REMEMBRANCE: "Workers' Memorial Dinner"

In Hookset tonight, I represented people of faith across the state at the Annual Memorial Dinner for workers in New Hampshire who died on the job (or because of their job) during 2019, 2020 and 2021.  The annual event is organized by the NH Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health; and I was asked to read the names of the 26 whose deaths are linked to occupational events or illness.  There are surely others--particularly those who contracted COVID-19 at work--but these are the names that COSH can verify.  And it was a powerful and tender moment.

I have friends whose ministries are singularly focused on working people and unions, in particular.  I'm so grateful for their work, for their tireless advocacy for neighbors whose daily commitment to our towns and cities goes unrecognized all too often.  By folks like me.  If the church is to fully and faithfully serve the communities Christ served, we'd do well to remember our mandate to feed and inspire and call the fishermen, and the growers, and the road pavers, and the truck drivers--who are our brothers, our sisters, our siblings.  When they are wounded, so are we.  And when their families grieve or suffer, so do we.  

So often, the "mainline" church is silently divided--we somehow exclude working people as we organize according to socioeconomic locations and occupations, as we settle in towns and churches according to unexamined ethnic and class assumptions.  Tonight's event reminded me (all over again) that the task of building beloved community--across our communities--is not an easy one.  And one that requires courage and deep humility.  Bias is embedded in our ministries, and in ministers (like me).

Among those 26 names tonight, I read this one: James Robert Tomilson, who died on September 16, 2021.  Jim is the husband of my colleague and friend Holly Tomilson, a UCC pastor here in the New Hampshire Conference.  His name reminds us all that we are one body, one community--and when that bell tolls, it tolls for us all.  I imagine it's that grief, that pain, that connection that will make us whole in the end.  Something like compassion and the pain we have to share.  The pain we're created to share.

In the union hall tonight, I was honored to stand with working people remembering siblings, grieving co-workers, committing again to workplace safety and protections.  I'm reminded, and hope I won't soon forget, how many are working every day to make my commute work, and to make my utilities work, and to make my state a place where families and communities can grow.  All to often, they pay the greatest price for that commitment--their commitment to work for all of us.

God, have mercy on all your children.  And receive every one into the arms of mercy and power and everlasting communion.  Amen.