I’ve Been to Mother Jones’s Grave
Ruth Ann Stites, Staff Writer
One June many years ago I was driving through southern Illinois and happened on the Union Miners Cemetery, near Mount Olive, and the monument to Mother Jones. Mary Harris Jones was, to quote her page on the National Women’s History Museum website, “The most famous female labor activist of the nineteenth century, Mary Harris Jones—aka ‘Mother Jones’—was a self-proclaimed ‘hell-raiser’ in the cause of economic justice. She was so strident that a US attorney once labeled her ‘the most dangerous woman in America.’”[1]
Following her death in 1930, a monument was erected to her. As the Mother Jones Museum website reports: “Soon [after her death], a fundraising effort was underway by the miners to build a fitting monument to Mother Jones. In the heart of the depression, when miners around the country were often penniless, they donated in mostly small amounts to build a tremendous 80-ton Minnesota pink granite [monument], 22 feet high, flanked by two bronze statues of miners. They dug the site themselves. The site itself evokes what Mother Jones meant to a generation of trade unionists.”[2]
I don’t want to involve us in a discussion of social justice, a loaded term if ever there was one. Rather, as I thought about Labor Day, my memory of finding her memorial on a warm June afternoon prompted me to ponder on the way Jesus and the early church approached many of the issues we place under that rubric today.
For the moment, let’s limit our thinking to how He treated the disciples who followed Him and instructed them to treat each other (and as modern-day disciples, how we respond to each other in the church). At the Last Supper following Judas’s departure the Lord Jesus predicted Peter’s denial. He follows this with a “new commandment.” Here, He said, is how you are to treat each other, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). Again, He is asking them to imitate Him.
So how had Jesus treated His followers? He served them, bore their burdens, forgave them, encouraged them, accepted their limitations, and treated them kindly with gentleness and compassion. The history of the early church as recorded in the New Testament is full of examples and instructions of loving each other (Acts 2:42-47; Rom. 12:9-21; Gal. 6:1-10; Eph. 4; Col. 3; Phil 2:1-18; 1 Peter 4:7-10; 1 Thess. 5:11-28). One of the great Church Fathers, Tertullian, used their love for each other thus:
His treatises To the Gentiles and Apology directly attacked pagan beliefs and practices as superstitious and immoral, and argued that the Christian life as taught in Scripture and practiced in the church was morally superior. He imagined pagans looking at Christians and saying, “Look . . . how they love one another (for they themselves [pagans] hate one another); and how they are ready to die for each other (for they themselves are readier to kill each other).”[3]
In light of this instruction from Jesus and His early followers, how are you and your church doing in showing love to fellow Christians? Do the single moms in your church receive the help they need to raise their children to be healthy members of the community (in mind, soul, and spirit)? Are the elderly shut-ins able to participate in the fellowship of the congregation while remaining at home? Are your young people motivated and involved in wholesome activities rather than the excitement and degradation of the secular culture? Who is “falling between the cracks” financially, socially, and emotionally? And possibly the hardest question of all to answer, are you letting the “leaders” do the work of loving one another by sharing their time, talent, and treasure the Lord intended you to do among the members of your church?
All of us, even that shut-in elder, has something to contribute to the love life of our church. It is supposed to be reciprocal. Because one of us receives aid, does not mean the receiver does not become a giver in another person’s life. Maybe the most important question of all is simply: How can I love another believer today? In asking that, you are taking another step toward Christlikeness.
(Photo credit: R. A. Stites, Old Alabam Church and Cemetery, Madison County Arkansas)
[1] Mary Harris Jones | National Women’s History Museum
[2] Union Miners Cemetery | MotherJonesMuseum
[3] Quote from See how these Christians love one another | Christian History Magazine
