Romans 8:14-23: Paul says, for all who are led by the spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry "Abba! Father!" it is that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children and heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the present sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free even from the bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. Not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Let us pray. O holy God, we thank you that you gather us together, that you stimulate our minds, that you inspire us to work for you. Bless us, Lord; open up our hearts that we would receive your message. Bless the words that come out of my mouth that they may glorify you. Amen.
Wesley's attraction to the British working class in the 18th century is well know and is attested to in this quote from his journal. April 1st, 1743: I had a great desire to visit a little village called Picey. It is inhabited by coal miners. Their grand assembly used to be on the Lord's Day on which men, women, and children met together to dance, fight, curse, swear and play chuck ball. (Sounds like our church). I felt great compassion for these poor creatures from the time I heard of them, and the more because all men seemed to despair of them. Between seven and eight I set out with John Healey my guide, the north wind being unusually high drove the sleet in our face which froze as it fell. I went into the square and declared him which was wounded for our transgressions. The poor sinners were quickly gathered together and gave earnest heed to the things which were spoken. And so they did in the afternoon again, in spite of the wind and the snow what I besought and received Him for their sins.
It is ironic that 255 years later we the spiritual descendants of Wesley have gathered here to discuss something which came naturally for the early Methodists. For them the connection between their faith and the reality of working class life was implicit, and there was a powerful influence that Wesley had on the working class movement in spite of Wesley's intentions and his conservative politics. So it's ironic that the day that we modern-day Methodists gather here, and we want to participate and have influence on the labor movement, and yet we are in a quandary about how that connects up with our theological tradition. The central question I want you to think about this morning is this, "What does my Methodism make as a contribution to my involvement in the labor movement?" I'm not asking you "what does it mean to be a good person in the labor movement", or "what does it mean to be a good Christian in the labor movement?", but specifically "what does it mean to be a United Methodist with our theological and spiritual tradition in the labor movement?" Now let me clarify. When I say the labor movement, I'm talking about something more than just trade unions. I'm talking about those community based organizations, and issues and campaigns that are also part of working class peoples lives. As Stanly Oratowa says, he calls it the heroic view of the labor movements. I'm using that term in the much broader way than we normally use it in the United States. Now at the heart of Wesley's theology is his way of salvation or his order of salvation. And by this he meant that dynamic process, how we experience the grace of God as prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace. And Wesley believed that grace was transmitted to us through certain means or channels. Some of these were ordinary means such as prayer and fasting and reading the scriptures, but also it was through visiting the sick and even extraordinary means such as women preachers, which he would call extraordinary in his day. Now I believe that Wesley's theology can be critically and creatively applied to our current situation, and thus can deepen our faith and our commitment to workers' rights, and I refuse to allow our doctrinal heritage to be abandoned and to become the exclusive claim of some portion of our denomination that wants to use it for political purposes. (...make good Methodists, maybe even Wesley.)
But underlying Wesley's concept of the order of salvation is his notion, his belief that all people were created to reflect the image of God. And for him, he talked about this being three-fold. He referred to this as the natural, the political, and the moral. I would suggest that if we had a modern reinterpretation of that, you could say that all people reflect the image of God in these three ways: that we are created, communal, and compassionate people. We are made in the image of a Creator, and the ability to work is meant to reflect this creative capacity. We are also created in the image of a triune God who has designed us to live in harmony and cooperation with one another. Finally, we are created in the image of a loving, compassionate God, and the highest expression of our humanity is seen in our capacity to love one another. For Wesley, salvation was a restoration of the image of God. Sin therefore is a distortion of anything, any action, attitude, program, custom, policy, or system that distorts or diminishes the image of God in a human being. By that definition, I would submit to you that capitalism, as it is currently structured, is sinful. Capitalism alienates and suppresses the creativity of human work, dominates and diminishes communities, and it exploits and subordinates human compassion. Some of you will argue that capitalism has increased human creativity, and through philanthropy has been compassionate; and I would agree, but that does not diminish the truth that when push comes to shove, what motivates, what's at the heart of our global system is capital accumulation, and it will accommodate human creativity, and community, and compassion as long as it can increase profits. But as soon as there is a choice between the image of God in a human being and capital accumulation, it will put profits before people in our current global economic situation, and that is sin.
