I suspect that a
number of you have heard the old story of the young man who was desperately
seeking God’s guidance for some crucial issue in his life. For some reason he
decided that the best way forward might be simply to allow his Bible to fall
open randomly and then follow the wisdom of whatever verse his eyes first fell
upon.
So he let his Bible fall open. And much to
his alarm the verse staring up at him was Matthew 27:5, where he read these
words: “And throwing down the pieces of silver into the
temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.” Well that certainly
didn’t appeal to him, so he decided to try again. This time he came to Luke
10:37 – “You go, and do likewise.” Well, he thought to himself, maybe it’s
third time lucky. So he riffled through the pages once more and what did his eyes
land upon, but John 13:27 – “What you are going to do, do quickly.”
You don’t have to laugh, but I just wanted to
illustrate a maxim that was drilled into me early in my Christian life by some
of my fellow students in our Christian fellowship at university. It goes like
this: A text without a context is a pretext.
I could name any number of clips from the Bible
that have been misused because they have been quoted without any regard for the
context in which they were originally written. And I confess to my shame that I
am guilty of having done it on more than one occasion myself. But I say all of
this because this morning we have come to a passage that has been one of the
most egregiously misinterpreted in all of Scripture. And if you haven’t guessed
it already, it is Peter’s words about slavery.
A couple of weeks ago in my own personal quiet
time I was reading through Ephesians. There the apostle Paul also addresses
slaves, and in terms not all that different from what we have read from Peter
this morning. I must say that I was tremendously grateful for what the
commentator had written in my study guide. He gave this warning: “This text should not be misused either to
downplay the evil of slavery or, as has historically been the case, to support
its horrors.”[1] A text without a context
is a pretext.
The Sorrow of Injustice
So it is this morning that we find Peter
addressing “servants” and calling upon them to be subject to their masters with
all respect. The word translated “servants” in our Bibles in the original is oiketes. My Greek lectionary translates that term as a domestic or a house
slave, or simply a slave. And in fact that is how the majority of contemporary
English translations render this word: “slave”.
But whether the word means “servant” or
“slave” is not the issue. The real tragedy is that passages like this, which
can be found in both the Old and the New Testaments, have been used as a
justification for slavery.
No less a figure than George Whitefield, who
with Jonathan Edwards was one of the leaders of the First Great Awakening—that remarkable
revival that swept across what is now the eastern United States in the early eighteenth
century—was a leading proponent of slavery. As was Charles Hodge, principal of
Princeton Theological Seminary and recognized as one of the greatest
evangelical theologians of the nineteenth century. In fact, just a year before
the outbreak of the American Civil War, Hodge could write in categorical terms,
“If the
present course of the abolitionists is right, then the course of Christ and the
apostles was wrong.”[2]
But
to go back to my daily devotional reading, here is more of what the author had
to say:
Many times I have heard it said that the best way to
understand [the Bible’s] words about slavery is to think about the modern
workplace, so that the text becomes about respecting your boss … In the
ancient world, slavery was common, as being employed is common today, but to
compare the two in any way beyond this is wrong. Slavery meant you were owned
by someone else, that your body was not yours and that you were not able to
decide for yourself.
So what are we to take away from these
words from Scripture? How are we to understand and apply them to our lives and
in our world today?
First of all, we must remember that neither
Peter nor the slaves to whom he wrote were in a position to do anything about
their slavery. Although it had occurred a century and a half before, everybody
knew about the revolt of 120,000 slaves that after a three-year struggle had
been brutally put down by the Roman army. Of those who were not slaughtered in
the conflict, more than 6,000 were crucified along the Appian Way.
Besides that, we need to recognize that you
and I are in a position of privilege. We may face difficult circumstances at
work—unreasonable bosses, excessive
hours, dangerous conditions, the pressure to compromise our integrity, or a
host of other unfavourable conditions, but the
fact remains that we aren’t slaves.
Yet estimates are that there are well in
excess of forty million men, women and children who are living in some form of
enslavement in our world today—whether in forced labour on farms,
in mines and in factories, in forced marriages, through child labour, through forced
sexual exploitation or in still other variations. Think of it for a moment.
Forty million: that’s the population of Canada. And the fact is that you and I
benefit from their labours through the inexpensive produce and manufactured
goods that are at our fingertips every day.
