Prepared by Father Thomas McAlpine. 

What might the Spirit be saying to us in these readings?

Let’s start with Paul’s discussion of Jesus’ resurrection in his letter to the Corinthians. “If Christ has not been raised…” What’s at issue here? Paul gives multiple answers to the question; one of his stronger answers occurs later in the chapter: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (v. 32). If Christ has not been raised this [our presence in this Mass] requires a special kind of stupid. Another answer implicit in the text: If Christ has not been raised, then this world doesn’t matter. It’s disposable. But Christ raised—that’s God’s strongest statement that this world matters, that this world has a future.

For what that future looks like, let’s turn to the Gospel. Here we encounter Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. Jesus’ words are surprising, by many accounts nonsensical. No one wants to be poor, hungry, weeping, and those who are poor, hungry, etc. are not obviously blessed or happy. So the verb tenses are important: “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” The future is not a simple continuation of the present. And perhaps a better translation than ‘blessed’ or ‘happy’ is ‘fortunate’: as in you’ve got the winning lottery ticket.

But pulling back the camera, how can Jesus be pronouncing the poor etc. fortunate and the rich etc. unfortunate? How, for that matter, could his mother sing “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, / and lifted up the lowly; / he has filled the hungry with good things, / and sent the rich away empty” (Lk. 1:52-53)? Here we need to pull the camera back further, say, to Psalm 82. It’s short; I’ll read it.

¹ God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
² “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
³ Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
⁴ Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
⁵ They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk around in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
⁶ I say, “You are gods,
children of the Most High, all of you;
⁷ nevertheless, you shall die like mortals,
and fall like any prince.”
⁸ Rise up, O God, judge the earth;
for all the nations belong to you!

Within Holy Scripture this vision is an uncontested portrait of our world. Our world is usually unjust. While there are exceptions, the wicked, sinners, and scornful of Psalm 1 usually play an outsized role in making and interpreting our laws. The Golden Rule: those with the gold rule. So Jesus, with only some hyperbole, declares the poor, hungry, etc. fortunate and the rich, full, etc. unfortunate, because usually the poor are poor because of injustice and the rich are rich because of injustice.

Within Holy Scripture the benchmark for justice is the law of Moses, that law that this morning’s psalm celebrated. And there it’s clear that justice is both about how wealth is acquired and how wealth is stewarded. Acquired: only one set of weights and measures in the marketplace. Stewarded: “my” wealth is finally held in trust for the community. Harvests are to be incomplete, so the poor have something to glean. In Deuteronomy all debts are cancelled every seven years. In Leviticus every forty-nine years there’s a Jubilee in which all return to their original tribal inheritance. Justice means nobody stays poor—or rich—indefinitely.

Of course other factors influence where wealth or poverty cluster. Proverbs has much to say about diligence and sloth, wise and foolish decisions. The larger environment plays a role, all those things over which we have no control: droughts, locusts, armies passing through. But when the Bible pulls back for the big picture (like Psalm 82, Mary’s Song, the Beatitudes), injustice is centerstage.

The poor, hungry, etc. of the Beatitudes are fortunate because God will respond to the prayer at Psalm 82’s end: “Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!”

How do we respond to these texts? Before moving to our other readings, three immediate observations. First, between Psalm 82 and the Beatitudes, to the degree that I’m rich, full, etc. it’s sheer folly to assume that that’s simply the result of my virtue. On the personal level, that might be. On the corporate level, no way. So one of our confessions speaks of “the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” We live on stolen land, our consumer goods are cheap because we’re happy to get them from countries that discourage unionization. Should we wish to move from confession to amendment of life, there’s plenty to keep us occupied.

Second, the two verses immediately following today’s Gospel reading: “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” So understandable as it might be, our response to the Beatitudes is not to take up the sword, to set ourselves up as judges.

Third, the poor, the hungry, etc. need to wait until Jesus’ return? Absolutely not. Jesus’ vision is that his church be the sphere in which his words are experienced to be true. Recall Jesus’ words to Peter: “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age– houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions– and in the age to come eternal life” (Mk. 10:29-30). But from the start we’ve tended to downsize that vision, so Jesus’ brother James writes:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (2:14-17)

What’s the church for? (What’s faith for?) The Beatitudes can do wonders for our imagination.