Too often in the labor movement, we point our finger at individual acts of greed and pride, we point out the Michael Eisners of the world or the Board of Directors at Gannet, and say you people with your materialism and your greed need to change your ways. But what we fail to see is that sin is much more endemic than that. There are structural dimensions that go beyond the individual choices of individual transgressions. Sin is more than just the sum of individual actions. It's pervasive; it's a way of being. We live in sin; we are born into sin. Wesley would say it is original sin. Now for Wesley, original sin began with Adam, and is transmitted through the human population. But if we consider original sin as being transmitted through our social location rather than your mommy and daddy having sex, that has a powerful interpretive function in our faith. Or to quote .....[Einrichy deSalle???] who said it best. He said, "I shall define original sin as a sin that is constituted of our being from its origins. Our most radical being is our social being." In other words, think of original sin as the sin of your origins. The sin of where you come from. The sin of your social location, either by virtue of your birth or by where you stand in the social order, the economic situation. Because the original sin is universal, it is transmitted through a wide variety of social, cultural and political forces, and it varies from person to person. It's not going to have the same kind of contour because different social forces of sin such as racism or sexism-- all of these combine to create kind of a toxic environment for our souls. For example, mid-level manger at the [Harn-Young???]plant in Tijuana, Mexico. I don't know if y'all have heard about this. Harassed and intimidated workers with insults and threats and walked around the plant with paramilitary garb. That can be chalked up as an individual sin, be he is acting out of a whole context that has been created by the Mexican government and the Hundai corporation. He is acting true to form in that sense.
On the other hand, you see it at the lower end of the scale with the victims of this oppression. I have a parishioner named Tina. Tina grew up in a dysfunctional family. Her mother slept around a lot, and her step-father was abusive. For several years she was in foster care. Last month she was laid off from an electronics company that was restructuring. Now she's hired back as a temporary worker. Now she's not responsible for that sin, but she's trapped in it. A victim of that. And out of that context there is a simple reaction. In her case, it is either a reaction of bitterness and self-abuse or submissiveness, or in other situations it has been alcohol, drugs abuse, and other illegal activity. That does not mean that individual sins do not exist, but individual sins are a reaction to a sinful context. We've got to deal with the being of sin, and not just the effects of sin.
Now the good news. Good News in our theology is that God has not abandoned us to this destruction of the sin of our origins For Wesley, every human being is covered with God's grace, whether we are aware of it or not; we refer to this as "prevenient" or "preventing" grace. For Wesley, prevenient grace is manifested in four fundamental ways. (1) It gives us a rudimentary sense that God exists and has a moral code for this world; (2) we have the ability to restrain human wickedness in its complete form; (3) we are given a conscience, that feeling deep inside us, that things are not right with ourselves and the world; and (4) when in doubt, we have the free will to choose whether to continue to participate in the sin of our origins or to choose the liberation of Jesus Christ. In light of these criteria, I would suggest, that the labor movement is a channel of God's prevenient grace.
(1) First, prevenient grace gives you a sense that God has a moral code for this world. There is Biblical standard of justice, which is ignored by multi-national corporations, and all the praise about free-market system--how great this is going to be for your community. And then along here you come with a community-based organization that says that's a bunch of crap! You're fooling yourselves. That's the prevenient grace of God, maintaining that standard of Biblical justice .
(2) Prevenient grace gives us an ability to restrain complete human wickedness. Often times the only thing--the only thing--that restrains wickedness in a corporation is a labor union.
(3) Prevenient grace gives us a conscience, a feeling deep inside that something is wrong. I've seen this on an individual level when I meet with folks who are involved in the labor movement. They don't go to church. They wouldn't step inside church doors; wouldn't even talk about God, but they've got a sense deep inside them that something is wrong. Things aren't right. There's something better for the way we ought to be living our life That's the prevenient grace of God. But, too often what we have done in the church when we see the anger and the rage of working class people. Well we say, wait a minute. Y'all settle down, you know. Everybody's got to get along. There's two sides to every story. We want to mediate everything. When in reality what we ought to be saying is "You're ticked off? That's the Holy Spirit." You don't realize, that's the Holy Spirit that's working inside of your life ...enable them to name the name.
