I suspect that a number of you have heard the old story of the young man who was desperately seeking God’s guidance for some crucial issue in his life. For some reason he decided that the best way forward might be simply to allow his Bible to fall open randomly and then follow the wisdom of whatever verse his eyes first fell upon.
So he let his Bible fall open. And much to his alarm the verse staring up at him was Matthew 27:5, where he read these words: “And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.” Well that certainly didn’t appeal to him, so he decided to try again. This time he came to Luke 10:37 – “You go, and do likewise.” Well, he thought to himself, maybe it’s third time lucky. So he riffled through the pages once more and what did his eyes land upon, but John 13:27 – “What you are going to do, do quickly.”
You don’t have to laugh, but I just wanted to illustrate a maxim that was drilled into me early in my Christian life by some of my fellow students in our Christian fellowship at university. It goes like this: A text without a context is a pretext.
I could name any number of clips from the Bible that have been misused because they have been quoted without any regard for the context in which they were originally written. And I confess to my shame that I am guilty of having done it on more than one occasion myself. But I say all of this because this morning we have come to a passage that has been one of the most egregiously misinterpreted in all of Scripture. And if you haven’t guessed it already, it is Peter’s words about slavery.
A couple of weeks ago in my own personal quiet time I was reading through Ephesians. There the apostle Paul also addresses slaves, and in terms not all that different from what we have read from Peter this morning. I must say that I was tremendously grateful for what the commentator had written in my study guide. He gave this warning: “This text should not be misused either to downplay the evil of slavery or, as has historically been the case, to support its horrors.” A text without a context is a pretext.
The Sorrow of Injustice
So it is this morning that we find Peter addressing “servants” and calling upon them to be subject to their masters with all respect. The word translated “servants” in our Bibles in the original is oiketes. My Greek lectionary translates that term as a domestic or a house slave, or simply a slave. And in fact that is how the majority of contemporary English translations render this word: “slave”.
But whether the word means “servant” or “slave” is not the issue. The real tragedy is that passages like this, which can be found in both the Old and the New Testaments, have been used as a justification for slavery.
No less a figure than George Whitefield, who with Jonathan Edwards was one of the leaders of the First Great Awakening—that remarkable revival that swept across what is now the eastern United States in the early eighteenth century—was a leading proponent of slavery. As was Charles Hodge, principal of Princeton Theological Seminary and recognized as one of the greatest evangelical theologians of the nineteenth century. In fact, just a year before the outbreak of the American Civil War, Hodge could write in categorical terms, “If the present course of the abolitionists is right, then the course of Christ and the apostles was wrong.”
But to go back to my daily devotional reading, here is more of what the author had to say:
Many times I have heard it said that the best way to understand [the Bible’s] words about slavery is to think about the modern workplace, so that the text becomes about respecting your boss … In the ancient world, slavery was common, as being employed is common today, but to compare the two in any way beyond this is wrong. Slavery meant you were owned by someone else, that your body was not yours and that you were not able to decide for yourself.
So what are we to take away from these words from Scripture? How are we to understand and apply them to our lives and in our world today?
First of all, we must remember that neither Peter nor the slaves to whom he wrote were in a position to do anything about their slavery. Although it had occurred a century and a half before, everybody knew about the revolt of 120,000 slaves that after a three-year struggle had been brutally put down by the Roman army. Of those who were not slaughtered in the conflict, more than 6,000 were crucified along the Appian Way.
Besides that, we need to recognize that you and I are in a position of privilege. We may face difficult circumstances at work—unreasonable bosses, excessive hours, dangerous conditions, the pressure to compromise our integrity, or a host of other unfavourable conditions, but the fact remains that we aren’t slaves.
Yet estimates are that there are well in excess of forty million men, women and children who are living in some form of enslavement in our world today—whether in forced labour on farms, in mines and in factories, in forced marriages, through child labour, through forced sexual exploitation or in still other variations. Think of it for a moment. Forty million: that’s the population of Canada. And the fact is that you and I benefit from their labours through the inexpensive produce and manufactured goods that are at our fingertips every day.
