#UnMute Yourself Day 3 - Essential Worker
Today I contemplated Micah 4:6 (and the broader chapter) and the COVID-tide phrase "essential worker."
I saw the term “essential workers” and then the verse about “gather”ing and “assemble”-ing and was like, oh so we’re talking unions today, huh? But then I decided to go beyond the initial impulse.
The verse: “In that day,” declares the Lord,
“I will gather the lame;
I will assemble the exiles
and those I have brought to grief.
In COVID times, who do we think of as essential workers? Grocery store stockers and clerks. Nurses. Bus drivers and train operators. Fast-food employees. In other words, the people we as a society are accustomed to looking down on. You know, the Karens who go around bossing people around, feeling as if they are superior to these folks by dint of education or employment or bearing. Nurses, who despite doing the bulk of the work in most hospitals are often dismissed by those who haven’t had experience in a hospital as the second-tier medical professionals. Who I imagine have to field thousands of “well why aren’t you a DOCTOR” questions from people.
In this passage from Micah, we see the Lord talking about those same sorts of people who would have had their contributions to society overlooked or actively denigrated: those with disabilities, the exiles, the mourning or depressed. These are the people God has chosen as “my remnant” to build “a strong nation.” Once again, God coming down on the side of the oppressed and the marginalized.
I want to pause here and ask you if you felt any sort of dissonance with a phrase about “essential workers” but a Bible verse talking about “the lame.” I had a momentary thought of that. But I was able to feel past that to recognize the flash of ableism that that represents. Even disabled people have internalized ableism. That’s a digression, though.
So, we’ve established that the essential workers in God’s story as told through Micah are the outcasts, the disabled, the mourners. These are who God calls to God’s self. Verse 9 says, “Why do you now cry aloud-have you no king” and I am reminded of the pleas of these essential workers, and others without political capital, to get some assistance from the government during the pandemic. For all the answers they get from most of the establishment, they might as well not have leaders.
Verse 13 ends the passage with a promise: “’I will give you hooves of bronze, and you will break to pieces many nations.’ You will devote their ill-gotten gains to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.” Because that’s what the coming of Christ at Christmas is: a flipping of the power structure. Putting the least of these first. Empowering those oppressed by empire to hope for more, for better, and proving to them that they are immeasurably loved in the interim.
So, yeah, I guess, unions is still my takeaway. Or at least, collective organizing. Raising up the voices of the essential worker in God’s kingdom - the lame, the grieving, those who feel abandoned - so that they can help turn society into a more just one. That’s what we can use this Advent, coming on the eve of a new administration, to prepare for.
I saw the term “essential workers” and then the verse about “gather”ing and “assemble”-ing and was like, oh so we’re talking unions today, huh? But then I decided to go beyond the initial impulse.
The verse: “In that day,” declares the Lord,
“I will gather the lame;
I will assemble the exiles
and those I have brought to grief.
In COVID times, who do we think of as essential workers? Grocery store stockers and clerks. Nurses. Bus drivers and train operators. Fast-food employees. In other words, the people we as a society are accustomed to looking down on. You know, the Karens who go around bossing people around, feeling as if they are superior to these folks by dint of education or employment or bearing. Nurses, who despite doing the bulk of the work in most hospitals are often dismissed by those who haven’t had experience in a hospital as the second-tier medical professionals. Who I imagine have to field thousands of “well why aren’t you a DOCTOR” questions from people.
In this passage from Micah, we see the Lord talking about those same sorts of people who would have had their contributions to society overlooked or actively denigrated: those with disabilities, the exiles, the mourning or depressed. These are the people God has chosen as “my remnant” to build “a strong nation.” Once again, God coming down on the side of the oppressed and the marginalized.
I want to pause here and ask you if you felt any sort of dissonance with a phrase about “essential workers” but a Bible verse talking about “the lame.” I had a momentary thought of that. But I was able to feel past that to recognize the flash of ableism that that represents. Even disabled people have internalized ableism. That’s a digression, though.
So, we’ve established that the essential workers in God’s story as told through Micah are the outcasts, the disabled, the mourners. These are who God calls to God’s self. Verse 9 says, “Why do you now cry aloud-have you no king” and I am reminded of the pleas of these essential workers, and others without political capital, to get some assistance from the government during the pandemic. For all the answers they get from most of the establishment, they might as well not have leaders.
Verse 13 ends the passage with a promise: “’I will give you hooves of bronze, and you will break to pieces many nations.’ You will devote their ill-gotten gains to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.” Because that’s what the coming of Christ at Christmas is: a flipping of the power structure. Putting the least of these first. Empowering those oppressed by empire to hope for more, for better, and proving to them that they are immeasurably loved in the interim.
So, yeah, I guess, unions is still my takeaway. Or at least, collective organizing. Raising up the voices of the essential worker in God’s kingdom - the lame, the grieving, those who feel abandoned - so that they can help turn society into a more just one. That’s what we can use this Advent, coming on the eve of a new administration, to prepare for.