Beloved Members of St. Martin’s,
Happy Labor Day weekend! I hope we all spend it in gratitude for the labor that makes our lives possible. Our own labor, paid and unpaid, and the labor of others. Labor at its most humble, and yet most necessary, such as the work of those who clean our buildings and homes; feed us, serve us and clean up after us at restaurants; diagnose and repair our cars, public transportation, and airplanes; sew our garments; grow our food and handpick our fresh produce; watch over and teach our children; care for and clean the sick and the elderly; remove our garbage and sort our recycling; mow our grass and work to clean our environment; connect and bury and maintain all the cables that bring us electricity and internet; and a thousand other tasks that can escape our notice.
As a child of the working class, I continue togive thanks for the labor movement that allowed me to be the first person in my family to graduate from college and later attain two graduate degrees. Growing up in a working class neighborhood, we learned that we are all mutually dependent upon each other: acknowledging the obvious division of labor in a specialized economy was as simple as looking from house to house in our subdivision and ticking off the jobs that each of my friends’ parents and neighbors did: Mr. Green was a policeman; Mr. Lee was a grocer; Mr. Miller worked with my dad repairing and maintaining aircraft; Mrs. Phillips was a bookkeeper like my mom; Ms. King was a counselor at the junior high; Ms. Andersen managed a restaurant; and so on.
All of them did their jobs so that my parents could do their jobs, and vice versa; and that collective effort was done so that the bills were paid and that all of us kids could have food, shelter, and an education, which was shorthand for “a better life.” There was no such thing as not needing your neighbor, or kidding yourself that anyone was truly self-sufficient in an arrogant way. And the early months of the COVID pandemic in 2020 should serve as a lasting reminder to us of the truth that all workers depend upon other workers, as we remember how we were reminded that grocery clerks and nurses and garbage men and nursing home aides and teachers were designated “essential workers” for a reason.
Our epistle and our gospel passages from the common lectionary for this weekend remind us that we live collectively, in community, and offers us guidance for how to live together not just in peace but in care for one another, starting with how we speak to and about each other. Jesus insists in our reading from Mark that cleanliness begins with keeping our hearts free from greed, envy, violence, deceitfulness, slander, and from treating people like objects.
As people of faith, the author of James reminds us to choose our words carefully: “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger…” This is a prerequisite for James’s main exhortation for disciples: to not just HEAR the Word of God, but ACT upon what Jesus teaches us. And that starts with celebrating and honoring our common life together, honoring each other with our words and our actions to strengthen the bonds of community and communion. These are wise words indeed, especially in an election year.
On Monday, I invite all of us to spend some time with the readings (Ecclesiasticus 38:27-32a; 1 Corinthians 3:1-10; Matthew 6:19-24) the Episcopal Church suggests for Labor Day from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, which may be found by clicking HERE. And may we all especially pray and live into the Collect of the Day, not just today but every day:
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.
In Christ’s love,
Mother Leslie+
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