Jesus lives a revolutionary witness that is challenging and changing the ruler system. He needs other revolutionaries to join with him in his fruitful mission. “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.”
Laborers in the work field have persistently challenged the ruler system. Eugene Debs was a voice for such laborers at the turn of the 20th century when rulers’ abusive cruelties were the norm, “I am thinking… of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved body and soul.” The unions he and other laborers organized were fought against by the ruler class whose personal and social abuses led to the Great Depression. Laborers organizing an international union were dealt a blow when German laborers aligned not with other workers but with the Nazi ruling class in the build-up to and during the 2nd World War. The same scenario was repeated when workers aligned with pro and anti-communist camps during a very long Cold War. Assaults by capitalist and communist rulers against laborers forming unions have persisted. In the U.S. they include Right to Work lies and legislation. For example, lies like unions are bad for workers even though they provide better benefits, conditions, hours, and wages; or unions are bad for the economy even though they strengthen local businesses, community centers, neighborhoods, and schools. Lies like unions are as bad as big business which means big business must be bad and both need at least reform to benefit laborers. The Right to Work assault was also injurious by making joining a union a private choice of each individual laborer. It denied work as an activity of a community. It rejected that joining a union was a common agreement by all laborers in a common endeavor. Rulers were thus able to reintroduce injurious policies previously outlawed by unions. For example, Amazon, Starbucks, and other companies are diminishing benefits including health care. They are also firing labor union organizers, targeting them and their work sites with cuts to benefits or wages, and changing work contracts to penalize labor union involvement. Rulers intended to and succeeded in destroying yet another communal element of our lives and in its place introduced yet another element of privatization. Rulers operate by privatizing life, for example privatizing schools and educational policies, waste pick-up, water treatment, and are privatizing prisons. Many rulers claim the title Christian but Christ Jesus did not employ laborers nor target them for abuse. Jesus himself was a laborer. He was also a labor organizer, organizing not for any particular work but organizing humanity for community to replace rulers and their privatization abuses. 2,000 years ago Jesus understood the need to progress beyond the privatized divisions invented and maintained by the ruling class. He even invited the ruling class to join his new union. The fruits of our labor come from continuing to create that full union.
“Privately owned industry and production for individual profit are no longer compatible with social progress and have ceased to work out to humane and civilized ends.” (Eugene Debs)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, we labor for communion.
Question: How am I influenced toward privatization rather than communalism?
June 18, 2023 Matthew 9:36-10:8 Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time