Sermon

The Misery of My People
A Sermon in The Other Six Days Series
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
February 19, 2006
Exodus 3:7-10; Mark 10:13-16

Exodus 3:7-10 Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’

Mark 10:13-16 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

I. BEGINNING

I remember my first job. It was working at the local Agway store in my town. It was the summer before my sophomore year of high school—I was 14. I stocked shelves. I watered trees in the nursery. I carried 50 lb. bags of dog food out to people’s cars. I put together lawn mowers and gas grills that would go on display. There was a fair amount of grunt work—lifting and carrying. But it was honest work and I had the privilege of working for a kind and decent man, Mr. Moore, who was ready to provide constructive criticism where necessary and compliments when earned. And of course, it was a couple of days a week after school and then Saturdays over the summer. All in all, it was a minimum wage job that gave me some pocket money and taught me a little responsibility.

But it was not the totality of my existence. My job was a supplement to my schooling, my family life, extracurricular activities, and so on. I did not need the job to put food on my family’s table, and truth be told, if I had not had that job, my material well-being would barely have been impacted.

II. THE CRISIS: CHILD LABOR

We in the Protestant traditions place a lot of value on work. It’s why there’s something called the Protestant Work Ethic. It’s why the United Methodist Church, among others, opposes gambling: because it detracts from a belief in the value of work. We have seen work as something that can grant dignity, self-respect, and a sense of self-worth through work.

And yet for millions of children around the world, work is not a blessing that confers self-worth and dignity. It is not an after-school job to put a little extra money in one’s pocket. Rather, it is a burden, in some cases a terrible crushing burden.

A. The facts

It is estimated that there were some 211 million children ages 5 to 14 at work in economic activity in the world in 2000. This accounts for a little less than one- fifth of all children in this age group. About 73 million working children are less than 10 years old. The total economically active child population 5-17 years old is estimated at 352 million children. [1]

The Asian-Pacific region harbours the largest number of child workers in the 5-14 age category, 127.3 million in total. It is followed by Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America & the Caribbean with 48 million and 17.4 million, respectively. Developed economies and transition economies have the lowest absolute numbers of child workers. [2]

An estimated 171 million children ages 5-17 were estimated to work in hazardous situations or conditions in 2000. In other words, children in hazardous work constituted about half the total number of economically active children and more than two thirds of those in child labour. A stunning 55 per cent of very young child labourers (i.e. those below 12 years of age) were already working in a hazardous occupation or situation. [3]

Children in unconditional worst forms of child labour. In addition to the number of children in hazardous work, it is estimated that there were about 8.4 million children involved in other worst forms of child labour as defined in ILO Convention No.182, Art. 3. This includes trafficking (1.2 million); forced and bonded labour (5.7 million); armed conflict (0.3 million); prostitution and pornography (1.8 million); and illicit activities (0.6 million). [4]

B. The Problem

Earlier this week, our Social Justice Committee and the Office of the University Chaplain co-sponsored a table-talk entitled “Can Child Labor Ever Be Justified as a Tool of Development?”. The question itself takes into account a certain reality, that all nations have at one time or another, used child labor in their economic life, including our country. Children worked in sweatshops, children worked in factories, and on farms (many children still do work on farms). The nineteenth century seems like it was full of child labor. Is child labor merely a stage that economies pass through on their way to full development? The panelists answered an unequivocal “no”.

Child labor, they said, in fact impedes development. It creates intergenerational poverty. Children who work all the time never get the education to develop skills that lift them out of the unskilled labor they practice. They do not elevate themselves out of poverty, and at the same time, they take away jobs from adults. [5] The practice of child labor itself becomes a barrier to economic development because it becomes an obstacle to universal education of children, which now more than ever—in the information age—is the most important resource a child can make use of.

III. INNOCENCE

But why should Christians care? You get enough international development and economics and political theory in your classes. Why should Christians care about child labor as a theological issue?

In tonight’s Gospel lesson, we read a famous passage of Jesus and the children. Listen again to some of those words:

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

People sometimes wonder what this teaching is emphasizing and some think that it is suggesting that people have a simple, undeveloped faith.

It is doing nothing of the kind. Jesus is teaching us that our faith ought to be like that of a child: full of wonder and awe. Full of imagination and possibility. The innocence of a child is not naïveté, it is not inexperience or immaturity. Rather, it is that kind of innocence that is open to the possibilities.

A professor of mine in college described religious life as a three stage journey that repeats itself over and over again: innocence, fascination, and distance. [6] The journey consisted of being open to possibilities, to immersing yourself in new experiences to the saturation point, and then stepping back to contextualize those experiences in the broader life of faith. But the journey begins with that innocent stage—that sense of wonder and adventure. The way a child can spend hours contemplating ants going about their business, or can run through the woods and fields as if they were a giant playground, ready for the taking.

That is the innocence that Jesus is talking about in terms of the life of faith. And that is exactly the innocence that child labor deprives children of.

Children are already growing up too fast. You all have far more stresses and pressures on you than I ever did at your age. A consequence of “progress” I suppose. But imagine children without any childhood at all. Children whose lives are beset by hard labor, by the burdens of having to support families, or by the terror of forced labor, or trafficking, or abuse. Child labor does more than keep children economically impoverished: it can keep people spiritually impoverished.

When the ability to wonder and have awe, the ability to be inspired and to dream is crushed as such an early age, it may never be rekindled, and a person may never come into the kind of faith of possibility that Christ is calling us all to experience.

As Christians, we are compelled to help people to experience God in the world. There are millions of children for whom God is a distant reality, both because their lives become unbearable toil, but also because the ability to imagine possibility is quashed.

IV. LIBERATION

And, too, we believe in a God of liberation. A God who hears the cries of her people and seeks to liberate them from bondage.

‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey… The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’

This is the God we serve. The God we profess. The God who in Christ came and liberated us from the bondage of sin and death, from the prisons of fear and hate. Our calling as disciples is to spread the gospel of liberation.

[Our responsibility too is to "the least of these" that Jesus refers to in the Gospels, and to the "widow, the orphan, and the stranger"--the marginalized, the powerless--that the Hebrew scriptures speak of time and time again. These children are certainly the 'least of these', often orphans, and definitely powerless.]

There are millions of children who are in Egypts of the world’s making. Can we hear their cry on account of their taskmasters? The Hebrew for the word “Israelites” can also be translated as “the children of Israel”. Can we hear the cries of the “children of Adam”, the misery of our people? Do we know their sufferings?

So how do we, as Christians, respond?

Like Moses, we testify to this God of liberty. We cry to the pharaohs of the world: “Let my people go”. God sends us to Pharaoh, to bring his people, the children of humanity, out of Egpyt.

We are not all Moses, of course. We are not all the kinds of people who lead mass movements. But there are things we can do as a testimony and witness.

We can care about the things we buy. We live in an age of global markets. Our goods are produced all over the world. Do we know who is making them? Do we know whether the clothing we wear is produced by children? Do we know whether the chocolate we eat contains cocoa harvested by children? Do we know what the labor is for companies that contract out with local suppliers round the world?

This information is easily obtained from a variety of sources. And if you can’t find it, you can always call the company to ask. The nice thing about living in a free market is that if enough people want something, they’ll offer it. If companies learn that people are asking for products that are free of child labor, they will provide it to meet that need.

V. END

We might be forgiven for thinking that a problem like this is beyond the ability of any one individual to fix, and perhaps it is. But Christians are called to live lives of witness, lives that testify to the reality of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom in which there is no exploitation or fear, in which there is no want, no poverty, no failure of people to take care of one another. Even in small ways, we can testify to the reality of that Kingdom and respond to the voice of God calling us even now:

‘I have observed the misery of my people … I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, …. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Children of Humanity, out of Egypt.’

Notes

[1] International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC), “Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labour”, International Labor Office (ILO), Geneva, April 2002, p. 5
[2] Id.
[3] Id., at 6
[4] Id.
[5] Sudhanshu Joshi, of the International Center on Child Labor and Education and the Washington Office of the Globar March Against Child Labor, remarks at the February 15, 2006 Table Talk: “Can Child Labor Ever Be Justified as a Tool of Development?”, Kay Spiritual Life Center, American University.
[6] T.R. Martland, Religion as Art: An Interpretation, SUNY Series in Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981. pp. 13-64

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*The Misery of My People* A Sermon in The Other Six Days Series Rev. Mark Schaefer Kay Spiritual Life Center February 19, 2006 Exodus 3:7-10; Mark 10:13-16 Exodus 3:7-10 Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ Mark 10:13-16 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. I. BEGINNING I remember my first job. It was working at the local Agway store in my town. It was the summer before my sophomore year of high school—I was 14. I stocked shelves. I watered trees in the nursery. I carried 50 lb. bags of dog food out to people’s cars. I put together lawn mowers and gas grills that would go on display. There was a fair amount of grunt work—lifting and carrying. But it was honest work and I had the privilege of working for a kind and decent man, Mr. Moore, who was ready to provide constructive criticism where necessary and compliments when earned. And of course, it was a couple of days a week after school and then Saturdays over the summer. All in all, it was a minimum wage job that gave me some pocket money and taught me a little responsibility. But it was not the totality of my existence. My job was a supplement to my schooling, my family life, extracurricular activities, and so on. I did not need the job to put food on my family’s table, and truth be told, if I had not had that job, my material well-being would barely have been impacted. II. THE CRISIS: CHILD LABOR We in the Protestant traditions place a lot of value on work. It’s why there’s something called the Protestant Work Ethic. It’s why the United Methodist Church, among others, opposes gambling: because it detracts from a belief in the value of work. We have seen work as something that can grant dignity, self-respect, and a sense of self-worth through work. And yet for millions of children around the world, work is not a blessing that confers self-worth and dignity. It is not an after-school job to put a little extra money in one’s pocket. Rather, it is a burden, in some cases a terrible crushing burden. A. The facts It is estimated that there were some 211 million children ages 5 to 14 at work in economic activity in the world in 2000. This accounts for a little less than one- fifth of all children in this age group. About 73 million working children are less than 10 years old. The total economically active child population 5-17 years old is estimated at 352 million children. [1] The Asian-Pacific region harbours the largest number of child workers in the 5-14 age category, 127.3 million in total. It is followed by Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America & the Caribbean with 48 million and 17.4 million, respectively. Developed economies and transition economies have the lowest absolute numbers of child workers. [2] An estimated 171 million children ages 5-17 were estimated to work in hazardous situations or conditions in 2000. In other words, children in hazardous work constituted about half the total number of economically active children and more than two thirds of those in child labour. A stunning 55 per cent of very young child labourers (i.e. those below 12 years of age) were already working in a hazardous occupation or situation. [3] Children in unconditional worst forms of child labour. In addition to the number of children in hazardous work, it is estimated that there were about 8.4 million children involved in other worst forms of child labour as defined in ILO Convention No.182, Art. 3. This includes trafficking (1.2 million); forced and bonded labour (5.7 million); armed conflict (0.3 million); prostitution and pornography (1.8 million); and illicit activities (0.6 million). [4] B. The Problem Earlier this week, our Social Justice Committee and the Office of the University Chaplain co-sponsored a table-talk entitled “Can Child Labor Ever Be Justified as a Tool of Development?”. The question itself takes into account a certain reality, that all nations have at one time or another, used child labor in their economic life, including our country. Children worked in sweatshops, children worked in factories, and on farms (many children still do work on farms). The nineteenth century seems like it was full of child labor. Is child labor merely a stage that economies pass through on their way to full development? The panelists answered an unequivocal “no”. Child labor, they said, in fact impedes development. It creates intergenerational poverty. Children who work all the time never get the education to develop skills that lift them out of the unskilled labor they practice. They do not elevate themselves out of poverty, and at the same time, they take away jobs from adults. [5] The practice of child labor itself becomes a barrier to economic development because it becomes an obstacle to universal education of children, which now more than ever—in the information age—is the most important resource a child can make use of. III. INNOCENCE But why should Christians care? You get enough international development and economics and political theory in your classes. Why should Christians care about child labor as a theological issue? In tonight’s Gospel lesson, we read a famous passage of Jesus and the children. Listen again to some of those words: People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. People sometimes wonder what this teaching is