Sermon for Sunday, September 4, 2011 "The Blue Denim Work Shirt"

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday, September 4, 2011

 

SECOND READING: Romans 13:8-14

⁸Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.  ⁹The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

¹¹Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers;  ¹²the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light;  ¹³let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.  ¹⁴Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

 

²¹Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο ὁ Ἰησοῦς δεικνύειν τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ ὅτι δεῖ αὐτὸν εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα ἀπελθεῖν καὶ πολλὰ παθεῖν ἀπὸ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καὶ ἀρχιερέων καὶ γραμματέων καὶ ἀποκτανθῆναι καὶ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἐγερθῆναι. ²²καὶ προσλαβόμενος αὐτὸν ὁ Πέτρος ἤρξατο ἐπιτιμᾶν αὐτῷ λέγων, Ιλεώς σοι, κύριε: οὐ μὴ ἔσται σοι τοῦτο. ²³ὁ δὲ στραφεὶς εἶπεν τῷ Πέτρῳ, Υπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ: σκάνδαλον εἶ ἐμοῦ, ὅτι οὐ φρονεῖς τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ ἀλλὰ τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων. ²⁴Τότε ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ, Εἴ τις θέλει ὀπίσω μου ἐλθεῖν, ἀπαρνησάσθω ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἀράτω τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκολουθείτω μοι. ²⁵ὃς γὰρ ἐὰν θέλῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ σῶσαι ἀπολέσει αὐτήν: ὃς δ’ ἂν ἀπολέσῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ εὑρήσει αὐτήν. ²⁶τί γὰρ ὠφεληθήσεται ἄνθρωπος ἐὰν τὸν κόσμον ὅλον κερδήσῃ τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ζημιωθῇ; ἢ τί δώσει ἄνθρωπος ἀντάλλαγμα τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ; ²⁷μέλλει γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔρχεσθαι ἐν τῇ δόξῃ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν ἀγγέλων αὐτοῦ, καὶ τότε ἀποδώσει ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὴν πρᾶξιν αὐτοῦ. ²⁸ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι εἰσίν τινες τῶν ὧδε ἑστώτων οἵτινες οὐ μὴ γεύσωνται θανάτου ἕως ἂν ἴδωσιν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ.

 

 

“The Blue Denim Work-shirt”

+ In nomine Domini.  Amen.

The year was 1969, and I was in my second year at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  In addition to taking endless classes in systematic theology, church history, liturgy, homiletics, Old and New Testament … I was employed as one of the school bus drivers for the Gettysburg Area School District.

It was the fashion in those days, that the male students of the Seminary (which, in those days, were all but one of the whole student population … yes, in the time I was at Seminary we had only one female student[1]) … it was fashionable to wear blue denim work-shirts.  The work-shirts came in long-sleeve and short-sleeve versions; they were dark blue and light blue and in-between blue and often they were washed several times to make them look as if they were really used hard.

 

One of my fellow students starched his, especially the collar, and ironed it every time he wore it because he wanted to have the effect of a work-shirt without the actual pre-determining qualification of using it for labour.  Odd … but his shirt had a real snappy look about it.

The shirts were worn as a kind of uniform.  It was the time of Peace Marches, especially to Washington, D.C. in an effort to make the peoples’ voice heard that the War (in 1969 it was Vietnam) should come to an end, that soldiers (mostly all male in that decade) should be brought home, and we should work on our problems here in this nation … helping poor people find employment and health-care and child-care, that everyone, especially women and what we called “minorities” in those days should have equal opportunity and for all people there should be universal education and clean-water and a safe environment, especially for children.

(hmmm …)

To wear a blue denim work-shirt was to wear a symbol of solidarity, to demonstrate by our clothing that we believed in the worker and the rights of laborers … in fact in the rights, the human rights, the civil rights of all people.

So one weekend when I went home, back to our farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,  I asked my mother what she had done with my work-shirts.  She looked at me as if I had been spending too much time in Hebrew Class, “Well,” she answered, “They’re on my sewing table.  I was going to cut them up and make them into something useful.”

IN a leftover adolescent exclamation I exuded, “What‽ My workshirts‽ I need them!”

“Well,” said Mom, “I think there’s one left.  You can have it, if you really want it.”