Now for Wesley, the response to prevenient grace is repentance--turn around. It's interesting that for Wesley, repentance comes before the experience of justification. Now the only thing that makes repentance effective is if we are forgiven for our participation in and freed from the sin of our origins. Now this requires a watershed experience that Wesley saw as a combination of justification and regeneration. Justification is that experience that you are forgiven for your sins and reconciled with God, and regeneration is what we would call the new birth--given a new identity. From Paul's perspective, he would say, for all who are born of the Spirit are called the children of God; he calls them a child of God Now our experience of justification and new birth having socio-economic dimensions because of: (1) the nature of sin already described, and if you are really going to be saved from your sins, it's going to involve that kind of salvation from the sin of your origins, but also by the nature of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not die, and was not resurrected in a theological vacuum. It happened because there were political forces that were taking place. Remember the quote from Eugene Debbs yesterday? That's good theology. (He is also from Indiana. That's also why it was good theology.) The image of God is restored in us by Jesus the carpenter who stood by the poor and oppressed, by Jesus who was executed by the State, by Jesus who overcame the social forces of sin when he was physically resurrected from the dead. I believe in physical resurrection. [ It appears that if] God that can bring somebody physically back from the dead, He can change some things in this world. Salvation is the restoration of the image of God in our soul. Then the new birth must entail a new consciousness that is defiant of our global capitalist system And Paul says it is God's spirit bearing witness with our spirit in defiance of the commodification of life --of the fetishization of capital--for all you Marxists that are here. It is God's spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. I would say, bears witness in two ways.
First, justification in the new birth gives us a new identity that enables us to survive the global capitalist system. Everything in our economy must have a price. Everything has an exchange value. And if your work does not have exchange value, then you are nothing in our system. To be born again, to be born anew, to have this internal sense that I am a child of God says I am defined by God--not by what I do, not by how much money I make, not by what my boss says-- but I am a child of God, and that literally saves people in this world.
I had a parishioner one time by the name of Don. Don Dalton. Shy person. Used to walk around hunched over. Worked for 23 years for Chrysler in New Castle, Indiana. In his spare time Don was able to make the most beautiful cabinets you ever saw. This man had a gift that was from God. Incredible kitchen cabinets he made for everybody in the community. But it had no exchange value. Back in the early 1980's Don got laid off for over two years. His wife Barbara said that Don would have committed suicide if he had not been converted to Jesus Christ. On the verge of committing suicide for several months, Don went to the spring revival meeting, gave his life to Jesus Christ, and that's what got him through. That's what got him through. Don is my pastor-parish relations chair.
Dawn is a single mother of bi-racial children three years ago who was on welfare. She's now a homeowner, is gainfully employed. Part of her redemption of her family was her getting a sense that "I am a child of God." And if you work with folks on welfare making that transition, there's got to be that internal confidence. Otherwise it doesn't work. Now if that's all that you have, then you also ought to deal with the spirit of capitalism. So there's also another side, a second dimension--the spirit bearing witness to our spirit--and that is that the Holy Spirit empowers us to resist and to fight against the spirit of capitalism that is in our society. We are given a power over the sins of our system, the sin of our origins. It gives us an ability to challenge the status quo. Because I am a child of God, I now realize that I ought to be treated with respect and fairness. Because I am a child of God, I don't have to be fighting and being in competition with my fellow workers. Because I am a child of God, I do not have to be just another part of the machinery. I do not have to be this brick that follows along with the corporate line. I'm a child of God; I ought to be treated better than that. The spirit of God bearing witness with our spirit, can never be something that says you can serve both God and man.
Now, as a child of God we receive this in faith, but we act out our faith in specific concrete ways, and the social implications of the new birth may not be immediately apparent but will develop as we live out our faith. The new birth is the beginning of that process of spiritual growth. Wesley referred to this as sanctification or holiness. Sanctifying grace is God's complete process of restoring the image of God in humanity. For Wesley, the goal of holiness was "In a Christian believer love sits upon the throne which is erected in the inmost soul, namely love of God and man, which fills the whole heart and reigns without a rival. This God to whom we are to have a single-minded love is a God of justice for workers. And therefore, one way we express our love for God is to love other workers by joining their struggle for peace and justice in the workplace.
