The Call of the Carpenter

Deuteronomy 24:14-15. Matthew 19:23-26

So I should probably confess to all of you that as far as I know, I am the only ordained minister in the entire Rocky Mountain Conference of the United Methodist Church (Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming) whose fulltime ministry has been with Labor Unions, low-wage workers, and issues of workplace justice. And this fact never fails to raise at least a few eyebrows (of curiosity and sometimes suspicion) among the faithful! In fact, throughout my ministry, I’ve noticed that some church folk get uncomfortable if you talk at all about the connections between economic justice and religion. But the plain truth is that the Bible hardly talks of anything else. For example, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the subject of justice for the poor and those who labor for wages is the second most prominent theme (idolatry is the first). In the New Testament, one out of every 16 verses is about the poor. In the Gospels, the number is one out of every 10; in the Book of James, one out of every five.

So today, with the help of some of these Scriptures, I want to lift up and honor all the so-called “common” people who live by the sweat of their brow…the many people for whom work (if they can get it) is too often experienced as an oppressive burden. But as Christians, we know that the God revealed to us in Scripture is a God who empowers common people to do some very uncommon things.

Consider the great story of our faith: To begin with, God’s chosen people, the Israelites, were a rag-tag group of slaves living under oppression in Egypt and forced to labor for the Pharaoh. Our scripture this morning from Deuteronomy calls the Hebrews to remember this heritage; to practice economic justice even to the “aliens” among them, even to the immigrants living in their towns, because after all, the Jews themselves had been “illegal” aliens of a sort when Moses led them out of bondage through the wilderness and toward the Promised Land.

In the New Testament, God’s concern for common people is so great that he chooses to have his only Son born to Mary, a young peasant girl from Galilee. When Mary learns of her miraculous conception through the Holy Spirit she sings a revolutionary song known as the Magnificat from the Gospel of Luke: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness…He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones, but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich he has sent away empty.” Now I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to bet that if Mary sang this song in public today, in the United States of America, she would probably have her phone tapped by the Department of Homeland Security. I mean, this is pretty seditious material! And then there is Mary’s husband, Joseph. According to catholic tradition, Joseph is the patron saint of working people. You could say he was the original “working class Joe.” And yet, Joseph is only mentioned five times in Scripture. So we don’t know that many details about his life. What we do know, however, leads me to believe that Joseph’s life would make a

fantastic country-western song. I mean, think about it: he was a carpenter by trade and like many working people, Joseph struggled to provide for his family. Joseph knew hard times. He has a pregnant wife, but everybody in town is gossiping about how he ain’t the real daddy! The child, Jesus, ends up being born in a barn because there is no room at the motel. Later, the family is chased by Herod’s cops into Egypt. All you have to do is add a sick dog and a broken down pick-up truck to the story and you got your country song!

Now you may not particularly enjoy country music yourself, but as Methodist theologian Tex Sample reminds us: “country music sings a theology of failure. It comes from and speaks to people who are born to lose.” Well, one could say the same thing about the Christian Gospel. Jesus came primarily for the so-called “losers” of this world. In his public ministry he ate with sinners, he said the poor were blessed and that the meek would inherit the earth. This message was so shocking that people said: “Can this be that carpenter’s son from Nazareth?” What good could possibly come out of Nazareth, that back-water honky-tonk town of the Roman Empire? How could a carpenter’s son possibly offer forgiveness of sins? How could a carpenter’s son heal lepers and feed the hungry masses? What they did not know or could not believe was that Jesus was on a mission from the Divine Carpenter, the One who had fashioned the very foundations of the universe. The ministry of Jesus was a divine labor of love on behalf of those whose lives were less than lovely. Christ said: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest in your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Over 2,000 years have passed since Jesus spoke these words, and yet many working families still bear the heavy burdens of toil and trouble. And Colorado is no exception. In fact, Colorado is home to one of the most tragic and violent episodes in American labor history: the Ludlow massacre. In 1914 the Colorado State Militia was sent out to break a miner’s strike in Ludlow, CO…about a three hour drive south of here. In the process, they set fire to the miner’s tent colony and killed 12 children, two men, and two women in a massacre that shocked the country. Around the same time, Harry F. Ward, the great leader of the Methodist Federation for Social Action wrote that: “Starved bodies and starved souls are twins, and the struggle to be rid of one is also the struggle to be rid of the other. This means that the Labor Movement is one of the strongest religious forces in the modern world, because of its idealism.” Well, call me an idealist, but I believe Harry F. Ward was right. Despite enormous odds, Union members in this country fought for (and sometimes died for) important labor law reforms that many Americans (union or not) enjoy today: an 8-hr work day with paid overtime, social security, paid vacations, minimum wage laws and laws against child labor. Did you know that in 1820 half of all factory workers in America were children 11yrs old or younger? It was organized Labor along with the

