Finishing the Work

Jesus is talking to, “great crowds traveling with (him)” about the work of being his “disciple.” He tells a parable about “laying the foundation” and tells of others needed to “finish the work.” It requires we renounce our possessions, “anyone who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

Today’s accompanying New Testament message is from Paul who refuses to ask a slave owner, Philemon, to renounce his possession of a human being, Onesimus, “I did not want to do anything without your consent.” Philemon the slave owner is noted as a “co-worker” by Paul and both men as Christ-like by theologians. But neither are committed to finish the work of Christ Jesus. Both are possessed by the master class, as is institutional Christianity. All diminish Jesus’ work to the personal vice of possessing things while they obscure or ignore Jesus’ work on the social revolution ending the possession of people. People enslaved were and are capital for the master class. Few of the people finishing the social revolution work of freeing people from the slavery that is capitalism are noted in U.S. history. This is especially true for African Americans. For example, African American workers in Washington D.C. who as early as 1835 were engaged in work strikes. Also, African American dock workers in Pensacola, Florida, who, after the Civil War, organized a Workingman’s Association. Master class possession, especially of African American workers, was enforced under the Redeemer Rule and Jim Crow Laws that included Plessy vs. Ferguson. Hence, we know little of African American workers who had violence done to them, like Joe Spinner Johnson and Ernest Glenwood. These and other Black unionists have shortened notations because they had shortened lives due to beatings, mutilations, and murders. Only 8 names are known of the 60 Black farm worker unionists who were murdered in Louisiana’s Thibodaux Massacre. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated he was participating in the Sanitation Workers Strike. Fewer unionists exist currently because fewer unions exist – still attacked to this day by the master class. Union workers are still being busted, abused, and violated, mostly by GOP backed efforts (Right-to-Work) and by the anti-union tactics of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Starbucks. We are indoctrinated into the business of capitalism yet kept ignorant that capitalism is the business of slavery. In the same way earlier slavers once tracked the productivity of the human beings they possessed, so too current corporate managers track the productivity of the human beings they possess.  As too few historians have noted the human beings possessed by capitalists, so too few theologians note the human being possessed by Philemon, Onesimus. While Paul and Philemon are errantly noted as Christ-like, Onesimus is rarely noted. Certainly not his first-person experience as a human being possessed as a thing. For Onesimus’ experience to be prioritized it would mean we are participating in the Christ-like work of a social revolution.

“I was severely punished by a board cut full of holes to raise the blisters, then I was whipped with a strap to burst the blisters, which were then salted and peppered,” said Thomas Brown.  “My mother was sold away from me,” said Collins. “I was so lonesome without her that I would… cry and look for her return… but she never came back.” “One white lady that lived near us at McBean slipped in a colored gal’s room and cut her baby’s head clean off ’cause it belonged to her husband… But he kept goin’ with the colored gal and they had more chillun.” (unnamed) “If their master thought that a certain man and woman might have strong, healthy offspring, he forced them to have sexual relation, even though they were married to other slaves… slaveowner Big Jim would make them consummate this relationship in his presence… He enjoyed this… and often entertained his friends in this manner… Sometimes they forced the unhappy husbands and lovers of their victims to look on,” said Sam and Louisa Everett. “I knew a man at the South who had six children by a colored slave… he sold all the children but the oldest slave daughter. Afterward, he had a child by this daughter… Such things are done frequently in the South,” said William Thompson. “My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves… Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves… They regard such children as property, as marketable as the pigs on the plantation… No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery,” said Harriet Jacobs. (Selections from 19th & 20th century Slave Narratives)

Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, keep urging us to finish the work of humanity.

Question: How am I finishing the work on the needed social revolution?

September 04, 2022    Gospel Luke 14:25-33          23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

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