Turning to Jeremiah and Psalm 1 we might hear that image of the tree planted by water as a strategy for life in the world as described both by Psalm 82 and by Jesus’ Beatitudes. It’s an unjust world, and God’s addressing that, but it’s not a quick fix. God’s playing a long game, and the image of the tree planted by water urges us to likewise play a long game. That can be hard. The trust on which Jeremiah focuses is the trust that God’s timetable is preferable to ours. (And, parenthetically, like Jeremiah we’re free to repeatedly bend God’s ear about that—as long as we’re willing to listen to how God might respond.)

Did you notice the chorus in today’s readings? Jeremiah: How fortunate/blessed/happy those who trust in the Lord. The Psalm: How fortunate/blessed/happy those who delight in the law of the Lord. Jesus: How fortunate/blessed/happy the poor. Why (bottom line)? God raised Christ from the dead. God has plenty of skin in the game, and, shifting the image, God regularly invites us to share His Body and Blood so that we play that game well.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.” Blessed are we as we continue to examine ourselves and make the choices that position us to together hear Jesus’ words as good news, to together experience Jesus’ words as good news.

Rise up, O God, judge the earth;
for all the nations belong to you!

Our God is responding to that prayer today, and invites us to join in that response today:

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field—all us trees of the field—shall clap their hands.” (Isa. 55:12).

 

What matters right now? 

I have a slip of paper on the frame around my laptop screen, with those words on it. Now and then I notice it. It’s almost always a useful question. A question that invites me to pause, and re-assess. 

What matters right now?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus’ disciples have a clear idea that what matters is the journey they’re on. This is not just any old walk across the countryside. Jesus is leaving Jericho ON HIS WAY TO JERUSALEM. The Triumphal Entry – the event we remember and re-enact on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week and Jesus’ path to the cross – is the very next thing that happens.

I don’t know exactly what the disciples think is about to happen. They definitely don’t anticipate what Jesus anticipates: his arrest, trial, and execution. They might be banking on some combination of a people’s revolution and an angelic army that will kick out the Roman occupying forces and install Jesus as a new divine King on the throne of David. So they are champing at the bit! Things are about to get exciting! Tell that beggar to shut up and not bother the Master! We’re on our way!

But then they are interrupted. Because Bartimaeus won’t shut up. And the interruption becomes the story. The thing that matters. 

I don’t know whether Jesus stops because he finally hears Bartimaeus – or because he consults his own inner slip of paper that asks, “What matters right now?” Regardless: Jesus stands still. He calls Bartimaeus to him. And Bartimaeus is healed. 

Healed, and changed. Mark says that he follows Jesus on the way, meaning both that he joined the crowd headed for Jerusalem –  AND that he became a disciple, part of the movement. Which is probably why we know his name. 

The journey continues; but for a few transformative moments, the interruption became the story. There was a pause. There was listening.  There was noticing of needs, previously ignored. There was a fresh assessment of what matters.

We have lived this, haven’t we, dear ones? Our Great Interruption is almost too familiar to talk about. Covid forced us to pause…. and in the pause, we listened. We noticed needs we had ignored – in our own lives and in the larger systems that surround us. The differing impacts of the pandemic laid bare the starkness of economic inequality in our country. Locked down in our homes with few distractions, many of us saw more clearly than we had before the naked violence against people of color that our country tolerates. Likewise, we’ve watched the terrifying impact of increasingly chaotic and extreme weather systems worldwide. Global climate change no longer seems like tomorrow’s problem. 

And now, as we slowly emerge, I’m hearing from a lot of people that they’re pretty ambivalent about “getting back to normal.” The pause – the Great Interruption – gave us time to notice that lots of thing about Beforetimes Normal were not that great. Collectively, we’d like our “new Normal” to be better, kinder, more just, more inclusive, more mindful of our fragility and our interdependence. Individually, we’d like our “new Normals” to make more room for what matters. 

Where does church fit into all that?

Why does church matter, right now? 

