Pentecost + 9, 2022
Friends,
Today’s Gospel contains words that comfort and words that confound; words of grace and words where grace may founder.
The late Paul Gibson and I served on the committee which created the lectionary in use by Anglicans and Lutherans and by many other Christians in North America and around the world. It’s a lectionary that was derived from the Roman Lectionary for Mass. It’s a gift born in the ethos of Vatican II. At the time, Paul was chair of the committee and I remember him offering a principle which might suggest inclusion or exclusion of a particular text from our Sunday readings. Not the only principle but an important one.
His principle was this: we never proclaim a controverted text without preaching on it. Don’t put a reading before the assembly which might bring unease, distress, or hurt, or worse without addressing it. The rape of Tamar was an example. There were feminists of the time who spoke for inclusion and feminists who spoke against. It’s a pretty heavy and disturbing text. Therefore, you don’t put it before the assembly unless you are going to address it and address the fallout.
So today we have a wonderful word of grace. “It is of the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Full stop. That’s a Rector Preston sort of clear statement of grace. God treats God’s children with abundant, profligate love irrespective of their/our deserving it however we might measure that. I like that bit of good news and I’m happy to proclaim it. Christians, ten; lions, zero.
But then, about midway through the full text, we have this: “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes.” Yikes! Blessed slaves? “Blessed” and slaves” in the same sentence? Did anyone run this idea past some slaves. The term “slaves” is used in an illustration of good discipleship with no suggestion of disapproval on Jesus’ part for this abhorrent institution. I was writing this sermon on Monday, on Emancipation Day. I wondered aloud how my black friends would hear this text. And my chest was heavy as my mind darted all over the place.
The church has a terrible history with this and kindred texts. Until very recently, the word “master” was translated small ell “lord.” As in “lord of the manor.” That was true until the 1950’s. And the word “slave” was translated “servant” until very recent times. In other words, the text was sanitized—whitewashed—lest this reading cause discomfort, especially where slavery was abetted. Let’s be clear. Servants are paid for their work. Servants work for the “lord of the manor”. And if they don’t like it, they can move on. Not so slaves. They are owned. They are not paid. And they can’t leave. All agency has been removed from them under terrible penalty. And the Greek text admits to no other honest translation than “slaves”. “Dou-loy” in Greek is not servants.
So there was I on Monday and here are you on Sunday and the text is before us. A couple of things. If it’s about lords and servants, and a lord who shows up in the middle of the night, home from a wedding banquet, and puts out a midnight snack for the workers who stayed up, it doesn’t have much punch, does it! It’s nice, I suppose, but eminently under-whelming. But a slave-owner doing lunch in the middle of the night for the slaves—of whom there are apparently several because some sat up and some didn’t—that gets your attention. (Deep breath.)
I have a great, great, great and then some grandfather who is revered in Grandmama’s family as a United Empire Loyalist. (In fact I got a scholarship from local chapter of UEL’s simply for my brilliant choice of ancestors.) His name was John, a name which recurs in every generation including that of my son. John came up, from New York, a captain in the militia in the June Fleet of 1783, John was the senior officer of Company 8. On the manifest, only the men are listed by name but there are notations for the other members of a person’s retinue. So there he is, John, a “refugee” according to the language of the day. I kind of liked the romantic idea that my forebear, John, was a refugee and a captain in the militia. Then, a few years ago, I learned a little bit more.
John was born in England and was listed as a gardener on the manifest of the ship Thames. (T-H-A-M-E-S). It was a very English voyage of them who’d fight for King and country. Anyway, the ship’s manifest has him travelling with his wife—her name was Abigail, and I have her lovely hand-written entries in the family bible—and two kids over the age of 10, and 3 under (I have no idea why the distinction.) … and one servant.
The word servant was the polite word, and the preferred word, in a slaving culture, for a slave. Ten years after he arrived in Saint John, John died. In his proved will, of which we have a copy, John left his (air-quotes) “negro wench Jemima” to Abigail. I was beside myself when I learned that truth. I’ve spent a lifetime getting into trouble for works of social justice. I simply couldn’t imagine such a terrible truth, such a terrible choice of ancestors.
We know a fair bit more about this band of refugees who were my forbears, but we do not know Jemima’s full name if, indeed, she had one, and we do not know what became of her. Perhaps my grandson who has shown some interest in such things will succeed where my brother, Christian, and I have, so far, failed.
I have wanted to make my peace with Jemima. But it’s hard to know how to make peace with people and events which are rooted in the murky past and with unclear trajectories to the present. That’s familiar territory for our nation, though, is it not, these days, and for our indigenous peoples and for their forebears and ours? I hope that my people can accomplish some measure of peace with Jemima, or with her kin, in my time. That is my hope. It may seem a small task compared to the national reconstruction of our relationship with First Peoples. Small but no less important, no less significant.
I kind of hope, in my heart of hearts, that Jemima was freed into the black settlement which then existed near Saint John, New Brunswick and which was partly engineered and supported by white folk of the time. In other words that she was freed before she died. But we simply don’t know and not for want of trying.
It’s hard to reckon with the past, whether near or distant. It’s hard to come to terms with a Jesus who used the contemporary illustration of slavery to suss out the relationship between God and God’s children. How do we sort that out? Slave and owner could not have been further apart in the social order of Jesus’ world. Between10 and 20 percent of the Roman Empire at its peak were slaves. Of the 50 million, say, 5 to 10 million were slaves. Roman officers often travelled with their slaves. It was a familiar thing among the occupying forces of Jesus’ time but also among the wider community then resident in Jesus’ world. So Jesus used the image of the master serving his slaves as the sort of astonishing reversal which defines the kingdom of God for us.
And of course, Paul, the remarkable theologian who wrote a generation or two before Luke, had it right: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, (not even a binary) male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus”. That is the stuff of grace. That is the substance of the Father’s yielding the kingdom to his children. Imagine a master whose good pleasure it is to give the freedom of the kingdom to the slave. I think that’s what we’re talking about here.
When I was ordained, 40-some years ago, we were still whitewashing the text in Luke:
“Blessed are those servants etc, etc. That’s what my version of the Bible said when I was ordained. But slowly, slowly we are beginning to get our language right, our present-day language right, and we don’t try to fudge the Scriptures anymore.
When I was serving as our church’s ecumenical & interfaith officer, prior to retirement, when asked at a multi-faith gathering where I fit in, given the astonishing diversity which is our corner of God’s world, I would answer that I’m a follower of Jesus and I didn’t get into Christian denominationalism. I’d save that for the church-to-church side of my work. One of the things being a follower of Jesus means is that I’m on the hook to figure out what the Gospel as Jesus lived it, can mean for our age. How do I talk about a God who is so generous that someone, who was as low on the social ladder as was a slave in Jesus’ time, could inherit the kingdom? Where do we learn the language? Well, here. In the church. It’s all of grace. That is our language. It’s all of grace.
I have to believe that to interpret the Jesus whom I follow for our age, I have to feel secure in the truth that there but for the grace of God go I and that God wills the kingdom for me and it is of our God’s good pleasure to accomplish this thing. At the same time, I hope that you can be secure in that truth; that God wills the Kingdom of God for you, and simply out of God’s good pleasure. It is all of grace. Silence.
May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in God’s sight. And let the church say “Amen.” R/ Amen.
André Lavergne, CWA (The Rev.)
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener