Sometimes the secular calendar runs up against the liturgical calendar in ways that are inopportune. Other times, it’s fortuitous. Each year, when Independence Day weekend rolls around, for example, there’s always the question how the church can faithfully respect the heritage of secular freedom that is celebrated everywhere you look—complete with fireworks, even!—while also remaining faithful to the gospel and the countercultural proclamation that our citizenship is in heaven, under the ruleship of Jesus whose kingdom isn’t of this world. Jesus, in his prayer for the disciples before his passion in St. John’s gospel, reminds us that we are not of the world, but we’re still in it. That’s to say that faithful Christians don’t shun the world or despise the world—for indeed, God so loved the world to actually become one of us and participate in everything that goes on it, complete to dying as one of us. The world isn’t bad, per se; it’s misguided and misaligned with God’s purposes.
And so we are not of that brokenness, but we’re in the midst of it, here to make sense of it for ourselves and for others, and to be God’s presence where it’s sorely needed. We as Christians, if we are to be faithful, must engage the world as it is before us, for it’s this world that God entered into in Christ to redeem, and the same world that Jesus sends us into to teach all that he taught us and to make still more disciples. In this regard, Christians have both feet firmly planted in two realities—the reality of God’s peace that transforms sin into righteousness and death into life and the reality of this world that is constantly unsettling us with whispers and shouts of insufficiency and imperfection. This is a tension that we must grapple with each and every day as Christians, but it’s also a tension that God equips us to take on through the gift and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We don’t go at it alone; God is right by our side. But to be faithful, we must go at it. Keep that in mind as you listen on today…
Let us pray. May only God’s Word be spoken and may only God’s Word be heard; in the name of Jesus! Amen.
So here we are, on this Labor Day weekend. This weekend signals the end of summer for many, what with barbeques, the return to school, closing up the swimming pool. You may be ripping out old tomato stalks that have finally stopped producing after a bumper crop that saved you $2.37 for all your work all summer long. But gosh darn it—those BLTs were good! Yes—Labor Day signals the end of summer, even if we have twenty days until the official first day of fall. Astrological fall, at least. The meteorological fall started on September 1, but who’s being fussy about that?
Labor Day bookends the summer with Memorial Day. The history of this holiday is different than many of our other patriotic holidays. It’s one of the few that isn’t somehow connected with our military past. Labor Day is actually holiday to honor and recognize the labor movement and the contributions of everyday workers. Beginning in the late 1800s, as trade unions gained strength and the overall labor movement gained momentum, trade unionists started demanding a day be set aside to honor workers. In 1887, Oregon was the first state in the United States to make it an official public holiday. By the time it was made a federal holiday seven years later in 1894, thirty states were already including Labor Day on the calendar. Labor Day is a time to celebrate, cherish, and honor everyday, ordinary working people and their contributions to the overall wellbeing and success of our life together. It’s a good thing to recognize.
Today’s first lesson comes from the Wisdom of Sirach, and although it’s not a reading picked specifically for Labor Day—it just happened to come up in the rotation of readings as they normally do—it fits today perfectly. But first, a little about Sirach.
The Wisdom of Sirach is a Jewish work. More specifically, it’s a work of on ethics, that comes from approximately 200-175 BC, written by a scribe named Ben Sira, who was born in Jerusalem. He wrote in Hebrew, likely in Alexandria, in Egypt, during the time of the Ptolemies—that’s the ruling family of Cleopatra, although Ben Sira lived about 80 years before the legendary queen pharaoh. Ben Sira even had his own a school where he taught. What makes Ben Sira’s work so important for us today is that the prologue of the Wisdom of Sirach is generally considered the earliest witness to a canon, or list of something considered of the highest quality or genuine—Ben Sira is considered the first to mention a canon of the books of the prophets. So his work influences both Judaism and Christianity. In other words, the list of prophetic writings that we look to today as the official list of genuine material from the prophets…
And so it is that our first reading today comes from Ben Sira, from the Wisdom of Sirach, and it’s very appropriate for today. We heard about artisans—smiths, potters, jewelers, painters. “All these rely on their hands,” Ben Sira tells us, “and all are skillful in their own work. Without them no city can be inhabited.” These are essential workers, essentially.
The text is rather straightforward. “Without them no city can be inhabited.” In other words, without these workers doing their jobs, the rest of us can’t make it go. We need each other, with our respective, unique contributions to life together. It’s fair and right to say that no one’s job is more important than any other; but each needs the other.
