Scriptures: Deuteronomy 4:1-8 James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-23
We’ve turned the page on the calendar. September has arrived, and with it a new sequence of Scripture readings. For our Gospel readings, we’ve taken leave of the long “bread of life” discourse in John’s Gospel and are now back in the fast-moving, action-packed Gospel of Mark – where, in the original Greek, the words “kai euthus” – translated to English - “and immediately” – recur over and over throughout. Jesus went here and immediately did this, and immediately Jesus went there and immediately did that. While both John’s and Mark’s Gospel tell us about Jesus, their ways of telling the story couldn’t be more different. And for our epistle readings, we’ve left Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and embarked on a journey through the letter of James. James was the brother of Jesus, and was head of the church at Jerusalem. And the contrast between Ephesians and James is at least as strong as between the Gospels of John and Mark. While Ephesians offers intricate doctrinal statements of belief and a very high Christology, the emphasis of James is on human deeds and human actions. You could say metaphorically that James is from Missouri, known as the “show me” state. At one point, he just about comes out and tells his readers, “Don’t just tell me about your faith, show me.” James has been categorized as a sort of Christian wisdom literature, similar in style to the books of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes.
James tells us to be doers of the word, and not just hearers. James compares the word of God to a sort of mirror that shows us to ourselves. But the mirror provided by God’s word is only effective if we act on what we see. And what it means to be doers of the Word, James will tell us over the next several weeks. Today’s reading gives us a few hints: James speaks of generous acts of giving as coming from above; urges his readers to be quick to listen but slow to speak, and slower still to give in to anger; most of all, James defines pure and undefiled religion as “to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” The writer of James would probably appreciate Danish pastor Soren Kierkegaard’s famous parable about a flock of geese in a barnyard who had the gift of speech – and so they came together every Sunday for worship. Every Sunday they would gather, and one old gander would stand up every week and preach about what high goals God had for the geese, for God had given them the gift of wings with which they could leave earth, soar into the air, and fly to distant lands, where they would be at home, for in the barnyard they were only strangers and aliens. And the congregation would listen attentively and then waddle home – on their feet, not their wings. For while they liked to hear every Sunday about wings and flying, they were none too keen to actually stretch their wings and fly. Stories circulated about what terrible things befell those geese who actually tried to fly…why, once they took off, they were never seen again. A few geese took the old gander’s preaching seriously, and began to lose weight and look thin…..and the other geese said, “See, this is what happens when you take all this talk of flying seriously…they’re preoccupied with flying, and so they lose weight and don’t thrive, like us who have become so plump and delicate. And so the next Sunday they gathered to hear the old gander’s eloquent words about God’s gift of wings and God’s high goal of flying……and so on.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus also has something to tell us about being doers of the word. Some religious authorities noticed some of Jesus’ disciples eating without washing their hands first, and called them out on it. Now, let me be the first to say that, as a health measure, I strongly encourage everyone to wash their hands before they eat. Hospitals these days have very strict hand-washing rules for health care workers, and for good reason. But the objection to Jesus’ disciples was not on the basis of health or cleanliness, but rather grounded in religious tradition. Mark’s gospel tells us that the Pharisees had a strong tradition of handwashing grounded in what they called “the tradition of the elders”. The “tradition of the elders” was instituted over time to apply the Torah to changing circumstances, and to put a sort of fence around the law so that the people would not even come close to transgressing it. Jesus in turn calls them out on a part of this “tradition of the elders” which gave religious justification for neglecting the duty to care for parents. He concludes his teaching with a parable: “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” Among his disciples, Jesus elaborates on what are the things that come out of a person and defile: evil intentions and actions such as fornication, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness…a whole laundry list of thoughts and actions that destroyed community. Failing to wash one’s hands may be inconsiderate, may even spread disease – but nothing on the order of the disease of the soul evident in a society which fails to care for its parents, widows, and orphans.
In both our gospel reading from Mark and our epistle reading from James, the emphasis is on community. Actions are commanded that maintain and strengthen community – caring for parents, looking after widows and orphans, avoiding careless speech and hasty anger. These are Scripture readings about where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, about what it looks like when faith in Christ is put into action. They ask a very basic question: do we walk the way we talk? And in these readings, what it means to walk and talk as a Christian is to demonstrate love for neighbor, be it toward one’s own aging parents, or toward widows and orphans with no one to care for them. It’s about seeking the welfare of the community, about showing solidarity with those in need.