One answer, of course, is that church matters because we gather to worship the Creator and Source, the Word and Friend, the Breath of Life and Advocate. There’s something precious and necessary about choosing, together, to present ourselves to the Love that formed the universe. Not everyone finds that they need a community in order to regularly turn their hearts towards God. But many of us find that it helps. A lot. 

Another answer is that churches can be a way to organize people’s efforts and resources to do good in the world. We do that some, here – and we do it reasonably well, though I suspect we have the capacity for more.

But church doesn’t only matter for what we can do out there. Church matters for what we do HERE. Within, and among. 

A couple of weeks ago, Sharad Yadav, the pastor of a church in Portland, wrote up a list of reasons to commit to a church. I think he was probably inspired by the same question I’ve just asked – what’s the value of church, in this time of the Great Interruption, the Great Reassessment?

Yadav says that church, at its best, can help us stay focused on what matters. He writes: To join a church is to live in rebellion against the … forces which are brainwashing you into making your consumer desire the center of the world.

[To join] a church is to organize your life around a time to confess your limitations, culpability and imperfections – together with other people.

Joining a church is a way of maintaining healthy skepticism about human knowledge and capacities in the language of divine mystery.

So: Stepping out of our cultural currents, repenting and making amends, reminding ourselves of our place in the universe – these are important practices for keeping our minds and hearts clear and oriented. 

Church, at its best, can help us know our own worth – and our capacity to share. Yadav writes, To join a church is to cultivate an environment …where your life is not measured according to any other purpose or goal than to discover and enjoy your own humanity.  

And: To join a church is to cultivate an imagination for how your unique talents and creative potential can be offered on purpose for love instead of money.

And church, at its best, can help us develop and practice our better-tomorrow skills. It can be a space where we explore, together, how to live more fully into our hopes and intentions. Yadav writes, Joining a church organizes your financial priorities around supporting an inclusive community for vulnerable people . . . that you actually have to live with.

Joining a church is a life lesson in how to deal with [jerks] without retaliating, dehumanizing or running away…

And… Joining a church is a way of practicing –  among a small group of people over a significant period of time – what you’d like the world to be like.

What would you like the world to be like?  How could we practice that together, here? 

I was talking with a young person of this parish recently who said he’d love to see St Dunstan’s lean into becoming our own squirrelly little mutual aid network. Mutual aid is a model in which people cooperate and share resources for the good of everyone in the community.  

The first step, of course, is to break down the foolish illusion that everybody here is FINE, economically, emotionally, employment-wise, and so on. Lots of us have needs – and the assumption that we’re all middle-class, healthy, happy, and totally have our stuff together, only makes it harder to name our struggles and and extend care for one another. I see opportunities on a weekly basis – whether it’s connecting the newly-bereaved with those already walking that road; or passing on hand-me-downs; or sharing skills like canning or knitting; or connecting the bored with the lonely, or the curious with the knowledgeable; or loaning out a specialized tool; or accompanying someone to their first AA meeting.

One of my favorite pandemic phenomena here at St. Dunstan’s was the spontaneous emergence of the puzzle box. There’s a plastic tub outside the church’s front door where you can borrow a puzzle, or leave one for others to borrow. If you’re local and like puzzles, check it out! I had nothing to do with it, and I think it’s great. 

What if we did more of that… bit by bit? With stuff? With skills? With our time? With our hearts?

What if we really had each other’s backs, in substantive ways – and not just long-established members and “church friends” and people who come every week, but anyone who thinks of St. Dunstan’s as their church home – and anyone who shows up looking for meaningful community?

Because a lot of people are looking for meaningful community. For people who will learn their name, and ask how they are, and mean it. 

Church matters because it’s made of people, and people matter.

Church matters because we try to see each other with God’s eyes and love each other with God’s love, here, and sometimes we succeed. 

Church matters because we’re all seeking and struggling and wondering, and it’s less lonely when we share it. And because our seeking and wondering are deepened by one anothers’ experiences and perspectives. 

