Luke 14:1, 7-14
Year after year, churches in our country love to plan their worship services around certain secular holidays. Every Mother’s Day churches pass out roses and honor the youngest or oldest mother in the congregation. When Father’s Day arrives, churches give the dads mini screwdrivers or flashlights. When Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July roll around, worshipers wave flags, sing patriotic hymns, and sermons are preached about love of God and country.
But here’s the problem: although those holidays may be meaningful for families, for communities, and for the country, none of those holidays are rooted in the gospel. None are commanded by Scripture, and none are inspired by the words and actions of Jesus.
And yet, when Labor Day comes around, the one secular holiday that echoes the heartbeat of the gospel, that testifies to God’s concern for workers, for Sabbath rest, for fair wages, for dignity at the table, most pulpits in our country are silent. And I am ashamed to confess to you today that I have also been guilty. I have acquiesced to the culture, as this is what you could call my first Labor Day sermon.
To acknowledge Labor Day, I am aware of some churches will host a cookout, but very few will pause on this Sunday to remember that the scriptures declare: “the laborer deserves their wages” (Luke 10:7); and “Woe to those who oppress the hired worker in their wages” (Malachi 3:5); and “Do not withhold wages from the poor and needy” (Deuteronomy 24:14).
It’s a strange contradiction. Churches will drape sanctuaries in red, white, and blue for national pride, but not lift up the struggles of those who built this nation with their hands, their backs, and their sweat. Churches will honor soldiers on Veteran’s Day but ignore teachers, nurses, farmworkers, janitors, and factory workers on Labor Day.
In today’s scripture, Jesus walks into the house of a Pharisee, a religious leader with some clout, and he watches how people are elbowing each other to grab the best seats at the table. He notices how people are playing the game of upward mobility, doing what they can do to sit close to power.
Jesus immediately calls them out, telling them that the kingdom of God, in the words of the late Henri Nouwen, is about “downward mobility,” blessing those at the bottom. So, Jesus flips the script: “Don’t sit with the powerful. Take the lowest seat with the powerless, for the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” Jesus flips the guest list, saying: “And when you host a banquet, don’t invite the ones at the top who can return the favor. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Invite the ones who never get an invitation.”
Now, this has nothing to do with polite table manners. This is a revolutionary reordering of society. Jesus is calling out the systems that uplift a few, while crushing the rest. He turns the values of status, power, and privilege upside down. I believe you could call today’s gospel another “table-flipping moment” by the same Jesus who stormed into the Temple, flipping the tables of the moneychangers, saying, “My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.”
I believe Jesus is saying: “If the table is built to exclude, if the table is set so that some may feast while others starve, then that table must be flipped.”
Labor Day presents an opportunity for the church to point out that we have too many tables in this nation built on the exploitation of workers.
Wages have been stagnant for decades, while the salaries of CEOs have soared more than a thousand percent.
Workers are told there’s no money for healthcare, no money for paid leave, and no money for fair retirement, but somehow there’s always money for those in the corporate office.
Migrant workers pick our food, service workers keep our cities running, childcare workers and certified nurse’s assistants serve our most vulnerable family members, yet they are often paid poverty wages and denied dignity.
And these injustices are not accidents. They are tables intentionally built by greed. And Jesus wants these tables flipped.
But it’s not easy to flip these tables. For these are old tables, and they are heavy tables. These tables were never designed to be moved.
It reminds us that Labor Day was not freely handed down to us by the wealthy or by the government, but was won by struggle, solidarity, and sacrifice, by workers who dared to organize, who marched, who were jailed, and some who even bled and died for the right to a fair wage, safe conditions, and humane hours.
In 1894, the Pullman Company that manufactured railroad cars cut wages but didn’t cut rent for their employees who lived in their company-owned housing. Workers finally cried out, “Enough!” They walked off the job, demanding dignity. The strike spread nationwide shutting down much of the nation’s railroads west of Detroit.
President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops into Chicago without the permission of local or state authorities. Can you imagine such a thing? Bullets rained down. The blood of workers stained the streets. Thirty workers were killed. Fifty-seven were wounded.
