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Re-Membering the Dream
A sermon related to the ‘I Have Dream’ speech and to Isaiah 65:17-25
Intention:
In the context of re-stating our mission and revitalizing our church, to inspire a trust in what is yet to be
and to engender an energy to work for that more just and peaceful future through WPUCC.
CENTRAL POINT:
To uplift our labor as vocation and to raise awareness of gains and momentum in the labor movement
as an expression of God’s Realm coming to earth.
Do you know who Echol Cole and Robert Walker were?
Do you know their story?
Echol Cole and Robert Walker were sanitation workers for the City of
Memphis in 1968. On February 1st, 1968, a long day of intense rain a
five man garbage truck crew was headed back to the station. Cole, 36,
and Walker, 29, had the least seniority and had to ride outside of the
three man cab. To get out of the storm, they stood in the back of the
truck just in front of the garbage. But a short circuit engaged the trash
compressor and these men were crushed to death.
This was the last straw for the black sanitation workers of Memphis.
Tired of mistreatment and dangerous and filthy working conditions,
they went on strike. This was the reason that Martin Luther King ended
up in Memphis in the spring of 1968.
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Today is called Labor Sunday, the Sunday prior to the Labor Day
holiday.
Since the time of our mythic past and the mythic exit from the Garden
of Eden, life has had its share of work. And while we are no longer an
agrarian or for that matter a hunter-gatherer culture, we are still
working. In classrooms, cubicles, offices, restaurants, hotels, city
streets, homes, construction sites, warehouses, and ports, we are
working. For most of us, this is our farming and hunting and gathering.
This last week was the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington
where Dr. King delivered the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. These two,
Labor Sunday, and the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech belong together. They
are both about labor, both about work, the work that the many
unemployed and underemployed long for and the work it takes to bring
into being a more just society where all might have a decent job. It is
important to remember that Dr. King had been a leader in a civil rights
movement not merely about overcoming racial discrimination, but
about overcoming job and housing discrimination and poverty. Many
signs on the March to Washington were about getting decent jobs. Like
Ghandi, King understood poverty as the worst form of violence.
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And poverty has been on the increase in our country. Not just because
of the Great Recession. It has been on the increase since 1970. One can
cite a legion of studies and statistics:
- The younger you are the more likely you are to be poor
- The minimum wage, in real dollars, is lower than it was in 1968
- We now have the largest number of long term unemployed since
1948
- The fastest growing segments of jobs to return after the recession
are low wage jobs
- The richest 1 percent have enjoyed 33% income gain in the last
20 years while the 90 percent has seen no growth
- In the last 25 years, the poor have actually got poorer adjusted for
inflation
In the midst of a difficult situation comes the author of this last section
of the Book of Isaiah. The people have returned from a generation of
exile in Babylon, but reconstructing their lives has not gone well. AS
with any prophet worth their salt, their challenge to the status quo and
to all those who support it is always accompanied with a positive vision,
a dream of how things could be and will be. In the case of this Isaiah
passage, a just and peaceful world is envisioned in agrarian images
where all live a long life, keep their homes, and enjoy the fruits of their
labor. There is no one to come and foreclose, no one to take the
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produce they work on with their own hands, and no one who denies
health and life to the people.
And we are still called to work on this dream. God is Still Speaking that
prophetic call because still there are those who have lost their home,
those who have lost jobs or who work to bring out food from the land
that they do not eat, those who have lost wealth and health due to a
lack of access to health care. Like those listening to the Rev. Dr. King, I
can imagine that Isaiah’s people were wondering how long? How long
until we have work and receive enough from our labor to keep our
homes and our health? How long until income inequity starts shrinking
instead of growing?
As Dr. King said, it might take a long time, but change gonn’ come to
the moral universe.
Do we still believe that? Do we still believe it in a way that we can keep
on the march to justice and peace, the journey to a sustainable society?
In the movie Pretty Woman, Vivian sums it up as she talks of how her
life got off track.
“It’s easier to believe the bad stuff.” True too often, both personally
and socially. Yet, there are those who lead us and who remind us that
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we can create anew. There are signs of hope and progress. In
Germany, they are actually shutting down fossil fuel power plants
because they can’t compete with renewables. Gay marriage is legal in
many states with more to come. A man of color was elected President
of the United States. And, in the world of labor, we have gone from a
seven day 12 hours a day work week, to the reference of a 5 day 40
hour work week. Child labor laws and worker safety protections as
well. Even now workers are rising up. This last week, fast food workers
in seven U.S. cities went on strike for better wages. Other low wage
workers are now challenging Wal-Mart and other retailers to pay a
living wage.
And while there is no divinely ordained political solution, there is the
vision and voice of Spirit to see into and speak of the nature of things in
a different way. The dark shadow of capitalism appears when others
become objects, commodities of labor to be leveraged and bargained
down to as low a wage as possible for the sake of financial profit.
Do you know what was on the signs of the sanitation workers of
Memphis in 1968?
“I AM A MAN”
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They were not garbage. They were human beings. Human beings with
value and a voice. Human beings who deserved equal treatment and
decent pay.
This is the spiritual issue: the way we orient ourselves to others and to
values.
What is of true value? What is our true profit? What is the purpose of
our economic system?
Who and what is an economy to serve?
So on this Labor Sunday, I ask us to listen and to receive the prophetic
message of Isaiah and of Dr. King.
We are called to live into a message of faith, of trust in the power of
Divine Love and the prophetic call to a better way. We are called to
follow Jesus in helping bend the long moral arc of the universe. We are
called to grab a hold at the spot where we are now and exercise the
muscle of our hearts, the creativity of our brains, the energy of our
bodies, and the soulforce of our spirits to move it.
And it may not come easy. There will be a cost. It will take more than a
charismatic leader. It always has. Let us remember not just Martin, but
Rosa, Fannie Lou, Medgar, Ralph, Roy, Stokely, Malcolm, and John. Let
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us remember the thousands of unnamed ones of all races who have
marched, who have been on a journey, working for the dream. Let us
re-member God’s dream, re-envision it, re-energize it to make it real
here and now in our bodies and souls in our time and place.
Oh, yes, back to Memphis in the spring of 1968. 65 days after their
strike began and 12 days after Dr. King was killed, the City agreed to
recognize the union and to pay raises for the sanitation workers.
Blessed be the memory and the souls of Echol Cole and Robert Walker.
Let us re-member them. Let us re-member their simple dream of a
decent work for decent pay. Enjoy your Labor Day and re-member.
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Isaiah 65:17-25
7 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.
20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at
a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of
a hundred will be considered accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards
and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and
another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my
chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They shall not labor
in vain, or bear children for calamity;*for they shall be offspring blessed
by the Lord— and their descendants as well. 24 Before they call I will
answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the
lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the
serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my
holy mountain, says the Lord.
Martin Luther King Jr.
‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.' How long? Not long! Because
'no lie can live forever.' … How long? Not long! 'Truth forever on the
scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown
standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch over God’s own.' How
long? Not long! Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it
bends toward justice.