There is a case before the Supreme Court now that has huge implications for anyone who works on a day that they consider to be a Sabbath or a Holy Day in their religion. A postal worker refused to work on Sunday and had to resign, eventually suing the Postal Service. The court has had a lot of these kinds of cases, and the decisions have been on both sides. A recent case concerning a football coach who was fired, he claimed, for praying on the field after games, went in the coach’s favor. It is an important question, isn’t it? And the outcome cannot be predicted, regardless of what one might think about the conservative nature of the SC.
There are two issues I think about in this kind of case. The first is how our country has become more profit driven than ever, forcing smaller companies to compete with big-box stores that are open 24/7. Workers don’t often get a say in when they must work, and shift-workers often get moved among different times to share the pain equally. In conversations I’ve had with people in these situations, the toll they say it takes on them is often extremely stressful; their families suffer, their faith communities suffer, and they suffer. Workers are at the mercy of their employers, and many employers aren’t all that merciful.
The second issue for me is that Christians in America have always received religious accommodations, at least more than other religions. You know who doesn’t get those options? Jews, Muslims; in fact, all other religions. For most of our history, many states and communities had blue laws which restricted commerce on Sunday (your still can’t buy a car in Pennsylvania on Sunday). And if you are a devout Sabbath keeper, you can forget about playing football in high school. Christmas is a national holiday, but Yom Kippur is not. Good Friday used to be an official day off, but if you want Eid Al-Fitr, good luck; non-Muslims don’t even know it exists. We who are Christians enjoy a level of privilege that others do not; or at least, we used to. Now we get to experience what everyone else has. Doesn’t feel great, does it?
I don’t know what the legal answer is, but I do know what we could do. A rabbi in Cincinnati once told me of a congregation he served that had an agreement with a local church; his teenagers would do child-care on Sunday mornings and the church’s youth would help them on the Sabbath. The youth would be paid, but it was as much an act of kindness as it was a work agreement. Workers could do the same; people who go to church on Sunday (who actually go to church) could work on Friday nights; those who worship on Friday and Saturday could work on Sunday. This would, of course, mean that we would have to actually care about and understand other faith traditions. We would have to be willing to make some accommodations for each other. It might teach us about each other and maybe we would learn to get along better. And while we might never make our country less greedy, we could make it kinder. That would be a start.
Prayer – Holy God, You are present in all of our faith communities, teaching us many of the same lessons. Help us to respect each other, for Your sake and ours. Amen.
Today’s art is from Brazilian mural artist Eduardo Kobra.