Session 1: Slavery

Hello and welcome to the first session of our Lent Course, Journey to Freedom. Some of you watching may be using the Diocese of Blackburn’s Lent Devotional which takes us through the first part of the Book of Exodus. In this Lent course, I am going to pick out some of the big themes of that amazing book and think what they might mean for us as we live out the Christian life in 2024. And the first theme I want to explore is slavery.

I am speaking to you from a very cold church. It’s cold not because the heating has broken down, but because it’s closed. Normally a closed church would bring me a great deal of sadness. I love to see churches opened and new ones planted. But for once, I am very glad that this church is closed. You see this is St John’s Church in the very centre of Lancaster. It was built in the mid-eighteenth century when this city lay at the centre of the transatlantic slave trade. And this church was built on the proceeds of slavery.

These box pews and the organ were donated by a man called Abraham Rawlinson who was a slave trader. In a grotesque irony, the altar rails, where people once knelt to receive the bread and wine of freedom, are made from mahogany produced by slaves. There are numerous slave traders buried in the grounds, notably a group who many think owned a notorious slave ship called The Johns.

It's interesting that we remember the names of those who owned and traded in slaves. But the names of the slaves themselves are forgotten. Simply because most of them were black, these men and women were stripped of their freedom, forcibly removed from their homes, made to work in appalling conditions and were little more than marketable commodities. Their names and stories are mostly lost.

I suppose some people might object that I am digging up events from so long ago. Yes of course, they’d argue, slavery was terrible, but surely it’s all history. If only that were so. Not only do we live today with the legacy of slavery, we also live with the reality of it. The Clewer Initiative, a Christian charity that helps people notice and address modern day slavery, has calculated that there are 122,000 people living in slavery in the United Kingdom today, most of them trafficked from abroad.

They may be working in nail bars or car washes or hotels. They may be harvesting crops in our rural areas. They may have been forced into the sex trade or into transporting drugs through county lines. This is not history. This is in 2024. It could well be that today you have been served by a slave.

The Book of Exodus begins with the experience of slavery. And just like the slavery that funded this church building, at its heart lay racial discrimination. The Israelites, once welcome guests of the Egyptians because of Joseph, have grown in number and prosperity, and the native Egyptian population feels threatened and jealous. So what do they do? They enslave them. Chapter 1 verse 11 could be a definition of slavery where we read, ‘They set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour.’

This is cruel and bitter slavery and the level of oppression rises the more the Israelites cry out for freedom. They have to build mighty supply cities. They have to work harder and harder as ruthless tasks are imposed on them. Their right to reproduce is attacked when Pharaoh tries unsuccessfully to bully the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, into killing male children. Their babies are thrown into the river. The tasks they are given grow more and more unreasonable until they are forced to make bricks without straw. This is hard and desperate suffering, an attempt to break and oppress an entire people.

But God does not abandon them. In the Book of Exodus we read of a God who hears the cry of the enslaved. He sends Moses as their leader. He rescues them. He leads them from slavery to freedom. This is the story of a God who leads his people on a journey to freedom.

From the very earliest days of the Church, Christians have studied the book of Exodus in the forty days of Lent as part of their preparation for the great Feast of Easter. That’s because the mighty work that God does in setting free the Israelite slaves in Egypt points us to the even greater work that God will do in Jesus to free you and me through the power of the cross.

To see what I mean, let’s for a moment turn to St Paul. He was writing into a culture where slavery was the norm and where the distinction between slave and free person was an extremely important one. But in his letter to the Romans, at chapter 6 and verse 20, he writes ‘ You were slaves to sin.’ His readers thought they were free. In fact they were enslaved.

Think what that means. I am someone who treasures and values my freedom. I am not under a taskmaster. No one can ship me from one part of the world to another against my will. I can make my own decisions and go where I like and do what I like. But all the time I am still a slave. That’s what Paul is saying. I may be free physically. But I am a slave spiritually. A slave to sin.

I was talking to a friend recently who is in a Weight Watchers’ class and he tells me that he is allowed ten sins a day. That may be helping him to lose weight but it’s not doing much for his theology. Sin is not about doing naughty things. It is the word that describes a breakdown in the relationship between us and the God who made us. It springs from the decision to live in our own way rather than God’s way. And sin leads to death. That’s why even though we think we are free, we are slaves.