emphasizing and some think that it is suggesting that people have a simple, undeveloped faith. It is doing nothing of the kind. Jesus is teaching us that our faith ought to be like that of a child: full of wonder and awe. Full of imagination and possibility. The innocence of a child is not naïveté, it is not inexperience or immaturity. Rather, it is that kind of innocence that is open to the possibilities. A professor of mine in college described religious life as a three stage journey that repeats itself over and over again: innocence, fascination, and distance. [6] The journey consisted of being open to possibilities, to immersing yourself in new experiences to the saturation point, and then stepping back to contextualize those experiences in the broader life of faith. But the journey begins with that innocent stage—that sense of wonder and adventure. The way a child can spend hours contemplating ants going about their business, or can run through the woods and fields as if they were a giant playground, ready for the taking. That is the innocence that Jesus is talking about in terms of the life of faith. And that is exactly the innocence that child labor deprives children of. Children are already growing up too fast. You all have far more stresses and pressures on you than I ever did at your age. A consequence of “progress” I suppose. But imagine children without any childhood at all. Children whose lives are beset by hard labor, by the burdens of having to support families, or by the terror of forced labor, or trafficking, or abuse. Child labor does more than keep children economically impoverished: it can keep people spiritually impoverished. When the ability to wonder and have awe, the ability to be inspired and to dream is crushed as such an early age, it may never be rekindled, and a person may never come into the kind of faith of possibility that Christ is calling us all to experience. As Christians, we are compelled to help people to experience God in the world. There are millions of children for whom God is a distant reality, both because their lives become unbearable toil, but also because the ability to imagine possibility is quashed. IV. LIBERATION And, too, we believe in a God of liberation. A God who hears the cries of her people and seeks to liberate them from bondage. ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey… The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ This is the God we serve. The God we profess. The God who in Christ came and liberated us from the bondage of sin and death, from the prisons of fear and hate. Our calling as disciples is to spread the gospel of liberation. [Our responsibility too is to "the least of these" that Jesus refers to in the Gospels, and to the "widow, the orphan, and the stranger"--the marginalized, the powerless--that the Hebrew scriptures speak of time and time again. These children are certainly the 'least of these', often orphans, and definitely powerless.] There are millions of children who are in Egypts of the world’s making. Can we hear their cry on account of their taskmasters? The Hebrew for the word “Israelites” can also be translated as “the children of Israel”. Can we hear the cries of the “children of Adam”, the misery of our people? Do we know their sufferings? So how do we, as Christians, respond? Like Moses, we testify to this God of liberty. We cry to the pharaohs of the world: “Let my people go”. God sends us to Pharaoh, to bring his people, the children of humanity, out of Egpyt. We are not all Moses, of course. We are not all the kinds of people who lead mass movements. But there are things we can do as a testimony and witness. We can care about the things we buy. We live in an age of global markets. Our goods are produced all over the world. Do we know who is making them? Do we know whether the clothing we wear is produced by children? Do we know whether the chocolate we eat contains cocoa harvested by children? Do we know what the labor is for companies that contract out with local suppliers round the world? This information is easily obtained from a variety of sources. And if you can’t find it, you can always call the company to ask. The nice thing about living in a free market is that if enough people want something, they’ll offer it. If companies learn that people are asking for products that are free of child labor, they will provide it to meet that need. V. END We might be forgiven for thinking that a problem like this is beyond the ability of any one individual to fix, and perhaps it is. But Christians are called to live lives of witness, lives that testify to the reality of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom in which there is no exploitation or fear, in which there is no want, no poverty, no failure of people to take care of one another. Even in small ways, we can testify to the reality of that Kingdom and respond to the voice of God calling us even now: ‘I have observed the misery of my people … I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, …. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Children of Humanity, out of Egypt.’ Notes [1] International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC), “Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labour”, International Labor Office (ILO), Geneva, April 2002, p. 5 [2] Id. [3] Id., at 6 [4] Id. [5] Sudhanshu Joshi, of the International Center on Child Labor and Education and the Washington Office of the Globar March Against Child Labor, remarks at the February 15, 2006 Table Talk: “Can Child Labor Ever Be Justified as a Tool of Development?”, Kay Spiritual Life Center, American University. [6] T.R. Martland, Religion as Art: An Interpretation, SUNY Series in Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981. pp. 13-64 Back to Sermons page Back to AU UMC Home Copyright © 2006. Mark A. Schaefer No part of this text may be reproduced or otherwise disseminated without the express written consent of the author.

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