Labor Day

For most of us Labor Day is little more than a chance to grill out and drink a few cold beverages with friends and family. For others, it is the last day when you are allowed to wear white and still consider yourself fashionable. In most of Hampton Roads in particular, it is the last day before the start of the school year and is therefore the calm before the proverbial storm. Unfortunately, this means that most young people in the region don’t ever actually talk about why we celebrate Labor Day in the first place.

So let’s talk about Labor Day, the national labor movement in the US, and the role that we have as people of faith in the face of our current labor systems.

You see, the American economic and political machines have a notoriously dark history when it comes to their relations with organized labor. Under the direction of the President of the United States, Federal Marshalls and US Troops have historically used intimidation, physical abuse, and even murder to keep workers quiet and business running smoothly. After the particularly bloody strikebreaking in response the Pullman Strikes of 1894, Congress decided that something needed to be done to acknowledge the sacrifices made by the American workforce. Thus, Labor Day become a federalized holiday.

Unfortunately, this didn’t magically make things instantly better for members of the US workforce. Afterall, when your economic system is one that is powered by greed and self-preservation, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that corners get cut in the interest of greater profit margins. In the turn of the 20^th century, this meant that working conditions continued to be deplorable and factories were still rife with worker abuse.

In response to sub-par work conditions and unjust labor laws, the Methodist Episcopal Church (the precursor to the UMC) took action and drafted a social creed that rings just as true today as it did 103 years ago. This historic document stated:

The Methodist Episcopal Church stands:
For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life.
For the principles of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions.
For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries and mortality.
For the abolition of child labor.
For such regulation of the conditions of labor for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.
For the suppression of the “sweating system.”
For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practical point, with work for all; and for that degree of leisure for all which is the condition of the highest human life.
For a release for [from] employment one day in seven.
For a living wage in every industry.
For the highest wage that each industry can afford, and for the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.
For the recognition of the Golden Rule and the mind of Christ as the supreme law of society and the sure remedy for all social ills.

While the Social Principles of the UMC have been tweaked a bit since this first social creed was adopted in 1908, the rights of workers have remained a top priority for the United Methodist Church. We realize that in our own country, workers are still not free from “dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries, or mortality”. Even though laws are in place to protect children, we still must acknowledge that an alarming number of kids are still forced into manual labor. We must own up to the fact that the $7.25 federal minimum wage is still a long way away from “a living wage in every industry”.

So as we get ready for bed on this “Labor Day”, I want to challenge you all to think about the men, women, and children who make up our American labor force, and then to think about this passage from the book of Deuteronomy,

“¹⁴ You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. ¹⁵ You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.”

Are our current practices  “incurring guilt” in the eyes of God? Would the creator of the universe be pleased with the way that we are treating those men and women who live life on the margins? Are our current labor laws and practices really caring for the “least of these”?

A Little Clarification

I don’t know if it was because I posted the link at noon or if the content struck a nerve with some folks, but I have gotten more emails and messages about yesterday’s post than anything else I’ve posted since starting this blog. Therefore, I figured it’d be a good idea if I offered a little clarification.

The point of yesterday’s post was not to demonize the United States Armed Forces or to belittle the sacrifices made by men and women in uniform. My dad spent 20+ years in the Navy. Both of my grandfathers served combat tours overseas. The Navy put food on my table as I grew up and gave my parents enough money to put my siblings and me through college. The US Gov made sure that I had health insurance for the last 25 years of my life.

I owe an awful lot to the US military.

My point with yesterday’s post was that there are always unintended consequences to our actions. When we began military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and declared “war on terror”, we launched a crusade to eliminate terrorist threats that were responsible for the deaths of thousands. Whether you think that there were other motives at play as well, it is pretty hard to argue this fact.

And I don’t think that this is an inherently bad thing.

Where problems start to creep in is when we look at the methods used to achieve this goal. I’m am going to completely oversimplify Rene Girard (cultural theorist) and J Denny Weaver (theologian and pacifist) by saying that on a fundamental level, systems use the tools that they have in order to preserve the status quo. Violent systems respond to stimuli with violence in order to continue functioning violently. Racist systems respond to stimuli with racism. Corrupt systems respond to stimuli with corruption. The list goes on and on.

So when we as a country respond to stimuli (terrorism) with the tools that we have (armed conflict), we end up perpetuating this system indefinitely. Armed conflict begets more armed conflict.

What I was trying to get across yesterday was that even though the war in Iraq is over, the system of violence used will inevitably bring about more violence.

BUT…

I think we’ve been modeled a different way. When we look at the New Testament, we see a man who encountered a violent, oppressive, terror fueled political system and refused to participate. He chose not to respond to this system in kind (even though many people hoped that he would), but instead put himself at the mercy of that violent, oppressive system. He knew that this system would respond with violence, oppression, and terror, and yet he did it anyway.

Anyone know who this guy was?

Anyone willing to try to respond his way instead of our own?

For more info on Rene Girard check out “The Scapegoat” and for more info on J Denny Weaver check out “The Nonviolent Atonement”

From the Mouth of Babes

One of the things that we’ve been doing throughout training is having different YAMs lead morning devotionals on a chapter from the Gospel of John each day. We have been loosely using Jean Vanier’s commentary on John, but we have had the freedom to engage the text in our own particular ways.

This morning, the group presenting was responsible for John 16, which happens to be one of the most depressing chapters in the entire book. It talks about death and martyrs and all of the other things that the people of God could potentially encounter.

