A Labor Day Sermon

Luke 14:25-33

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

I’m gonna start this sermon by addressing the elephant in the room—“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Oof. What happened to honor thy mother and thy father, right? But this is where translation and interpretation come into play. First of all, “hate,” in this case is hyperbolic, and it also doesn’t mean hate the way we think of it today. It’s a strong word meant to shock, sure, but it also means something different than strongly disliking someone or something—it means to detach from, to distance yourself from. Now, there’s no way Jesus is telling his followers to completely cut off their families; after all, then he’d be going against the commandments that he absolutely still abides by. This is a warning of sorts from Jesus—he’s giving would-be followers a heads-up about what truly following him means. Because at this point in his ministry, people are getting excited. They’re hearing gossip and rumors about Jesus and his words uplifting the poor and oppressed, about his healing powers, about changing the world. But they don’t fully grasp what it means to follow Jesus. They don’t realize that it will take courage and sacrifice. It will mean not completely deserting your family, but it will mean distancing yourself a bit—it will mean letting go of some of yourself, of your ego, in favor of a better world that can be created together, as one people.

So with that explanation of this passage’s use of “hate” out of the way, we can get going with the rest of the sermon. I’ve talked a lot about how the path of Jesus, even today when Christianity is the dominant religion, is difficult, sometimes dangerous. In Jesus’ day it meant standing up to the Romans, to the powerful, and fighting for a more just world on behalf of the little guy. Today, though Christianity is now widespread and in a sort of contradiction, very powerful, to truly follow the words and the call of Jesus still takes sacrifice— because it still means standing up to the powerful and right now the gap between the powerful and the disenfranchised is bigger than ever.  

And speaking of the powerful—what’s interesting here is that it’s implied that Jesus is talking to the elite. His analogies here are not ones that the common people would really identify with. First he uses an example of a builder starting project before making sure he has all the workers and materials he needs; the he goes so far as using a king preparing for either war or diplomacy. He’s letting these presumably pretty well-off people know that they have to be prepared to follow him, and preparation means, in this case, letting go of their ego, and letting go of their possessions—quite the ask of a rich person in Jesus’ day.

I got to wondering though—what does Jesus mean when he says possessions here? On this Labor Day weekend, I was thinking of the importance of worker’s rights and solidarity as one to create a more just system. I was thinking of how poorly some workers are treated by the powerful, as if they’re nothing but cogs in a machine. And in this passage, Jesus is talking to builders and leaders, to the elite—telling them to give up their possessions. In these ancient days, unfortunately what also often happens today, manual labor wasn’t looked upon with any respect. Anyone who had rough hands was looked upon with contempt, and when it comes to builders and kings, they were more often than not using slave labor to build their empires and fight their battles. And slaves were looked upon as almost subhuman. I wonder if Jesus was telling the elite to let go of their ego, to let go of their people by actually seeing those supposedly less-than as people.

In his encyclical from 1981 On Human Work, Pope John Paul II writes, “The ancient world introduced its own typical differentiation of people into classes according to the type of work done. Work which demanded from the worker the exercise of physical strength, the work of muscles and hands, was considered unworthy of free men and was therefore given to slaves.” He goes on to point out that the Jesus, our savior, “devoted most of the years of his life on earth to manual work at the carpenter’s bench.” And finally John Paul writes, “This circumstance constitutes in itself the most eloquent “gospel of work,” showing that the basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done, but the fact that the one who is doing it is a person.”[i]

“The fact that the one who is working is a person.” It’s such a simple concept, right? But it wasn’t obvious back in the day, and let’s be honest, it doesn’t seem to be obvious now. Now, Pope John Paul II and I probably wouldn’t have agreed on a ton of things, but one thing we certainly both agree on is that Jesus came as a lowly carpenter, working with his hands for reason.

See, the reason exploitation of labor is so prevalent these days isn’t because “nobody wants to work anymore.” It’s because the powerful see the people doing hard work, doing difficult jobs, the ones making them money as less-than. They see them as cogs in their own machine to use to make a profit. Companies say they’re desperate for employees, but won’t raise their wages to accommodate high cost-of-living areas, not to mention inflation. They say they’re desperate for employees but won’t give any paid sick time, or parental leave. They say they’re desperate for employees but they won’t provide any flexibility working parents, any options to work from home, or have more flexible hours. Maybe most egregious example is the businesses that claim to be hiring, but purposely remain understaffed because it’s so much cheaper to pay fewer people and force those few to work backbreaking hours as a skeleton crew. Because the people at the top—these kings, these builders, the elite that Jesus is talking about in this passage, they see those doing the work for them as possessions. They don’t see them as full human beings, and so they don’t compensate them properly. They don’t see them as full human beings, so they don’t take in account that they have families to provide for; they don’t think about them as full human beings with bodies and minds that need rest. Slave labor is technically outlawed, sure, but workers continue to be unfairly compensated for the work they do. And those examples I listed just a second ago—those are from people ranging from biotech engineers to service industry workers. It’s a national problem that, to an extent, transcends education, that transcends class even.

