Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity 2020

Lectionary Gospel reading: Matthew 18:21-35

In the Gospel reading set for this Sunday, Peter (representing the Church) tries to assert his moral superiority. Jesus responds with a parable that reveals God’s nature as merciful, and calls on God’s people to make that mercy manifest in the world. In this parable, everyone is equal before God; they are all slaves of the king. And this parable of the merciless slave has particular relevance in a year in which we have seen the international rise—and backlash against—the Black Lives Matter movement; and, closer to home, the toppling of statues honouring slave traders. Because, you see, Jesus tells a story, and invites the Church to the work of discerning how to apply it within our community in any given historical context. But as with the preceding verses (indeed, as with so many of Jesus’ parables) those who believe they are more wronged than in the wrong, more sinned against than sinning, are being led into a trap.

Into the story, Jesus introduces a certain slave who is summoned to an audience with the king. On can presume that this slave appears before the king with a certain degree of confidence. After all, to date the king has lent this slave ten thousand talents. A talent was worth more than fifteen years’ wages of a labourer; and so, we can say that this sum was the equivalent of fifteen years’ unpaid labour by 10,000 slaves. This man is, himself, a slave—he is no different, inherently, to anyone else—and yet he is living a life that is unimaginably removed from his fellow slaves. Indeed, as we shall see, he believes himself to be de facto king over them. But the actual king has summoned him to ask that the loan be re-payed.

The slave protests that this is quite impossible. And so, the king determines that the slave be sold, along with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment be made. This clearly implies a broader redistribution of concentrated wealth and power; and has consequences for successive generations. And as the king in this parable represents God, such a solution should be understood to be perfectly just. But the slave pleads for patience to repay—apparently it is only hard, not in fact impossible—and the king, motivated by compassion, moves to write off the man’s debt entirely.

No sooner had the slave departed, but he meets a fellow slave who owes him a hundred denarii, the equivalent of three-and-a-half month’s unpaid labour by one slave (contrasted with fifteen years’ unpaid labour by 10,000 slaves). There is a power dynamic at play. For the slave who lent the money, it is a trivial sum; but not for the one who borrowed. He cannot pay off the outstanding debt in one go—who can survive for three-and-a-half months on no money at all?—and this slave is doubly enslaved paying back the interest on his loan. Now, because the first slave has neither compassion nor empathy, he is about to be triply enslaved, thrown into debtor’s prison, with some physical violence and psychological terror thrown in for good measure.

When his fellow slaves saw what happened, they were greatly distressed. They went before the king and reported the injustice, and, because the king was just, he acted justly. Because the slave who had known the king’s mercy had not participated in the king’s mercy, he would now know the king’s justice. His participation in the king’s justice would be to experience torture until he would pay his entire debt. This, then, Jesus concluded, is what it will be like for those who do not participate in mercy.

In 1791, the French-owned Haitian slaves revolted. In order to prevent territorial loss to the British, the French Republic abolished slavery in 1794, restoring it in 1802. Throughout the 1790s, Britain, who had recently lost her American colonies, fought to capture French territory in the Caribbean and re-establish slavery there, while also crushing slave revolts on her own islands (including the genocide of men, women and children), spending £4 million and losing between 50,000-100,00 men in battle or to yellow fever. In 1804, two years after Napoleon reinstated slavery in French colonies, the Haitians declared independence and abolished slavery. Three years later, in 1807, a bruised British parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Not until 1833, and after ongoing slave rebellions, was this followed by the Slavery Abolition Act. As part of this process, the 1837 Slave Compensation Act paid out £20 million (an estimated £17 billion in today’s money) to former slave owners “compensating the Persons at present entitled to the Services of the Slaves to be manumitted and set free by virtue of this Act for the Loss of such Services”. Freed slaves did not receive any compensation.

The British government—or, the British taxpayers; including the descendants of the slaves—finally ‘paid off’ the loan in 2015. The families of slave owners and the families of investment bankers have been benefitting from slavery from its abolition until the present. Meanwhile, France extorted a debt of 91 million gold francs for the loss of property which Haiti finally paid off in 1947; and Britain systematically exploited her colonies and former colonies; and has treated those we asked to fight for us in two world wars and then to come and help rebuild the motherland after the Second World War utterly shamefully, to this day. This is not history, separate from current affairs.

If I were to announce that, this year, we will not be marking Remembrance Sunday, there would be uproar. If I were to suggest that ‘it all happened a long time ago, and we just need to move on,’ angry letters would be written to my bishop and I would be the subject of hostile articles in the press. But ‘it all happened a long time ago, and we just need to move on’ is the argument I hear again and again (not seven times but seventy times seven) in relation to slavery, despite the legitimate calls of Caribbean Heads of State for a program of reparations there, and of Black British voices calling for justice here. It strikes me as ironic that, despite the fact that no one alive today fought in the First World War we habitually claim that ‘we’ won the war; but that when it comes to the reckoning of debts relating to slavery, we cannot be held responsible as it all took place before we were born.

