Year B, Proper 24, October 19, 2003

St. John's Episcopal Church
Harrison, Arkansas
The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost, October19, 2003

Imagine, if you can, that we have been transported back to the mid 1800’s. [1] A black man stands shackled to a post on an auction block. The auctioneer stands at the base of the block, pointing to the features of the merchandise: strong arms, good teeth, straight legs, clear eyes. The auctioneer then opens the bidding. How much is bid? It is a scene that we really cannot imagine. It is horrific! Slavery as an institution is emphatically rejected as corrupt, perverse, and evil. Especially in this country, we hold dear to the belief that all persons are free. We believe that it is somehow a fundamental violation of the natural order, God’s law, and numerous governmental rules for one person to be the real property of another.

It was not always so. In 1861, John Henry Hopkins, first Bishop of Vermont and eighth presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, was opposed to the abolitionist movement, and preached that scripture and reason did not condemn slavery. Although he felt slavery to be a physical evil, according to his reading of the Bible, it was not a moral evil. The Bible, he preached, ordained a certain race of men to servitude because God judged that to be their fittest condition. He concluded his most famous sermon with these words, “What Christian can believe that the Almighty attached immorality or sin to the condition of slavery?” [2]

Following the end of the Civil War and the signing of the emancipation proclamation, the Church began the hard work of reconciliation. The country was torn apart by poor North-South relations, and the Episcopal Church was anxious to heal the rift that had occurred between the northern church and the renegade Protestant Episcopal Church of the Confederate States of America. Despite some keenly prophetic voices within and without the Church, cultural biases and prejudices prevailed over the next 30 years. White Bishops and white Episcopalians were afraid “freed slaves would follow ignorant and grossly immoral black preachers who were carrying African Americans beyond the reach of white church people.” [3] So the Commission of Home Missions to Colored People was begun to provide “guidance” to the African American community.

Debate over racial issues continued until the early part of the 20^th century when General Convention approved the notion of suffragan bishops to oversee newly formed separate missionary districts of black congregations within the borders of traditional dioceses. In 1918, the first black suffragan Bishop in the United Stateswas elected in the Diocese of Arkansas. [4] Some considered this a good step toward unification of the entire Episcopal Church. Others were very concerned that consecration of more than one bishop for ministry within a single geographic area would destroy the administrative unity that had become synonymous with Episcopal diocesan polity. A compromise was reached where all Episcopalians were united under one necessarily white bishop, and Black congregations were organized as supposedly separate but equal missionary congregations. This paternalistic approach was favored by those who argued for the unity of humankind, the catholicity of the church, and the superiority of the white race.

Thank God that we don’t experience the evil of institutionalized slavery in this country anymore. Thank God that people are not shackled to auction blocks. But people continue to struggle to be free from the chains of poverty or political oppression. Handicapped persons seek to be free from the barriers put before them. And, regardless of how enlightened we think we are, people do still struggle to be free from restraints imposed because of ethnicity.

As a nation and a people, we continue to increase awareness of how different individuals are bound and restricted by social and cultural views. We are sometimes embarrassed to discover that we have done things, or have been taught certain behaviors that are oppressive or hurtful to one person or another. But, thankfully, there is a growing refusal to let these behaviors go unchecked. Ever so slowly, we are becoming more sensitive to those who are exploited, oppressed, or denied.

Harry B. Adams, a preacher at Yale Divinity School, notes that as we engage in the struggle to increase our sensitivity and to help others to achieve freedom for ourselves and others from things, we need to keep in mind one very important question: What are we being freed for? [5] How are we to use our freedom?

In today’s gospel, Jesus advocates that we should use our freedom to serve. Now there is a profound difference between being a servant because we choose to and being a slave because we have been coerced. What Jesus calls us to do is to give up ourselves and our sense of self importance in order to become servants. Jesus calls us to give up that sense of self-importance that blocks us from seeing and experiencing God’s kingdom that in fact exists right here, right now, on this earth, and in each of us. We have to be clear about one thing and that is that Jesus was not advocating the servant role as some kind of career plan for salvation whereby what we do as servants punches our ticket to heaven. Jesus is not advocating the role of the servant as a career whereby humility becomes something that we attain and become proud of. If we do that, we have simply made servant hood into an idol. Being a servant is not the ticket to the ultimate reward like James and John saw, sitting on the left and right hand of Jesus in heaven. Being a servant is being willing and able to recognize those behaviors that rob others of their freedom and that oppress or hurt our neighbors.

