9/5/54

Scripture: Micah 6: 6-8; Matthew 7: 7-12; Luke 10: 25-28.

It has been good to worship together during the summer. This arrangement between our two churches is one of those tangible things that can be done at the local level in the spirit of Ecumenicity which pervades such a meeting as the World Council of Churches held in Evanston last month. It was my privilege to attend, with my family, the opening plenary session of that council as well as the giant festival of faith held on the evening of August 15th. Though the Festival of Faith was held in a stadium, it was a service of genuine worship, and the throngs present were there to worship. People joined in the responses and sang the hymns as they would in their own churches.

We have all known for a long time that it is possible to worship God in diverse ways and in differing surroundings. Some of the very first Protestant services held in our own community took place in the front of a building that was a saloon. But even though late sleepers snored in their bunks, and poker card enthusiasts spoke audibly in the back room, those who were intent on worship at the front found that common bond that grew among souls into a church of Jesus Christ.

The meetings at Evanston have underlined for us all the possibility and the importance and the reasonableness of exploring the common ground of our faith together at the same time that we continue as distinct families in the household of faith.

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Today we meet for worship on the Sunday of a week that has a common concern for us all, for this is Labor Day Sunday. And we all have our thoughts beamed to its significance. With the advent and the development of the labor movement, there has been both tension and cooperation; some divisiveness and some gain in strength for the total society.

There have been strikes and lockouts in some industries. And there has been constant improvement in the conditions that affect laborers directly and all of us indirectly. Fortunately for our own community there has been remarkably little of the disruption that plagues some localities when stalemated negotiations erupt into strikes or lockouts. This seems due, in great measure, to the disposition of management to negotiate fairly, and to really consider the welfare of people associated in the industrial life of an important company; and, in a measure, to the purpose of labor to make its goals reasonable, with a regard for the welfare of all concerned.

But it is not so in every community. Some are disrupted by strikes that shake the neighborhood like an earthquake. If you have ever lived through an earthquake you recall what a shock that can be. You are suddenly aware, as I once was, that you can’t depend on what you had supposed was the most stable of certainties -- Mother Earth herself. As the ground heaves and buckles, you wonder, “Will my house stand? When will it end?” I remember running toward the children’s bedrooms through a hall that seemed to sway and shudder like a ship on a stormy sea, with these thoughts fleeting through my mind.

In those communities that have to endure a major strike, everyone is affected to some extent, and people are relieved when it is over and all folk can return to constructive pursuit, like Japanese people returning to their houses after fleeing to the streets during a major tremor.

The Church is concerned with both labor and management; with both production of goods and the consuming of the same. For it is concerned with the souls of people therein. This is not to say, nor to suggest, that the church shall, or should, have any hand in directing the negotiations that result in fair contracts between labor and management. Few leaders in the field of organized religion have the competence to address themselves to the complicated issues that must be known and evaluated in such a negotiation.

But industrial relations are simply one aspect of human relations. Human relations are God’s business! And the church is concerned with God’s business and the proclaiming of what it understands to be His will.

Over 3000 years ago, God definitely demonstrated His divine interest in the plight of Hebrew workers at forced labor in Egypt. When the Egyptian Pharaoh ordered his foremen to withhold straw from the Hebrew brick makers [Exodus 5: 7 ff], compelling them to keep busy gathering their own materials in addition to turning out their regular production quota, God raised up Moses, charging him to relieve the injustice and the suffering of those mistreated people. Eventually he led them to their freedom.

God spoke through the prophets 700 years before Christ, to the social and economic conditions created by the hearts and the actions of people. The same concern of God for people, in the whole of their lives, is implicit in much of what our Lord, Jesus Christ, taught. And it is revealed through centuries of Christian tradition. All major religious faiths in American are today increasingly conscious of their responsibility to God, to their own people, and to the community in this regard.

When a British prime minister warned a group of American churchmen, meeting some years ago, to consider conditions in coal fields struck by thousands of miners, he said, “The coal strike is no more your business than the Athanasian creed is the business of the coal operators,” he was wrong on both counts. For bishops must know what affects the welfare of all sorts of people. And people must know the verities summed up in the great creedal affirmations of the church.

The Christian faith is not an escape from the problems of living. It should be the dynamo of power for right living. The labor leader or the management representative who approaches the bargaining table without religious faith and principle leaves behind the most important part of his equipment for the task. The foreman or the workmen whose practical ethics are not guided by God are not truly profitable servants of either the deity or humanity.

Karl Olson points out that the church is interested in labor-management relations for far better reasons than the effect they have on the Sunday morning offering plate! For there are moral principles rightly involved in the earning of our daily bread -- principles that we must keep constantly in mind and in practice. Let me share with you some of the observations of this Christian minister.

