Excerpt from Isaiah 9:1-4

“For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.”

Reflection by Lillian Daniel

There is a place on the annual pledge card where people can add comments. This year, as in the last two years, there is one comment I saw way too often—“I would like to give more to the church but I am unemployed.” Or someone is underemployed, working part-time, piecing together benefits and insurance.

Businesses have learned to do more with fewer employees. Some shareholders are making money but the jobless recovery continues. Hotel housekeepers are expected to clean more rooms than they had to a few years ago, even if their backs get injured and they take Tylenol like it’s popcorn. Corporations making money again are trying to make their contracts with workers worse, rather than better. That’s not efficiency. It’s oppression.

Some folks are starting to find part-time consulting work, but it remains unclear if their full-time positions will reappear, as businesses have managed to make do with less. Profits are not trickling down to the everyday working world, and so those gifts are not trickling down to faith communities and charities either. The jobless recovery hurts the most vulnerable in our society the most.  

Let us remember Jesus, a man who seems to have spent much of his adult life unemployed. He stood up for the outcast and was supported by the generosity of the poor. He was hard on the rich but they followed him, too. He stood up to injustice and we read his words today. He may have been unemployed, but his work changed the world forever.

Prayer
God of justice, be with those who are unemployed and underemployed, at numbers not seen since the Great Depression. Break the rod of the oppressor and use me to do it. Amen.

 About the Author
"Lillian Daniel serves on the board of Interfaith Worker Justice, which has produced the Congregational Toolkit on Unemployment.