In this season when the interruption has become the story – in this season of fresh assessments of what matters right now – I am so deeply grateful for all the people who believe that St. Dunstan’s matters, and who support this church with their time and talent, resources and prayers, energy and skill. 

And I am so deeply hopeful about all the people for whom St. Dunstan’s will matter – in a whole range of ways – in the days and months and years ahead, as we continue to seek to use whatever God places in our hands to add to the world’s measure of hope, wholeness, and delight. 

 

 

List of reasons to join a church posted on Facebook by Sharad Yadav, October 7, 2021.

Our first Scripture reading today is from the Book of Job. Job is a strange, interesting book of the Bible. It was probably written five or six hundred years before the time of Jesus. I don’t think the book is trying to tell us about a real person named Job. It’s not a biography. Instead, the story of Job is used to explore what it’s like when someone is suffering. Going through something really hard and really sad. How their community responds; and where God is, in times like that. Our first reading is the set-up for the story. You will hear God bragging about Job and how righteous he is. And then there’s this other character, the Adversary. Adversary means someone you’re arguing or fighting with. In Hebrew, the word Adversary is shatan. Satan! So we might say that this character is Satan – the Devil. But in these old, old stories, the Devil has a very special job: TESTING good people to see how good they really are. And that’s what happens here.  Let’s receive the story and our other readings, and then I’ll say some more about it. 

Job 1:1 – 2:10

So we heard the beginning of the book of Job! Notice how it made you feel. Did you smile or laugh a little? Some people did! That’s OK! I actually think it is supposed to be funny, even though the things that happen are terrible. All these bad things happen very fast because the story wants to get to what it’s really interested in  – which is how Job handles this situation; and how his friends handle it. 

I was trying to think of a good modern example that’s kind of like this, and I thought it’s a little like the TV show The Good Place. The Good Place is a show about what it means to be good person. And it’s set in some kind of afterlife. So almost all the main characters, are dead. But you’re not really supposed to be sad about that. It’s just the setup for the story. I think this first part of Job is meant to work the same way. 

I think if this was a TV show, I would probably stop watching because I didn’t really like any of the characters! The Adversary is certainly not very nice. Job himself seems kind of controlling and mean, actually. And God is TERRIBLE, here! Right? What an awful idea, that God would torture a human being just to see how faithful they are!

I don’t think the Book of Job really thinks that God is like that. I think the voice of this text thinks that God is hard to understand; and that life can be hard to understand. But the part of the story we heard today is not trying to tell us the truth about God. It’s just setting up a story. The Bible is complicated, and we’re not supposed to read all the pieces of it the same way. 

So, what happens next? … What happens next is that Job’s friends come to visit, to console and comfort him. That’s what you do when somebody suffers a tragedy, right? You come be with them. You let them know you care and that they’re not alone. 

And you know, Job’s friends start out pretty well, because they just sit with him, in silence, for seven whole days. But then they start to talk… and things go downhill fast. 

After two chapter setting up the story, the Book of Job spends 35 chapters on Job’s friends and Job talking – often arguing! – about what Job’s suffering means, and about God. 

His friends think they’re helping Job. But are they?  I want you to think about how it feels when you are really sad or really struggling, and then we’ll see if what Job’s friends have to say seems helpful to you. 

Job’s friend Eliphaz starts out. He says: Job, you say that all this tragedy just came out of the blue, but that’s not how things work. Bad things don’t happen to good people. God must be punishing you for something. You brought this on yourself in some way. So, cheer up! Your suffering isn’t meaningless; it’s happening because you’re secretly bad! 

Did that make you feel better?… 

It didn’t make Job feel better either. He said, you’re only saying this because my tragedy makes you afraid! You want to believe that this happened to me for a reason – so that you can tell yourself that nothing like this will ever happen to you.

Then Job’s friend Bildad tries to cheer Job up. 

He says, Okay, Job; maybe you ARE a righteous person. Then it must have been your CHILDREN who were sinful. That’s why God killed them. But since YOU are a good person, you’ll be fine. God will replace your lost children and your wealth, and you’ll be happy again. 

