Hilton Head Island, SC – August 31, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Genesis 2:14-18; Exodus 20:8-11
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work.” – Exodus 20:9-10b (RSV)
Has Labor Lost Its Value?
Labor Day is one of several annual national holidays. It always signals the beginning of the school year, or at least it did in the school districts in which many of us lived for much of our lives. Back in the day, there were Labor Day parades and public gatherings in which labor union leaders and others, including the clergy, spoke out in recognition of the importance of work. Now, labor unions are hard pressed to find jobs for their members or members for those jobs, especially in a state like South Carolina, which is not thrilled with unions and which, during one very memorable period, was not thrilled with The Union, either.
What has happened to the notion of the virtue of work? For one thing, the Great Recession killed millions of jobs, many of which will probably never return, at least in the U.S. of A. Furthermore, there is not nearly as much loyalty to employers or corporations as once was the case. It is not unusual for many people, especially younger people, to have been employed in four or five different companies before they are forty years of age. In addition, many employers intentionally hire people for less than forty hours a week to avoid paying them any benefits. Everyone here this morning knows someone or knows of someone in that situation.
The level of loyalty to an employer who hires someone for less than a full work-week to avert paying someone fairly is likely to be considerably lower than the loyalty of someone who is working for a long-established company which takes good care of its workers at all levels, and not merely those in the top echelons.
My father worked for the Borden Company his entire career. He started out at the Borden plant in Ingersoll, Ontario out of high school, and was transferred from there to North Lawrence, New York. From there he went to Stirling, Illinois, Fort Scott, Kansas, Dixon, Illinois, Fort Scott, Kansas again, to Ellicottville, New York, to Madison, Wisconsin, and finally, after the market dried up for the division he managed, the Midwest Food Products Division, which specialized in powdered milk, he and Mom went back to Dixon, Illinois. He was the plant superintendent there, and that’s where he ended his career, happy to have a job, and where both my parents died. Dad loved the Borden Company. He did not think it was perfect, but it provided foods necessary for millions of American families, and more than sufficient food for the Miller family. Borden’s didn’t pay extremely well; no food companies do. But because everybody needs to eat, Dad always had a job, even through the depths of the Depression.
Almost all of my father’s career was in management, but he knew everyone by name in all the plants he managed or administered. He was a salaried worker, not hourly, and as such, he worked far more than forty hours a week, because for many of those years he travelled a lot, and when he was a plant superintendent, he was the first into the office in the morning and the last out in the late afternoon. He and our mother taught their four sons the value of honest labor. My oldest brother worked for only two companies in his life, and the second of them was for over thirty years. My younger two brothers were career Army officers, and thus had only one employer, and I have been an active minister for fifty years.
I do not tell you this to suggest that the five Miller men (and the one very hard-working if also unpaid Miller woman) are special, but rather to suggest that attitudes toward work have changed enormously during my lifetime and yours. If one is loyal to one’s employer, it is no longer a guarantee that employer will be loyal to its workers. Think of how many corporations have closed plants in this country and moved lock, stock, and barrelsful of money to other countries where there are no unions and wages are much lower and profits are much higher.
Or ponder how few companies offer pensions anymore. 401(k)s, maybe, but pensions, no.
One of the primary reasons that employer-employee relations have deteriorated over the past half century is that profits are basically much stronger now than they were was fifty years ago. When there is a strong economy, both workers and employees have more options than they did when jobs were really scarce. There are still millions of Americans without jobs, but compared to the Thirties, Forties, or early Fifties, things are much better now than then.
But when you stop to think about it, is a profession or vocation or occupation really all that much to write home about? There’s a Cole Porter song, “Nice work if you can get it.” However, wouldn’t it be nicer not to have to work at all? Is Labor Day nothing more than a sweet lemon conjured up by union leaders and employers?
The Bible begins with a curious observation about the value of labor in the Creation Story in the Garden of Eden. Eden is a Hebrew word which means “Delight.” After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit (everyone thinks apple, but the text says fruit), God told the guilty couple two sobering thoughts. To Eve God said the first: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” We might infer from this that had our so-called first parents not sinned, it would be as easy for women to give birth as to expectorate, although women are not supposed to expectorate. Nor to spit either. As for the second part of this odious verse, it implies that sex is what makes women interested in men (isn’t the reverse really more accurate?), but men shall rule over women anyway. There is no end to the cockamamie purportedly-religious notions that have come from that nonsense. Genesis 3:16 definitely gives women the short end of the stick.
And here is what Genesis 3 says God said to Adam in the Garden of Delight: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life….In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:17,19). The name “Adam,” incidentally, is related to the word “adamah,” which means “ground” (or possibly “garden,” although I doubt it).
Is that a kick in the pants, or what? If we never sinned, we would never have to work, but we do sin, and so we’re consigned to work like a dog for the rest of our lives! What kind of an equitable arrangement is that?
The first time labor is mentioned in holy writ, we are told that it is necessary because of the direct result of human disobedience to the will of God. If we would just behave ourselves, we could sit all day in a chaise lounge beside a swimming pool, eating grapes which grew themselves and Viennese pastries which baked themselves from fields of grain which seeded and tended themselves. Yeah, right! Genesis 3 was written by utopian idealists, to say the least.
But you see, the story of Adam and Eve (did you ever notice it is never “Eve and Adam”?) in the Garden of Eden is intended to tell us that sin is disruptive of what God wanted, but it happens anyway, to the last syllable of recorded time. Thus work, sweaty effort, diligent labor is the penalty for our bad behavior. Otherwise, life would be a bowl of cherries.
