By Rabbi Renee Bauer and This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
January 17, 2010
Isaiah 62:1-5, John 2:1-11

This morning, we had a two-part sermon. Rabbi Renee Bauer is the director of the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice in South Central Wisconsin. She reflected on the Isaiah passage in light of the experiences of immigrant workers in the Madison area. Then Pastor Leah connected that to the message of John's Gospel story of Jesus at the wedding feast in Cana. We start with Rabbi Renee:

“They treated us like old furniture,” said Juan as he was discussing how he was fired from his job of several years by a Taco Bell in Madison, how he and his former co-workers felt discarded and left on the curb, in favor of something shiny and new. 

Last spring, 28 Latino workers were summarily fired by Madison area Taco Bell restaurants after working for anywhere from 4-13 years. They were replaced by white workers who were paid more in a starting salary than the Latino workers had been paid after extended tenures with the restaurant. The firing happened after the workers experienced increasing discrimination —not being allowed to speak Spanish on the job, not being given as many breaks as their non-Latino counterparts.

These workers are not alone. Each and every day that our office at the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice is open- workers, mostly Latino workers, come to us seeking help after experiencing unfair, often illegal treatment in the workplace. Most often they come in because they have not been paid for hours they have worked. They are forced to clock out and then continue working overtime without pay. Or they are fired and not paid for their last two weeks of work. Or they are contract workers and are just simply not paid.
 
As we join together on this Sunday of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday weekend, we turn our attention to this injustice that is often invisible in our communities. Rev. King is most well known for his civil rights work but he was also a staunch spokesperson for economic justice and workers’ rights. In fact he spent the  last weeks of his life he spent in Memphis supporting striking sanitation workers.

Last year at this time we celebrated King’s legacy by rejoicing in the inauguration of the first African-American president. When we reflect on the fact that an African-American family inhabits the White House, we are aware of how much has changed since King tragic assassination. However, to honor King is to not only rejoice in the progress but to take action on what still needs repair.

As Reverend King said to the striking sanitation workers in Memphis in one of the final speeches of his life: “Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know now, that it isn't enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't have enough money to buy a hamburger?...”  We are saying, "Now is the time." Get the word across to everybody in power in this town that now is the time to make real the promises of democracy” (Martin Luther King, Jr., speech to the striking sanitation workers, Memphis Tennessee March 18, 1968).

How easily he could have spoken these words today. It is eerie how true they ring in our years in this time of economic downturn.
When take King’s words with the words of Isaiah from today’s selection from the Hebrew Bible we receive a call to action. Isaiah says, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.” (Isaiah, 62:1).

When we take these words and integrate them with King’s message we call out our own message,  “for the sake of those who are not able to provide food for their children, those who do not have access to health care and those who struggle to keep a roof over their head we will not be silent. For the sake of those who are mistreated because of their immigration status or robbed from the wages they have earned, we will not rest, until their vindication shines out like the dawn and their salvation like a burning torch.

Martin Luther King was a preacher. He knew that economic justice was moral issue that was at the heart of what it meant to be a person of faith. I know that myself when I look in the eyes of the young man who has a small notebook where he has meticulously tracked each hour he has worked in the last two months and pleads with me that he does not want extra pay but just wants to be paid for his work. I know I am witnessing the modern day version of the Biblical story of the Israelites in Egypt who worked under harsh task masters when two women come in with their young children to tell us they need their wages from the last two weeks they worked in the cleaning service at the hotel but are not sure what to do because they do not want to get in trouble with immigration.

Every day decent, hard working people in our neighborhoods are being robbed.  Workers who bus tables at the restaurants where we enjoy our meals, who clean the office buildings where we work and do the laundry in our hospitals where we recover from illness are being robbed of their wages. These workers who often work behind the scenes and perform the important services we depend on have not only been robbed of their wages but of their dignity, their trust in others and often their hope.

These workers, like Juan and the Taco Bell workers, are treated like old furniture - given all the dignity of random pieces of furniture,  objects who could be moved from location to location, treated well or abused based on the owners’ whim, and then disowned without concern.  After all, furniture has no feelings.  Or memories.  Obligations or relationships to which anyone must attend. This is how much old furniture is treated.

But on the other hand, many of us, in fact, prefer old things in our home, particularly when the alternative is the poorly made, look-alike stuff to be found in many stores.  Why do we love our old furniture?  Because it does hold memories and sentiment.  Because it was passed down from a beloved or discovered on a particularly sunny day with a friend or made by our or another’s worn hands. 

There is value placed on really old furniture.  People call them antiques, stroke them, care for them, and pay dearly for them.  Why?  Because they too were made with more care and expertise than their younger counterparts.  And, often, because they came from another place, another culture.  Because their lines carry stories of their history and travels and stir in us the attachment to both travel and home.
(Becky Schigiel, ICWJ newsletter, August 2009)

Perhaps the problem is not that the immigrant workers in our cities are being treated like old furniture but perhaps it is that they are not being allowed the dignity and care that we do even bestow on furniture, much less a person, that is aged, dependable, well-crafted and yes, perhaps, long-traveled.
 
It is time for our society to recognize the dignity of the hard workers, often from other countries, who work in every corner of our cities. When we, as a society really deeply understand that all people are made in the image of God and that the wealth we cling to is temporary and ultimately belongs to God we will see a more just world unfold.

Our faith traditions call each of us to be part of this transformation. We begin by letting the silent stories of those who work in the shadows of our own cities motivate us to speak out about the injustices that happen around us each and every day so that words of the Psalm from today’s lectionary ring true for all in our cities,  “All people… may feast on the abundance of [God’s] house, and… drink form the river of your delights.” (Psalm 36:8).

May this be God’s will.

Pastor Leah read John 2:1-11 and the continued with these words:

This morning’s gospel reading holds one of my very favorite biblical stories.  Jesus has just begun his public ministry, called his first followers, and where do we find him?  At a wedding party.  And what does he do there?  He turns water into wine, and not just any wine, really good wine.  And not just a bottle or two of good wine, but 120 gallons of really good wine that saves the day for the almost embarrassed groom and his new wife. 

I love this story for its extravagance, for what it shows us of Jesus and God and how they choose to be in relationship with us.  Jesus comes to us in human form and models for us a new way of being together and with God that is generous, grace-filled, and brimming with abundant love.  120 gallons abundant, in fact. 

In John’s version of this story, Jesus doesn’t speak except to snap a bit at his mother for making him work at a party.  But writer Peter Steele envisions things differently.  Writing in the voice of one of the party-goers, he shares a remembrance of the feast... “After a while they gave us wine in flagons.  The kind of thing it was a privilege to drink, or think about.  I still don’t know where they had found it, how they bought it, why they kept it until then.  I do remember, late in the piece, a man who made some toasts and drank as if he meant them, and the jars for water, and the way they seemed to glow.” 

Here is Jesus, according to Peter Steele, providing out of Love’s great abundance that which saves the day and brings the newly married couple and all their loved ones great delight.  Here is Jesus toasting their happiness in sincerity, with a generous heart, and love that overflows onto his beloved.     

I love this story for a variety of reasons, but one is because John names it as the first sign of Jesus’ glory.  John works in “signs” instead of miracles like the other gospel writers.  These signs reveal that Jesus is sent in love by God and tell the people that the abundance, truth, freedom, and love of heaven are now breaking in to everyday existence and are available to all who choose to live in love with God.  What does this first sign tell us about Jesus and God and living in that in-breaking heaven on earth?  That God intends for our life together to be an abundant one, that God has provided enough for all, and not just enough, above and beyond what we need, so that we might live well, abundantly, and in ways that bring us joy.

It might seem strange, then, to learn that all of John’s signs, even this one about abundant and joyful living point to the cross and the resurrection to new life.  Remember how this reading begins?  “On the third day…”  This first sign is about God’s abundance, the second is about healing, and the signs build on and on in this fashion until Jesus is on the cross and the final sign finds us.  Jesus says to Mary and his disciple, “Woman, behold your son; son, behold your mother.”  Even at the brink of death, Jesus points us to that in-breaking heaven, that abundant living and love that God has and wants for us.  Even death or all life’s little deaths cannot and should not stop us from living in love and connection to each other and to God.  Ultimately, Jesus’ glory, God’s glory that all John’s signs point to is that we are all one in love, in God’s generous grace, and in God’s intention that we should live well and abundantly together.

It is fitting then, that this gospel reading finds us on the day that we hear from Rabbi Renee about the stories of God’s people here in Madison who are being cut off through active or passive oppression from the abundant life that God wants for all of us.  There is enough for all.  120 gallons of really good wine enough. 

God’s glory is that we are God’s delight, as the passage from Isaiah tells us today, and God has given us to each other in love to care for one another and share God’s abundance with each other.  The light and truth and freedom and love that have so generously broken into our human reality in the person of Jesus are for all of God’s children.  These gifts of love from God are what connect us to each other and call us to provide for and protect and lift each other up in ways that mirror Jesus’ extravagant act of love at the wedding in Cana.  We might, like Jesus, protest that our time has not come, but friends, our time has come.

Tomorrow we celebrate the life of one who lived and died for that extravagant and life-changing love.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis for the third time in a month’s span when he was assassinated.  He was there not to wax on eloquently and in inspirational ways about some far off heaven.  He was there to demand attention and action on the garbage worker’s strike that had gone on there for over a year while the workers and their families suffered greatly.  He was there to lift up the oppressed and abused, to call for change, that they might be provided for in ways that honored their status as God’s beloved and invited them to the life abundant that Jesus came share with all God’s people. 

Here is Jesus, here is Dr. King saying to the people of Memphis and to all of us, “here is your son, here is your mother, here is brother, here is your sister.”  When we live these connections out in the world in the abundant and extravagant love of God, then we too are signs of God’s glory, and we can truly know what it means to be God’s delight. 

May it be so with us and all of God’s beloved children.  Amen.