What Does Jesus Christ Have to Say to Labor?              9/4/49

 

Scripture:  read John 5: 1-17

 

Text:  John 5: 17;  “Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”

 

Labor Day is hardly a great festival of the churches on earth.  Here in the USA the first Monday of September is now a holiday in the nation, and many churches mark the Sunday previous as Labor Sunday; but by no means all of them.

 

Unfortunately many clergymen and church staff members give the day no recognition as such, counting it not a part of the church year.  Among some church leaders there is indifference to the problems of labor; among some, frustration; among some, a feeling of guilt.

 

Frustration, because of failure to find a way to be of Christian service to the people, especially leaders, of labor.  Guilt, because of the notion that the church and its leaders ought to be more effectively concerned for the spiritual, social, and physical welfare of all toilers of every station of responsibility.

 

Usually, the Protestant churches are not exactly crowded on Labor Sunday.  It falls on a holiday weekend, the last before the school season opens.  Numbers of families “take off” for one last outing before the discipline of the school year.  Others are “laboring” to close their summer cottages before school opens.  Some of the organized laboring folk concentrate on their picnics or other celebrations, many of them to the neglect of their church attendance.  Others are regularly in their place in their own houses of worship.  But despite these things, responsible Christians and church leaders do have a concern for all people, and the great majority known as “workers” are no exception.

 

Actually, most people come in the classification of “workers” - factory employees, and employers, farmers, miners, craftsmen of every description, doctors, lawyers, teachers, clergymen, merchants and certainly housewives.  Work of some sort, in planning, administration, manual dexterity, study and training, is an urgent necessity for almost everyone.

 

I suppose the “workers” referred to in Labor Day celebrations are chiefly those who belong to, or are eligible for membership in organized Labor Unions.  For these, as well as for all other workers, the church must have concern.  For we believe that Jesus Christ has something to say to all people.  For years now, the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, representing the best of thinking in a majority of Protestant Christian Churches, has issued a statement for consideration on Labor Sunday.  I should like to read to you the statement recommended for this year.

 

            American workers in factory, store, field, and office, with their families, compose most of the American nation and most of the Christian churches.  Labor Day calls attention to their rights, responsibilities, and aspirations.  We therefore call upon the churches to unite wholeheartedly in celebrating this Labor Sunday.

 

            Everywhere workers are taking a larger part in the shaping of their own lives.  They are assuming greater economic, social, and political responsibilities.

 

            Workers want status.  They want to feel that they are recognized as far more significant than the machines they operate and the materials they handle.  They want to bring the democracy they hear so much about into their work-a-day world.  American labor has made great strides toward this goal.

 

            Workers want security.  They want an end to the ups and downs of the business cycle.  They want a cushion against the hazards of unemployment, sickness, and old age.  Within recent years the justice of this demand has had increasing practical recognition.

           

            Workers seek self-expression, both in their work and as citizens.  This means wide participation for all in economic and political decision.  In America, social changes over the years have resulted in gradual but significant progress, partly registered in social legislation.

 

A World in Ferment

 

            The world is now in a ferment.  Movements that were begun to free the people have been used later to enslave them.  Other movements have effected profound social and economic changes without sacrificing civil and political liberties.  We should take care not to resist change merely because it is change, nor to condemn that which exists merely because it is not as new as something which is proposed.  The strength of democracy is its ability to reinterpret the old, to use the new, to make continuing adjustment between freedom and justice, between individual rights and social demands.  We dare not ignore the just aspirations of all people.  We must strive to realize them within the framework of a Christian society.

 

            The first step toward this end is to recognize the vast changes that have already occurred in our American life.  We have shifted to a large extent from individualism to organization, from comparative self-sufficiency to far-reaching interdependence.

 

            With business management this change has taken the form of building up greater corporations and financial groups, representing vast concentrations of economic power.  Neither the individual worker nor even the local union can successfully deal with a multi-million-dollar corporation regarding terms of employment or conditions of work.  On the part of labor the growth of industrial unions has been stimulated to balance these powerful concentrations.

 

How Will Labor Use Its Power?

 

            The Church must never forsake its basic interest in individuals.  Nevertheless the times demand that it give increasing attention to group action, group morality, and group responsibility in our economic life.  Men and women as objects of God’s redeeming love are not means to be used by the powerful for selfish ends.  They are neither slaves to be driven nor statistics to be manipulated.  Each as a child of God is an end unto himself within God’s purpose.