Christian churches that helped to put an end to this exploitation of children. And for those of us in the Methodist tradition, we can be proud that our church has a long and committed history of standing in solidarity with the labor movement. And I’d like to offer just three quick historical examples of this.

In 1834, six farm workers from Tolpuddle, England were convicted of taking an illegal oath to join a union and were sentenced to seven years hard labor in Australia and Tasmania. Five of the six convicts were Methodists and two were local Methodist preachers. One of these Methodist preachers, George Loveless said at his trial: “The motives by which we were influenced to form our union was to prevent our wives and families from being utterly degraded and starved…Nothing can be more absurd than to suppose that you can keep down the conquered for any length of time, by pouring out judgment without mercy.”

Here in the U.S., the very first American organization dedicated to both labor and religion was the Christian Labor Union founded in 1872 by the Methodist minister Jesse Jones and a lay preacher and ship carpenter, Edward Rogers.

And of course, John Wesley himself, the founder of the Methodist movement, began his revival preaching to coal miners in England in the very heart of the Industrial Revolution. In 1733 Wesley wrote a tract entitled “Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions.” In this tract, he blamed the economic crisis in Britain on three things: monopolies, government waste, and unfair wage distribution. Sounds awfully familiar doesn’t it?! It is rather sobering to realize how little some things have changed since 1733!

Because even today in the United States, over 10,000 workers are illegally fired every year just for attempting to organize a union. Last year in the U.S. 4 million workers were injured on the job and 4,000 were killed. Yet in spite of these grim statistics, the average CEO in America still makes over 360 times what the average worker makes. What would John Wesley say about this if he were alive today? Well, we may not know for sure, but we can guess. In a letter to Freeborn Garetson Wesley wrote: “Most of those in England who have riches love money, even the Methodists; at lease those who are called so. The poor are the Christians. I am quite out of conceit with almost all those who have the world’s goods.”

Now this is heavy stuff from Mr. Wesley. And yet, it is no more scandalous the words of Jesus Christ himself heard in our Scripture today from Matthew. This passage is the only place I know of where Jesus says the same thing twice…so we know it’s important! Christ repeats himself: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” What is clear from this passage is that there can be no privilege based on class or social status in God’s Kingdom. Here on earth, more often than not, wealth becomes a barrier not to charity, but to solidarity with common people.

Now I will make the necessary caveat here and say that the point of all this is not to make the rich feel guilty about their wealth. That isn’t my intention and it wasn’t Jesus’ intention either. Jesus knew that the guilt doesn’t move people into discipleship…rather, guilt paralyzes the soul. Jesus came to free us from guilt, but not from responsibility…amen? So the point isn’t to condemn all CEO’s as people of evil intentions. In fact, Bill Gates, one of the richest people on the planet, gives a lot of his money away to charity…much of it to fight AIDS in Africa. So the problem isn’t people like Bill Gates. The problem is that individual charity alone isn’t enough, not in a society like ours where a mere 1% of the population owns 23% of the country’s wealth.

Of course, as Christians, you and I know that wealth comes in many forms. The important thing is not that we are rich in money, but that we are rich in mercy, justice, and righteousness. So on this day brothers and sisters, we are invited to pause and consider the call of the carpenter. The one from Nazareth who spoke so long ago still speaks to us today and he invites us to join him in a great labor of love: a labor of love that remakes the world not in the shape of a dollar sign, but in the shape of a cross.

See more Labor in the Pulpit 2011 here.