During the devotional, we took a few moments to actually lift up the names of people who have been killed throughout the ages on account of their efforts to bring about the justice and reconciliation that we read about in the Bible. Somebody lifted up Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and my mind instantly went to a clip from a podcast that I heard and shared with friends a few months ago.

For those of you who are fans of “This American Life”, it is from episode #188 and starts around the 13 minute mark. It’s only about 3 minutes long and is one of the most powerful things I’ve heard throughout my 5ish years of listening to the show. If you aren’t familiar with the show, I want to invite you to click on the link, fast-forward to the 13.5 minute mark, and just listen.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/188/kid-logic

Did they kill him too?

Such profound words from the mouth of a 4 year old.

What does it say about our country when we have to have conversations like this with our children?

What does it say about our reality when our children can better see and hear the Gospel than we can?

We can talk about martyrs all day long, but I think there is something uncontainable about the insights of a child. There are no politics involved. There hasn’t been time to form social or economic alliances. There aren’t insidious ulterior motives slinking below the surface.

The struggle for equality does sound like the message of Christ. The pursuit of a just and equitable society does sound like the mission that Jesus of Nazareth takes upon himself. The “dreams” of civil rights leaders inside and outside the US sound almost identical to the dreams of the Hebrew prophets, Christ, and the Disciples.

Maybe we should start spending a little less time trying to win others over onto our side, and spend a little more time listening to the four year olds.

Blogging “Correctly”

So today we were “taught” how to blog. By this, I mean that the Communications Department for the General Board of Global Ministries prepared a presentation and stopped by for a three hour session this afternoon on how we are to use things like social networking, photography, and blogging in order to share the stories that we encounter during our service. It was a lovely seminar and I enjoyed most of it, but I just can’t get behind the model of blogging that was presented.

As it turns out, my style of blogging doesn’t exactly fit into the template that GBGM is looking for. I don’t use the style or voice of most professional publications, more often than not I leave posts open-ended without any kind of clear resolution, and I keep it real when it comes to my struggles with the institutional aspects of the UMC.

When faced with this fact, I can’t help but ask the question…Who made these “rules”?

Who decided that a blog should be written in the style of high academia? After all, many of the “poor” that we are working with have little-to-no connection with this style of writing or rhetoric.

Who decided that a blog should be concise, concrete, and conclusive? Doesn’t the move of solidarity that will be taking us to the margins also pull us away from the land of certainty and concreteness?

As I was reflecting on this, I found myself looking back to some of the parts of the biblical cannon that got “edited out” because of their style and themes. I can picture the group of theologians and scholars who solidified the lectionary sitting around a table and discussing the Book of Lamentations.

“Come on guys, why on earth would we include that stuff in the lectionary? Where is the joy? Where is the praise? Let’s just put it off to the side and let someone else deal with it. In fact, let’s just skip over those psalms of lament while were at it.”

I find it incredibly disappointing that these very real, intimately human texts are so often ignored because they don’t fit most people’s understanding of what faith is all about. For that very reason, I make sure to include these texts in sermons and devotionals when a lament is all that we have to offer; when anything else would be a lie.

And for that very reason, I’ll continue blogging in my informal style.

I’ll continue leaving questions unanswered.

I’ll continue sitting with the tension when that’s what is needed.

I’ll continue sharing frustrations and struggles alongside my joys and praises.

I’ll continue to be me.

EDIT: I am not trying to say that all GBGM blogs are written in an academic/journalistic style or that there isn’t space for the style of blog that I keep, just that  training painted this style as the preferred method. 

Housing Upgrade!

Today we headed out of the city and up into the quiet town of Stony Point, New York. This town is home to the Stony Point Retreat Center, an interdenominational and interfaith retreat center committed to peace, justice, and holistic living (and will consequently serve as our home away from home until we return to the city on August 12).

During our time up here along the banks of the Hudson, the members of our cohort who will be serving internationally will be living together in an old semi-renovated country home called the Allison House for a chunk of our stay. That means all 15 of us will be shopping for groceries collectively, cooking all of our meals in one tiny kitchen, and sharing 2.5 bathrooms. Needless to say, things are gonna be a little cozy.

Today was also the first day in which we got to hear some of the stories from members of the community about how and why they agreed to spend the next 2ish years of their lives living far from home with little pay and in a high stress environment. The only rule to this sharing is that our stories take no more than 5 minutes.

As I sit here reflecting on the day, I am reminded of one of the early church communities spoken of in Acts 4:32-35. The passage reads as follows:

“³² Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. ³³ With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. ³⁴ There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. ³⁵ They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”

I know that this passage can seem a little too “political” for some people, but I see a pretty strong correlation between the young men and women who I am currently living and training with, and this early community of Christ-followers.

I can say pretty confidently that despite our cultural, social, and theological differences, every person up here has a deep commitment to serve the “least of these”. Every one of us has experienced something (one might call it the Divine lure if they were into Process Theology) that has drawn us into a live of simplicity and service. We might not be the same, but we are of one heart and soul.

I can also say that there is something powerful that takes place when we share the stories of our faith. Whether we articulate this experience through jokes, nervously pacing around the room, shedding tears of joy, or quietly praising God, the spirit moves in a very tangible way.

And my hope is that as we go forth to serve, that the radically egalitarian community that we read of in Acts could become real in our world.