1) First, we recall that every thing comes from materials created not by ourselves, but by God. The minerals, the metals of the earth, the air we breathe, the soil we use for the growing of crops, the timber we cut, all come from God’s creation. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” [Psalm 24: 1]. No matter how much its resources are developed by the earnest labor and the cunning of man’s purposes, they are still God’s to give or withhold.

2) In a moral sense, therefore, we are not outright owners of anything. That material over which we have temporary custody cannot be taken with us beyond this mortal life, but must be left to the care, for better or worse, of others who survive us. We are, before God and by His grace, trustees and stewards of the wealth and material we control. Jesus implied this in numerous parables of his.

A few years ago, Christian business men, labor leaders, and farmers who had been called together from all denominations to consider the relation of the church to economic life, state the principle in this way, “Property represents a trusteeship under God,” they said, “and should be held subject to the needs of the community.”

3) A third principle is that love is the way of life. Jesus underlined it as the fundamental commandment of living. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” [Luke 10: 27]. “Whatsoever you wish that men should do to you, do so to them.”

4) And again, along with love, we recognize that God demands that we practice justice and right dealings. “Let justice roll down like waters,” said the prophet Amos, “and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” [Amos 5: 24]. And Micah put it pointedly in the question: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” [Micah 6: 8].

5) A fifth principle, as old as time and tradition, is that we are accountable for our brother’s welfare. When the Lord God inquired of Cain what had happened to his murdered brother, Cain posed the question for all mankind since: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” [Genesis 4: 9]. And all eternity has answered, “Yes, you are! Not as his master, but as his brother, you are to have a care for him.”

In a sermon to the Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Evanston, Bishop Oxnam urged it as a matter of spiritual concern, that the average per capita annual income in China is $23 per year; that the per capita income in India is $43 per year; that the per capita income in Great Britain is $660 and that the per capita annual income in the USA is $1500. And these disparities are reflected in the living standards of people. Brothers must consider these facts together!

There may be no sin in accepting gratefully the standard of living that is ours. But there is a sin of neglect and indifference, if we pay no heed at all to the need that cries to heaven and humanity out of the suffering of millions, for the help in friendly understanding and brotherly “know-how” that we could give.

6) The sixth moral principle here stated is that while man is endowed with moral freedom, he is yet morally obligated to use that freedom responsibly in all spheres of human relations “to widen the range of effectual freedom for all men.” Liberty without responsibility is a false freedom and a moral mirage!

The awareness of these moral principles in the earning and use of our daily bread brings before us certain implications in the field of labor and management and their mutual relations with the public.

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1) First, the determining of conditions of employment is not the exclusive role of any one person or group. Rather it is the joint concern of management, of workers, and the general public.

It was a Roman Catholic clergyman, who had carefully studied labor matters, who stated what he believed to be his church’s position in these words: “Business is not the property of its owners; it is a society in which the stockholders and employees are social partners and must work together.” If this be true, it would be equally a sin for managers to say: “There will be no discussion of a raise,” and for a worker to say “15 cents an hour more pay, or we’ll shut you down.” The livelihood and lives of people - employers and employees, of producers and consumers, depends on honest exploration of the human rights and needs of all the folk concerned.

I venture the observation that there has been a considerable amount of this spirit in negotiations in the industrial life of our community over many years. To the degree that this may be so, it is fair to speak of Christian relationship in our industry. To the degree that it may not yet be so, we have yet to become more Christian.

2) A second implication of recognizing moral principles in the earning of daily bread is that all partners are entitled to a fair return for the efforts in the enterprise, with due regard for the rights of the public. In production, capital, and direction and labor each deserves its own reward.

The “gimmick” in this is, of course, a determination of what is “fair.” Probably the eventual understanding and acceptance of what is fair is reached better by those who approach each side of the bargaining table after prayer for the guidance of Almighty God. People rightly dislike any vain parading of their religious practices. But I have heard men of both management and labor say that their own private prayer is an important part of their efforts to arrive at what is fair.

There are other implications that can be seen and applied by those who are Christian in their vision and purpose.

In earning daily bread, and negotiating the condition therefore, these religious resources are available:

1) Have we loved our brother -- not sentimentally, but with genuine, loving concern for his welfare.

2) Have we honestly taken the matter to God in meditation and prayer for superhuman guidance? His kingdom comes, and his will is done among those who seek to know right, rather than just seeking their own way.

3) Do we approach our problems with full faith that a solution can be found? Quitting never won a ball game. And faint heart ne’er won fair maiden.

He who is our Master, Jesus Christ, never gave up on his problems nor on the problems through which he stands at our side. Surely he is interested, with us, in the moral principles by understanding and application of which we earn the daily bread supplied for each one of us by God the Father.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 5, 1954; (Labor Sunday; Union Service of the Methodist and Congregational churches.)