Down the steps to the basement and Mom’s Table … a kind of Magic Kingdom™ of its own.  Rustling around piles of various articles I found the work-shirt.

“Where’s the iron?” I called upstairs.  My Mother went to the top of the stairs and in all saintly motherhood asked, “You want to iron a work-shirt?”

“And the spray-starch stuff, where is that?” I asked.

***

When I returned to Seminary that Sunday night, I carefully hung the shirt on a hanger ready to go the following morning.  After chapel I was the center of a small group of friends who gathered to admire my shirt.  One of my friends said, “How many times did you wash that thing? … to get it so faded.”

“Hundreds of times,” I said.  And then I explained that this blue denim work-shirt had actually been used for … work.  I was an item of envy.

***

We seminarians believed that the Gospel was nothing less than the following of Jesus into the world to raise up the poor, lift up the oppressed, bring peace where there is conflict, and stand up for the rights of all laborers, including those human beings who were coming across our borders seeking a better life and freedom.  Wearing our denim blue work-shirts was, I guess, a way that we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” … a way that we wore Christ into the world … literally.

***

It’s Labor Day Weekend.  That is not a liturgical time in the Church Year; it is, however, a weekend when we honor, pray for, uphold, and stand with all workers … for their dignity and worth, for the justice of their fair wages, for their rights and protection, and – in thankfulness – for their part in human life and community.

The first Labor Day was in 1882 on September 5, in New York City, and was observed by the Central Labor Union of that city.

Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland reconciled with the labor movement.

Last Wednesday noon, many of our clergy and laypeople here in Santa Fe met at St. John’s United Methodist Church for a gathering sponsored by the Interfaith Workers Justice organization.  Among many other issues, we hear and talked about and worried about the plight of workers here in our own community … especially the sin of wage theft, where owners and administrators refuse to pay minimum wage, or ask workers to work off the clock, or refuse to pay for benefits and on and on and on.

I have joined the IWJ and invite you to do the same if you are of such a conscience.

http://www.iwj.org/template/index.cfm

Or by telephone: 773-728-8400

Or by mail:

INTERFAITH WORKERS JUSTICE

1020 W BRYN MAWR AVE
CHICAGO IL  60660-4627

***

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” wrote the common laborer Paul of Tarsus become missionary for the Good News. 

[We often think of the missionary Saint Paul traveling around with a little portable desk upon which he wrote his epistles to all those congregations, a man of leisure and letters (literally).  But Paul, the tradition goes, was a worker … he made tents, shelters for others.  It was his trade.  He understood the calluses on the hands of one who labors.]

Addressing the little congregation in Rome from afar, he taught that the Gospel is a lifestyle, a living of grace in love for others who are in need of that graceful love.  Followers of the Crucified One follow him into the world and into the places where voices are so tiny that they cannot be heard by the Pharaohs of various times and ages.  Followers of the Crucified One follow him into the world and into the lives of those who are in need of healing, in need of companionship, in need of support, in need of having the abundance of all shared equally so that all may equally share.

I can hear it now, someone is about to say, “Oh no, here comes another social justice gospel Sermon …”

Well … what other Gospel is there?

The only Gospel there is, is the one that beckons us to leave the thought of a private personal relationship with God (the me and God thing) and move into the world for the good of others.  The Gospel is always a Gospel for others.

It is what gathers us together here each week.  It is what we share in the sacred Story and around this Table and as we embrace one another with words of Peace.  It is what fills us, what is spoken into us, breathed into us … and it is just so that which we take with us into the world, every week, every day as followers of the Crucified One.

***

Let us pray.

God of love and justice,
we come to You asking for Your
presence and guidance.
You have asked us to walk with our brothers and sisters
and told us there are no strangers

among us. 
You have given us to love one another as we love ourselves.

God, as we remember those who

are struggling and organizing

for a living wage, healthcare,

and human dignity in their

workplaces, remind us this

that You have

called us to walk in

solidarity with our

brothers and

sisters, and live gracefully

in the world with love and justice.

In the name of Jesus our Brother.  Amen.[2]

 

Deo Gratias (+)

The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III
Pastor, Christ Lutheran Church
Santa Fe, NM

 

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[1] Now, as with all of our Lutheran Seminaries, the male/female ratio of students is at least 50%/50%.

[2] The Prayer comes (with some editing) from the AFL/CIO