But that doesn’t make sense - - - does it? Is it reasonable or rational or sensible to imagine that we could ever live in this world without effort being expended to continue the process of life? Surely no one can seriously think that! Therefore Lowell Mason, the organist and choirmaster of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia wrote both the tune and text to a well-known hymn from the mid-19th century. “Work, for the night is coming/ Work through the morning hours/ Work while the dew is sparkling/ Work ‘mid springing flowers/ Work when the day grows brighter/ Work in the setting sun/ Work, for the night is coming/ When man’s work is done.” Lowell Mason wrote that in 1864. Did the approaching defeat in the Civil War and Sherman’s March to the Sea have anything to do with the sober inspiration for that hymn? No one is likely ever to know, but it is an interesting thought to ponder.
By the time Moses came along in the Bible, labor had become a more accepted reality in life, even by God Himself. The Ten Commandments were handed down to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai. The Fourth Commandment implies that work is naturally taken for granted. It was not a five-day work week, however, but a six-day week. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; it in you shall not do any work.”
By implication, the Fourth Commandment expresses support for the value of labor. But even more, it expresses support for the idea of paying particular attention to God on the seventh day, the Sabbath. The earliest Israelites were shepherds, but the later ones were farmers, and the Fourth Commandment is addressed particularly to farmers. As important as it is for them to work six days every week tending their fields and crops, on the seventh day they need to tend to God, in order to be properly refreshed to start the new week all over again.
In sociological or anthropological terms, true civilization did not evolve out of hunter-gatherer cultures. It evolved where there was an established acceptance of ongoing labor, and a division of labor, where some people did certain things and others did other things. Furthermore, in general the greatest civilizations historically developed in temperate climates, not in tropical climates. It is often too hot in the tropics to work eight or more hours a day at hard work. The siesta becomes a physical requirement in such circumstances. Here in a semi-tropical climate we have learned to stay inside when it is too hot. After all, only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
In our lifetime, a most astounding phenomenon has occurred in the American culture. There is a growing number and percentage of people who work for 25 or 30 years and then retire, living more or less happily ever after in retirement, depending on their health and their finances, for another 35 or 40 years. Whoever could have predicted or even imagined that 50 or 60 years ago? Only successful capitalism makes that possible. A primarily agricultural economy could never produce that situation in the best of circumstances.
Our final hymn is “Come, labor on; who dares stand idle on the harvest plain?” We might infer it is talking about working in agricultural fields, but it is really talking about working in God’s field, which is the entire earth. It refers to one of the parables of Jesus. The hymn points us toward God’s harvest, which means the mission of Christ’s Church. The tune for the hymn was written by T. Tertius Noble, and he called it “Ora Labora,” which is the motto of the Benedictine Order of monks. The two Latin words literally mean “Prayer-Work.”
If you have wondered where all this is leading, and I would be surprised if some of you have not been wondered that for some time, here is where we are going: There is a difference between “secular work” and “sacred work.” Secular work is what we do to earn a living, to put food on the table, to turn what we learned in school into a useful occupation for ourselves and for society. Sacred work is what we do for God, potentially twenty four hours of every day, including Sundays. We toil in secular work because secular work requires toil --- keeping at it, sticking to it, even drudgery from time to time. Sometimes toil is hard physical labor, and we get tired from doing it.
Sacred work, on the other hand, may also be physically tiring, but it is expended for very different reasons. We do secular work basically to benefit ourselves and our families, and we hope that indirectly we also benefit society. We do sacred work to benefit God and others. Going to church every Sunday is sacred work of a sort. It is a weekly exercise intended regularly to offer God the praise He preeminently deserves.
There is much to be said for physical toil. It is necessary to get certain kinds of things accomplished. Farmers have to plant and harvest their crops at the right time, and they must do it quickly, or all may be lost. Scientists and educators and managers work under deadlines, because a certain thing must be done in a certain time frame, or all their efforts will be lost.
Sacred labor may involve toil, but not necessarily so, and not usually. Turning the other cheek, to use the words of Jesus, is sacred work. So is going to extra mile, loving our enemies, giving to those in need. Furthermore, volunteer work, by its very nature, is sacred work.
Of all the communities in which I have lived, I think Hilton Head Island has the highest percentage of volunteers among its population, and Island volunteers probably give more hours per week than most volunteers in most other communities. A culture of caring has been created on this splendid sandpile by the sea. Helping out at Volunteers in Medicine or at the hospital, working at the Bargain Box or the Litter Box or the Deep Well Project, being a tutor in the schools, wielding a hammer or paint brush for Habitat for Humanity, giving time to the Boys and Girls Club, helping with Family Promises, being a member of a service club: these and many, many other activities represent sacred work. They illustrate Christian love put into practice, which is the only way love really works. As Jean Valjean sings in Les Miserables, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”
Retired people ordinarily have more time for volunteer work than other people. In this congregation, most of us are either retired or semi-retired. If we are going to be retired for decades, we have decades of sacred labor left in us. “Go, labor on, spend and be spent/ Thy joy to do the Father’s will/ It is the way the Master went/ Should not the servant tread it still?” “Come, labor on/ claim the high calling angels cannot share/ To young and old the gospel gladness bear/ Redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly/ The night draws nigh.”
Earning a paycheck has always been part of what labor means. That kind of work is what was conceived when Labor Day originated many years ago. It is important to do that kind of work, and to do it as well and as effectively as one can. But sacred work is equally if not more important. There is no time-clock for sacred work, no fixed hours, no boundaries beyond which one cannot or should not go. Tomorrow, on Labor Day, think about what kind of sacred work you can do for God. Then, till you draw your last breath, if you are able, keep doing it.