SERMON AT ST. PAUL'S POMONA LABOR DAY 2008 - WHY CAN'T LABOR & MANAGEMENT COOPERATE?
Lesson: Sirach
38:24-37;39:1-11 Psalm: 8 Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16
+ In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. AMEN.
I love work. I
work as an attorney about ten to twelve hours a day Monday through Friday,
another eight hours on Saturday, and usually three to four hours on Sunday.
That’s about 70 hours a week. That may sound like a lot to you, but that’s down
from the 80 hours a week I was working from about 1995 to 2004 and the over 100
hours a week I worked when I started my first real business, an investigation
company, in 1985. So much work may sound like there’s something wrong
with me in our increasingly leisure oriented society. It is certainly very
un-Californian…I’m originally an Easterner, where I heard growing up, that
while we in New England lived to work,
Californians worked to live. Call me a workaholic if you will, but I
really do enjoy working.
Labor Day wasn’t a
liturgical feast until the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Labor Day became a
national holiday in 1894 to celebrate the successes of the unionized labor
movement. It’s traditionally been associated with honoring the labor of the
hourly workers, like construction laborers, factory workers, secretaries, food
servers, maids, janitors, and similar persons, Those of us who grew up with a
politically liberal mother, as I did, still see Labor Day in those terms to a
great extent. And despite a long-term decrease in membership, the
unionized labor movement still has its place in dealing with particular issues.
But the way liberals usually look at the relationship between workers and
owners is really too narrow a perspective to look at work from a theological
viewpoint.
Today’s lesson from
the Hebrew Bible highlights the importance of manual work and the industrial
trades. But it also takes note of the fact that those of us who are leaders and
intellectuals are also necessary to make organization succeed, be it a
business enterprise, government agency, or Church. My rather broad
interpretation of the Hebrew Bible lesson’s description of “studying the
law of the Most High”, means not just scribes (the ancient equivalent of
lawyers) but includes all of us who do intellectual work. We are engaged
in a constant discernment of the principles by which God’s creation operates,
be it physics, software, chemistry, architecture, geology, mathematics,
biology, electricity, music, fine arts, and just plain human nature in
activities like sales, social work, parenting, pasturing, and entertainment,
and applying those principles to better our earthly existence. Those endeavors
do in fact require ample time for study and contemplation to produce results.
It is true, that
without factory workers, you would not be sitting in those chairs. It is true
that without janitors, we would not have clean bathrooms in public buildings.
It is true, that without food servers and bussers, you would not be able to
enjoy a leisurely lunch after this Mass.
But that’s only part
of the story. Not only does the world need brawn, it needs brains as well. So
it is also true that someone had to design the chairs before they could be
built in the factory. The janitor who cleans the bathrooms depends on a
chemical engineer to design the detergents he uses to clean. The food
server has a job because someone had the intellectual wherewithal to experiment
with food and originate a recipe for the food being served. The busser’s
cart for dirty dishes originated in the mind of a mechanical engineer.
And, every business needs sales and advertising people to tell the public about
what the factory produces or what’s on the menu at the restaurant. The best
products don’t leave the factory and the tastiest food stays in the kitchen is
someone isn’t out there selling.
To better illustrate,
look at this Church building. Yes, it took carpenters, masons, plumbers,
painters, electricians, plumbers, and the other building trades to put it up.
Without them, we would have no Church building. But they would have been
unable to do so without the architects and engineers who drew the plans and
specifications. The point is, hands-on labor and the products of the mind are
inextricably intertwined. Both were essential to build this building.
Both are essential to any organization.
Traditionally, the
leadership of business organizations and those who produce and sell the product
or service have seen themselves in adversarial positions. They fight each other
for the revenue of a company and control of how it operates. They also see
themselves hierarchically, with business owners at the top claiming a right to
make the rules because they own the capital on which the company runs and the
assets of production, while workers at the bottom thinking they can decide the
rules of the game because they own their labor and have the right to work or
not work. The entire atmosphere is one of mistrust and does not benefit either
management or labor, and no business can exist without its sales force.
This entire idea of
an ongoing conflict between management and labor in the post-modern world is
simply stupid. Strikes and lockouts don’t benefit anyone. In both
situations, the company loses money and so do the workers and so do the vendors
and so do the customers. Oppressive company rules that treat workers like
wayward children and poverty-level wages are the result of that backward,
us-versus-them thinking. So is union thinking that sees management as an
enemy and walks off the job if they don’t get their way.
We need a new
paradigm for management-labor relations. A paradigm is an orientation, a way of
looking a things, a structure, a lens through which we see the world, the
underlying assumptions by which we organize persons and things.
In today’s
Gospel, all workers get paid the same wage for the day, no matter how long they
worked. Today’s workplace needs a paradigm that says all work is, indeed,
equally important, whether one works with one’s brain or one’s hands. In this
paradigm, everyone who works for any organization, all think of themselves as a
COMMUNITY where everyone is valued, where everyone’s dignity is respected.
This paradigm is based on the Baptismal Covenant, to seek and serve
Christ in all persons and to respect everyone’s dignity. This paradigm
sees all positive work as holy, that all work should be a sign of God’s grace,
or it’s not worth doing. Geometrically, it is circles of people around
common goals rather than hierarchies run from the top down.
