We know a lot about Sirach, because he ran a school for scribes. He tells his disciples not to think themselves better than anyone else just because they work with words and information. "The wisdom of the scribe," he writes, "depends on the opportunity of leisure." Only those who have "little business" to do have the luxury of wisdom.
Sirach describes each worker with a sort of refrain, variations on the expression, "He sets his heart on" his craft. The farmer "glories in the shaft of the a goad," and his talk is of bulls: "How can he become wise?" Yet "he sets his heart on plowing furrows, and he is careful about fodder for the heifers."
The makers of signets are "diligent in making a great variety [and] painting a lifelike image." The smith, "intent on his handiwork," even while "the breath of the fire melts his flesh," "inclines his ear to the sound of the hammer." The potter "moulds the clay with his arm," "sets his heart to finish the glazing," and still "is careful to clean the furnace."
These artists are "not sought out" for advice, do not "attain eminence in the public assembly," and "cannot expound discipline or judgment," yet "without them a city cannot be established," and "they keep stable the fabric of the world" (v. 34)
Most lovely of all is Sirach's conclusion to the poem, "Their prayer is in the practice of their trade."
Across the millennia, I hear Sirach speaking to me and my friends. We are all of the "scribe" class, the ones with the degrees, the ones who spend our days talking and writing, manipulating figures, ideas, and images, people for whom last week's breakdown of the sanctuary's air conditioner has already entered into church lore as the Sunday we had to suffer a full hour in summer heat.
I and my fellow scribes sit at the same table as politicians, college presidents, financial advisors, authors, and symphony conductors. Every one of us has a pile of funds in front of us, and some services that we offer, and all our "work" is a matter of swapping around what's there on the table: real estate, financial products, opera subscriptions, books, classes, brand name consumer goods, $100 meals. As a teacher, my little store isn't so much, but I've reasonable assurance of livelihood and protection against calamity, so my place at the table is secure. Sometimes, a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs brings some new wealth to our table, some new services -- and we make room.
The men who put the roof on my house a couple summers ago, and the courteous man in his 30s who served me my breakfast yesterday are not seated at that table, though they work much harder than I ever have done pushing my papers. I know: I spent a day roofing, and a few years working in a restaurant, and a few more years working in my dad's chemical factory.
A living poet, Todd Boss, spoke to what I feel in his poem "Apple Slices." As his dad's "jobsite grunt" on building projects, he and his dad shared the contents of a lunch box, listed ingeniously to make someone reading the poem aloud chew and lip-smack the words. Boss concludes about himself,
another well-paid
well - fed, college -
bred paper pusher, I
wonder that I've never
labored harder, nor
eaten better.
- from Todd Boss, Pitch, p. 22-23).
From Sirach, I take the message to heart that the work of today's "scribe" class shouldn't be valued so highly, the services of the hourly wage-earners valued so little. Let's pay them enough to put them at the table with those of us who can be confident in our food supply, housing, and health care. If that means a commensurate decrease in the profits that go to my quarter-million dollar investments, so be it.
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