Sermons from Park Hill Congregational UCC Denver, Colorado Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] September 2, 2018 “Wages and a Fatter Than Usual Corpse” James 5: 1-6 – NRSV Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. 2 Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. 4 Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. Hear verse 4 again. “Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” Or as the Common English Bible translates it: “Listen! These are the wages you stole from those who harvested your fields.” And in simpler terms: God knows what you have done. And is not happy. The next verse, as Eugene Peterson translates it: “But [after all that] all you’ll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. (That’s an image!) In fact, what you’ve done is condemn and murder perfectly good people, who stand there and take it.”[1] This Labor Sunday reminds us that the scriptures are full of texts that are very explicit not only about the treatment of the poor, of widows and orphans, but specifically of workers. Texts such as: Deuteronomy 24:14-15 Do not take advantage of a hired worker, …whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing among you. And pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin.” New International Version (NIV) Leviticus 19:13b “Do not withhold a hired laborer’s pay overnight.” Common English Bible (CEB) Malachi 3:5 I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against sorcerers, liars, adulterers, (and then, right up there with adultery) against those who oppress hired workers in their wages, and against those who mistreat aliens, …says the Lord of Hosts.” New Revised Standard Version, alt (NRSV) Nothing is quite as clear, however, as Sirach 34:22 in the Good News Translation: It is murder to deprive someone of his living or to cheat an employee of her wages.” Epifania (E-pee-faa-nee-aa) Hinchez is a home care aide in New York City. New York has an admirable $15 minimum wage, but an exception was carved into the legislation for home health care workers, 93% of whom are women and 79% immigrants. Epifania is among the many who work mandatory 24 hour shifts in their client’s homes but are paid for only 13 hours. That’s because supposedly they sleep for 8 hours. I guess the rest is for “breaks.” But as she explains, how can I sleep when “I have to flip my patient’s body every two hours and change her diaper at 9 pm, midnight, and 3 am? Not to mention, besides providing care all day long, responding to any other cries for help 24 hours a day. Her last patient weighed 290 pounds and couldn’t walk. The heavy lifting led to injuries and nerve damage that required surgery. Again, Epifania is only paid for 13 of those 24 hours. Yet, she does it anyway because, she said, she loves her patients and considers them family; and needs the job to take care of her own family.[2] Might this not lead to a shortening of her own life? All of that so company shareholders, in the very graphic words of the Book of James, might have a “fatter than usual corpse” when they die. The Book of James very clearly describes wage theft. People had to be told, don’t do it! Which is true then and now, whether they are workers who harvest your fields or who worked for a certain former Atlantic City casino owner and are among the 3,500 who filed official complaints: un or underpaid painters, glass installers, cabinet makers, drapery installers, marble installers… some of whom lost their businesses. Dishwashers, bartenders, even architects, real-estate brokers, and ironically, his own lawyers.[3] All so he can have a fatter than usual corpse. That’s the Book of James, not me. While Epifania is a good illustration, I assume you realize this doesn’t just take place in faraway states or countries overseas. Workers in the State of Colorado are subject to as much as $750 million in wage theft. Undocumented workers are especially vulnerable. And other under reporting makes it difficult to determine, but the Economic Policy Institute estimates that nationwide wage theft could be as high as $50 billion each year.[4] While the general public understandably decries burglaries and armed robberies and stolen cars, the affect of wage theft is three times higher, yet is not considered as serious a crime as a stolen car. But scripture thinks it’s pretty serious, especially in Sirach: “It is murder to deprive someone of his living or to cheat an employee of her wages.” Here in Denver, Eduardo was hired to complete an exterior stucco job.