Sermon at St. James Cathedral, Chicago
September 5, 2010
Proper 18 C – Full Text
Jeremiah 18:1-11
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
Then the word of the LORD came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. …
Luke 14:25-33
Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ …
On behalf of myself, and the more than 4,000 union members of United Auto Workers Local 2320, whom it is my privilege to represent, I thank you for the privilege of speaking to you today. Our members work primarily in the federally-funded legal services programs for the poor, but also in human services agencies, such as Hull House, Heartland Alliance, and Illinois Action for Children. I especially thank Dean Rogers, and my friend the Rev. Jackie Lynn, for their invitation.
Among my duties as a union officer is the teaching of classes on labor history and collective bargaining. I often ask our members when they think the earliest example of union organizing and collective bargaining was. They are usually surprised when I hold up a copy of the Bible and tell them it is a labor history and organizing manual!
In today’s Old Testament reading from Jeremiah Chapter 18, God compares himself to a potter, and he compares Israel to the clay that he fashioned in his hands.
And in the selection from Luke’s gospel, Jesus advises those who want to become disciples that they must prepare for discipleship with the same diligence and foresight as a carpenter or construction worker who was undertaking to build a tower.
These are both metaphors of labor which teach us about the nature of God, and what the Kingdom of God is like.
The Bible is filled with references to labor, and today’s scripture readings are no exception, but they are by no means the earliest. Let’s go to the very beginning…
Genesis 1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…
This is the first sentence of our Bible. Who is doing the work here? Does God farm out the creation to a non-union subcontractor? It is God himself who fashions the earth, who divides the land and the water, who plants the fields, who creates the various species, and who forms human beings from dust, giving them life with his own breath. This labor requires six days. And then something astonishing happens:
… on the seventh day He rested from all the work that he had done.
What kind of a God is this? Why does the Supreme Being, the Creator of the Universe, rest? Because he is tired. The God of the Abrahamic tradition, the God worshipped and glorified by more than 3.6 billion Jews, Christians and Muslims, is a Worker God. That is how He is introduced to us at the very beginning. And this has significance for every other book in the Bible. From this narrative of creation, of God working, and then needing to rest, springs the whole concept of social and economic justice that runs throughout the Bible.
Let us consider the second book of the Bible, Exodus. It is here that we find the story of the liberation of the Hebrew people from their bondage in Egypt.
Well, who are these Hebrews, and what were they doing in Egypt in the first place? They are immigrant workers, who left their homeland because of drought and economic hardship, and they crossed the frontier into Egypt to find work and support their families. And we know what they did. In order to survive, they sell themselves into slavery, and they are engaged primarily in farm work and construction work. At first they were welcomed. But as they increase in population, an anti-immigrant sentiment begins to grow among the Egyptians.
So the government takes steps to keep them under control, and to discourage the increase in their population. The Egyptians still wanted their labor, of course. But they feared their growing numbers. Now, stop me if any of this sounds familiar…
In Exodus Chapter 1 we read what the government did:
Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens; and they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Ra-am’ses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they made the people of Israel serve with rigor, and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field; in all their work they made them serve with rigor. (Exodus 1: 11-14)
Reading further, we learn that God hears their cries, and takes action to end their oppression. He seeks out a leader to negotiate with the government in an attempt to win their freedom. That leader is Moses. This is what God says to him:
I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings …So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
Well, who is Moses? Moses is a Hebrew himself, who was raised in the household of Pharaoh’s daughter as an adopted son. When he grew up, he held a position of privilege. But he also has a keen sense of justice. When he comes upon a foreman beating a Hebrew construction worker, Moses defends the worker, and actually ends up killing the foreman. So he is forced to flee Egypt. When God recruits him, Moses is living a comfortable life in Midian. He has married a priest’s daughter, and is living a comfortable life as a sheep farmer. And he is not keen about having a change of career.
But God knows that in Moses He has found someone with a keen sense of justice, someone who is willing to take action on behalf of the workers. He overcomes each of Moses’ objections. He appoints Moses’ brother Aaron to become part of the team, and most significantly, God tells Moses not to worry, because it will be the Lord God Himself who will be speaking through Moses. God will be present and will give Moses the words to say.
So, in essence, what we have here is history’s first union bargaining committee, and it is created by the Lord God himself.
And then he sends them off to present his first bargaining demand to Pharaoh. Do you remember what the first demand was? Look at Chapter 5:
Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us; let us go, we pray, a three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the LORD our God…
They are demanding a a three-day weekend. Folks, this is the first Labor Day weekend. I am not making this up!
Well how does Pharaoh respond? Well let’s say that he was not a sympathetic employer, and he didn’t favor the idea of his slaves having the audacity to bargain with him. So he orders Moses and Aaron to leave, and then he takes one more step:
The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks which they made heretofore you shall lay upon them, you shall by no means lessen it; for they are idle; therefore they cry, `Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ Let heavier work be laid upon the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.” (Exodus 5: 1-9)
So at this point in the scriptures, we find the first union bargaining team being organized, the first bargaining session, the demand for the first Labor Day weekend, and now, history’s first example of anti-union retaliation. Pharaoh makes a unilateral change in the construction worker’s job description. He increases their duties, with no increase in pay, by the way, insists on maintaining the same production quotas, and explicitly orders it with the intent of discouraging further union activity. It is designed to scare the workers into submission, and to split the membership (i.e. the Hebrew workers) from the leadership of Moses and Aaron.
But God counsels perseverance. The negotiations continue. Moses and Aaron return time and again to Pharaoh with their demands. The struggle escalates. The Nile turns to blood. There is a plague of frogs. There was a plague of gnats. All the employer’s cattle are killed. There is hail and lightning. There is a plague of locusts. Finally, God strikes dead the first born son of every Egyptian family.
