Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Though I am still a few years from Medicare, there is little doubt that I am getting old. My body tells me every day. Then there is my mailbox, snail mail not email. Most afternoons there is at least one, sometimes more than one, print magazine. I also read news online, but I still like long-form journalism and good writing on paper, and despise the meme wars, which seem a one way road to stupidity and evil.
I receive a range of publications, from the Christian Century, the magazine of record for Mainline Protestants, to the Guardian Weekly and the Nation, progressive news and opinion, and mainstream cultural magazines like the New Yorker.
And it seems like every one of them these days has a full page advertisement for a nationwide speaking tour by Lech Walesa, former president of Poland and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Walesa was the trade union activist who confronted and eventually unwound state communism in Poland, then a satellite of the Soviet Union.
For our younger worshippers, that was a communist nation-state that controlled all of northern Asia and much of eastern Europe, either directly or through puppet governments. It was centered on Russia. And if you wonder why I just had to explain that, you are in the geezer club right along with me. The Soviet Union has been gone for 34 years. There are parents with no memory of the Soviet Union who have kids in high school.
I have no idea what Walesa has to say to our current situation, whether he will speak to crowds or empty halls. There is an irony that it was workers who brought down state-communism in Poland when communism was supposed to be a worker’s paradise, and that Poland itself descended into nationalism and adopted a rapacious capitalism along the United States model instead of embracing the pro-worker social democracy model to be found just across the Baltic in Scandinavia.
The union and movement Walesa led was called Solidarity. The word indicates common interest and mutual support, which is to say, the word indicates what it is to be part of a social species.
And since it is Labor Day Weekend, originally a celebration of organized labor, I will land there after a brief detour into scripture and theology.
Scripture tells us that when the ancient Jewish tribes were afraid of the new immigrants arriving on the coast, they went to Samuel and asked for a king. God’s response, as popularized by a recent meme, was “You don’t want a king. Kings suck.”
But the people insisted, making them just like every other dictatorship in the region, ironic since their own collective story was about escaping an evil king, the ruler of Egypt.
Their second king as a nation, David the Usurper, was a rapist and a murderer. His successors created a propaganda campaign that continues to this day, three thousands years later, the idea that God had chosen David and his house alone to save the nation. Very Trumpy. For the next five centuries, the authoritarian partnership of king and priest would be challenged by outsider prophets who called for justice and sided with the poor.
The nation was not saved by the move from confederation to despotism, first falling under the rule of foreign powers, then being effectively erased from the map not long after the time of Jesus.
Though the early Christians would craft a narrative in which Jesus resurrected is the eternal and rightful heir to that personal covenant with David, the key is that there was no actual king on earth who spoke for God. This was deeply subversive, a theological innovation in that age when caesars were considered gods. Yahweh’s presence after the ascension of Jesus was to be found in the Holy Spirit’s work through regular people.
Students of history will know that this egalitarian Christianity would not survive for long, a mere three centuries at best. But the social framework established before that first xenophobic dash to monarchy in Israel and in the three century window when the Way of Jesus was about discipleship reminds us that God’s covenants are collective. The whole personal Jesus / personal salvation narrative is nonsense.
We only made faith about getting into heaven when we decided to accept hell here on earth.
The Christian Church has always conformed to the prevailing power structures of the day. When the Roman Church was created, nations were ruled by despots, and so they created a despotic governance. Our Reform tradition originated in the council-led cantons of Switzerland, and spread in decentralized locations like Scotland and the New England colonies, so we operate with a mix of direct democracy and regional bodies. In the late 20th century, with corporations as the most powerful structure in society, some created megachurches that sell goods and services to an entertained audience.
We humans tend to trip and fall on our faces because we are walking forward while looking backward, so some earnest Christians today long to re-create an idealized early church. I’m not sure there ever was such a thing. The early church was messy too, because humans are humans, and diverse, again because humans.
But it did get something right, that early church, something that predates the people begging Samuel to turn a warlord into a king as Philistines brought a new Mediterranean culture to the region.
The early Christian church was more confederation than kingdom, chaotic and creative in all the best ways. And while it was still a tribe, it was a tribe not of blood, but of choice. This may be the best thing we can draw from those first centuries, not some orthodoxy that didn’t yet exist, still to be forged in the violence and blood. Not some institution, that wouldn’t develop for centuries. It was the idea that you are not born on the Way of Jesus, but instead chose the Way of Jesus.