Some people have
asked me how I, as a lifelong Anglo-Catholic, could work so many hours that I
would seem to embody the so-called “protestant work ethic.” That’s a concept
invented by German sociologist Max Weber in the beginning of the last century from
the notion that Calvinism emphasizes the necessity for hard work as a component
of a person's calling and worldly success as a sign of personal salvation.
Today’s Gospel, however, says the opposite. In the traditional
interpretation of this parable, God is the landowner, the vineyard is the
world, and we are the workers. This parable is God’s statement to us that
no matter how productive we are in earthly terms, ultimately we have the same
reward in God’s kingdom because, rich or poor, God loves us all. Applied
to everyday life at a law firm, I experienced a practical application of this
parable, where the workers who worked longer complained that they should get
more money than those who worked only an hour. I can identify with the boss
here; as an employer. Quite recently, a very dedicated, long term employee was
upset because this spring we handed out profitability bonuses based solely on
job description. This upset one of our workers, and I took her criticism
seriously. The result was I improved morale tremendously by giving everyone the
same amount the next time bonuses were paid.
Another problem with
Weber’s concept is that it says that living as a Christian is an “all about me”
thing, as if your personal salvation is all that matters. But Christianity,
from the get-go, has been all about community. Christianity is not about
personal salvation, it is about salvation for a community. One cannot live as a
Christian alone. If you are by yourself, there is no one to baptize you,
no one to receive your commitment to Jesus; no one to celebrate Mass with you,
no one to forgive your sins, no one to heal you, no one to marry, and no one
for you to lead or be led. The fact is, Jesus himself was born into a
community. His ministry took place in a community among his apostles and
disciples.
Throughout the
canonical New Testament, we see stories about communities as we see Paul
writing to Christian communities at Rome , Corinth , Galatia ,
Ephesus
We Catholics,
Anglican or otherwise, live in a sacramental community. Not only do we all
gather around the table for Mass, but we receive persons into our community
through baptism; those receiving confirmation make commitments to our
community; in unction, the community heals us; in reconciliation, the community
forgives us; ordination gives our community leadership; and in marriage, we
start new communities.
The sacramental
ethos, however, does not end with the ecclesiastical community. It is part of
the community beyond the Church doors. A paradigm where all work is
considered important in that community that constitutes a business organization
happens when we think of all work in sacramental terms.
The concept of work
as sacrament comes from a book by Father Matthew Fox, titled The Reinvention of
Work – A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time. Father Matthew is a former
Roman priest from the Dominican Order. After many years of Rome telling him
what he could or could not write or preach, he felt God calling him to free
himself from the yoke of oppressive Roman censorship by upgrading his Holy
Orders to the Episcopal Church in 1994, where freedom of thought and expression
are the precious hallmarks of our branch of God’s Holy Catholic Church.
Father Matthew’s book
tells us work can be classified into the seven slots representing the seven
classical sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation,
Healing, Marriage, and Ordination. If you’re the receptionist at your office,
or you conduct orientation for new employees, you do baptismal work. If you’re
a teacher, you do confirmation-type work as you prepare young people to assume
the responsibilities of adult citizens. If you’re in healthcare, you do healing
work. If you’re a psychotherapist or a lawyer, you do penitential work as
people tell you their problems and you try to do some things to change things
in their lives so that they can live more fully a more successful part of the
community. If you’re in sales, you’re doing marriage work, because your task is
to initiate and nurture the relationship between your company and your
customer. Those of you who are leaders and managers are doing ordination type
work. If you produce a product, you do Eucharistic work, since Eucharist is
about changing the raw material of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood
of Jesus, just like the furniture factory changed wood into these chairs.
I invite each of you
to think about the work that you do, and how it fits into the each of the
sacraments. Maybe your work covers more than one; mine certainly does, in that
I am the managing shareholder of my law firm and supervise people in addition
to practicing law.
The point is,
however, that your work can be, and should be, an outward and visible sign of
an inward and spiritual grace, not just to benefit you, but something that is
part of a community. Yes, work gives you self-esteem and enables you to be
economically independent, but it also defines your identity in relation to the
community and enables you to contribute your efforts to the community.
For a Christian living as a Christian, that means bringing God’s kingdom among
us on earth as it is in heaven.
Simply put, it is not
only money, but my relationship to the community that makes up our law firm is
what motivates me to work. My work, both at the law firm and here
at St. Paul’s, fits in the context of a community of persons; not only do I
benefit from it, but the community does as well.
In the three
businesses where I have been the leader over the last 23 years, God has always
been part of the scene even though everyone there was not Christian. I
don’t buy into this society’s prevailing secularism that keeps religion out of
the workplace. I have always had crucifix in my office, and an Ordo Calendar in
the common area. Both generate conversation from clients and employees.
Yes, it is a challenge to live in a work community that represents diverse
faith viewpoints. Yet as I walk through the office, I sense the inward and
spiritual grace of the Holy Spirit making our office community what it is.
It is that divine presence I feel in the community of our office that
motivates me to continue doing God’s work as a lawyer, putting down the mighty
from their seat and exalting the humble and meek, and the love I feel in this
community, that motivates my continued service here.
May God bless all of
you in your work, whatever you do, and always remember that your work, whatever
you do, is important in God’ eyes. AMEN.
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