Don't take my word for it. Consider probably one of the greatest theologians that I have ever met, Woody Wilson. Woody Wilson is a retired coal miner and Baptist preacher from Clinton, Indiana. Died of black lung disease last year. I asked him one time, I said, " Woody, what's the connection between your faith and being a part of the union." He said, "When I was young I could always get a job. I was a good worker. I knew how to do things. But there were other guys who didn't have the advantages I had, and they weren't being treated right by the bosses, so I always figured that joining the union was my way of following the golden rule."
So, two implications of sanctifying grace in the labor movement: First, the labor movement is a means of God's sanctifying grace in our individual lives. Once we believed that one can grow in grace by performing certain religious disciplines such as prayer and fasting. But I would add to the standard means of grace that we also participate in struggles of justice. That's a means of grace inside of ourselves. The reason why our solidarity is a means of grace is because Jesus is present with the folks who are struggling for justice. But when I first got saved 18 years ago what I wanted was to continue to have this warm fuzzy feeling that I felt down at the altar. And Jesus said--Jesus spoke to me--(I don't know if he speaks to you, but he speaks to me)--Jesus said if you want to be with me, then you've got to be where I'm at, and Jesus is on the picket line, he's on the bread line, he's not in the stained glass window up there, but rather he's with the folks that are hurting today. If you want to grow in grace, you've got to go with him.
We got some labor leaders who need to have that message--have Jesus in their heart and repent of their sins, because too often what I see--at least in Indiana--we have too many labor leaders who are caught up in that sin of origins, of that materialism and the greed. Last year I went to the Labor Day parade in Indianapolis to give the invocation, and on the front row of the Labor Day parade is the UAW Corvette Club. Need to repent of your sins. There are some pastors, some heads of general boards and agencies, and some bishops (who are not present here)--but we've got some United Methodist pastors who need to repent of their sins--that are caught up in measuring themselves on another standard. We have coopted the Gospel into a spiritual commodity which is nothing more than a therapeutic value for the individual. We have based out professional evaluation on the size of our churches and the success of our programs. We worship the God of church growth. We live in the fear of the perceived negative consequences of our parishioners if we preach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And I've got to tell you, folks, I preach this sermon to my whole church. Nobody gets bent out of shape about this. We're caught up in this numbers game. I've got to rag for a minute on this church growth stuff. Frederick Nietzsche said, "You want followers? What, you want tens? You want hundreds? You seek followers? What? You seek zeros!" Is that what we're seeking? Zeros?
Involvement in the labor movement is an opportunity for you to grow in the spiritual fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit. If you are involved in an organizing campaign, you need patience, self- control, spiritual discernment, and I would suggest for you folks who are part of rank and file labor movement, if you see your activity as a means of grace. for God to continue to grow that grace inside of you, and every time you go out on the picket line, every time you hand out those check cards, those that is holy activity. (And if you want to learn more about it, talk to Katie-- Katie Foster--she has a good sense about it.)
But not only is the labor movement a means of grace to us; we also have a vital role as people of faith to play in renewing and restoring the labor movement. It goes without saying that trade unions in the United States desperately need a greater vision, a higher moral vision. And I am convinced that if rank and file believers took seriously their faith and applied it to the labor movement, that it would make the labor movement more compassionate, more creative, and more militant. Now I think you saw that last night with Stewart's [Stewart Acuff] speech. This will be challenging. This will be hard. You will have to put away some of the stuff that is cherished in your life. Paul says if we are God's children and we are heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. It's going to involve suffering and involve carrying the cross. Or in the words of Mother Jones, "labor must bear the cross for other sins, must be the vicarious sufferer for the wrongs that others do." Now Wesley believed that the image of God is being restored in your life that there is a synergy that takes place that ... between your spirit and the Holy Spirit and we become co-workers in God of restoration. He said for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God. (This is Paul speaking). Because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. Society waits for us to start acting like God's children, participating in God's spirit, in God's spirit of restoration, of liberation and of justice.
My call for you is this, that as United Methodists there is a place in our doctrinal heritage to do that--a call for all of you in whatever struggle you are engaged in to see that as holy work.
[The Bible Study/Devotions concluded with singing one verse of "Jesus Calls Us".]
Location: http://cswt.ppjr.org/events/umwork98/cushma98.htm