slaves. Just what is a slave? Throw out the images of pre-civil war slaves. In
those days, people knew a slave when they saw one…by the color of their skin, usually
in chains, people bought and owned. Today slavery is different. Today’s slaves
are those who are bound by the society in which they live to provide their
labor for wages that do not allow them to meet their own basic needs. You see
nearly all of those families receiving food stamps and Medicaid are working,
many of them more than one job…the political system requires they work in order
to receive any government assistance and the economic system makes sure they
can’t earn enough to sustain themselves.
So…who negotiates for
them? Who remembers them? The world’s richest
woman doesn’t She says low-income people are only poor because they
don’t work hard enough, and because they drink too much and are
lazy. This from a Australian named Gina
Rinehart, who inherited her $30 billion fortune. God sees it differently…Jesus
and the prophets spoke often of how the system was rigged against the poor.
God says, “take care and watch
yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen
nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life.”
But they are forgotten. No one
speaks for them. Or should I say no one negotiates for them. There’s no labor
union representing the poor. They can’t afford lobbyists and political consultants,
they have no super pacs…and so in today’s world they have no place, no voice.
They have become the stuff of
political rhetoric, not sacred obligation. Sacred obligations are not created
on election day but on the Sabbath. Money creates Pharaohs. God calls the Caesar Chavez’s, the Samuel Gompers,
Al Shankers and Moses.
The pharaohs don’t mind if we simplycollect
food for the poor. Pharaoh loves it when we subsidize the low wages he pays
with the food we contribute. What the pharaoh minds is when we negotiate for
the poor, when we actually speak out and become their advocates. The pharaoh
says, “please just leave the food at the food pantry and quietly go your way.”
Food collection is an important mission and we here at Highlands have
been generous with NEEDS and COMEA among others. But, the sacred obligation of
the church, the synagogue, the mosque goes beyond collecting food. Listen
carefully to the scripture from this morning…James 1:27…”Religion
that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans
and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Churches are stained
by the world when they simply collect food for the hungry and never ask, “Why
are so many people hungry in the richest country on earth? Why is it we can pay
a billion dollars a week to fight a war and have long, mean-spirited debates
over food stamps?” “Why are people in our community holding garage sales and
spaghetti suppers to raise money to pay for cancer treatment?”
When we Christians
ask those questions as we drop off the food baskets, we go from being a
respected charity to becoming meddlers. Moses was a meddler…as were Caesar,
Samuel, and Shanker.
A stained, defiled
world doesn’t like religious meddlers. Once I wrote one of my weekly columns on
poverty in Wyoming. A reader responded with a letter to the editor. “Rev.
McDaniel,” he wrote, “should stick to saving souls and leave economic policy to
others.”
That’s how badly
stained the world has become. The stain of the world comes when the church
offers food baskets but doesn’t answer God’s call to negotiate on behalf of
these people. As we celebrate the Labor Day weekend, take notice of the working
people in your lives. Is that woman who served your meal at the restaurant able
to feed her own children? Does the fellow who put a new roof on your house have
a roof over his own head? What do the falling prices advertised at Walmart mean
for the workers whose labor has been discounted so that we can buy for less?
You see…that’s what
Jesus was saying when he told the people, “Isaiah
prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors
me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship
me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
If we aren’t able or willing to negotiate on behalf of the poor,
we should at least honor those who do…and that is what Labor Day is about.
My labor roots rejoice!
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