The Journey 327

Read: Mathew 21: 12-17        Black Friday: Today is termed as Black Friday. A day that started not today but late night of Thursday. A day that people in this country look forward to. A day when sales in each retail shop roar and zoom high as people think that they are going to get electronic items like laptop, HD TV and other household items cheap and hence goes in for a shopping spree. But this year Black Friday is indeed Black for some workers who are struggling to  make ends meet. As each retail shop is going to compete with each other this morning to woo its customers, one of the well known retail shop The Walmart is bracing for a workers strike. Strike!......In United States?.....Are you joking? Yes this is real strike…..not in Kerala….This strike today is considered to be a historic strike. The Walmart employees in Dallas, Miami, San Francisco have already started to strike late night on Thursday, while the rest of workers in other parts of the country are going to strike today in the morning. The workers are striking on Black Friday so that people in this country would hear about their woes and lend a sympathetic hand to their fight for a better living. It was about one year back it seems that the OURWalmart union was formed as a subsidiary of United Food and Commercial Workers Union. They are taking up the cause of ordinary workers because of injustice that is being meted out. According to the news agencies what the workers need is better pay, more full time jobs, an affordable health care. In 2011 the retailers were asked to pay its workers  $13 per hour, but the employees complain that they sometime receive less than what has been promised, plus the agony of forced to do part time jobs. Thus when the workers have started protesting and started demanding fair wages and work conditions, the retail giants started retaliating against workers and many were asked to leave or the cops called in and many were rounded up.  What touched me about the strike was the stand taken by one Walmart worker in Florida, which was reported by Dave Jamieson in Huffington Post. The worker named Vanessa Ferreira aged 59 told her manager publically on Wednesday that she was going to strike. As the other employees looked on, Ferreira walked out of store as a protest for the sake of her colleagues who worked in Walmart. She says that she enjoyed her job, but then she feels somebody has to stand up and take a risk. She tells that others are scared to join the strike as they feel they cant fight Walmart. But someone has to pay a price and Ferreira says she is ready to stand up for them even if it means that she will loose her job. As soon as she walked out, the cops came told her that she was trespassing and ordered her to leave. She has been working for Walmart for the last eight years and why she is striking is so that things could be made better.  Here is a case where people are fighting retailers whose only goal is profit and make more and more profit even if it tramples the basic rights of its workers. Thus as people all over this nation indulges in a shopping spree let us spare a few moments for people like Ferreira and host of walmart workers and workers also working in many other giant retail stores especially in the pharmacy and nursing field, who are often condemned and are forced to work in the most inhuman conditions. People in other parts of the world often see only the glitter in this country, but behind this glitter also lies tears and pain of ordinary people who are keeping quiet because they have no other option other than that so as to keep their family going. Vehemently opposing injustice and unjust structures, patterns and systems and bringing peace and justice to the common man was one of the main focus of the ministry of Jesus Christ  and hence as Christians it is imperative that we also be spokesperson, to stand up for the cause of the oppressed people and raise a our voice for justice and human rights and dignity.
           We are meditating on the theme “ Transformed Living” and the portion that we shall use for our meditation is from Mathew 21: 12–17. This is one portion in the Bible where you find Jesus Christ expressing one of the fiercest emotion– the emotion of anger. Many people have termed this anger outburst of Jesus as righteous anger or righteous indignation. Why Jesus is angry is that temple which is supposed to a place of justice, worship, peace and harmony has been turned into a place of bargaining, haggling for better deals and thus destroying the sanctity and the very purpose for which a temple has been established. As people came to temple to pay temple tax you find the money changers taking advantage of the system, exploiting the common people by charging an additional fees from all those people who could not pay tax in the local currency. Then you have the retailers who sold animal like dove for sacrifice. People could not carry these animals and hence they were forced to buy from these retailers who charged exorbitantly fully knowing that the religious laws demanded the sacrifice. Here is the case where innocent people whose only objective is spiritual in nature, who wants to worship in the temple are subjected to exploitation in the name of religion and religious laws. They could not complain to anyone and they could not imagine going back home without doing these religious duties in the temple at Jerusalem. It is in such a context that Jesus explodes at the unjust treatment being meted out to common people with the refrain that the temple is not meant for prayer, a place for fellowship and harmony and not a place where financial gains is the priority. Let us therefore on this day Black Friday, as nation indulges in a mad shopping spree, affirm that more than financial gains while buying and while hoarding material things, human life and rights have a greater value. This is because if we dont value that now, tomorrow there may come a time when we want others to value our rights no one would be there to stand for us.

Rev. Dr. Joe Joseph Kuruvilla