We choose common cause with other humans. Solidarity. And especially in a congregation like this, where so many of us are refugees, where we refuse doctrine and creed, focusing on the practical, it is choice that defines us.
Organized labor, this weekend’s historic theme, is about solidarity, is about choosing to be in solidarity with other workers. It is a good thing, and I have been pro-union all of my life. But it still fails as a matter of justice because it still operates in a zero-sum system where someone has to lose in order for someone else to win.
State communism was about control. It snuffed out freedom, creativity, and innovation. It caused famines and produced gulags. It literally killed people.
End-stage Neo-liberal Capitalism is about exploitation. It is about manipulation and greed. It causes starvation, and profits from incarceration and slaughter. It literally kills people.
Yet, the moment we try to imagine a just economy, an economy that reflects the Torah but at efficient scale, that reflects the gospel but at efficient scale, that reflects the sutras of Buddhism but at efficient scale, we are called communist and un-American.
It is a failure of American imagination, a failure of Christian imagination.
The Scandinavian social democracies are not perfect, and they benefited in their formation from a cultural homogeny that never existed here and no longer exists there, but they have found one balance point, a form of solidarity, with the productive creativity of free market competition and the necessary engine of capital investment. They established protections and a safety net that creates solidarity not of workers against owners, but of workers and owners, who benefit together.
And as good as Scandinavian economies are, there is yet a better model, one tried on a small scale, but that always struggles against a system designed to snuff it out. Employee owned corporations.
A member of a congregation I previously served built a successful company in her industry. Her kids, blessed with privilege, established their own careers and lives, so when it came time to retire, she transitioned the business into an employee owned business and walked away.
We don’t all have that option. But we can be scrupulous in our own consumer activity, contributing in our own small way to a just labor environment, one that reflects the Torah and the gospel.
This week, corporate news media reminded American’s that our Fascist government has ended the “de minimis” tariff exemption on goods valued at $800 and less. This will be an inconvenience, but it represents one of the few policies with which I am aligned. The fast-fashion industry that thrived in that regulatory environment was not only an environmental disaster. It depended on exploited labor. But that is an action forced on us. Here are some we might choose.
First, avoid union-busting companies as much as possible. Notorious examples include Amazon and Starbucks.
Second, buy local, buy small. You have a better chance of knowing whether the staff is treated well if you can see them.
Third, take a few extra minutes and do your research. There are more fair trade products than you realize. Especially promising are B Corporations, also called “benefit corporations.” Unlike standard corporate governance, which prioritize profit over principle and people, B corporations are allowed to consider the common good, community good, and environmental good, in their decision making. Well known B Corps in the United States include Patagonia, Danone Yogurt, King Arthur Baking, and Seventh Generation cleaning products.
Fourth, promote cooperatives wherever possible. As we consider Elmira’s housing crisis, cooperatives offer a path out of exploitative tenancy. While our local area has community supported agriculture, and some limited direct-to-consumer food sales, this is the first community I’ve served that does not have a food coop. While food coops can lean into expensive organic products, there are plenty that make staples available at a good price. We need one, especially on Elmira’s east side.
Fifth, where we have the opportunity to invest, with our church endowment, through our own portfolios and retirement funds, we should insure that those investments are in just economics. Many of us, including The Park Church and the United Church of Christ, already embrace these practices. And if the opportunity presents itself, we should be prepared to invest directly in our local economy.
Finally, many of us already pay attention to faith-based economic to promote justice, not just labor justice but also climate justice, racial justice, LGBTQ+ justice, justice for immigrants. We might do a better job sharing insights and resources through our church platforms, and in routine advocacy training. As the billionaires try to make our votes at the ballot box mean less and less, our votes at the cash register will mean more and more.
It is our duty, if we are to follow the justice mandates in scripture and in our tradition, to model just economic practices, adapting Torah to today’s context, and prophetically calling for an end to those predatory practices that are harming our sisters and brothers every day. Your neighbor who is in the ditch was not mugged by robbers. He was mugged by NYSEG, Trump’s Department of Miseducation, by a shrinking number of mega-corporations controlling the food industry, and by United Healthcare. But bullies only win until people resist. May we do so, creatively, compassionately, and with the Holy Spirit that is, in the end, God-with-us. Amen.