But the consequent injustice is ongoing; and for that, we are called to take responsibility. We cannot move on, until justice is done. Regardless of whether wider British society can accept this, the Church of England should. The thing that strikes me most about Jesus’ parable of the merciless servant is the line, ‘When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed.’ They were greatly distressed at the injustice they witnessed. I wonder whether we are even capable of such a response, to the pain of injustice felt by our Black sisters and brothers.

We don’t remember the First World War because ‘if we forget we will repeat the mistakes of the past’—our government hosts the world’s largest arms fair and we profit economically from ensuring instability across the world, while refusing to take responsibility for the lives ruined, let alone for our own veterans. No, we remember the First World War to recognise a communal trauma, passed down the generations; and, increasingly over recent years, to reassert ourselves over others. And, before you write to my bishop, we shall mark Remembrance Sunday. But we are called to recognise the communal trauma, passed down the generations, of our fellow slaves; and to recognise that we are not inherently superior but inherently equal: and to repent of sin and make material redress for injustice, though it be to our cost. Black Lives Matter because our society repeatedly demonstrates that they do not matter, dismissing justice by labelling people Marxists, looters, terrorists, criminals, lazy, disruptive—and allies as naïve self-haters.

The alternative is that we find ourselves tortured until we pay off our entire debt, not to the enslavers and their descendants but to the wrongly imprisoned and their descendants. We do not torture ourselves, but we do bring it upon ourselves. Where we reject mercy, justice demands it. As with all of Jesus’ parables, we ought rightly to be troubled.

 

Sermon for Third Sunday after Trinity 2020

On Thursday evening just gone, I attended a Black Lives Matter vigil in Keel Square. It had been organised at the request of community organisers within the BAME (Black, Asian and Minority-Ethnic) community in Sunderland. I went as their guest, and in response to their invitation to stand in solidarity with them at this time. I went to hear local Black and mixed-heritage speakers share something of their experience of living here, in the city where I live. About 200 people came to a well-organised and peaceful event, maintaining spatial distance, most wearing masks. Many local church leaders were present. As part of the vigil, we were invited to take the knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. A humble, prayerful posture that connects us to Martin Luther King, Jr, and the ongoing civil rights movement; and a length of time that remembers the murder of George Floyd by a police officer who knelt on his neck for that long.

 

Some say that it is humiliating for a White man to take the knee; which causes me to wonder why humbling ourselves should be seen as (is) humiliating by White people, and White men in particular? Some dismiss it is a token gesture, which causes me to ponder the difference between symbolic actions and token actions, and how action can sustain us and empower transformation or sedate us and disempower transformation. Some will undoubtedly dismiss it as ‘woke,’ which makes me wonder why alertness to injustice should be something to vilify people for, and whose interests that serves?

 

There was a small but vocal demonstration protesting the vigil. One man waved a Union flag. Now, to be clear, context is everything. Despite our colonial history, the flag is not inherently racist. Flanking a member of the Cabinet giving the daily Coronavirus briefing, not racist. Flying from public buildings, not racist. Waved at the Olympic Games, not racist. Fluttering as bunting at the village fete, or adorning tea towels and cushions, not racist. But held aloft in protest of a Black Lives Matter vigil, the point being made is, “If you are not White you don’t belong in this country: go back home where your people come from.”

 

Again and again, as Black and mixed-heritage speakers addressed those in the square, the protestors tried to drown out these not-White voices with chants of ‘All Lives Matter’. And yes, all lives do matter. But, again, context is everything. If your first response to Black Lives Matter is not to listen, to hear why it is that such a statement needs to be made; if your response is the paternalistic corrective, All lives matter, then what you are actually saying is, Black people need to get back in their box—and, they need to accept that it is a far better and more comfortable box than it used to be. And if your response is to stand on the pavement and attempt to drown out not-White voices, that reveals a desperate attempt to silence the Other, and, frankly, demonstrates just why we need to insist that Black Lives Matter. For if all lives truly matter, then by definition Black lives matter; and if Black lives matter, then we should listen to them. We should acknowledge the injustice people experience because of who they are, and, with them, seek to address it. And yes, if all lives matter, then White lives matter too; but no one in this nation experiences wearying prejudice on account of being White, just as no one experiences wearying prejudice on account of being ‘able-bodied’ or ‘straight’.

 

How incredibly apposite our readings this Sunday are to the upheavals we are living through! And what a gift to wrestle with these words, and the story they unfold, and our place within it.

