Slavery, Freedom, and Friendship

Preached by Becky Ankeny
Silverton Friends
2/12/2012

Framing Scripture
Ephesians 4:1-6 (NRSV throughout, except as noted)
I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

Back when my children were little, my two-year-old (or maybe three-year-old) daughter came home singing the chorus “Learn To Be the Servant of All” for the benefit and education of her parents. We tenderly and gently explained that it applied to her also, and was not the magic formula to get parents to do whatever the child wants. The other truth is that serving children in God’s economy is not the same thing as giving them what they want or doing everything for them. It’s more about challenging them appropriately to grow and leading them into authentic relationship with Jesus. Teaching them to be “servants of all,” like our Lord. Teaching them, like Paul, to be prisoners in the Lord—engrafted in Christ, united with Him, enclosed in conscious fellowship with Jesus. Paul, who was in a physical prison, embraced with exuberance the idea of being imprisoned in Jesus. This highlights the paradox of gospel freedom—we are most free when we are most enslaved to God. We are least free when we serve ourselves.

One consistent teaching of the Bible is this: “People are slaves to whatever masters them” (2 Peter 2:19 ).

I’m not a Greek scholar, so I use Strong’s Concordance to look up words that interest me. The great thing is that I can then see where else that word is used and how it is variously translated. Another great thing is that Strong’s concordance is on line and is super easy to use.

The words I investigated were prisoner, servant and slave, and I found these three words: desmios—a captive in chains, a prisoner; doulos—a slave, captured, advancing another’s interests above one’s own; and diakonos—one who carries out the commands of another, a runner. Just for good measure I also looked up Lord/Master and discovered it can be more vividly translated “owner.” So right away I can see the flaw in translating Jesus’s parables about our relationship with God into employer/employee relationships. Those are way too flexible and dependent on employee choice. And in the words for prisoner/slave/servant, I discover a sense of urgency (runner) to do what someone else (or some compelling desire) wants done.

And I have to say that this sermon is challenging to me. I have to be reminded by Jesus on nearly a daily basis to check in—Who (or what) am I a slave to? What has mastered me and is calling the shots? Here are some possibilities.

Greatness/Importance: The desire to be the greatest—the most important—what if I am enslaved to this?

Several times, Jesus discovered his disciples arguing about who was the greatest, the most important.

“Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be the last of all and servant of all’” (Mark 9:33-35)

“A dispute also arose among the disciples as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But Jesus said to them, ‘The kings of the unbelievers lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves’”(Luke 22:24-27).

The prescription for those of us who want to be important is to become the slave of those we want to boss around: Radical surgery for the ego. In other words, we put the good of others ahead of our own preferences. In this, as in so much else, it is necessary to pay close attention to how Jesus served others and what informed his actions. Jesus first listened to God and did what he saw God doing and what God told him to do. And one of the clear ways God is active in the world is that God gives us what we need, what is good for us. Give us this day our daily bread, we ask.

Celebrity/Recognition: The desire to be recognized as special or to be in a position considered to be special—to be the favorites, in the innermost circle—what if we are enslaved to this?

“James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? ‘They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’ When the ten heard this they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the unbelievers those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you: but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many’” (Mark 10:35-45; see also Matthew 20 where their mother asks for this favor).

C.S. Lewis gave an address to students at the University of London in 1944 called “The Inner Ring.” Among other wise things he says, partly out of knowledge of his own soul, he says: “I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.” I know for a personal fact that the desire to be an insider rather than an outsider has caused me to behave disloyally to true friends and to myself and to bury my own true gifts and truth.

The prescription for those of us who long to be insiders, one of the chosen few, is to follow Jesus to the cross, to drink of the cup he drank of at Gethsemane, and to be baptized with him into being God’s beloved children filled with the Holy Spirit. Like Jesus, we give our lives to inviting other people into their own closeness with God over which we have no control.

Fair Treatment/Reward: The desire to be rewarded for hard work—God owes us something for all we’ve done for the church or for God—what if we are enslaved to this?