I am grateful to Jo Hockley, who a couple of weeks ago pointed me to a website called “Slavery Footprint”. I took their survey and discovered that by a conservative estimate my lifestyle depends on the labour of at least forty-eight slaves. Those slaves are invisible to me because they are working (or perhaps I should say overworked) often in dangerous and unhealthy conditions in mines and fields and sweatshops thousands of miles away. What is the solution to this? I confess that the problem is far too complex for me to make any recommendations, except at the very least to make ourselves aware of the extent of slavery still present in our world today and to be careful about what we purchase. And if you’d like some help with that, the website endslaverynow.org has 429 useful suggestions for you!
And let us not forget that we follow the one anointed by the Spirit of the Lord “to proclaim good news to the poor…, to proclaim liberty to the captives…, to set at liberty those who are oppressed…” (Luke 4:18)
The Suffering of Christ
So how are we to understand those words of Peter to slaves? The answer is to try to comprehend them not only in their historical context but equally, if not more importantly, in their biblical context. And that context is found in words that Peter would certainly have heard from Jesus himself: “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either… And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” (Luke 6:27-28,31)
Peter had witnessed that lesson dramatically put into action by Jesus himself in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. You will remember how, when the soldiers had come to arrest Jesus, Peter drew out a sword in an attempt at bravado and slashed off the high priest’s servant’s ear—only to be met by Jesus’ stern rebuke, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (John 18:10-11) At which point Jesus touched the servant’s ear and healed him.
Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us, then, that at this point Peter’s thoughts turn to what took place on the day that followed. As he looked back across the space of a generation or more, I suspect that the events of that grim and fateful day were as clear in Peter’s mind as when they had first occurred. The heckling of the passers-by would still have echoed in his ears. He could still see the sadistic grins on the faces of the soldiers. And he could still feel the tears that trickled down the faces of Mary and the other women—and down his own too. And above it all he could hear the parched voice that cried out, “Father, forgive them…”
So we shouldn’t be too surprised when a generation later we find Peter writing, “For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.” It is not an easy lesson to absorb, because it is counterintuitive. It goes against all our grain. It turns our natural sense of justice on its head. Yet it is the repeated experience of generation upon generation of Christian believers from Peter’s time right through to our own—somehow to meet abuse with grace, anger with gentleness, nastiness with love. I’m not going to say that people are necessarily going to change as a result (although perhaps by God’s grace some will), but regardless of their reaction we will be radiating the sweet aroma of Jesus.
The Sacrifice that Transforms Us
It was only later, during those forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, that Peter began to realize that Jesus’ suffering on the cross was more than just a terrible miscarriage of justice. Luke tells us it was then that Jesus “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations…’” (Luke 24:44-47)
So it was that in the space of a short seven weeks later Peter would be proclaiming, “Let all the house of Israel … know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified… Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins…” (Acts 2:36,38) And so it is that we read this morning, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”
It was at Calvary that Jesus took all the suffering, all the injustice, all the cruelty and evil of the world upon himself. And the power and effects of that sacrifice reach across the whole sweep of eternity to touch not only Peter and his readers but the likes of you and me today. The cross of Christ tells us like nothing else that you and I are loved—loved by none less than the God of the universe and of all eternity, and loved to the point where he would give his own Son to restore our relationship with him.
The cross frees us from the burden of thinking that somehow we need to earn our way into God’s good books (which is something we could never do in the first place). For through his cross Jesus has nullified both the curse and the power of sin over our lives.
When Jesus uttered those words, “It is finished,” we are told that the thick veil of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. It was a dramatic sign that the wall that our sins and waywardness had erected between us and God was demolished. The Good Shepherd had reclaimed his straying sheep to bring them home.
Well, that’s the big context of our passage this morning. May it cause us to rejoice in the freedom that we enjoy in our society, to pray and advocate and do what we can for those who still live in bondage today—and never to underestimate the price that Jesus has paid for your and my eternal freedom and for theirs.