Did that make you feel better?…

Now, sometimes, it **could** be helpful to tell someone who is suffering that there may be healing and joy beyond their current situation. But it’s so easy to get that wrong, and to say it in a way that minimizes what they are going through. Also, you can’t just replace people you love with other people! Although you can trust that there will keep on being people to love.  

Job tells Bildad: You are trying so hard to make sense of this situation in human terms, but humans can’t know why God does what God does.

But then Job’s friends Zophar and Eliphaz start to scold Job. They say, You shouldn’t be talking about God like this! You keep saying you’re a good person and didn’t deserve this tragedy, but that makes God seem like a villain! Your anger is pushing you away from God. Just be quiet and accept your suffering. It is what it is. 

Did that make you feel better?…

Well, there might be some truth to the idea that sometimes we just have to learn to live with hard stuff. Sometimes there is no way to make sense of things. But Job doesn’t like being told to be quiet. He says, I have the right to cry out to God in my suffering. I don’t have to squash down my pain and my anger,  just because you’re uncomfortable. 

I am paraphrasing all of this – saying it in simpler ways than the text of the Scripture – but I want you to hear how angry Job gets! He calls his friends worthless doctors and miserable comforters! He says, If you would just shut up, that would be your wisdom!

He hears their platitudes – God doesn’t send us anything we can’t handle; everything happens for a reason;  what does not kill us makes us stronger; look on the bright side and count your blessings -Job hears all that and he calls it proverbs of ashes.

Proverbs of ashes. Empty words that carry no comfort for him. 

And even though I don’t entirely like Job – Job has a point. Bad things happen to good people all the time – and good things happen to bad people.  Sometimes what doesn’t kill us, leaves us wounded. And I don’t actually believe that everything happens for a reason – though I believe that God’s grace can often bring good out of bad situations. 

For Job, none of this means that life is meaningless and God is a fantasy. Job believes in God – and that God is good, even though sometimes it’s hard to spot God’s goodness at work until we’re looking back on something, or have some distance from it. 

Job is honest about feeling abandoned and unheard by God. He says, “I cry to you, and you do not answer me.” But Job is certain that God is there. Even in emptiness and loss.

And Job insists, again and again and again, that he’s shouting out his grief and rage to God, not because he lacks faith, but because he has faith. That there is room for these feelings in his love for God and God’s love for him. Wouldn’t it be nice if his friends could just be with him in his big feelings, too? 

A writer I like, Anne Lamott, says that in life it’s part of our job to hold someone’s hand and bring them juice, until it’s our turn to have someone hold our hand and bring us juice.  We all have times when we need comforting.  And we all have chances to be a comfort for someone else – to be a friend when things are hard or sad or scary. 

We can all learn from Job’s friends – what they get right and what they get wrong. Show up. Don’t try too hard to make it make sense. Let people feel what they’re feeling. If somebody else’s big feelings make you feel kind of funny inside, the loving thing to do is figure out how to handle that funny feeling on your own, instead of doing what Job’s friends do, telling him to stop talking about how unhappy he is because it’s making them uncomfortable. 

And remember: sometimes your silence is your wisdom.

The Letter of James is odd. 

James is one of a set of texts in the New Testament that we call Epistles – Greek for “letters.” Some of the Epistles were written to a particular church – or even a particular person – and address specific situations or questions; and some are more general teachings, probably circulated among many churches. James seems to be the second kind of Epistle. He says he’s writing “to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion” – a poetic way of saying that he’s writing to God’s scattered people, to Christians all across the ancient world. 

While fitting the general template, in other respects, James is pretty different from other Epistles. For one thing, James doesn’t have much to say about Jesus. In five chapters, James mentions Jesus exactly twice – once when the author introduces himself, and once in today’s text. Compare that with Paul who mentions Jesus seventeen times in the six chapters of his letter to the Galatians. 

James has many resonances with the Wisdom texts of the Hebrew Bible – texts that use poetic language to describe the ways of the world and offer moral guidance. Our Proverbs text this morning is a good example, and you can easily see the similarity with James. And like Proverbs and other wisdom texts, James covers a lot of ground in a few verses. James can be hard to preach because there’s so much you could unpack from any given passage!