In Billings, Montana, an important rail center, a local Methodist minister named J. W. Jennings, with other preachers across the country, supported the workers. In one sermon, Jennings called out the President and local government for betraying the principles of democracy and failing to defend “the rights of the people against aggression and oppressive corporations.” He prophetically called the President and his party (and you gotta love this): “the pliant tools of the codfish monied aristocracy who seek to dominate this country.”
It was out of this struggle that Labor Day was born, not because President Cleveland loved the workers and respected the people, but because he feared the response of the people who were standing with the workers. Labor Day literally born from the blood of workers and because clergy rose up and spoke out. Thus, the church, especially here in 2025, cannot treat Labor Day as an opportunity to have a cookout. It is a day of holy remembrance, rededication, and resistance.
One could call some Amazon warehouses “modern-day storehouses of Pharaoh,” as it has been reported that workers are collapsing from the heat, tracked like cattle, urinating in bottles because they aren’t given time for a bathroom break. Some have stood up and said, “Enough!” They formed the first union in Amazon’s history. And what did the richest man in the world do? He tried to crush them, just like Pharaoh, just like President Cleveland.
So, here’s a question for us today: Will the church remain silent while Pharaoh builds bigger warehouses? Will we sing about heaven while ignoring the cries of workers in hellish conditions? Will call out state government regarding Virginia’s right-to-work law, which really means: “the right to be poor” or “the right to be fired without cause” or “the right to work without protections?”
Or will we stand up like Rev. Jennings in Montana and stand with Jesus who flips the script, flips the table, and flips the guest list setting the banquet for those corporations control and exploit?
Will the church finally wake up and understand that Labor Day is a holy day? That when we fight for fair living wages, for unions, for healthcare, for rest, we’re flipping the tables of Pharaoh’s economy while demanding the justice of God’s kingdom! And when we stand in solidarity with those who have been pushed away from the table of dignity in the workplace, we are being faithful to our decision to follow Jesus.
When we stand with our immigrant siblings, who clean our hotels and harvest our crops—
When we stand with our queer and trans siblings, who still face workplace discrimination—
When we stand with our Black and brown siblings, who are often last hired and first fired, and who make less for the same work as white people—
When we stand with our women siblings who are still paid less than men—
When we stand with the differently-abled who seldom get a chance—
And when we rise up declaring that diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace is what the kingdom of God looks like—
Then we are doing our part to not just make room for them at the table, but we are joining Jesus in flipping the table until the lowly are lifted up, and the mighty are brought low!
On this Sunday before Labor Day, through our gospel lesson in Luke 14, I hear the Spirit saying: “Church, it’s time to flip the tables!”—standing with teachers demanding smaller class sizes; with auto workers demanding a just contract; with fast-food workers demanding $15 an hour and a union; with underpaid service workers who rely on tips; with all who are told they are disposable, until they rise up and declare: “We are children of God, and we deserve dignity, justice, and a seat at the table.”
And yes, this might mean uncomfortable conversations at work, in our neighborhoods, even at our family cookouts. But when we signed up to follow Jesus, we were not promised comfort, but we were told there would be a cross involved.
So today, we are not passing by Labor Day as though it has nothing to do with our faith. We are claiming it as a holy day, a sacred day to remember that God’s kingdom comes whenever dignity is defended, whenever workers rise up, and whenever the poor are lifted and the lowly are honored.
Because we believe the Jesus we have decided to follow is still flipping tables. He’s still inviting the poor and the workers and the weary to the feast. He’s still telling us that the kingdom of God is not built on greed but on grace, not on hoarding but on sharing, not on exploitation but on liberation, not on lies but on love.
And if Jesus is flipping tables, we know the church must flip tables too. Flip the tables of silence that keep us comfortable while others suffer. Flip the tables of nationalism that honor the flag more than the worker. Flip the tables of greed that deny fair wages, dignity, and Sabbath rest.
For we know, when we flip the tables, we tell the world that God’s table is wide, and there is room for everyone: teachers and janitors, farmworkers and nurses, factory workers and baristas, Amazon drivers and home health aides.
And when we flip those tables of greed and exclusion, we will discover that Jesus himself is already seated there, breaking bread with us, saying: “This is the kingdom of God, the banquet of heaven, the table of life.”
Amen.
Just Love 