But remember what Paul wrote to the Romans. ‘You were slaves to sin.’ Then he says ‘Now you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God.’ How are they free? Because of Jesus. In Exodus God sent Moses to join the enslaved Israelites and lead them to freedom. In the Gospel God goes much further than that. He sends his own Son. As Paul writes, Jesus ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.’

By becoming a slave like us, Jesus sets us free. We were slaves to sin and sin leads to death. But on the cross Jesus dies that death on our behalf. So through his death, we are free. The language the Bible uses is redemption. In the time of Jesus the price of redemption was the money that would have to be paid to buy a slave’s freedom. Jesus has paid that price by dying for us. In him we have been set free from slavery to sin to delight in the freedom and joy of his eternal presence.

So we’re free! That’s the good news. Powerfully good news. Or is it?

You see for me, the good news of our freedom in Christ is only good news for us if it’s good news for everybody. There is a danger for the Christian that our own freedom in Christ becomes a purely personal and privatised matter. I’m alright. I’ve found freedom in Christ. The rest of the world can go hang. 

But we cannot fully rejoice in the freedom we find in Christ whilst others are still captive. We cannot fully rejoice in our freedom whilst others are still slaves to sin because they do not know Jesus Christ or the power of his cross. Equally, we cannot fully rejoice in our freedom whilst a legacy of slavery goes unaddressed, whilst many are victims of racial prejudice, whilst modern day slaves are oppressed and abused, whilst many struggle because of low pay or economic captivity. If we are free, we must long with all our hearts for others to be free. Perhaps that’s what Paul meant when in Galatians 5, 1 he writes ‘For freedom Christ has set you free.’

So what does that mean in practice? During this talk I have spoken about freedom in two ways. The spiritual freedom we find in relationship with Jesus Christ. The physical freedom we find when we address slavery and oppression and work for a world where justice prevails. If we truly know freedom in Christ, we will want to work equally to achieve both of those freedoms. Because it’s hard to hear the good news of the freedom we find in Christ if you are a victim of oppression. And likewise there is little point in being freed from oppression if you are still a slave to sin.

So if we really know freedom in Christ, we’re going to want to do two things. On the one hand, we will want to share the good news of the spiritual freedom we find in the Gospel as we tell others about Jesus Christ. I will come back to how we do that in the third session of this course.

On the other hand, we will want to work for physical freedom for the enslaved and oppressed. Because when we set the oppressed free from physical captivity, hearts are opened to the saving work of Jesus. Here are some ways we can do that.

First, we can address the legacy of slavery. Let me tell you about how Christians are doing that in Lancaster. A wonderful project called Facing the Past has unearthed Lancaster’s hidden history as the fourth largest slaving port in the country. It has enabled people to address complex issues around disputed heritage and memorials. It has brought to life hidden people, for example Sophia Fileen, a once forgotten slave girl who is now, in sculpture form, dancing joyfully in the Priory. And all of this has helped those involved in the project to understand and confront the racism which so often lies behind slavery.

Maybe there is some learning here for you or for your own church. Is there perhaps a slavery legacy or some disputed memorial to a former slaver in your church? Can you do more to give space and voice to those we often inadvertently silence, especially those from minority ethnic groups?

Second, we can become aware of modern day slavery and campaign against it. The Clewer Initiative is incredibly helpful in doing this. It enables people to spot the signs of modern day slavery in their daily lives, for example when they are visiting the nail bar or having their car washed. And it then provides a mechanism for reporting it. Very few of us are equipped to notice modern day slavery. We often assume it is something that happens in big cities, not in rural Lancashire. But if we could all be alert to this form of oppression happening now on a doorsteps, many could be set free.

But then third, we can all be aware of those in our lives who are held captive by circumstances beyond their control. I remember one Christmas celebrating the Eucharist with a Church in the Diocese and meeting a woman who was really struggling. She was living in appalling privately rented accommodation. Her cooker had broken down so she was unable to cook Christmas dinner for her children. She was run down and depressed because life had got on top of her.

It was beautiful to see that church gather around that sad family. They were invited for Christmas Dinner. The children were given presents. Once Christmas was over, the churchwarden went to the rental agency to ensure that the issues in the flat were addressed. Through those simple gestures, someone who felt captive experienced some small sense of the freedom we find in Jesus.

Maybe you know people like that in your life. Maybe there are simple, everyday ways you can bear witness to the freedom that Jesus came to give.

For freedom Christ has set us free. We who once were slaves to sin have been set free by Christ. Let’s rejoice in that freedom. And let’s reflect on what it means to share that freedom with others.