Ultimately, Moses leads the Hebrew workers out on strike. They walk off their jobs, and completely leave the employer’s premises. And when Pharaoh sends his troops after them to bring them back, the Lord our God is not idly standing by. He wipes out the Egyptian army to the last man.
The significant thing about this story is this: God is not neutral in this struggle. In fact God is the instigator of the whole thing. It is God himself who organizes and leads the first recorded labor struggle in history.
This is the defining moment of the Hebrew God. Jahweh is the God of slaves, of working people. Jahweh is the God of justice, of liberation. This is also the defining moment of the Hebrew people. They are commanded to remember that they were slaves in Egypt, and that God led them out of bondage. The God they worship is a God of Justice, not in some other world, but in this world, and concretely in terms of social and economic justice.
This is the taproot out of which grows the entire Judeo-Christian tradition, and the Islamic tradition as well.
Having been liberated, the former slaves go on to create a new society, and they develop legislation to govern themselves. The first 10 laws were written by the finger of God Himself, and among those laws ordained by God, was this Commandment: “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto Jehovah thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.” (Exodus 20: 9-10) The Worker God who labored six days, and then took a day off, declared the same benefit for His people. Other legislation dealt with the timely payment of wages, dealing justly in trade, social security for widows and orphans, forgiveness of debts, release from debtor’s prison and slavery, and the restoration of family lands lost during economic hard times. This body of legislation, found primarily in Leviticus and Deuteronomy is known as “the acceptable year of the Lord”… the Jubilee.
Down through the centuries the Hebrew prophets held up the vision of a truly just society ordained by God. At the heart of this society was the principle that the workers should enjoy the fruits of their own labors, that the wealth they created would be theirs to enjoy and not be expropriated from them by others. In the 65th chapter of Isaiah we read:
They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain…
And what about the New Testament? Who is Jesus? When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, God came to us as a worker, not as a rich man, a ruler, or even a clergyman. The Incarnate God was a carpenter. He grew up in working class household. He recruits other workers to become part of his entourage. His brother James, would have also followed in his father’s trade, and would have been a carpenter. We know that there were at least seven fishermen, at least one low-level civil servant, and according to some accounts, even a reformed prostitute. But no kings, no princes, officials of any consequence. This is a working class movement.
Jesus’ ministry is built upon the foundation of the radical Hebrew prophetic tradition. In the first public pronouncement of his ministry, He enters his hometown synagogue and reads from the Book of Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4: 18-19):
He then closes the scroll and announces that this prophecy is being fulfilled in their hearing. The message is clear. Jesus declares his mission to be the establishment of social and economic justice in the land, and not at some abstract time in the future, but now. Clearly a message that will bring Him into conflict with the powers-that-be.
Consider the parables of Jesus. Like the passage from Luke’s gospel we heard today, the parables of Jesus often use the imagery of work, which would be understood by workers, and perhaps not so well understood by the authorities. And understanding is often expressed as being able to hear the Word of God. As he speaks in parables, He often says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (e.g., Matthew 13: 9, et al.)
Many of his parables have construction images (“Build your house on a rock, not on sand”), or agricultural labor (“The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few”). Many describe the Kingdom of God as a place where economic and social justice are realized. Consider, for example, the parable of the day laborers: Matthew 20: 1-16.
1: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
2: After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3: And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place;
4: and to them he said, `You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went.
5: Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same.
6: And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing; and he said to them, `Why do you stand here idle all day?’
7: They said to him, `Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, `You go into the vineyard too.’
8: And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, `Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’
9: And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius.
A denarius was a day’s wage. It was the ancient equivalent of the “living wage.” It was what was necessary for the sustaining of working class life. In this parable, Jesus saying, in essence, that in the Kingdom of God, each person will receive what they need, and will be called to give what they can. You might even say “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” We have heard that before, haven’t we, in a later century, from the pen of another radical Hebrew prophet? I would submit to you that even the philosophy of Karl Marx, with its vision of a more equitable society, grows out of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The point I wish to make is this: There is a profound unity between what Moses called “The Promised Land”, what Jesus called the “Kingdom of God”, and what the labor movement calls the “hopes and dreams of working people”.
The greatest American prophet of the 20th century, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this unity very well. What many people do not realize is that while Dr. King was certainly a religious and civil rights leader, he was also a labor leader. He described the labor movement as the “first and best anti-poverty movement.” When you see photos of the March on Washington, in the very front row of the march you will see Dr. King, and right next to him is Walter Reuther, the President of the United Auto Workers union — my union. The UAW worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize that historic march, along with A. Philip Randolph.
And let us not forget that the reason Dr. King was in Memphis in April of 1968 was to lead a march in support of striking sanitation workers. They were members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Dr. King literally gave his life for the labor movement.
As Christians, we ought to understand this unity better than anyone else. And we ought to be in solidarity with workers who are struggling for a better way of life for themselves and their families.
If you need any further proof, consider who Jesus is. Our Lord Jesus Christ has a worker’s sunburned face. He has a worker’s calloused hands. And He suffered a worker’s death. In an act of supreme irony, when the Romans put Jesus to death, they used the tools of His own trade. They executed the Carpenter of Nazareth by nailing Him to a cross of wood.
Can we not then see the face of Christ in every worker?
Tim Yeager is the Financial Secretary/Treasurer of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers, Local 2320 of the United Auto Workers union. His union represents approximately 4,000 union members working primarily in federally-funded legal services programs for the poor, as well as in human services agencies, such as Hull House and Heartland Alliance. Tim is a member of Grace Church, Oak Park , serves as an intern at Grace Church in Chicago and is secretary of the National Executive Council of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and past chair of the Diocese of Chicago Peace and Justice Committee.
