September 24, 2006 Sermon

Slavery
Exodus 1:1-14

Crispus Attucks lived in Boston during the late 1700’s. Though a black man, he had no known owner. He may have run away. He may have been freed. Or he may have been born free. Regardless, Attucks joined the colonies’ fight for freedom. At one riot he marched in the front ranks and shouted insults at British soldiers. They shot and killed him, along with four white colonists. You may have heard of the incident. We call it the Boston Massacre. It helped kick off the Revolutionary War.

Indianapolis once had a Crispus Attucks high school. Oscar Roberston led it to basketball championships in 1955 and ‘56, the first time an all-black school won a state title in any major sport. Attucks was worthy of the legacy of the man for which it was named. But in 1986 the district closed two high schools due to budget problems. Crispus Attucks disappeared. It was a shame. The name did not deserve to die. Other school districts—including Anderson, Indiana, just up the road—have closed buildings but transferred their proud names to other schools. But the Indianapolis Public Schools did not keep the Attucks name alive. Instead it kept exciting names like Tech and North Central.

Former slaves often do not get treated well by history. In Exodus we read that a Pharaoh arose who “did not remember Joseph.” Four hundred years had passed since Joseph, the former slave, had run Egypt on behalf of another Pharaoh. His people had pastured their, and Pharaoh’s, flocks in the lush Nile Delta. They had multiplied. But nobody was naming high schools after Joseph any more. He had disappeared from the collective memory of the nation. His people had become slaves.

We have followed the story of God working in human history through the book of Genesis. We continue through Exodus. This book opens with the Hebrews enslaved and ends with them freely wandering in the wilderness. It contains two critical moments in Hebrew history: the Exodus itself, or God freeing the nation of Israel from slavery in Egypt; and God’s gift of the covenant law at Mount Sinai. First we deal, as Exodus does, with the slavery/freedom theme. As we read this saga we can see that God’s plan required that God’s Chosen People become enslaved. We see that in order for them to experience freedom they had, first, to be slaves. But how did the people who had to live in it feel about slavery?

Slavery and freedom both have their places in God’s plan. Use your freedom gratefully.

Exodus opens with a quick roster of Jacob’s sons and grandchildren. This list includes the claim that they numbered seventy. They might very well have done so; equally likely is that the biblical author wanted to use the symbolic number of seventy, which the ancient Hebrews believed stood for perfection, wholeness and above all, rich blessings. Jacob (a.k.a. “Israel”) left a robust family that quickly grew into a nation. Exodus tells us they not only multiplied, they “grew strong”. As the centuries passed the land filled up with them.

Next comes that telling sentence, “There arose over Egypt a new Pharaoh who did not know Joseph.” Joseph’s memory, his star (to use imagery from his boyhood dreams), had faded. Modern archeologists have found no certain reference to Joseph in the oceans of information in the hieroglyphic records of ancient Egypt. There are references to a mysterious figure named “Yuya” (a transliteration from archaic Egyptian) who may or may not have been our man. But the Bible states that this great man had fallen out of the knowledge of the rulers. This Pharaoh may not have known Joseph, but he knew all about Joseph’s people.

Egypt had a problem. It had hundreds of thousands of alien workers living among its own people. In places the Hebrews outnumbered the Egyptians by substantial margins. The Hebrews insisted on speaking their own language and worshiping their own God. They would not assimilate into the Egyptian culture. Does this sound familiar? Today Spanish language radio stations pull the highest ratings in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Houston, Miami, Chicago, New York and Seattle. The United States today has a love-hate relationship with the millions of workers, legal and illegal, who live everywhere among us. Go across the street to the high school. You will find Hispanic youth speaking Spanish except on the infrequent occasions they feel compelled to communicate with the rest of the school community. In northern Michigan.

Though until recently migrant workers in America lived and worked in horrific conditions, at least we have not enslaved them. But we do not know what to do with them. We fear their numbers. We fear their refusal to become like us. Many times I have heard people of Germanic, Italian, Scandinavian or Celtic descent complaining that when their families came to America at least they willingly became Americans. This complaint has merit. We have no generally accepted solution to the problems this mass of unassimilated people in our midst poses.

Imagine Pharaoh with his Hebrew Problem. He and his people fear them. They will not become Egyptians, yet Egypt cannot operate without them. If foreign armies attack these foreigners in the land could join with the invaders against their “hosts”. They threaten to “outbirth” the natives, to become so numerous they might just take over. Pharaoh’s solution, a popular one in the ancient and third worlds, was to make them slaves. Later he will decree the murder of all males born to the Hebrews.

As we read Exodus we can lose sight of just how terribly slaves suffered. We know how the story ends. We see that in order for God to free the Hebrews they must first endure bondage. But do not overlook the affliction of slavery as we read these verses today. Slavery was and is evil. Slaves suffer the physical demands of the labor they must give in return for nothing, but they suffer even more deeply because they have lost their freedom. Which of us knows how that feels? Actually, we all should understand all too well how slavery feels.

The New Testament tells us that in Christ we have escaped our bondage to sin. We still sin, but we are no longer enslaved by it. We have escaped from the consequences of our willful defiance of God’s will for our lives. Jesus died on the cross specifically to offer us forgiveness for the sins we stubbornly continue to commit. Praise God!

God’s story began long before Exodus. It led through Jesus. It continues today. I would never try to claim that our slavery to sin causes us anything like the affliction endured by literal slaves. Yet we do remain enslaved to sin. And sin has life-or-death consequences. As the Apostle Paul wrote to Christians in Rome, “the wages of sin is death.”

When we gossip, we lie about people, sinful people whom God loves just like God loves sinful us. Gossip kills reputations. Gossip kills relationships. The wages of sin is death.

When we break promises, we sin against people, sinful people whom God loves just like God loves sinful us. Broken promises kill trust. Broken promises kill hope. The wages of sin is death.

When we steal, we sin. Sin kills. When we commit adultery, we sin. Sin kills. Sin is part of human nature. Sin enslaves us. Praise God that God frees us from our bondage to sin! Slavery and freedom both have their places in God’s plan. Use your freedom gratefully. Use your freedom from the death of sin to spread the Good News: in Jesus Christ we are forgiven. In Christ, God has freed us from the deadly consequences of our sin. God has planned from the before the beginning that this would happen. Rejoice in your freedom. Use your freedom to walk more closely with Jesus Christ.