I am grateful to Jo Hockley, who a couple
of weeks ago pointed me to a website called “Slavery Footprint”. I took their
survey and discovered that by a conservative estimate my lifestyle depends on
the labour of at least forty-eight slaves. Those slaves are invisible to me
because they are working (or perhaps I should say overworked) often in
dangerous and unhealthy conditions in mines and fields and sweatshops thousands
of miles away. What is the solution to this? I confess that the problem is far
too complex for me to make any recommendations, except at the very least to
make ourselves aware of the extent of slavery still present in our world today and
to be careful about what we purchase. And if you’d like some help with that,
the website endslaverynow.org has 429 useful suggestions for you!
And let us not forget that we follow the one anointed by the Spirit of the Lord “to proclaim good news to the poor…, to proclaim liberty to the captives…, to set at liberty those who are oppressed…” (Luke 4:18)
The Suffering of Christ
So how are we to understand those words of
Peter to slaves? The answer is to try to comprehend them not only in their
historical context but equally, if not more importantly, in their biblical
context. And that context is found in words that Peter would certainly have
heard from Jesus himself: “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to
those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who
takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either… And as you wish
that others would do to you, do so to them.” (Luke 6:27-28,31)
Peter had witnessed that lesson dramatically
put into action by Jesus himself in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night
before his crucifixion. You will remember how, when the soldiers had come to
arrest Jesus, Peter drew out a sword in an attempt at bravado and slashed off
the high priest’s servant’s ear—only to be met by Jesus’ stern rebuke, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take
the sword will perish by the sword.” (John 18:10-11) At which point
Jesus touched the servant’s ear and healed him.
Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us, then,
that at this point Peter’s thoughts turn to what took place on the day that
followed. As he looked back across the space of a generation or more, I suspect
that the events of that grim and fateful day were as clear in Peter’s mind as when
they had first occurred. The heckling of the passers-by would still have echoed
in his ears. He could still see the sadistic grins on the faces of the soldiers.
And he could still feel the tears that trickled down the faces of Mary and the
other women—and down his own too. And above it all he could hear the parched
voice that cried out, “Father, forgive them…”
So we
shouldn’t be too surprised when a generation later we find Peter writing, “For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.” It
is not an easy lesson to absorb, because it is counterintuitive. It goes
against all our grain. It turns our natural sense of justice on its head. Yet
it is the repeated experience of generation upon generation of Christian
believers from Peter’s time right through to our own—somehow to meet abuse with
grace, anger with gentleness, nastiness with love. I’m not going to say that
people are necessarily going to change as a result (although perhaps by God’s
grace some will), but regardless of their reaction we will be radiating the
sweet aroma of Jesus.
The Sacrifice that Transforms Us
It was only later, during those forty days
between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, that Peter began to realize that
Jesus’ suffering on the cross was more than just a terrible miscarriage of
justice. Luke tells us it was then that Jesus “opened
their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day
rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be
proclaimed in his name to all nations…’” (Luke 24:44-47)
So it was that in the space of a short seven
weeks later Peter would be proclaiming, “Let all the house of Israel … know for
certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified… Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the
forgiveness of your sins…” (Acts 2:36,38) And so it is that we read this
morning, “He himself bore our sins in his
body on the tree, that we might die to
sin and live to
righteousness. By his wounds
you have been healed.”
It was at Calvary that Jesus took all the
suffering, all the injustice, all the cruelty and evil of the world upon
himself. And the power and effects of that sacrifice reach across the whole
sweep of eternity to touch not only Peter and his readers but the likes of you
and me today. The cross of Christ tells us like nothing else that you and I are
loved—loved by none less than the God of the universe and of all eternity, and
loved to the point where he would give his own Son to restore our relationship
with him.
The cross frees us from the burden of
thinking that somehow we need to earn our way into God’s good books (which is
something we could never do in the first place). For through his cross Jesus
has nullified both the curse and the power of sin over our lives.
When Jesus uttered those words, “It is
finished,” we are told that the thick veil of the Temple was torn in two from
top to bottom. It was a dramatic sign that the wall that our sins and
waywardness had erected between us and God was demolished. The Good Shepherd
had reclaimed his straying sheep to bring them home.
Well, that’s the big context of our passage
this morning. May it cause us to rejoice in the freedom that we enjoy in our
society, to pray and advocate and do what we can for those who still live in
bondage today—and never to underestimate the price that Jesus has paid for your
and my eternal freedom and for theirs.
