When I was growing up, this weekend marked a very important demarcation. Summer was over. The pool was closed. School was in session. It was time to put away your straw cowboy hat in favor of a felt one and women put away white shoes for the winter. Life has changed so much that you might remember this as a traditional last weekend for the public pool to be open, but you didn’t know that in western wear, it’s time to switch to the felt hat for winter or that women long avoided white shoes after Labor Day. 

This holiday weekend was the creation of labor unions. According to the United States Department of Labor, the holiday began with the New York-based Central Labor Union declare a day of rest for the working man. Through the 1880s various unions worked to get cities to recognize the holiday, then states and finally the federal government created the first Monday in September as a national holiday in 1894.  

The first proposal of the holiday was for “a street parade to exhibit to the public ‘the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations’” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. The American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, adopted the Sunday proceeding Labor Day as “Labor Sunday” dedicated “to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.” 

Well in that old pattern of doing things, this would be a Labor Sunday sermon, but it won’t be. While I think hard working men and women in America have accomplished much, I don’t intend to preach on the virtues of the labor movement or the nobility of the American Worker.  

Instead, I want to return to straw hats and white shoes. Because that is the Labor Day weekend as I knew it, a time of transition from summer to fall and winter in an orderly society. That’s not the sort of rule that one person made and kept. Not wearing straw hats or white shoes after Labor Day was a cultural norm, an agreed way for the community to function. And while it may have been a relatively minor point, it was the tip of the iceberg that reserved Sunday as a day of worship and rest and instilled a host of other virtues such as courage, loyalty and trustworthiness as community values. Things we all agreed upon as good. 

So perhaps it is no surprise that in a world where men are apt to wear straw cowboy hats any day of the year and girls are raised to give no thought to wearing white shoes in winter, it’s not surprising that everything gets more informal.  

Now I am the very laid back and mostly find these sorts of rules as a little too intense. My wife grew up reading Trixie Belden books where the turning point was the book where she bought her first girdle. This was a world of calling cards, white tie events and formal gloves for women for days when it was even cold. I am glad that our daughter has been born into a different world.  

Yet, there are still and need to be cultural norms, ways for a community to get along. These are not about you and your personal choices. These are about us, and the kind of community we want to be. Then you come in with your role in that community. 

This is what our reading from Hebrews is about. The writer is describing the Christian community writing, “Let mutual love continue.” The word for mutual love in the Greek is “Philadelphia.” This New Testament word is where the “city of brotherly love,” the capital of Pennsylvania, got its name. This love for a sibling is the mutual love the community of faith is to show.  

The New Revised Bible translates this verse, “Never cease to love your fellow Christians.” I think that gets the sense of this passage perfectly. The writer is concerned with the whole Christian community and goes on to spell out what this Philadelphia looks like. The Christian community is to show hospitality, remember those in the community in prison, or being tortured, honor the marriage vows of one another, and don’t love money. That’s the short version and it might be an odd list for us.  

This was written in a time when Christians were persecuted for their faith. Some Christians were on the move from one community to another to preserve their lives. Some Christians were imprisoned and being tortured for their faith. Some Christians were still involved at least some of the time in the pagan temple practices which involved temple prostitutes. And all nearly all Christians were under the financial strain of being a persecuted minority. In this setting, Hebrews sets out some of the key areas touched on by the mutual love that should characterize a Christian community. 

This is a way of showing the marks of a healthy Christian church. For the writer of Hebrews, you would know a good Christian community by its hospitality, which meant literally “love of stranger.” You would know them by the love they showed for fellow Christians imprisoned and tortured for their faith. You would know a good Christian community by the way they separated themselves from the lust and greed that characterized life for many in the Roman Empire of their day. 

This fits well with virtue ethics. In virtue ethics, you pick virtues to guide your life trustworthiness, courage, patience, humility, and so on. Then you strive for these virtues. None of us master all virtues at once, but you can work on being more trustworthy and patient and then come to work on being more humble or courageous. But the idea is that when a problem presents itself and you are wondering the best course of action, you remind yourself, “I want to be a more patient person. What would a more patient person do in this circumstance.” Or I want to be trustworthy, courageous, humble and so on.  

