The Dignity of Labor, The Banquet of God

Father Bill reflects on the place of those who labor in Jesus' vision of God's Reign as "a banquet where the overlooked and overworked are at the center, not the margins."

Preached at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church (Ojai, California) on August 31, 2025.

What is What We Heard?

A weekly sermon podcast from Ojai, California. Grounded in scripture and open to the world, these reflections invite you to listen, wonder, and live the story.

This weekend, our country pauses to mark Labor Day —
a holiday that began not as a weekend for sales or barbecues,
but as a movement to honor the contributions of workers,
especially those who endured dangerous, grinding, and underpaid conditions
in the factories, fields, and railroads of the late 19th century.

Labor Day grew out of marches and strikes,
out of the demands of ordinary people who said:
our lives are worth more than endless toil.
We need limits on the workday.
We need wages that sustain life.
We need rest, safety, and dignity.

In other words, it was meant as a Sabbath of justice,
a reminder that labor has dignity,
that human beings are more than cogs in a machine.

Our readings today offer a striking resonance.
Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, tells a parable about where to sit at a banquet.
Don’t scramble for the seats of honor.
Don’t presume you deserve the best place.
Instead, let God be the one to lift you up.

Then he turns to his host and says:
when you give a banquet, don’t just invite your friends
or those who can pay you back —
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.
Invite the ones whose labor is unseen,
whose bodies are worn, who cannot repay you.

That is a vision of God’s kingdom:
a banquet where the overlooked and overworked
are at the center, not the margins.
It is an image of radical hospitality,
a picture of a table that shatters the logic of privilege and payback.
In God’s economy, honor does not flow to those
with the most wealth or connections.
It flows toward those who are often forgotten by the world.

Hebrews puts it this way: “Do not neglect to do good
and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
Sharing what we have includes more than material goods.
It includes sharing honor, sharing dignity, and sharing rest.
It means treating others not as tools for our own comfort or success
but as bearers of God’s image, worthy of joy and care.

And Psalm 112 sings: “They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright;
they are gracious, merciful, and righteous.”
The righteous are not those who hoard or accumulate but those who are generous,
those who make space at the table,
those who embody mercy in the face of hardship.

On this Sunday before Labor Day, we might ask:
who in our community labors in ways that sustain our lives,
but whose work is hidden?
Who harvests the food that graces our tables?
Who sews our clothes, builds our homes, delivers our packages?
Who cares for our children, tends to our elders,
cleans the spaces we take for granted?

Do they sit at the places of honor, or at the margins?
And what would it mean for us,
as followers of Christ,
to reorder our lives so that their wellbeing is central?

To honor labor is not just to set aside a holiday,
but to live in awareness —
to see, to give thanks,
and to stand in solidarity with those whose work sustains our lives.
That practice of holy attention is itself a form of prayer,
a prayer that shapes our imaginations for God’s Reign.

And prayer matters especially when we face the world’s violence.
This week, in Minneapolis, two children were shot and killed
inside a Catholic church.
It is almost unbearable to speak of.
In a place meant for sanctuary, life was torn apart.
We grieve with those parents, that parish, that city.
And we remember that Jesus calls us to make the vulnerable
the honored guests at the banquet.
Tragedies like this remind us how far our world is from God’s kingdom —
and how much we are called to embody a different way.

In the face of violence, we proclaim peace.
In the face of exploitation, we proclaim dignity.
In the face of indifference, we proclaim solidarity.

To share what we have,
to protect the most vulnerable,
to honor those who are unseen,
is not optional.
It is the shape of discipleship.
It is what it means to follow Jesus.
 
Jesus says: bring them in. Bring them all in.
All are welcome at the banquet.
For this table is not ours to guard,
but God’s table of abundance and mercy.

And at God’s table there is room for all —
the weary and the strong,
the poor and the powerful,
the ones the world forgets
and the ones the world esteems.
Here, all are welcome.
Here, all are fed.
Here, all belong.
Here, all who labor find rest.
Amen.