This is, of course, Labor Day weekend. For many, Labor Day is a welcome day off, but may not have much significance beyond that. It may be helpful to remember that, along with the Labor Day holiday, many other amenities we take for granted, such as an 8-hour work day, a 40 hour work week, time off on the weekend, health insurance and other benefits, and rules about workplace safety came about through the efforts of organized labor. Men and women fought and died for these benefits. There’s little discussion today about long-ago tragedies as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, in which management of a non-unionized garment factory had locked exits and blocked stairwells to prevent unauthorized breaks and therefore cut off all avenues for exit when the factory caught fire. 146 workers died in the fire, and this tragedy spurred the formation of the international ladies garment workers union. Likewise, we hear little of the Battle of Blair Mountain, which took place in West Virginia in late August/early September 1921, about this time of the year some 80 years ago, in the days in which mine workers lived in company towns run by the mine owners, and the workers were often in debt to the company store. (You may remember the song “Sixteen Tons”, with the sad refrain: “You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.”) Anyway, on Blair Mountain, in West Virginia, in the late summer of 1921, gunfire broke out between members of the United Mine Workers struggling to organize and lawmen and strikebreakers sent in by the mine owners to break the union – and before it was over, President Warren Harding sent in the Army to restore order. Over 100 were killed and hundreds more injured.
And yet workers persevered. Solidarity was the glue that held together the union. One worker acting alone can’t do much to change the behavior of management, but a walkout by every worker on a shop floor will get management’s attention. As the first verse of the song Solidarity Forever puts it, “Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one / For the Union makes us strong.”
Concern for fair wages and working conditions is a priority, not only for labor unions, but in Scripture. Our reading from Deuteronomy underlines the importance for the children of Israel of observing the law, saying that even the surrounding tribes would think more highly of the children of Israel because of their embrace of the law. Shortly after today’s reading comes Deuteronomy’s restatement of the Ten Commandments – which includes an interesting twist on the commandment to observe the Sabbath. The version in Exodus justifies the Sabbath by saying that God created the world in six days and rested the seventh day. By contrast, the version in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 reminds the children of Israel that they had been slaves in Egypt, but now God had taken them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and they were slaves no longer. So in Deuteronomy, neglecting the command to rest on the Sabbath is seen as tantamount to a desire to return to a state of slavery – and for those who work 60 and 70 hour weeks, it can feel like slavery, like their lives are not their own. Back in the book of James, later on in the book, the writer rails against those who fraudulently withhold the wages of their workers.
I mention all this because on this Labor Day, many of the gains won by organized labor are in jeopardy. Here in the States, corporations cut wages and benefits for workers here in the States, cut corners on maintaining workplace safety. They ship jobs to countries with no labor laws, where garment workers put in long days in miserable conditions for pennies an hour. And, increasingly, corporations turn to privatized prisons using inmates as a source of cheap labor. The lage scale corporate use of prison labor has been called a new form of slavery. Where does it end? Will it take another debacle on the order of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire or the Battle of Blair Mountain to change the conversation?
Solidarity isn’t just for union members. For those who aren’t union members – for example, accountants like myself just can’t seem to get our act together to organize – solidarity may mean asking questions about the stores we patronize and the products we buy, whether those low, low prices came at the expense of long, long, exhausting, dangerous, poorly paid days of work halfway around the globe. Solidarity may mean looking for the union label, or joining a credit union. Solidarity may mean shopping sometimes at the mom-and-pop store down the block or buying vegetables from a local farmer, so our money continues to circulate in the local community rather than shopping at the big box store at the mall, where the profits benefit those in some head office located who knows where. Another example: some churches in other cities – it really hasn’t caught on in Philly – make a practice of serving fair-trade coffee, in which buyers are assured that those who picked the coffee beans received fair wages. In this connection, I would also mention that the national setting of the United Church of Christ has a long record of advocating for the rights of union members, farm workers, and workers in a host of poorly paid occupations – and downstairs I left as an example a few copies of a 2009 statement from the UCC’s Justice & Witness Ministries in support of union organizing.
In loving our neighbor though such acts of solidarity, we act as children of God, who has shown such solidarity with humankind that he sent his own beloved Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God, who could have washed his hands of humanity and started over, instead loves us with a love that will not let go. May we rejoice that we are so loved, and may we help our neighbors to rejoice through our acts of solidarity and love. Amen.
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