a sermon delivered on September 4, 2011
I realize that in this day and age, when marriage has failed as a consumer product because it requires attention to the other, is not sufficiently self-centered to meet the standards of our culture, it may seem a bit rude to complain about one’s own childhood. After all, when my father died eighteen months ago, he and my mother had been faithfully married to one another for fifty years. And he had lived a rather long time, for at seventy-five he was well past the sell-by date of most retired firefighters. So truly, it may look like bad form to complain. But I will anyways.
You see, when I was a child, Dad worked 24 hours on and 24 hours off. Well, sort of. Actually he worked 24 hours at the fire station, then he got off in the morning and went to another job, as partner in a painting and home improvement company. And when he got home, often well after sundown, he was exhausted. So my childhood experience of my father was largely limited to holidays and vacations, to every other Sunday when he wasn’t working in someone’s home. My grandfather was also a firefighter and served the same municipality.
Everything changed when I was in my early teens, and so my youngest sister’s experience of Dad was very different. You see, suddenly firefighters were not working every other day, but every third day, on a staggered schedule. Even with a part time job, Dad simply had more time for his family. Of course, by then I had become independent and rebellious, so there was no making up for lost years.
I tell you this not so you will pity the poor daddy-deprived minister. In this day and age of disposable families, many are daddy-deprived. I tell you this because the change in my father’s working conditions did not occur due to “market forces.†The invisible hand of the market, the false god worshiped by economists and Wall Street, did not correct the poor work conditions. It wasn’t even my father’s own union, in which he was a trustee, that made the change, since collective bargaining for public employees has always been illegal in Virginia. Wisconsin is an also-ran in the race to strip workers of protections and rights. It was actually legal challenges brought by firefighters’ union in other states that dramatically changed the living conditions of my family. Let me say that again. The quality of life for my family was changed because the federal government stepped in and stepped over state and municipal governments that were taking advantage of their workers. The labor movement gave my sister the daddy I never had.
For many of us, the idea of labor rights is an abstraction. Poor Oliver Twist in the workhouse… Yet, there he is, the plucky orphan triumphant! Or maybe it’s the rags to riches story of the newsboy in threadbare clothes that rises up to own the newspaper. After all, there are no longer children in the coal mines… or are there?
Brutal work conditions exist today, and you and I reap the benefit. No, seriously; it’s not Dickens and the plucky orphan or some tale spun out by Horatio Alger. Today there is an all out assault on workers in America, with special attention on workers in the public sector, and I can tell you as a child of a public sector laborer, it galls me that we cast a blind eye to the thieves on Wall Street, to the crooks at Goldman Sachs, but we want to blame teachers and firefighters and police officers. I am on fire with anger, and it is a holy fire.
Simple observation will tell you that the hidden hand of the market doesn’t correct anything, has never produced human justice, much less divine judgment. Simple logic will tell you that we don’t want sixty year old soldiers and firefighters and police officers protecting us. And even if we did, the human body is not designed for that sort of punishment. We expect these women and men to risk their lives every single day they go to work, yet we begrudge them retirement? The City of Norfolk can be happy, then, that just months after he retired, my grandfather died on the 17th hole of his favorite golf course, struck down before his time as so many firefighters are. What happened to the post-9/11 love of public servants? Now they are the enemy, greedy union members seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of us poor working stiffs.
Damn that false narrative! It is a holy fire that burns within me. Justice for the laborer is not some liberal pipe-dream, it is God’s command, is written in scripture, has been a framing part of the Hebrew narrative since brick-making slaves escaped from Egypt, headed for the Promised Land. The war on workers is a war on God, is a war on our Judeo-Christian heritage, and it is being waged by Charles and David Koch, energy billionaires, and by their countless proxies. But is is also being waged by you.
Yes, you. And me. More than a few of you are former or current public sector employees, more than a few teachers. Every one of us participates in the war on workers, every one of us rebels against God. For every time we purchase a product manufactured in China, in a sweatshop in Mexico, every time we purchase a product that was manufactured in brutal conditions in a foreign country where workers have no rights, where toxic sludge is dumped directly into the environment, every time we fall for the hype and go for the quick thrill of consumerism, every cheaply manufactured product we buy, is a sin made tangible.
The Koch brothers are waging a war on workers. Political extremists are waging a war on workers. We are waging a war on workers. And while there is little I can do about the Kochs and their billions, there is something I can do about me. I may not be able to impact the hidden hand of the market, and who can? It’s as real as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and an honest politician. But I can impact this hand, which is not so hidden after all. I can try to make sure I play less of a role in shortening the lives of children in developing countries, for there is still child labor and it is not limited to the manufacture of oriental rugs. I can make sure I buy fair trade. I can make all sorts of economic decisions that will contribute, in a tiny way, to the building of the just and caring Kingdom of God.
It’s not easy, and it would be easy to throw up my hands and give up. I can’t. I can’t because I want children to have a daddy. Or mommy. Or whatever it is they have! Because I want them not to be enslaved. Because I want them not to be impoverished because jobs have been shipped to brutal regimes overseas. I can’t give up on the notion of economic justice because I don’t want women and men and children to die trying to sneak across borders because the most menial jobs in rich countries are a thousand times better then slow starvation in their homelands.
The war on workers is a war on God, is a full scale assault on the just and caring Kingdom of God. Shouldn’t I be willing to step up to that battle? Maybe I buy less. Maybe I find ways to feel good about myself that don’t depend on what I own, on the latest smart phone, the sharpest clothes. Maybe God doesn’t care about that stuff anyways.
The war on workers is a war on God. It is not the tale of the plucky orphan triumphant. It is the tale of broken and ruined lives, of vicious greed disguised as impersonal corporate policy. And I choose to be a the side of the workers. I choose to grow as much of my food as I can at home. I choose to buy products made in America, not because I wish to deny jobs to those overseas, but because at least I know there is some standard for how we treat workers and the environment, as pathetic as those standards are.
I believe that it is our duty to stand up for the worker and to stand out by not falling for the narrative of consumerist culture. We are trapped in a system that is designed so that we can never win, a system that perverts the very notion of fairness.
Let’s each, in our own small way, turn to God and turn away from false gods. Let’s find our satisfaction in the love of community instead of in what we buy. Let’s, this week if no other, remember that the war on workers, in Wisconsin and Illinois and anywhere extremists have seized power, is a war on those very same individuals that we lauded after 9/11, decent women and men who risk their lives every day. This week let us denounce those hypocrites who wrap themselves in the flag and proclaiming they are for America’s children while working against our teachers. This week of all weeks, let us mean what we say when we pledge justice for all. Let us mean it when we say we want God’s kingdom to come here, God’s will to be done here, as it is in heaven. Let’s mean it and act it. Let’s use caution when we go to Labor Day sales, that we not fall into hypocrisy.
There may be no plucky orphan, no re-claiming the years spent with my Dad, but maybe there can be a re-claiming of God’s justice. Maybe we can be plucky Christians, marching against the grain, faithful to the one true God, turning away from the sinful promises and false satisfactions of our culture. I am a man on fire, a man who believes with every ounce of my being that we can do better, and in so doing we move closer to the joy of a life lived in full. I am a man on fire with love for God. Catch the fire. Pass it on. Amen.