For nearly everyone, work has looked different since March and the emergence of the coronavirus. For some, work has looked drastically different. This weekend we observe Labor Day, a national holiday set aside to honor and lift up all workers.
I’ve thought a lot about work these past several months. When much of the country went into lockdown in the spring, one of the immediate fallouts was the loss of jobs. Layoffs, furloughs, businesses closing, livelihoods disrupted, in some cases ruined. For those fortunate to keep their jobs, many experienced a sort of whiplash as all of a sudden work needed to be done remotely, at home, juggled simultaneously with childcare, parent care, and other everyday responsibilities. The number of hats required to be worn grew exponentially overnight. For some, remote working was an impossibility. Thus the term “essential workers.” For these heroes, daily work suddenly became dangerous, a life-risking endeavor day in and day out. Work began to include thermometers, masks, symptom checking, and lots of sanitizing. Some workplaces became safer than others.
And yet, with all of these changes and challenges, looking beyond the financial stability that employment provides, many of us have re-discovered the sense of purpose that working provides us. With everything around us turned upside down, doing something, even if we feel only the slightest bit productive (because who really feels that productive these days), a sense of purpose can be the one thing keeping us from falling off the ledge.
Martin Luther often spoke and wrote about vocation. And he always did so through the lens of baptism. Vocation flows directly out of the waters of baptism. It is there in those waters that responsibility and promise swirl together. The promise of baptism is God claiming us as named and beloved children, the promise is grace, love and forgiveness, the promise is life and salvation over sin and death. The responsibilities are the ways in which we live as children of God in the world. Vocation. Vocation covers all manners of roles and responsibilities–a child, a parent, a spouse. Baptismal vocation is also deeply tied to work and how we fill our days, how we interact with the world. Remember that the first disciples were defined by their occupation–fishermen, a tax collector. Baptism reminds us of the deep connection between faith and work.
While today’s gospel reading deals mostly with conflict and how best to navigate conflict, the last verse is a broad declaration that covers all aspects of life, “For where two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus says, “I am there among them.” For me, it is a reminder that Jesus is most certainly present at our work and in our work, wherever that is and whatever that looks like. And even if in our work we are often alone, we are connected in some way to others. Christ is there, too. Our work is important to God and is a way we live out our faith in the world.
Given the importance of work and vocation in the life of faith, we must always be advocates for workers and workers’ rights. Things like a living wage, safe working conditions, and paid sick leave are not just workers’ rights, they are human rights. Our work as advocates is even more important now in this pandemic to ensure the safety and well-being of all workers, but especially essential workers who put their lives on the line to keep us safe and keep our economy running. While our lives have been disrupted, the call and baptismal responsibility to work for justice continues to ring.
How do we live together, work together, in the world as the body of Christ? The question is certainly as relevant today as it was when Jesus and his disciples walked the earth. In our work in our play, in our labor and in our rest, we do so dripping wet with God’s promise that we have been saved by grace and liberated by God’s love to love and care for one another.