[5] He warned his employer not to use a certain material because it would not pass city inspection. His employer dismissed his concern and when the job did not, in fact, pass inspection, the employer refused to pay him. Eduardo agreed to do the job again. He obtained the correct materials, expecting to be reimbursed, not to mention, get paid for his labor, let alone doing it twice. The employer refused both his $500 wage as well as the $1,000 he spent for new materials. El Centro Humanitario,[6] our mission partner in June, directed him to Towards Justice, which helped him recuperate his wages. But not before he incurred overdraft fees because he didn’t get paid in a timely fashion. If he had sought temporary assistance from one of those pay day lenders, it might have been much worse. Speaking of those lenders, The Interfaith Alliance,[7] which is here today as our September mission partner, has been involved in a successful effort to get a measure on the upcoming mid-term ballot to put limits on pay day lenders. If voters agree, the interest rate they can charge will be capped at a measly 36%, which may sound unfair, but is much better than the current rate of 500% allowed by our elected legislature.[8] I always thought pay day lenders preyed on those without bank accounts, but who are their most frequent victims? The fact that the largest number of pay day lenders are in Colorado Springs might give you a clue: people in the military and veterans. Plus, senior citizens.[9] Getting trapped in their debt hell, where a short-term $500 loan for an emergency can rack up fees and interest well into thousands of dollars, is sometimes a side effect of withheld or delayed wages.[10] During this time of increasingly obscene wealth inequality, it’s good to remember churches began observing Labor Sunday during the same kind of gilded age in 1890.[11] Although, clergy often had to be embarrassed into addressing the issue of worker justice by labor advocates who quoted scriptures like today’s reading from the Book of James. On the other hand, worker justice was often the heart of the Social Gospel, with powerful preaching from folks like Washington Gladden of First Congregational Church in Columbus and Myron Reed, of First Congregational here in Denver.[12] But they were often preaching into the wind. So many people prefer a message of charity, at the time highlighting the pious good will of such industrialists and monopolists as the Carnegies and Rockefellers. Labor advocates described this as “pouring a little balm on the surface, while cancer eats away at the heart.” We are still challenged by such attitudes toward charity. That’s why we support groups like the Interfaith Alliance. They help us hold compassion and justice in balance. While we provide shelter to 20 women on Tuesday nights, our support of advocacy and action with groups like the Interfaith Alliance help us address the structural injustices that create and perpetuate homelessness. So, a little about the Book of James. Outside the words of Jesus himself in the gospels, no other book in the New Testament describes Christian faith more clearly and forcefully. It asks, for example, what good is the gospel if you don’t do anything with it? AKA “Don’t be hearers only, but doers of the Word.” Scholars believe James was written before all the other gospels except Mark.[13] But the intent was not a recitation of the whole life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but more like a summary of his teachings. More than half of James teaches us, in the style of wisdom literature, to “do this” and “do that” because “faith without works is dead.” James isn’t exactly a letter like we think of the other New Testament books, though it was meant to circulate. It wasn’t written to a specific community to address a particular problem, like for example, Paul’s letters were. James is also unusual in that it does not address issues of conflict between Gentile and Jewish Christians. Which also suggests that the instruction to pay your workers was not necessarily directed at the Christian community itself but another indication of its place in the genre of wisdom literature. There is no evidence that the earliest Christians were not taking care of the poor. The Book of Acts, for example, spoke very concretely about how communities organized themselves to do so. Therefore again, James may be more about the wisdom of right action than an admonition for bad behavior. If we read it as finger-pointing, we may miss its point, though that does not let us off the hook. So, what, then, is our call to action? If we don’t own companies, if we don’t have employees, does this text have any practical applications for us this Labor Sunday or is it just about someone else? I suggest three actions we can take to enact the Good News: First, vote “yes” to cap the interest rate lenders can charge. And educate your neighbors and friends. Secondly, there’s another measure on the ballot: vote “yes” to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude still enshrined in the Colorado Constitution,[14] a measure which failed last time, perhaps for confusing language. It doesn’t address prisoner wages, yet, but this is the first step. Tell your neighbors to vote