One servant who overcame the biases of his time and culture, was the proslavery Bishop, John Henry Hopkins. John Henry had read the Bible carefully and felt that Holy Scripture was clear. He was at that time convinced that slavery was an institution that had merit and that was sanctioned by God. However, by the time he was elected presiding Bishop, he had changed his mind. He led the healing of the political rift in the Episcopal Church and called people to forget their wartime animosities and to seek unity.The Episcopal Church often seems to find itself in the midst of controversy and divisiveness. That is not surprising, given that the Anglican movement sought to find middle ground between catholic and protestant voices during the English reformation. Being in the middle tends to put one in the position of being a target for both sides of any debate.

This past week the 38 primates of the Anglican communion, including The Most Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, met at Lambeth Palace to discuss the “ profound pain and uncertainty [brought about by] the controversial decisions of the Diocese of New Westminster, Canada, to authorize a Public Rite of Blessing for those in committed same sex relationships, and by the 74th General Convention of the Episcopal Church (USA) to confirm the election of a priest in a committed same sex relationship to the office and work of a Bishop.” The primates feel the actions of the Canadian and U.S. churches “threaten the unity of our [the Anglican] Communion as well as [the] relationships with other parts of Christ's Church … and … relations with other faiths, in a world already confused in areas of sexuality, morality and theology, and polarized Christian opinion.” [6]

The debate about sexuality in the Church has split churches and threatened budgets. It has involved heated battles over the what the Bible says about homosexual practices and about loving one’s neighbor. Pro-gay forces favor passages from the Gospels, while anti-gay forces counter with passages from the Letters of Paul.

In my own teaching, I have tried to encourage people to look at the Bible as a book of documents written by a particular people about their own culture and society, that provides a both a factual and an interpretive view of how God was seen to have acted in their history at a particular moment. Examining the book in this way enriches our understanding of the past and illuminates God’s Word for us in the present. Recently, Barbara Brown Taylor wrote that as she reads the Bible, she finds that the book won’t let her set up house in its pages, but rather it pushes her into the world promising that she will find God not just on the page but also in the world. The written word, she says, “evicts her from the book, and causes us to seek the Word made flesh… If Jesus’ own “example is to be trusted,” she writes, “then following the Word of God may not always mean doing what is in the book. Instead it may mean deviating from the book in order to risk bringing the Word to life, and then facing the dreadful consequences of loving the wrong people even after you have been warned time and time again to stop.” [7]

Christ Jesus helps us to know what our freedom is for, so that when we, inside and outside the Church, confront new challenges and opportunities, we will be led to ask: How can we serve? How does this task provide new opportunities not for self-advancement or greater reward, but for an opportunity for the living Word of God to manifest itself in this world and to foster the freedom and dignity of others? How can we bring the Word to life? Surely the struggle to liberate ourselves and others from slavishly following hurtful and oppressive ways is important. But just as surely, we must know what we have been freed to do. What is our freedom for? “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”

Surelyhe has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

9 Because you have made the LORD your refuge, *
and the Most High your habitation,

10 There shall no evil happen to you, *
neither shall any plague come near your dwelling.

11 For he shall give his angels charge over you, *
to keep you in all your ways.

12 They shall bear you in their hands, *
lest you dash your foot against a stone.

13 You shall tread upon the lion and adder; *
you shall trample the young lion and the serpent under your feet.

14 Because he is bound to me in love,
therefore will I deliver him; *
I will protect him, because he knows my Name.

15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; *
I am with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and bring him to honor.

The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus 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 Gentiles 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.”

[2] John Henry Hopkins. “Bible View of Slavery, January 1861.” In Don S. Armentrout and Robert Boak Slocum. Documents of Witness: A History of the Episcopal Church, 1872-1985. (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1994), 191-193.

[4] The first black suffragan Bishop who was elected in Arkansas was James Solomon Russell, but he refused to accept the nomination, and Edward Thomas Demby was chosen. He was consecrated in 1918.

[6] “A Statement by the Primates of the Anglican Communion meeting in Lambeth Palace.” Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS) 3633, London, England. 16 October 2003.

[7] Barbara Brown Taylor. “Where the Bible Leads Me.” The Christian Century. October 18, 2003 120(21):59.

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