This is familiar to me because as a Boy Scout I regularly recited that group’s core virtues saying a Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Those were the virtues that my path to Eagle Scout instilled in me. 

In creating King of Peace, I was mentored to discover within myself the values I thought a church should organize its life around. My values might not be the same as someone else’s, but they would likely come to be values of the church and so it is better to name them at the outset and let people decide if that is the specific Christian church that is right for them. I named: 

Relationships—We want to build a lasting relationship with God and with one another. Inviting people into a relationship with God, as known through Jesus Christ, is the most important thing we do.  

Relevance—We value preaching and teaching that is relevant to today. The preaching and teaching all finds its center in the Bible, and works from the scripture to show how God's word applies to our lives.  

Worship—We believe that gathering together to worship should be, at the same time, a fun celebration and a chance for holy encounter. The worship of the gathered community is the center of our life together.   

Scripture—We believe that the Bible is the Word of God and can help us see how to gain meaning and purpose in our lives through a relationship with God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.  

Hospitality—We know that strangers are a gift to us as a congregation. We welcome newcomers, knowing that we will never be all we can become as a church without continually welcoming new people and new ideas.   

Children—We know that children are not the future of the church, but the present. Children are an important part of the church right now. We need to minister to children and be prepared to be ministered to by children. Taking part in church is based on gifts, rather than age.  

Ministry of all persons—Ministry is a job for all people, not just professionals. The ministry of the church is led by the ordained persons, but all Christians are to take an active part in ministry both in and outside of the church. 

These values of relationships, relevance, worship, scripture, hospitality, children and ministry of all persons, have come to be embodied in King of Peace Church. While not the same list as the one from Hebrews, it still includes hospitality and I hope that is still undergirded by the mutual love that comes from loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself.  

I think it matters that King of Peace named scripture and worship as key parts of our life together. We would have become a different church if we didn’t. I also think that taking part in church being based on ability rather than age has mattered. And we named up front that we would “value preaching and teaching that is relevant to today” and I hope that plays itself out in our communal life as well. 

That is us. That is what we aspire to be. We have reflected on the kind of community we want to be—a community where love of God and neighbor take the center stage and where that love is shared and the values I’ve named are honored.  

But as long as we are considering virtue. Are you the person you hoped you would be? Do you live out the virtues you profess? Let’s say you think that faithfulness is a virtue. Are you faithful to your friends? To your husband or wife? You want to be trustworthy. Do you consider that as you decide whether to tell a truth or a lie. 

We don’t become virtuous simply by deciding we value some virtue. The first readers of Hebrews didn’t just have mutual love because they wanted it. They showed mutual love by keeping their words and actions in line with that ideal of Philadelphia. Then showing hospitality and remembering those in prison and so on were just the ways their actions fit with the ideal.  

We become virtuous by practicing the virtues we profess. You say you want to be a Christian, then you need to have the little decisions that make up your day effected by that love of God and neighbor. The decisions to live out mutual love or any other virtue almost never present themselves as a big crisis or decision. Instead it is in the decisions about should I say this or that? Should I do this or that? where virtue is born. 

Am I the sort of man who switches from straw to felt this week when putting on a hat. Are you the sort of woman who packs away her white shoes. These may seem inconsequential and they are, but it is in the small decisions of life as well as the big that we become the person we become. 

You may be the man, woman, boy or girl you want to be. That’s wonderful. But if there is a gap between the person you aspire to be and the person you are, then try looking at these little decisions that make up your day as part of a bigger pattern. Because you will never be hospitable until you welcome the first stranger. You will never be trustworthy until you decide to tell the costly truth instead of the easy lie. You will never patient until you sit tight and wait when you want to jump up and throttle the receptionist. And you will never show in your life the mutual love that should mark this and every Christian community until you put the ideal into practice in your actions as well as your words. 

Amen.