Mary Robert and I have recently volunteered for a fundraiser for Family Promise of Mobile, an organization that houses among a network of churches homeless families year round. Several area restaurants hosted meals over four evenings with “celebrity” volunteer servers. Our job as the celebrity servers was to help serve meals and plead, schmooze, for generous tips which would go to the benefit of Family Promise. The meal was to last two hours…and after the two hours I was beat. It was hard work, and I thought of the many restaurant servers and cooks and support personnel who do this day after day, night after night for a living. One young woman waits tables at night at the restaurant at which I volunteered, and teaches at Baker High School during the day. How do you do it, I asked her….I don’t have a choice she said. Having more than one job these days is becoming more and more common, a common necessity….the disparity of wealth grows exponentially.
We never took a break; things were too busy, but I couldn’t stop thinking all evening of people whose labor demands so much of not just their minds but of their bodies….the laborers of our world, who are paid disproportionately relative to the energy they exert. A recent study has shown that the lower one’s income the lower one’s life expectancy. That being said there is dignity in a so-called honest day’s work. There is something sacred in serving….there was decided community among the people I worked with…and at the end of the evening we were satisfied with what we had done. In order to make ends meet our oldest son has taken on an additional part time job, which at first grieved me…but as he puts it…”it’s what I’m good at…and we’ll have enough…..so I don’t mind it.”
I think the point I want to make in this reflection is that we would do well to value those among us….and those out of our sight who do the common labor of this world, labor that puts food on our tables, labor that removes our garbage and manages our sewers, cleans our laundry and houses, constructs our houses and buildings, repairs our automobiles, works the factory lines, hauls our cargo, tends our children, patrols our streets for safety’s sake….the list is endless….but these are the moving parts of creation…a creation that God sees as good, and in which we all are intimately connected, one organism….but a creation whose order requires hard work of mind and body….labor that requires endurance…and labor in which dignity is affirmed by all as sacred, never taken for granted. When the chance arises, thank a laborer for their good work; and let us also work for a living wage for all. The minimum wage in this country is scandalous. Fair pay for hard work. There ought to be a law about that….a guarantee of the dignity of our lives of labor….we’ve got the means to do it, despite the fiscal hand wringing in Washington; we just lack the moral will.
Almighty God, who has so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ our lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP p.210)
