Amazing Grace Sunday February 18, 2007
Exodus 3:7-8
Amazing Grace is probably one of the best loved Hymns of all time. I understand it has been recorded on at least 1100 albums; there are almost 1000 arrangements for the song. After singing the hymn at Woodstock, Arlo Guthrie said “I’ve been singing it so long because I love the story of the man who wrote the song.”
John Newton’s story
John Newton started his sailing career at the age of 11, and later became a captain of a slave ship. On one journey there was a horrendous storm, so bad, that Newton felt that the ship would sink. He cried out to God for mercy, God saved him, and that began his walk of faith. It took six years before Newton gave up slaving. It goes to show you that not all conversions are instantaneous!
For the rest of his life he observed the anniversary of May 10, 1748 as the day of his conversion.
He left sailing altogether and From 1755 to 1760 Newton was surveyor of tides at Liverpool, where he came to know George Whitefield, deacon in the Church of England, evangelistic preacher, and leader of the Calvinistic Methodist Church. Newton became Whitefield’s enthusiastic disciple. During this period Newton also met and came to admire John Wesley, founder of Methodism.
Newton entered Christian ministry. His church at Olney became so crowded during services that it had to be enlarged. He and William Cowper would try to write a new hymn each week for Wednesday prayer meetings, one of those hymns was “Amazing Grace.”
While he had realized that a life of slave trading was not compatible with his faith, it was only later in his ministry in London that he took up the cause of the abolition of slavery.
Newton kept extensive journals and wrote many letters. Historians accredit his journals and letters for much of what is known today about the eighteenth century slave trade.
Newton would write later in life, “Only God’s amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God.”
It was in London that a young parliamentarian named William Wilberforce began to attend his church, and that brings us up to why today is “Amazing Grace Sunday.”
William Wilberforce’s story – movie opens march 23rd in Canada
William Wilberforce is not a household name, but this movie may bring his life to the fore. He was born into wealth, and became an MP at the age of 21. At age 25, Wilberforce was a convert of the religious revivals that transformed 18th-century England. He first heard Newton speak when he was young but regarded his real conversion to be confirmed following a series of conversations in 1785-86. At the conclusion of their conversations, Newton said: "The Lord has raised you up for the good of the church and the good of the nation." His life and his vocation as a Member of Parliament were profoundly changed by his newfound faith; he became a force for moral politics: he dedicated the rest of his life to leading the fight to abolish slavery.
Though he was chronically ill and his anti-slavery bills were repeatedly rejected by Parliament, his courage and passion to abolish injustice led him to be referred to as the “conscience of Parliament.” He also worked to collect evidence of the crimes of the slave trade, collected 390,000 signatures to support his cause, and relentlessly crafted anti-slavery bills. After almost 20 years of leading the British abolitionist movement, Wilberforce wept tears of victory when the slave trade throughout the British Empire was finally abolished in 1807.
It was a historic and moral victory, but Wilberforce wasn’t satisfied until slavery was abolished altogether. Finally, in 1833, the House of Commons passed a bill abolishing slavery in the British Empire, and Wilberforce died three days later, his work finally done.
Show trailer found at http://www.amazinggracesunday.com/us/resources/index.html
What does faith have to do with slavery?
two great redemptions – Exodus & Jesus
Exodus 3:7-8
7 The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey
Israel is told to remember where they came from – In the law, God is constantly saying “5 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you. That is why I give you this command today.”
He gives commands on how to free slaves, and how to treat people in slavery.
As Christians, we are adopted into this heritage – while we might not be blood descendants from slaves, we are spiritual descendants. The early Christians knew this and they often sold their own property to redeem their Christian brothers and sisters out of slavery.
Not only do we have freed slaves as our spiritual ancestors, we ourselves are freed slaves. Jesus teaches that apart from him, we are slaves to sin.
Paul writes: 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, [a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. – Romans 6:6-7
Romans 8:14-16 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
You may not know that John Wesley, one of the great revivalists and founders of evangelicalism was also an abolitionist. He wrote tracts against the slave trade, preached against it in the open air – even sparking a riot in Bristol, a slave trading port, and it was against the Methodist rule to buy or sell slaves.
Wilberforce and his abolitionist friends used many different means to convince the sheltered, aristocratic people who made the laws about the horrors of slavery
Show “Madagascar” clip from Amazing Grace Movie (1:39) found at http://www.amazinggracesunday.com/us/resources/index.html
You might think that having an “Amazing Grace Sunday is just a really good marketing ploy by the distributors. It may be that. But it is also a great chance for churches to hear about the horrors of modern day slavery, and to hear God’s call to end it.
Today, I would like to do the same thing that Wilberforce did in that clip – I want you to catch a whiff of the stench of modern day slavery.
Today, there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world.
50% of those are children
David Batstone has just published a book on modern slavery called “not for sale” he begins the book,
"Twenty-seven million slaves exist in our world today. Girls and boys, women and men of all ages are forced to toil in the rug looms of Nepal, sell their bodies in the brothels of Rome, break rocks in the quarries of Pakistan, and fight wars in the jungles of Africa. Go behind the façade in any major town or city in the world today and you are likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings."
In writing the book, Batstone traveled to Cambodia, Thailand, Peru, India, Uganda, South Africa, and Eastern Europe, investigating the situation and interviewing hundreds of people whose stories the book tells. In poorer countries of the world, poverty and inequality create the conditions that lead to slavery. From destitute parents selling their children, to young rural women looking for work in the cities, to people being trapped in debt with no way out – the pool of potential slaves continues to grow. The International Labor Organization estimates that the work performed by trafficked individuals generates $32 billion a year.
“Slavery is about one person controlling another person using violence or maybe the threat of violence, paying the person absolutely nothing and using that situation to exploit them economically, to make money of them.” – Kevin Bales, co-author of “disposable people”
There are an estimated 10,000 slaves in America today – we can assume that there is a proportional number in Canada.
46% in Prostitution; 27% in Domestic service; 10% in Agriculture; 5% in Sweatshops and 4% in Service-food-care
Show clip from Not for sale documentary, found at http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/Trailer01.aspx
Or Not for sale promo video found at, http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/Trailer.aspx
Or International justice mission montage found at
http://www.concerttoendslavery.com/
Runnymede Community Church has a connection to this: the top three countries for sex tourism in the world are Thailand, Cambodia and the Dominican Republic. The children that we held hands with in the slums of the DR are at risk for sexual slavery.
We are people who have a heritage of slavery, we ourselves have been rescued out of spiritual slavery: if we are going to be “Godly people” we too need to “see the misery of the people in slavery. We must hear them crying out because of their slave drivers, and be concerned about their suffering.”
What can you do?
Get Informed
David Batstone’s book “Not For Sale” will be available in the church Library soon.
Go to www.notforsalecampaign.org, and www.theamazingchange.com and following the links to learn more.
Use the Sojourners guide “Christians and the Global Slave Trade” in your small group, or create a small group to look at it.
Go see the movie “Amazing Grace” when it comes out.
Pray
Pick up prayer guides at the back of the church.
Give
Groups like ChildVoice International, Fee The Slaves, International Justice Mission & RugMark can use your support to help free slaves.
Act
Ø Sign the petition at the back of the church.
Ø Write to your MP about the issue.
Ø Use your money Wesley’s Methodist not only had a rule against the buying or selling of Slaves, but also the uying and selling of rum that was made from the sugar that the slaves cut in the West Indies. He was trying to create a hole in the slave trading triangle Today, have nothing to do with the sex and pornography industry, buy fair trade chocolate.
Ø Find out what else you can do on the websites above.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Abraham Lincoln
16th president of US (1809 - 1865)