Who wrote this text? The author introduces himself as James, “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus.” The traditional view – held by some modern scholars as well – is that this James was Jesus’ brother, who became an important leader in the church in Jerusalem, the mother church of early Christianity.

In the letter to the Galatians – which is one of the earliest Christian texts, possibly written only fifteen years or so after Jesus – the apostle Paul mentions James, the brother of Jesus, as a church leader in Jerusalem. Non-Biblical early texts also mention a leader named James. 

This James was probably not the same person as either of the disciples named James – because the Gospels say Jesus’ immediate family did not follow him, during his lifetime. But apparently James was a fairly common name! So it’s not a stretch to assume there was another James. 

Some scholars think that the oddness of the letter of James makes it likely to be a late text, perhaps written 100 years after Jesus or more – based on similarities of language and theme with other, non-Biblical texts of that period.  

Some scholars think the oddness of James makes it more likely to be very early. If James really was a prominent leader in the Jerusalem church, and possibly Jesus’ brother – and writing as early as the late 40s when the Christian world was still quite small – he wouldn’t have felt a need to explain who he was, or justify his Christian credentials. James doesn’t refer to the Gospels at all, which would make sense if it was written before the Gospels. He doesn’t talk a lot about Jesus – but he does sound a lot like Jesus. There’s a lot in James that closely parallels, or expands on, Jesus’ teachings. Which, again, would make a lot of sense for an early church leader – who maybe knew Jesus pretty well. The ways in which James has more in common with parts of the Old Testament than with other New Testament texts also makes sense for an early date, when most followers of Jesus were Jews.

I’m not a New Testament scholar and I haven’t read all the sources – but I do find the case for James as a very early Christian text to be pretty convincing, and that’s how I think of it. 

The Letter of James covers a lot of ground, but it does have a strong central theme: The call for believers to live a transformed life, in keeping with their new orientation as followers of Jesus. Last week I talked about integrity – about having our outsides match our insides, our actions match our values and intentions. That’s one way to describe James’ core message: Live a life that matches your faith. 

And it’s a message that transcends time and context. Reading James, I feel like he’s speaking to me – to us – a lot of the time. There are parts that don’t carry over as well, but much of James’ teaching feels pretty timeless: practicing generosity; guarding our speech so we don’t harm others with our words; being considerate of those in need; not being judgmental or greedy; being watchful about where the ways of the world – the social norms of our time and place – may be at odds with the way of Jesus. And so on. 

Integrity is always aspirational, always something we’re living into, step by step. And some of James’ words are important for me personally, as part of that work. They function as holy thorns in my side, urging me to live what I say I believe. In last week’s reading we had this passage: “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.”

I think about that text pretty often. About looking in the mirror of my faith and seeing myself honestly: where my life matches my deepest hopes and commitments, and where it does not. When I turn away from that mirror, what do I do? How do I act? What do I change? 

And then in today’s text, there’s this: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”

That passage gives me a good sharp poke now and then. I’m very clear that my salvation in Jesus Christ is God’s free gift. Our works – our actions – cannot earn God’s favor. But we are called to live lives shaped by gratitude and mercy – to live out love, as people who know ourselves beloved. As James says here: If our faith doesn’t show up in how we live, then what difference does it make – to us, to our neighbors, to the world? 

James’ description of faith that never manifests itself in acts of justice or mercy is harsh: he says that faith is as good as dead. I wouldn’t be so sharp in my own language. Living up to our own best intentions is demanding lifelong work. But James’ challenge rings in my ears now and then: You say that you have faith? Show me. 

So James’ strongest theme is the call to live in accord with what we believe. Not just keeping it in our heads and hearts but letting it spill over into our lives. Today’s reading gives us a look at the second strongest theme in James: the rich, the poor, and how folks in the middle respond to the rich and the poor. 

James starts with the question of a church’s hospitality to someone joining them for worship. He says, Your welcome should be the same, whether someone is visibly poor or visibly wealthy. If anything, you should favor the poor, whom, says James – quoting Jesus – God has chosen to be heirs of the kingdom of God. 