In this story, the word for laborers is not the word for slaves, but for day-laborers, people who hired themselves out for a fixed term, negotiating for their wages. These folks were likely in more need than actual household slaves because they lived on daily wages. (We have people in our towns who live the same way. Employers who take advantage of the dire neediness of such people to underpay them or take no care for their safety or well-being are often the subject of prophetic ire in the Old Testament and a cause for God’s judgment,) In the parable that follows, however, God goes looking for day-laborers; how does it work?

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them out into his vineyard. When he went out about one o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came the owner said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last’“(Matthew 20:1-16).

The prescription for those of us who demand to be treated fairly, to get as much reward as others who have worked comparably, and to get more than those who haven’t worked as long or hard is to be grateful for having our needs met and to celebrate God’s generosity to others.

So three queries we can use to check in on our enslavements:

How am I working for the best interests, the true good of those I want to boss around?
How am I giving my energy to clearing away barriers between other people and God?
How am I giving thanks that God’s generosity extends to those who don’t work for it in the same way I do?

Here is a very famous example of how Jesus acted out the principle of service: “After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, slaves are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them’”(John 13:12-19).

Listen also to the advice of Paul: “So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil… Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 4:25-5:2).

“[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross [daily, Luke 9:23] and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life (Luke: “forfeit themselves”)? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?’” (Mark 8:34-37).

What Jesus has to offer us for all our desires is himself—companionship with Jesus, working with Jesus, learning from Jesus—Jesus is our master, we are his slaves, and he says, “’From now on, I will not call you slaves, for slaves don’t know what their master is doing; but I will call you my friends, because I’ve told you everything God has told me. . . . You are my friends if you do what I command you . . . This is my command, that you love one another’” (John 15: 14, 15, 17).

“As slaves of God, live as free people.”(1 Peter 2:16).

Jesus says: “’Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Thoughts on Exodus 12: 1-14

This passage instituting the Passover resonates both backward into its own history and forward into the Christian understanding of what Jesus accomplished and how we ourselves fit into the big story of God’s purposes for human beings.

Two things to frame my thoughts: “None of us are free, none of us are free, none of us are free if one of us is chained, none of us are free” (sung by Solomon Burke) and the story of Elsa, a lion born in captivity who had to be taught how to live like a lion in the wild. We need to recognize that our being free depends on everyone’s being free, and that we have to learn how to live free.

A review of the context for this passage:
1) The Egyptians attempt to diminish and destroy Hebrews by enslaving them
2) Pharaoh orders the Hebrew midwives to kill all boy babies as they are delivered; the midwives evade the order with their wits
3) Pharaoh orders all his people to throw boy babies in the water

Moses, technically thrown in the water, is rescued by his mother, sister, and Pharaoh’s daughter and adopted into Pharaoh’s household

This is called irony.

4) Moses returns to Egypt with the mission of leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and slavery
5) Pharaoh ignores 9 plagues prior to this one—9 experiences of being struck by God’s hand (plague means striking)
6) Moses warns Pharaoh specifically about the deaths of firstborns; Pharaoh ignores him
7) This final striking is for the firstborn males—not even yet an eye for an eye, since Egyptians were supposed to throw all male babies into the Nile
8) The striking is for everyone unwilling to follow the commands of God, so not just ethnic Egyptians (Hebrews 11:28 ”by faith he kept the Passover”—anyone who kept Passover was protected.)

What happens to those willing to profit from others’ enslavement or death?

Let My People Go

Thus saith the Lord bold Moses said,
Let my people go
If not I’ll smite thy firstborn dead
Let my people go

The world is built on the idea that might makes right. Whoever is strongest makes the rules, and the weak obey or suffer or both. However, God’s cosmos is built on an spiritual extension of one of the laws of physics—every action results in an equal and opposite reaction. Thus the systematic oppression of one person or of a people builds up a spiritual and cosmic tension that is fearsome to behold. Abraham Lincoln referred to this in his Second Inaugural Address, given in the middle of the Civil War in this country.

“Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”

It just may be that every act of oppression sets up the energy which will rebound to the hurt of the oppressor, perhaps to the oppressor’s children, since such energy is undiscriminating. Oppression begets violence. And certainly it is accurate to say that both North and South had profited from the blood of slaves, and both paid blood drop for blood drop, if Lincoln is right.

The dead firstborn sons of Egypt provide a graphic picture of who often pays for the sins of the fathers. Those willing to enslave others may lose what they most value

Deut: 12:29-31
When the LORD your God has cut down before you the nations that you are about to enter and dispossess, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their land, beware of being lured into their ways after they have been wiped out before you! Do not inquire about their Gods, saying, “How did those nations worship their gods? I too will follow those practices.” You shall not act thus toward the Lord your God for they perform for their gods every abhorrent act that the Lord detests; they even offer up their sons and daughters in fire to their gods. (Jewish Study Bible, quoted throughout)

So much to comment on here with the sacrifice of children. Remember Isaac the firstborn of Sarah, nearly sacrificed but God provided a substitute.

God tested Abraham’s faith by asking him to sacrifice Isaac, then provided Isaac’s redemption with a ram. God did not require a child sacrifice, not like fertility gods, or we might call them now prosperity gods.

God does not approve of any person sacrificing another to increase prosperity and protect the future.

Look at all the sacrificed children across the Bible—the Canaanites, who made burnt offerings of their sons and daughters to the god Molech; the Egyptians, who drowned the babies of the Hebrews; Herod, who murdered all boys under the age of two in Bethlehem,. Think of the systematic oppression and sacrifice of children in today’s world. Think about the less systematic abuse that makes it difficult for children to trust God.

How does a person learn to live free?

Have faith and make a break for it.

God asked for a fine lamb to be killed, and a symbolic obedience to be enacted, the blood on the doorposts, followed by the grilled lamb dinner—what an interesting picture of God’s grace—give up something you value to God and get your whole life and your child’s life back and a feast to boot; notice that sacrifice precedes freedom but what God requires is less than the retribution the Egyptians stored up for themselves.

Note also that the Hebrews had to be ready to run the minute the door of opportunity opened.

A freed person must remember.

God tells Moses that the plagues with which he is striking the Egyptians are to be signs for the Hebrew people to rehearse forever the story of how God intervened to set them free from slavery and fulfill his promises to Abraham. Here are some psalms that rehearse the story, including Psalm 136.

Psalm 78:51, 105:36, 135:8, 136:10
To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn, for his mercy endureth forever.

What an troubling juxtaposition of judgment and mercy in this passage. It causes us to think about the fact that God gets to judge, not us, and God gets to decide how to administer justice.

God says to us that vengeance belongs to God; when we are oppressed, we do not retaliate in kind but offload the responsibility to God. Why? Because retaliation turns us into oppressors. Being an oppressor is bad for the soul and bad for the children.

A freed person must trust the character of God.

He’s got the whole world in His hands—the sun and the moon, the brothers and the sisters, the tiny little baby. African-American slaves sang this spiritual, which astonishingly affirms faith the care of Almighty God for them and their beloveds. In the face of contrary circumstantial evidence, they believed in the lovingkindness of God. God cares for every child sacrificed, every Canaanite child, every Egyptian child, every Bethlehem child, every enslaved child, God’s own child. No one is outside the care of God. It is not in God’s character to send these children anywhere but into his eternal love.

A freed person must be not become an enslaver. He or she must be generous to the vulnerable.

God expects the Hebrews to remember God’s intervention and therefore to treat the aliens and strangers settled among the Hebrews graciously.

Deut 10:12-22 And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God, to walk only in his paths, to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, keeping the Lord’s commandments and laws, which I enjoin upon you today, for your good. Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to the Lord your God, the earth and all that is on it. … Cut away, therefore the thickening around your hearts and stiffen your necks no more. For the Lord your God is God supreme and lord Supreme, the great, the mighty, the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing—You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You must revere the Lord your God; only Him shall you worship, to Him shall you hold fast, and by His name shall you swear. He is your glory and He is your God, who wrought for you those marvelous, awesome deeds that you saw with your own eyes. Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons in all; and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. Love, therefore, the Lord your God, and always keep his charge, His laws, His rules, and His commandments.

A freed person has responsibility for others.

The prophet Jeremiah (ch. 31) speaks these words of sorrow: “a bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, she cannot be comforted because they are not.”
Matthew 2 tells of another “striking”—Herod’s order to kill all male babies under the age of two, recalling Jeremiah’s words, and the one child who escaped to Egypt—out of Egypt I have called my son. Did Jesus feel it a burden to be the survivor? Did he think how he could make up for being the one saved out of the striking?

It is hard to think that God took from the Egyptians their most valued children. But we know how God feels about children. The incarnate God said, permit the children to come to me, and don’t forbid them, because the kingdom of Heaven is made for such as these. Unless you become like children, you cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven, God’s kingdom, right here among us. Woe to the one who makes it hard for one of these little ones to trust in God. It would be better for that one to have a stone around his or her neck and be drowned in the ocean. Children are the ultimate weak ones in our world, and God cares infinitely for the weak.

Without God’s intervention in history, the story of redemption does not exist. The story of redemption is a story of sacrifice and sorrow—from the garden of Eden to the hill of Golgotha. It takes enormous energy to break the cycle of oppression and violence, of sin and death.

Jesus the firstborn of Mary, the firstborn among many children, the firstborn from the dead; God gave him up to death to redeem us from sin and death. God sacrificed God’s only begotten son to redeem the world, including us—a sacrifice willingly entered into by Jesus, who is very God of very God—God sacrificed someone beloved and God sacrificed God’s very self to save us.

A freed person recognizes that God sees the world as bigger than “us and them.”

Abraham’s first born was Ishmael the son of an Egyptian mother; Joseph’s sons are half Egyptian. Us and them is just not tidy.

Throughout the time of the Patriarchs, Egypt was the place to go for food when drought happened because the Nile kept water coming almost all the time. That’s how the Hebrews came to Egypt in the first place. However, it became both a place of plenty and of slavery—in fact enslavement to the plenty (in the wilderness, the Hebrews lusted for the varied food of Egypt)—They would sell their souls and their relationship with the Almighty God for the predictability and plenty of Egypt.

God’s story is about hope for all. Isaiah 19 speaks about God’s intentions for Egypt:

First, God will bring Egypt under oppression, until they are trembling and terrified. God will break their pride and their idolatry. “In that day, there shall be an altar to the Lord inside the land of Egypt…so that when the Egyptians cry out to the Lord against oppressors, He will send them a savior and a champion to deliver them. For the Lord will make Himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will acknowledge the Lord in that day…The Lord will first afflict and then heal the Egyptians; when they turn back to the Lord, he will respond to their entreaties and heal them.”

A freed person obeys God’s spirit and does not judge.

God sees those who sold their children, those who sacrificed them in fire, and those who lost them to others’ violence, and God sees the children those parents once were, right back to the beginning. God does indeed have the whole world in his hands. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground but your heavenly Father knows.

And for us today, God carries us as well. God knows when we are willingly complicit in oppressive structures, how we lord it over others in our daily lives, God knows when we struggle against those structures and our own desire to dominate, God knows what we are willing to sacrifice our souls’ best interests for, what we are willing to sacrifice our children to. God knows what we fear.

God also knows when we try to be fair and even merciful, when we try to put others’ interests ahead of our own, when we try to give our children the best we have. God knows we are out of our depth, and God promises us help. This help is most likely to be simple everyday guidance. My 19th century mentor George MacDonald said, “Think of something you ought to do and go to do it, if it be the sweeping of the room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend.” When we are confused about how to live, we can ask God for help, and do what God moves us to do.

God disciplines us to help free us to walk along the path of love. God wants us to be like children who, when disciplined, run into the arms of our father or mother where we can know the love that both corrects and nurtures. Then we can go about our lives as free human beings in obedience to the Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth.