Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time C.  September 9, 2007.  Wisdom 9: 13-18b.  Philemon 9B -10, 12-17.  Luke 14: 25-33.

There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today.  Modern slaves are children and families working in the rice fields, on plantations, stocking brick ovens, making rope and those trapped in the world-wide sex industry.  These modem day slaves are not free to come and go.  They are beaten and threatened with violence to keep them in line.  They are not allowed to save money, to buy property or to get an education in order to free themselves and their children from virtual slavery.  Even though slavery may be illegal in most countries of the world, 27 million people are held and controlled by people who force them to work for the profit of their virtual owners.

The first time that I visited Ghana, West Africa, I was shocked by a slave castle out of which thousands of black Africans where shipped in chains to slavery in North and South America.  I was surprised by the church standing in the middle of the slave castle in which Catholic Portuguese and Protestant Dutch slave traders worshipped at the same time that they were breaking up families, ripping black Africans from their homeland and robbing them of their freedom as they sent them on a long and dangerous trip across the ocean during which many died.    The first time that I celebrated Mass for our African brothers and sisters at Our Lady of the Rosary, our sister parish in Ghana, I told them that they looked very much like the black people I knew at home.  Then the truth hit me.  Of course they looked like the black Americans I knew at home.  The ancestors of many black Americas had come through the slave castle I had just visited.  I began to cry because for the first time I understood the tragedy of slavery in my heart.  To take away a person’s dignity, freedom, culture and homeland and to sell him or her as the property of another human being is a great offense to Almighty God and to our human race.

The Apostle Paul has often been criticized for sending the slave Onesimus back to his owner.  Paul didn’t denounce slavery as the great evil that it is.  The technology that made the Roman Empire work was the labor and intelligence of slaves. St. Paul didn’t attack the Roman slave system directly.  Instead he focused attention on the attitude that allowed slavery to exist.  It is only when we don’t see slaves as human beings and when we do not hold them as our brothers and sisters in our hearts that slavery can exist.

In Roman society Onesimus was a slave, a piece of property.  Paul called Onesimus his child.  He wrote to the slave master Philemon, “I urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment (Onesimus had become a Christian because of Paul’s preaching); I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you… that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more to you, as a man and in the Lord.  So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.”

Paul says very clearly that it is the way that we hold people in our hearts that makes slavery possible and that slavery and oppression of every kind will disappear when we finally see all other human beings as our brothers and sisters in the human race and in the love of Christ.

John Newton was the son of the commander of a British merchant ship.  When his father died John was forced into service on a fighting ship.  When he escaped and was recaptured he was publicly beaten.  Finally he served on a slave ship and became the servant of a slave trader.  Again he was brutally abused.  John ultimately became the captain of his own slave ship and was very actively involved in the slave trade.  Although he was not a religious man, John Newton met God in the midst of a violent storm at sea.  By the amazing grace of God his life was changed.

Newton became a minister and a great preacher.  In old age he preached to William Wilberforce, the man who pushed the British Parliament to abolish slavery long before it was abolished in the Untied States. Newton’s letters to Wilberforce challenged him to act on his moral convictions against slavery.  Before he died John Newton wrote, “My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.’”  John Newton was a converted slave trader who by the grace of God helped bring the British slave trade to an end.  In his mind it is all about a converted heart.  It is all about grace.  John Newton is the author of “Amazing Grace”, a much beloved Christian hymn.  It is about slavery and freedom. (Gather Hymnal 612)

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)

That sav’d a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears reliev’d;

How precious did that grace appear,

The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,

I have already come;

’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

Laws about immigration, heath care, war and peace, the sanctity of human life, and hundreds of other moral issues are all important and very necessary.  When we exercise our responsibility as citizens in this great land it is most important that we have all human beings in a grace-filled place in our hearts.  Only grace can help us to see things as they are in the mind and heart of God.  We thank God today for amazing grace.

I would like to invite a parishioner to talk about one aspect of ministry at OLG.