yes on both. My third suggestion will require more long-term engagement: Tipping. The syndicated columnist Connie Schultz wrote a piece 14 years ago that she keeps updating from time to time. Connie is the wife of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and as I mentioned a few weeks ago, a member of Pilgrim Congregational UCC in Cleveland. Her original story is entitled “A little tip about gratuities.” If you've ever used a coat check, you probably noticed a tip jar. You might stick a dollar or two into that jar and assume the person behind the counter, usually a woman, will get the money. That's certainly what I always assumed. From now on, however, I learned I have to ask. I recently attended an event at Windows on the River. At the end, I picked up my wrap at the coat-check counter. I pointed to the large tip jar bulging with bills and said to the weary clerk, "Well, at least you’ve got some decent tips for tonight." She shook her head and said, "Oh, we don't get to keep those." I thought I misheard her. "What?" "We don't keep the tips." "Who does?" I asked. "Management." When I asked her how that made her feel, she sighed. "They say they use it to give us a Christmas party." Nowhere was there a sign indicating that the pile of bills in the tip jar was not going to the clerk but to management. At another event, I watched one person after another shove bills into the slot on the top of a box marked “tips.” "Who gets these tips?" I asked the coat-check clerk. She resisted telling me, but I pressed. "Management," she said softly. "How does that make you feel?" She shrugged her shoulders. "Life isn't fair, right?" So, I called the general manager of that fancy event center. She said, "Why are you asking about this? Why do you care?" The "girls," she insisted, are happy with the current arrangement. “And they're already paid an hourly wage." Word that I was “asking questions” went up the chain to two corporate vice presidents who called me. "We're confused. This is newsworthy?" They went on to praise their workers as some of the kindest, most professional servers in the business. And they get a free meal. Besides, they defended themselves, those tip jars only collect about $800 a year. Hard to believe, judging from the amount I saw stuffed into that jar last Friday night. They said, "We match it for their Christmas party." When I asked if they'd ever let their employees decide between keeping the tips and having a party, they fell silent. "Why does this matter?" they asked. The original general manager remained unrepentant. She said, "I don't ever think about who's getting the tip when I use a coat check. I don't care."[15] Connie asked her readers: Do you care? If you do, then ask and complain and make a big deal and embarrass companies that withhold those tips, like those who withhold wages. Ask when you see a tip jar at a bar. Who gets these? Connie has added subsequent columns, noting that if you are charged a “service fee” for a party of more than six people, ask the server, how much of this do you get? And if you leave a tip on your credit card, ask whether they get the full amount or minus the transaction fee.[16] Tipping isn’t worker justice. In fact, one person wisely described the tip jar as the "Trickle Down Economy Jar." Yet it might just be one way we are engaged in stealing the wages of the workers whose cries are heard by the Lord of Hosts. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t need any help having "a fatter than usual corpse." [1] The Message [2] https://sojo.net/articles/wage-theft-how-many-women-color-are-left-out-minimum-wage-hike [3] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/donald-trump-lawsuit-contractors [4] http://www.towardsjustice.org/wage_theft_in_denver_advocates_call_for_change [5] http://www.towardsjustice.org/testimonials [6] http://www.centrohumanitario.org/ [7] www.tia-co.org [8] https://www.stoppredatorypaydayloans.org/our-fight/ Vote YES! [9] Per Amanda Henderson of The Interfaith Alliance of Colorado [10] https://globalnews.ca/news/2699766/they-like-having-people-in-debt-your-payday-loan-stories/ [11] https://sojo.net/articles/history-behind-labor-sunday [12] http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.pd.046 [13] Marcus Borg, Evolution of the Word, HarperOne, 2012 [14] https://abolishslaveryco.org/ [15] https://www.cleveland.com/schultz/index.ssf/2004/04/heres_a_little_tip_about_gratu.html [16] https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz/12/13/tip-in-cash-and-dont-be-a-jerk
1 Comment
Kate Goodspeed
9/3/2018 10:26:18 am
David, this was excellent. Thank you. Our minister here in Winthrop, Maine, also preached in James, but the verses about being doers. I for sure am going to ask about too hard on the future. Lots more small mom and pop places here, but some larger operations. K
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