But there is good news! Remember, there’s always good news! Last Fall I preached a belated Labor Day sermon about the rise of unions, and the several different strikes going on at the time to fight for better wages and better working conditions. That fight is continuing in full-force today. Workers at corporations that have been infamously anti-union—Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Amazon—are finally saying enough is enough and demanding a union in order to get a fare wage, in order to be treated humanely. Workers are finally stranding up to the powerful and forcing them to see them as the human beings they are. A recent article in the Boston Globe reports that a Trader Joe’s in Western Massachusetts has become the first unionized Trader Joe’s. Multiple Starbuckses in major cities across the country have been unionizing, despite the fact that several have been suspiciously closed after union efforts began to materialize. And national union support throughout the country is at its highest since 1965, at 71%. That same Boston Globe article quotes labor studies professor John Logan as saying,

The real significance of these campaigns is not in the number of new members, which is pretty meaningless, but [in] the excitement, optimism and inspiration they generate in some sections of the labor force — especially among young, politicized, educated workers in the low-wage service sector.[ii]

This is wonderful, but as our passage today points out, enthusiasm and excitement isn’t all there is to it.

While it’s implied Jesus is directing his words to the elite here, his words work for the everyday person, the worker as well. So yes, enthusiasm for unions is at its highest level in nearly 60 years, but it does take work and sacrifice. Though Starbucks claims that closures of stores in Ithaca, New York, Kansas City, Missouri, and Seattle, were not for union-busting reasons, the timing is indeed suspicious—those workers who fought for the higher-ups to see them as the human beings are now without jobs because the powers that be would choose close stores completely than to fairly compensate their workers and provide them with benefits and security. These workers took a risk, and I pray to God it will work out in the end, but for the time being, they’re paying the price of a broken society that doesn’t respect them.

And even once you succeed, once a union is formed, it still takes sacrifice and letting go of some ego; letting go of just a little bit of your paycheck to benefit all. One of the reasons support for unions and union participation had fallen so steeply over the past few decades was because of several different campaigns and court cases revolving around paying dues or membership fees to unions, and how much power unions—and when I say unions, I mean the workers—can actually have. These policies and laws are often deceptively called “right-to-work” laws, when in fact, they gut the rights of workers by taking away the ability for unions to actually collectively bargain face-to-face with their employers; these policies and campaigns often have very deceptive vocabulary to make it seem like it’s just giving the individual worker more rights.

Now, first of all, these laws don’t give the individual worker more rights; but maybe even more important than that, is the fact that this ideology promoting the individual above the greater good is even that attractive to people. I’ve spoken before about this country’s obsession with rugged individualism, and how much harm it’s doing to the country as a whole, and this is a prime example. Because things like unions, a group of people getting together for a just cause, for something bigger than themselves—this can absolutely be seen as a microcosm of the kind of world Jesus was fighting for. When you join a union, or any kind of group fighting for something as one, you lose a bit of yourself—but not in a bad way. John Calvin, one of the main reasons our denomination exists today, talked about the concept of self-denial, which sound so negative at first; but self-denial meant freedom from selfishness. It takes self-denial, it takes a freedom from selfishness to be a follower of Jesus. This is what Jesus was talking about when he says to be a true disciple you have to “hate” your father and mother, that you have to give up your possessions. He’s saying that you have to give up your ego. Being a part of a union is a way to do this, because you’re not just saying, ‘Well what about my rights?’ You’re saying, ‘What about all of our rights? Shouldn’t be all be able to work a normal job and support ourselves and our families without burning out or breaking our backs?’ And to make humane working conditions a reality, people will therefore give up a little bit of your own possessions—in the case of unions, in the form of dues or fees—for the benefit of all workers.

So yes, this is a Labor Day sermon for Labor Day weekend—but it’s more than that. Giving up our egos and freeing ourselves from selfishness is a crucial command of Jesus. It’s likely, given the examples of builders and kings in today’s passage, that Jesus was directing this specific command to the elite; but I believe that it is a universal truth, that if we can practice some self-denial, if we can free ourselves from selfishness, and think about ourselves as part of a whole, as part of one people just fighting to survive, just fighting for a good, safe, and peaceful world, we might just be okay. So for this Labor Day weekend and beyond, let’s remember that there is a reason Jesus came to this world as a carpenter, as a humble worker, who was truly one of us. And in remembering this, we can see every single person as the person they truly are, not just a possession to do dirty work or make some rich person a profit; and once we see all people, as one people; all equal, all united, sacrificing to come together for the good of all, we will make this earth an earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

[i] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html

[ii] https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/08/30/business/recent-union-efforts-mass-part-growing-national-trend/