 

            In America the churches are rightly concerned with the motivation and the social consequences of the increased concentration of corporate power; they face also the great question of the end for which organized labor will use its expanding power.  Will it give Christian principles, including social responsibility, a first place in its program?  Will the men who guide its affairs exercise Christian humility and justice in their use of power?  Will they put the public interest above the special interests of the pressure groups they lead?  The answers to these questions depend upon the religious and ethical values held by the people in the ranks and leadership of labor.

 

            The values that Christianity puts first cannot be realized by preaching and the printed word alone.  They can most effectively be caught from men who share the problems and strivings of those they would serve.  Our churches seek both the organized and the unorganized workers in still larger numbers in their membership and leadership, while they likewise seek to achieve closer contact, understanding, and cooperation with all workers everywhere.

           

The Task Before Us

 

            Such is the task to which we urge earnest dedication by our churches.  This is a task which cannot be done only in the pulpit, in the sanctuary, or where people gather together for prayer and worship.  It must be taken also to wherever people live and work.  The mission of the churches cannot be separated from the restless masses of humanity who seek justice and freedom.

 

            We cannot escape from our increasing interdependence; rather we must accept its responsibilities and meet its challenges.  This means that Christians must be motivated by a purpose to help, never to dominate.  Christians must seek a more intimate and sympathetic understanding of the conditions and just aspirations of all working groups in their own communities; and then apply that understanding, rather than ill-informed prejudices, in their judgment and action as citizens on issues that involve labor’s rights and responsibilities.

 

            In a changing world, as Christians we not only welcome, but seek actively to promote, every advance in human relations toward social justice and human brotherhood under the Lordship of Christ and the love of God for all men.    [end of reading]

 

Like all such statements, resolutions, codes or memorializations, this statement is by no means an end but only a beginning.  Unless followed by Christian action, it is only destined for dusty files.  But it is evidence of the sincere concern of many of our Christian leaders that no group or classification of our people be unrecognized in rights, in self-expression, in receipt and application of the Gospel of Christ.

 

Now what does Jesus Christ have to say to Labor?  In a way, that question sound like a presumption; as if Jesus had a special set of teachings or precepts for Unions.  As a matter of fact, the modern labor union did not exist in the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry.  We have no pronouncement from him on church and labor.  But he did talk to people. --- Had little to say to fishermen as fishermen, carpenters as carpenters, lawyers as lawyers, priests as priests, teachers as professional educators, merchants as merchants and so on.  But he had a great deal to say about righteousness in the lives, hearts, and dealings with people in every one of those vocations.

 

What Jesus Christ has to say to Labor today, is essentially what he has to say to everyone --- those in the so-called professions, those in merchandising and commerce, those in government.

 

1)  For one thing, all productive work, contributing to the welfare of people and the glory of God is honorable, worthy and invested with its own dignity.  And the worker is a person in his own right, worthy of his fair share of the common production, to be considered a brother in mankind.  His hopes and ambitions, his frustrations and disappointments, his joys and sorrows, are as important as are those of his foreman or his employer.  He is a person, more important than the machine he tools or the blue prints from which he works.  There is dignity for him in his vocation.  Jesus remarked that God works, and that he, a son of God, works too.

 

2)  For another thing, everyone -- manger, craftsman, manual toiler -- has human obligations which he must fulfill.  If those in management, in righteousness, organize a given industry with full recognition of the persons working in the industry, the laborers must reciprocally recognize the persons, anxieties and problems of managers.

 

I can’t help but think that the record of arriving at agreement between management and labor in our chief local industry here in Wisconsin Rapids is due in considerable part to the fact that there are Christians, active in the fellowship of their several Christian churches, on both sides of the table during discussion of differences and the effort to arrive at common ground of understanding.

 

3)  The primary, basic needs of all of us are spiritual.  Important as are the economic concerns of all of us, the consideration of right is more important.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” said Jesus [Luke 12: 31] -- and all these other things will come in their place.

 

In this connection, it seems to me that all Christian people should be regularly in the churches of their choice, not merely as a matter of habit, though it is a good habit, nor from superstitious sense of duty, though it is a duty, but from desire to honor God and seek his righteousness.

 

The actual application of the principles of Christ to the problems of labor is chiefly for those who labor.  (Not ministers - I never had a union card),  but those experienced in the give and take of labor relations.

 

“My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”  Let us all strive to be workmen who need not to be ashamed, rightly divining the word of truth.  Part of that duty is to see that others have the same opportunity to take hold at rightly expressing the word of truth.

 

[Unison prayer, p. 3 of calendar.]

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 4, 1949 (Union Service).