Thought for Today
Exodus 20:9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work-- you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.
Psalm 104:23 People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening. 24 O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
John 4:37 For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."
1 Corinthians 3:8 The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each.
I probably don’t need to remind anyone; but, today is Labor Day. “Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday of September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements in the United States.” (en.wikipedia.org)
As I thought about Labor Day this morning, I realized that I tend to mentally categorize holidays as either liturgical holidays or civic holidays. Obviously, Labor Day would fall under the rubric of a civic holiday. Liturgical holidays would include Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Reformation Sunday, etc. Different faith traditions might include other liturgical holidays. Different religions do recognize other liturgical holidays. I was raised in a mostly Jewish neighborhood. My school friends had other holidays including Hanukkah, Purim, Yom Kippur and Passover. Each of us was aware of the other’s liturgical holidays, although, as young children we rarely understood their religious significance. I did know that for many of my childhood friends there were observances which required them to adopt actions or activities different from my own. My Catholic friends did not eat meat on Fridays and all abstained from something during Lent. My Jewish friends fasted for some holidays.
During my own lifetime I have noticed that the distinction between civic and liturgical has blurred for some holidays. Christmas, for example, has for many become a generic gift-giving holiday. Commercial practices and interests have co-opted a large measure of the day’s significance. I have even observed young children looking at a creche and asking why they left out the drummer boy.
Thanksgiving has always been an interesting mix of civic and liturgical observations. The liturgical element is captured in the very name of the holiday. It connotes offering prayers of thanksgiving to a deity, in the U.S.A. to God, for the God-given bounty enabling our ancestors to store up enough food to survive the impending winter months. During my lifetime, Thanksgiving has spawned another holiday, Black Friday, to ‘celebrate’ the beginning of the buying orgy leading up to Christmas. Of Black Friday, a Bing search yields, “Some retail historians trace the use of the phrase to the 1960s, when police officers in Philadelphia started calling the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday because they had to work overtime to deal with the chaos downtown as hordes of suburban shoppers came to the city to start their holiday shopping or attend the traditional Army-Navy football game on Saturday.”
Labor Day has always been a bit different, largely an almost purely civic holiday. In my youth, Labor Day marked the ‘official’ end of summer vacation from school. Most schools began the fall term on the Tuesday following Labor Day. Even though summer weather along the Texas Gulf Coast often extended into November, school officially began after Labor Day.
When I think of a day of rest from labor, however, I always remember the words of scripture about the Sabbath and its being a day of rest. Labor Day was not enacted as some sort of national Sabbath; but, today I will remember God’s own labor of creating all of Creation. And, today, I will honor God’s work . . . and, as part of that, I will fire up our grill and honor God’s Creation in our own traditional observance of barbeque, coleslaw and potato salad.
Stay safe, enjoy Labor Day, trust God,
Pastor Ray