Later, in chapter 5, James preaches against the wealthy who become rich by exploiting their workers: “Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire… Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” 

The Sunday lectionary tactfully skips this passage!

James’ indictment of those who gather wealth through unfair practices is also a call to concern for the welfare of workers. Tomorrow is Labor Day, a federal holiday set aside to honor the American labor movement and American workers. Labor unions are a way for workers to organize so that they have the power, together, to ask those in charge – factory owners, company leaders – for what they need. Like any human movement, the labor movement is imperfect, but I’m deeply grateful for its contributions. Some of its accomplishments include the eight-hour workday and the concept of overtime pay; the weekend; workplace safety standards and equipment; sick days; child labor laws; and the minimum wage. 

But while there are some protections for some workers – there is so much left to do. One of the realities laid bare by the Covid pandemic was that all of us depend on low-wage workers, who in many cases don’t have much protection. While many Americans relied on Amazon to meet daily needs during lockdown, Amazon warehouse workers faced a grueling pace of work that took a toll on both bodies and minds. Food workers – those who plant, harvest, process, pack,  transport, sell and serve food – were deemed essential and required to stay on the job, but with few added protections. As a result, one study found that in California – which grows a lot of food – food workers faced a 39% increase in deaths, compared to a 22% increase across all working adults. Many low-wage workers don’t have sick leave – so they come to work sick and potentially help the pandemic spread, not because they are selfish or thoughtless, but because they depend on their wages and can’t afford to risk their jobs. 

The Covid pandemic has been especially brutal for health care workers. Nearly 4000 health care workers died of Covid during the first year of the pandemic in the United States; the World Health Organization estimates that over 100,000 health care workers have died of Covid worldwide. 

Even apart from Covid illness, the past eighteen months have been exhausting and traumatic for many health care workers, especially those directly involved in care for Covid patients. Maybe you’ve seen some of their anguish, frustration, and grief in viral social media posts. A friend tells me about another friend who did a stint in Covid care last year, and now experiences what I would describe as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder when they step back into that part of the facility. 

This week it was announced that nurses in the UW Health system are seeking to re-form a union, as a way to advocate for themselves, their families, and their patients, in the face of challenges like deteriorating staff-to-patient ratios, recruitment and retention challenges, contributing to burnout and exhaustion. As one UW doctor said, “I want the nurses I work with to have what they need because their working conditions are patients’ treatment conditions.” (Source: https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/madison/politics/2021/05/20/uw-health-workers-push-for-union-voice_ )

One of the night prayers in our prayer book asks God to watch over those who work while others sleep, and to help us never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil.

Our common life depends upon each other’s toil. It’s hard to put it more simply and clearly. 

There’s dignity and significance in most human work. But Labor Day and the letter of James invite us to be especially mindful of those who keep our society and economy running, for low wages and with few benefits or protections. CNAs and grocery store shelf stockers; bank clerks and mail carriers; farm and factory workers; bus drivers, first responders and child care workers; and so many others. 

May one of the lessons we carry away from the Covid pandemic be a deepened awareness of just how much our common life depends upon each other’s toil, and a renewed commitment to the wellbeing of all essential workers.

May the apostle James provoke us not only to wish our neighbors peace, and health, and food, but to do what we can, when we can, to help ensure the wellbeing of all God’s people. 

Let us pray. 

Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

— Collect for Labor Day, the Book of Common Prayer, p. 261

Heavenly Father, we remember before you those who suffer want and anxiety from lack of work. Guide the people of this land so to use our public and private wealth that all may find suitable and fulfilling employment, and receive just payment for their labor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

— For the Unemployed,  the Book of Common Prayer, p. 824

 

Source for figures about food workers, and more information: 

https://foodchainworkers.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Food-Workers-Organizing-on-the-COVID-Frontlines-FINAL.pdf?link_id=1&can_id=1e3f40f0f0b23ebbd5900d42b6cdb30b&source=email-subject-line-30&email_referrer=email_1086129&email_subject=new-report-today-we-are-not-disposable-food-workers-organizing-on-the-covid-frontlines

9AM Zoom online gathering: We use slides during worship that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Sunday, July 11 Bulletin

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…
1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.