The CEO isn’t more important than the janitor. For what good is it to the CEO if the janitor doesn’t empty the garbage? Soon it piles up and the CEO’s office is rancid with the smell of stale rubbish. But likewise, what good is it to the janitor if the CEO makes poor choices on behalf of the company, which lead to bankruptcy? Soon the janitor finds herself without a job altogether.
Our society relies on individuals to work together, for the good of the whole. Imbalance, inequality, and injury arise when one class of individuals believe themselves to be more important, more essential than someone else. Yet it’s not true. Our society needs everyone in order to work together for the good of all, much like our bodies need each part to work together so that we are healthy. St. Paul goes to the heart of this when he writes, “the body does not consist of one member but of many.”
Imagine, if you will, our body parts were conscious, and could think and speak. Imagine if the a foot said, “I’m not elegant like the hands, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body.” Would that make it so? Or imagine if an ear said, “I’m not beautiful like the eyes, with their colored irises and expressiveness; I don’t deserve a place on the head.” Should the ear be removed from the head simply because it thought that way?
No—all those parts have particular functions within the whole, the feet for walking, the hands for helping, the ears for listening, the eyes for seeing. And so it is, we see that God has carefully designed each part of the body with a particular part to play within the whole for the good of the whole. No part is less important or more essential than another. So just as our body is one yet has many parts, and all the parts, though many, comprise one body, so it is with our society—and with the church, the body of Christ.
Sometimes people will ask me to pray for them or for something in particular on their behalf. I’m happy to do it. I hope people ask you to pray for them or something on their behalf too. Prayer is the foundation of any vibrant life lived in relationship with God. It’s our conversation with God, and God wants us to talk with him. But there’s this thing about people who ask me to pray. Often they’ll say something that suggests that my prayers are more effective—naturally, because I’m a pastor. I’ve heard things like I’ve got connections or that I have a direct line to the man upstairs.
Well, I suppose that’s true, but not in the way that people mean it. I don’t have any more special connections than the next person. I don’t have a direct line to the man upstairs anymore than you do. Just because I’m a pastor, a religious professional, doesn’t give me a leg up on anyone else in their relationship with God in Christ Jesus. In the body of Christ, there is no distinction before God in who we are—perhaps in what we do, but not in who we are. God hears our prayers, listens, and answers us all, not on account of what we do or don’t do, but on account of who we are and whose we are. We each are beloved creatures, made in the image of God, and though we all fall short of God’s glory, we’re all, each and every one of us, claimed by God as his children, marked with the cross of Christ upon our brows, and sealed with the Holy Spirit as God’s very own, beloved child—with whom he is well pleased. No matter what we do or don’t do, nothing can take that away from us. In God’s sight, we are each important; we are each essential.
Yet the reason we are important, the reason we are essential isn’t for God’s benefit, but for the benefit of each other, for the good of all. God who loves the whole world, God who loves you, has given you a particular job to do. God expects you to be his feet, his hands, his ears, his eyes in the world. God expects you to go places on his behalf. God expects you to help others on behalf. God expects you to listen on his behalf. God expects you to see things on his behalf.
Just as God sent Jesus into the world to walk with us, to help us, to listen to us, to truly see us for who we are, so he sends us to do the same on his behalf—sharing his creative and redeeming love. This is our job as Christians, our unified task. Our labor of love as the body of Christ in the world. Yet you who are the one body of Christ are also individually members of it. We might ask in the church, “Are all pastors? Are all musicians? Are all teachers? Do all work in the kitchen?” No—but we all work strive toward the same end—making Christ known in loving action and words in order that God’s original peace might be known.
The same is true for our life together in the world. Are all nurses? Are all civil servants? Are all architects? Do all clean toilets or design airplane engines? No—but we are all called by God to see the holiness in our lives in loving and serving one another for the good of all. That is holy precisely because God has tasked you to do it.
Each of you is important.
Each of you is essential.
It is good for us to celebrate, cherish, and honor everyday, ordinary working people and our contributions to the overall wellbeing and success of our life together. We each have an important, essential individual role to play that contributes to the well-being of the whole. And so it is, we see that God has carefully crafted us and our lives together with each with distinctive-yet-essential jobs to do within the whole for the good of the whole—and that’s just the way he wants it.
n the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 