Labor Day: The Lord Be With You!

The Blessings of Labor Arise from the Story of God’s Mercy in Christ.

I. Boaz, who hired, and those who labored for him reflect God’s blessings.

II. And buried within those mutual blessings is the story of God’s mercy in Christ through Ruth.

Sermon

On September 5, 1882, America witnessed the very first celebration of Labor Day in New York City. Did you know, though, that the founder of Labor Day was disputed? Two men—Peter McGuire and Matthew Maguire—laid claim to initiating Labor Day in 1882. According to history, Peter McGuire claimed to have suggested the holiday for “the laboring classes.” But Matthew Maguire also laid claim to the idea of Labor Day, in 1882 as well.

While history credits one or the other of these men with founding this holiday, it was President Grover Cleveland who signed the bill in 1882 that created it. The Paterson Morning Call had an op-ed piece that seems to have settled the matter. The op-ed read in part, “The souvenir pen should go to Alderman Matthew Maguire of this city, who is the undisputed author of Labor Day as a holiday.” Both McGuire and Maguire were in attendance for that first Labor Day celebration in New York City (“History of Labor Day,” Department of Labor, https://www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history [accessed February 27, 2024]). Labor Day has been celebrated in our country ever since then.

Labor has not always been something that was celebrated. Ever since the fall into sin in the Garden of Eden, one of the results was labor becoming unpleasant. “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:17–19).

On this Labor Day weekend, we want to look at a story from the book of Ruth that gives a proper view of labor. The story comes from Ruth 2, when Ruth is gleaning the fields. The writer of Ruth tells us, “And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, ‘The Lord be with you!’ And they answered, ‘The Lord bless you’ ” (v 4). The greeting of Boaz, and the response of the reapers, shows a right attitude toward those in charge and those who work for him. As the story goes on, Ruth’s situation reveals the mercy of God.

The Blessings of Labor Arise from the Story of God’s Mercy in Christ.

I.

When it comes to being in charge, there are two attitudes that seem to prevail toward the workers underneath the one in charge. The first attitude—and the wrong one—is to be overbearing. After all, the ones under you are “nobodies” who are there to meet quotas and make money for the owner. This can result in the one in charge becoming tyrannical and even intimidating. Workers will not dare argue with the one in charge for fear of demotion, loss of opportunity, or even loss of their job.

The other option for a person in charge is to care for your workers underneath you. In your eyes, they are not “nobodies” or failures, but real people—people God created! Your workers are people whom God planned for before there was a heaven or earth. It is no accident that they are employed by you. God knew that this day would come.

These people under you also have a skill set your company needs. Some of those skill sets are obvious. Some workers have talent that just stands out. There are those who work hard and get the job done. Of course, there is that other worker—the one who struggles every day, or so it seems. It’s easy to take advantage of a person like this. The apostle James, however, lays down a warning for those who mistreat their laborers: “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts” (James 5:4).

Corporate earnings and stock shares have always seemed to rule the day. However, God’s heart has always looked out for the laboring class of workers. There are two specific times in the Old Testament where God protects the laborers. One of those times is found in Leviticus 19. There, Moses writes, “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of the hired worker shall not remain with you all night till the morning” (Lev 19:13).

When Moses gave the Law a second time, he brought this subject up in the hearing of the entire nation of Israel. In the covenant they made with God on that day, Moses told the children of Israel, “You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin” (Deut 24:15).

Are you a business owner? Are you a boss who hires or supervises workers? You should take heed how you treat those who labor for you. It may seem as if nobody is watching. It may appear as if nobody even cares as long as profits are strong. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The reapers working for Boaz showed a God-pleasing attitude toward Boaz as they responded to his greeting by saying, “The Lord bless you.” In our “me first” culture, those words sound like a foreign language. However, those with a “me first” attitude fail to grasp the significance of the reapers’ response to Boaz.

Israel was, by and large, an agricultural country. They made their living by working the land. God told Moses the land was “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex 3:8). Everyone who made his living by agriculture depended on a good harvest.

Boaz certainly depended on a good harvest. For Boaz—or any landowner in Israel—not to have a good harvest had far-reaching consequences. If the owners did not have a good harvest, it would hurt everyone. Those consequences would reach all the way to the laborers in the field. Their income and livelihood would be affected by a bad harvest. However, a good harvest would bless the owner. It would also bless every person who worked for that owner year after year. A good harvest blessed the ones who owned the fields as well as those who worked in them.

Therefore, it was in everyone’s best interest—the laborers as well as the owners—to say, “The Lord bless you.” When God blessed the owners of the field, he also blessed by extension those working in them.

II.

There is, however, an even greater blessing buried within this story. The harvest blessings arise from the story of God’s grace and mercy—ultimately, the very story of our salvation.

The story of Boaz greeting the laborers in the field and their response to him has something buried within that story. That “something” is the story of God’s mercy as seen through Boaz and Ruth.

In order to grasp fully the depths of God’s mercy, we need to take a step back in family history. What God commanded regarding two groups of people, the Canaanites and the Moabites, touches both sides of the family. God, through the prophet Moses in Deuteronomy 20, commanded that the children of Israel destroy the Canaanites because they were an idolatrous people (Deut 20:17). However, when the children of Israel came and sent spies into the land, it was Rahab, a harlot and a Canaanite woman, who hid them on her roof. She did so only after receiving a promise from the spies to spare her and her family when they invaded Jericho. Her life was spared, and she became the mother of Boaz.

Then we come to Ruth’s story. Ruth was a Moabite. When Moses gave the Law a second time, he said, “No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter” (Deut 23:3). Though Ammon and Moab were relatives of Israel through Abraham’s nephew Lot, they had not welcomed the Israelites as they approached the Promised Land. Thus, God forbade them to be a part of his people.

So how did Ruth get past this prohibition? She lived in Moab. However, Naomi, an Israelite, came with her husband and two sons to live there during a drought. Ruth married one of those sons. Over the course of time, her husband died, her brother-in-law died, and Naomi’s husband died. Naomi returned to Israel, and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, moved from the country of Moab with her. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest (Ruth 1:22). If Ruth had not married Naomi’s son, this story would never have happened. But since she did, she had the right to bear a son from the nearest of kin. When the nearest of kin turned that down, Boaz, who was also a close relative of her deceased husband, stepped in and married her.

Boaz and Ruth had a son named Obed. Obed had a son named Jesse, who then had a son named David. Many years later, there would be a baby born from David’s line by the name of Jesus.

For many years, the Jews had lived by the Law of Moses, but they could not fulfill it. As much as they labored to bring forth the harvest of righteousness and holiness the Law demands, they simply were unable to do so. Try as we might, we cannot either. On our own, we can labor all our lives and never be made right by following the Law. We simply cannot work our way into God’s favor.

What neither the Jewish people nor we could do, despite all our efforts and labor, Jesus did for us. He kept God’s Law—all of it—in our place. He then did the one work none of us can do by offering himself as the sinless sacrifice for all sins. His blood shed on the cross forgives us for all the times we have had the wrong attitude toward those either over us or under us. Our guilt is washed away in his blood. Through Jesus’ suffering and death, we are forgiven, once for all. His resurrection is the guarantee that we will live forever because of him. All of what Jesus labored to do on the cross and by walking out of the tomb on Easter is ours in our baptism. That is the real story of Labor Day. In spite of our family history and background, by faith in Christ, we are indeed children of God. We are a part of his forever family, no matter what part of the labor force we may be today. Our works could not accomplish that. Jesus’ labor did.

So who was the real founder of Labor Day? Was it Peter McGuire or Matthew Maguire? Does it really matter, as we celebrate Labor Day 142 years later? If you are an owner, a boss, you can say today to your workers, “The Lord be with you.” And if you are part of the labor force, you can reply, “The Lord bless you.” No matter which side you fall on today, you can give thanks for God’s mercy shown to all of us at the cross. On this Labor Day 2024, we give Jesus thanks for doing that greatest labor of love ever at the cross. Amen.