 

Paul’s letter to the Christian community in Rome—Romans—was written to be circulated around multiple congregations. Some were predominantly of Jewish background, and others were Gentile-majority churches; and, while they were all Christians, the Jewish believers looked on the Gentile believers, and treated them, as second-class citizens in the kingdom of heaven. This was the issue Paul sought to address. And he did so with brilliant contextual theological reflection, which has often become problematic when read in other contexts.

 

Paul begins his letter by painting as black a picture of the Gentiles as is imaginable. He quickly focuses on sexual practices that, from a Jewish outlook were beyond the pale to the point of being unnatural in their desires and actions. He builds a caricature his Jewish audience would agree with whole-heartedly, until he springs a trap: the respectable Jewish Christians are by nature every bit as separated from God as the Gentiles. Indeed, Paul even ascribes unnatural desire and activity to God, saying that God has cut the Jewish people from the vine of their heritage, has grafted the Gentiles into that vine, and will graft Israel back onto the vine from which he had broken it. Throughout the letter, Paul labours the point that there is one new humanity, and seeks to deconstruct the divisions that exist in the minds of the believers, and to foster the construction of something new and mutually uplifting. A community that will ultimately subvert Roman civilisation not by revolt, but by a better alternative.

 

And in the passage before us today, Paul takes up the imagery of slavery, as an analogy that his audience would be familiar with. Around 90% of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves, owned by a master. This was not necessarily the most abject slavery the world has ever known, but all empires are built on the backs of slaves, on men, women and children seen as property. For the Jews, being a slave—certainly, being a slave to a Gentile—was especially demeaning. Even though they were a nation occupied by a foreign army, and ruled over by the Roman Empire’s local puppet king, they had won for themselves certain exemptions, and rejected the notion of being slaves. On one occasion, a group of Jewish community leaders, confronting Jesus, declared that as a people they had never been slaves to anyone. This is quite extraordinary, given how foundational the story of God liberating his people from over four centuries of slavery in Egypt was to Jewish identity. But then, when we are confronted with our present, we reframe our past to suit.

 

In this passage from Romans 6, Paul employs the language of sin exercising dominion over us, to make us obey those passions within us that separate us from God rather than the desire within us to please God. Paul goes on to state that, according to this analogy, we are all slaves to something, either to impurity or to righteousness. Recognising ourselves as enslaved to God does not imply that God is a tyrant, but that we are not masters of our own destiny. Even if we believed ourselves to be the ones who were free, we were only free in regard to righteousness: that is, our freedom was built on sin, on the breakdown of relationship with God and neighbour. A freedom that, pursued, ends in death, that is, in the very opposite of all that is life-giving in and to and for the world.

 

Paul also points out that the unexamined default of his audience was to present themselves—both personally, and as a deeply interconnected community—to sin as instruments of wickedness. That is, their unexamined way of being in the world was complicit and instrumental in wickedness. Instead, and in marked contrast, they were to present themselves—both personally, and as a deeply interconnected community—to God as instruments of righteousness. That is, by ongoing intentional choices and actions, they were to be instrumental in the mending of the world, the flourishing of human relationships.

 

And while Paul is addressing both Jewish and Gentile believers, the primary challenge in much of this letter is to the Jewish Christians regarding their view of their Gentile sisters and brothers—and, indeed, their overly-inflated view of themselves.

 

All this, as I say, feels very apposite, for a predominantly White Church of England needing to reconsider our relationship to BAME Christians, including Black Majority churches; and for White British Christians needing to relearn our history and its impact on the world as it is today, in terms of the sin of racism. For people needing to de-construct and re-construct our identity. Until and unless we face these things, we will be slaves of sin. We have nothing to lose except our chains.

 

In closing, let me return to our Gospel reading, those short verses from Matthew 10, the church sent out into the world. Jesus calls us to be prophetic—and to connect with other prophetic voices in the community—and to embody justice in our dealings—and to connect with others doing likewise—and not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task or to dismiss the significance of starting where we are, with even the smallest of actions. It is not enough to not be racist, we must be anti-racist. We are not only set free from something, but also for something. This is a matter of our Father’s kingdom continually breaking into the world, of his will being done on earth as it is in heaven—and of that will being resisted.

 

And perhaps for us the starting-point needs to be that we welcome Jesus come-to-us in the BAME prophets—whether nurses or students or professors or church (and other religious tradition) leaders or asylum seekers—whom he has sent to Sunderland? There is an ongoing work of learning to see people through Jesus’ eyes that needs to be done, of which the recent vigil in Keel Square was a part. It isn’t easy; and we will get it wrong, as the Church has been getting it wrong from the beginning. Yet in the hope that, as from the beginning, God is at work to redeem, I commend it to you.