St Margaret's Church Prestwich

Rev Sue gave this sermon on Sunday 23 July. Here it is for you again:

In the days of the Roman Empire, about 10% of the population were slaves. For the Romans, capturing slaves was a by-product of war. In the aftermath of the Jewish revolt against Rome shortly after the time of Jesus, a staggering 97,000 slaves were taken into bondage. Can you imagine what it would be like to be owned by another human being? First of all, there would be the capture. The treatment wouldn’t be too bad because you were valuable goods. Standing in chains at a slave market, you would be inspected by purchasers who would haggle over the price and make demeaning comments about your appearance or physique. It’s not surprising that many slaves were overwhelmed by despair and ended their own lives.

After that, it was all a matter of luck where you ended up. There would be a new language to learn and new social customs – you would be treated as stupid for not understanding and uncouth for not knowing how to behave. If you were sent to the countryside, you would most likely be an agricultural labourer. On the plus side, you probably wouldn’t be closely supervised, but then you wouldn’t always be properly fed and if the slave owner got twitchy about the workforce getting out of control, he would chain you all together. If your owner lived in a city, you might be part of a whole household of slaves and trained for a specific role, such as a gardener or hairdresser. In poorer households, you would turn your hand to anything from helping in a workshop to cooking and cleaning.

Or perhaps you had been born into the role, because your mother was a slave, or had been so poor that when you were a baby your parents left you on the street for someone to take in. You wouldn’t have known anything else, being set to work as soon as you could walk.

If you were lucky and had belonged to a wealthy household you might have been educated, and helped your master with his business, or even teach his children. Your master might have been so pleased with you that he set you free to become a Roman citizen. What would that have been like? It would have been hard to adjust to not being always afraid of punishment, to being independent and to owning things of your own.

Paul’s readers would have taken slavery for granted as an everyday part of life, so it was natural for him to use it as a metaphor. It’s as though, accustomed to a lifetime of slavery, we are once again in the slave market. We are pleased that we have been bought by a new, kinder master, but then, to our astonishment we find that God as bought us and set us free. He tells us to call him Father, we are part of his family now. We have been adopted, and made heirs to God’s riches alongside His Son, who far from resenting us welcomes us with open arms as brothers and sisters. He was, in fact, the one who went down to the slave market to buy our freedom.

But we have been slaves all our lives. At first, we still have a slave mentality, and we can’t believe our luck. Every moment, we are looking over our shoulders, waiting for a beating. We are furtive, scared, and selfish. We forget that we are the inheritors of a kingdom but behave as though we might revert to being hungry and oppressed at any moment. But as well as the Father and the Son, our new family has a third member, the Spirit, who is coaching us and teaching us so that we grow in confidence and remember to address God as Father and to trust in His unfailing patience and kindness.

As members of the household of God, we have a responsibility to behave in a way that will give credit to our new family. The Son is our role model, and we must talk, and act like Him. That’s easier when we are with other family members, but it can be difficult when we are with others who do not share the family values.

Jesus told the story to his disciples about a farmer who sowed good seed on his land. His neighbour was also growing wheat, and he decided that he would do much better if he was the only one with grain to sell. He would sabotage the farmer’s crop by sowing weeds at night when no one would see him. The seedlings began to come up, and at first all seemed well. But then as the plants got bigger, he realised that although the wheat was growing, it was all mixed up with the weeds. The workers on the farm were slaves who had never owned anything of their own. If that was their field, they would be furious! There was no way that they would be able to stand back and see it contaminated by weeds. They were worried about the crop and probably scared that they would be blamed for not being vigilant enough. They were prepared to put in the backbreaking labour to uproot the weeds – whatever it took – to get the situation sorted out immediately. The master was much more laid back. He shared their desire to preserve the crop, but he was prepared to be patient. When the crop is fully grown, he will harvest it and separate out the wheat. He can take the long-term view. The slaves, however, aren’t used to responsibility. They focus on the small everyday tasks with immediate results.

So what will happen if the slaves are set free and become children? When the crop is their inheritance, not something belonging to someone else? Will they still panic and risk pulling up the young wheat, or will they have learned to think the way their master thinks and adopt his strategies?

We are all aware that the last few weeks have seen some extremes of weather – we have had to put up with sudden torrential rain that soaks us in minutes and creeps through the church roof. In Southern Europe, the record-breaking high temperatures have been life threatening. In Greece, the combination of extreme heat and gale-force winds has left a trail of devastation, decimating pine forests and destroying homes. Flames have engulfed whole towns and come terrifyingly close to oil refineries before firefighting planes bombed the area with water and halted the spread of the fire. There are two ways to respond. If we adopt the mentality of slaves, the emergency will be sorted out as best it can, then we will go back to life as usual until the next crisis. We will only think in the short term. But Paul’s vision for creation is that it is waiting for us, the children of God, to be finally set free from slavery, and in our redemption will be the freedom of creation. We need to take upon ourselves the responsibility of children in the family business, imitating the wisdom of their Father in taking the long-term view. Paul ends the passage we read today by talking about hope. A present reality is not hope.  Something which is certain to happen in the future is not hope. Hope is for the things that are unseen – the solutions that may be found to climate change if we are courageous, imaginative, and prepared to change our own lifestyles for the sake of the future. If we despair the world is doomed, and our children and grandchildren will suffer as the climate crisis worsens and has more and more impact on their lives. If we hope, we open ourselves and the planet to the possibility of a future in which all creation lives in harmonious balance.

Through our baptism, God proclaimed us His children, not his slaves. He has given us his Spirit of faith and hope. We must live as mature, responsible adults, confident in the knowledge that God believes in us. He has given us our independence and entrusts us with the care of the whole of His creation. And God doesn’t make mistakes. Amen.

• With thanks to Jane Williams Lectionary Reflections Year A
• For more about slavery see: Slavery in the New Testament by Caryn A Reeder