H.G. Blake had a problem. He had some house guests that couldn’t leave. Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It was the middle of winter in the mid-1800s. People were homebound, and this was a big problem for Blake and his guests. His guests weren’t just any guests.

Blake’s house was a stop on the Underground Railroad here in Medina. He was the very Blake whom Blake Elementary school is named after, a member of this church, the business man who built the Phoenix block, and a two-term congressman… He had a lot on the line if his houseguest runaway slaves would get caught.

Back in the 1800s, they didn’t have Netflix or smart phones to occupy their time. What they did have was a type of capture-the-flag game. Each town had a flag that they would guard. Other towns would try to steal the flag. It was a point of civic pride and a community building exercise.

Blake couldn’t move the slaves without getting noticed so he organized a trip down to Wadsworth to capture their flag. He then acted as if his horse had thrown a shoe and had to turn back. While all of Medina went south to Wadsworth, Blake went north with the slaves to their next stop on the railroad and eventually to freedom.[1]

Blake was an abolitionist. He believed that no human should own another human. That’s what the Civil War was fought over. The Institution of Slavery shaped our nation in many ways. I used to deny this fact and say, “Nah… the Civil War was fought over state’s rights.” I wasn’t entirely wrong; I just didn’t finish the sentence: “State’s rights… to own people.”

We don’t like to look at this part of our history. We don’t like to think about how slavery shaped our nation and still affects us. It’s an ugly reality of our nation’s history, one that didn’t go away quietly. One that affects all political parties, both Democrats and Republicans, as well as Independents, Bull-Moose and Whigs. It isn’t confined to the south and it strangely produces a sense of guilt in most of us. Guilt and anger and even denial.

Our congregational ancestors were abolitionists. This congregation split over the issue around 1850. While they all agreed slavery was evil, they disagreed over how best to respond.[2] A 1/3 of the church left to start a new church.

The Bible is what Rene Girard calls, “A text in travail.” It’s in conversation with itself. The books of the Bible talk with one another and counter one another and argue, and we are left to figure it out. Just as our ancestors in the 1850s were left to figure it out. The two church eventually came to terms and reunited in 1866.

If you are horrified by the Exodus reading, good. You were paying attention. If you think the practice of slavery is barbaric, good. You have your humanity. If you think that the Bible is wrong for putting laws around slavery, you could be right. Yet put in context, slavery was something that existed and taken for granted… like that breath you just took. Like how we take electricity and indoor plumbing for granted. It was the water that they swam in, one of things that just existed and wasn’t questioned like we have in our day. Slavery was a fact of life.

Exodus is the first set of laws established by the Israelites in the wilderness. They were out on their own. No government or civilization around them. Back then, where would you go to reconcile a dispute? Say if you owned a shop and someone just walked in and took something without paying and left. Where would you go if you were living in the time of the exodus? Today, we have a whole system of laws. We would just pick up the phone and call the police, and the police would take the shoplifter to jail. There would be a judge and lawyers and a trial and a fine and the whole nine-yards. We even have a name for it; shoplifting. We take these things for granted. Exodus is barbaric because it’s when it was written. People were trying to figure out how to live together. There’s a word for the art and science of how people live together and that’s “politics.” The Bible records the politics of a lot of things, and how to treat slaves and the rules around them is just one issue of many.

We have more laws around slavery in Deuteronomy[3] which are more humane than Exodus. “If a fellow Hebrew is sold to you, then he shall serve six years and in the seventh year be set free. When you set him free, furnish him out of the flock, threshing floor, and vat.” There’s moral progress. Not only is a limit set to how long you can own a fellow Hebrew, but make sure you give them something to help along their journey after you set them free.

Then there’s Leviticus. That weird book with all the rules around what to eat, and what to wear, and how we’re not supposed to ever get tattoos or wear gold bands or earrings… Leviticus goes even further than both Exodus and Deuteronomy. Leviticus states very clearly that there is no such thing as a Hebrew slave. “If your brother becomes poor and must give himself over to you, do not subject him to the treatment of a slave. He shall remain with you as a hired laborer and serve with you until the jubilee year. Then he and his children will be free of your authority; he shall go back to his family and return to his ancestral holding. For they are My servants whom I freed from the land of Egypt… You shall not rule over him ruthlessly; you shall fear your God.”[4]

The term brother means all Israelites. This is a BRAND. NEW. IDEA. If a fellow kinsman falls into destitution, then I must do everything I can to raise him out of his desperate times. This is so far ahead of its time; we’re still trying to figure out how to do it now. In addition, Leviticus has the Jubilee Year. Every 50 years, debts are forgiven, slaves set free, and land returned to clans who had fallen on hard times and had to sell. We have no evidence that the Jubilee Year was ever practiced as it’s an idea so far ahead of its time. It’s a political statement that restores people and won’t keep them in debt forever.

This would be more like in our day, those who are paying hefty student loans, after 50 years of trying to pay, they would be forgiven. Or if you had to sell the family farm because a big conglomerate forced you out, after 50 years it would be returned to you. These are just examples that sound amazing and so far ahead of the time we couldn’t possibly do them now.

The Bible argues with itself and says different things about slavery. Then we get Jesus. Jesus the Word Incarnate, our God comes and tells stories of a world without slavery. A world where lepers are welcomed and healed. Where no one is shamed for being who they are. Where everybody is God’s somebody and are blessed and affirmed that everyone is made in the image of God. In our New Testament Scripture Jesus talks about Tyre and Sidon. This is a politically explosive statement he has said. Who are the Sidonians?

This goes all the way back to Noah’s ark. After the flood was over and Noah planted a vineyard and got drunk and passed out, his son Ham saw his nakedness. We don’t know exactly what that means but Noah got mad and cursed Ham saying that his brothers will take his children as slaves. This curse passed through the generations, from Ham to Canna, whom the Canaanite people are named after. Canna’s first son is Sidon. This is a long-standing prejudice. It’s Biblically justified. It’s tradition. It’s been passed down that we indeed can own THIS group of people because Noah cursed them. We can take Canaanites and Sidonians as slaves. This is important as the “Curse of Ham” was used to justify slavery through the Civil War and to justify segregation in the Civil Rights Era. And Jesus is having none of that.

A father cursing his son might seem barbaric. A father’s decision affecting his kids in adverse ways. Yet if we have watched the movies Field of Dreams, Boy Erased or Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, or any movie where the father and son are in conflict… or if we’ve ever heard the song “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin. We are still telling this story. This genre is still very much alive and with us.

Yet Jesus doesn’t care. Nor did H.G. Blake and the abolitionists. Jesus states in today’s text that Tyre and Sidon are in a better situation to hear God’s call than Israel. Israel should know it and has forgotten. Or they are banking on tradition and that “It’s always been this way” instead of living into God’s call for them. Later in the text, Jesus is amazed at the faith he finds in Sidon. Jesus knows that God’s call is beyond our world, it’s an upside-down worldview where we don’t profit from owning another person.

Abolition is still needed today. People are still in bondage. I spent 7 years in Toledo which is the #1 per capita leader in the nation for human trafficking.[5] There were many organizations working hard to get folks out of trafficking, specifically prostitution.

Toledo is part of the Rust Belt. A place that once made cars and was a hub of factories and manufacturing. But the factories were moved to where the labor was cheaper. What happens then is that the people left behind wait on the factories to open again and the jobs to come back. When they don’t, they often turn to other ways of making money. Drugs. Crime. Gambling. Prostitution.

The good news is that our God is a chain-breaker. Our God doesn’t side with the Pharaohs and the Herods and the Caesars. Our God says, “Let my people go!” Our God sides with the slaves and leads them out of bondage and even institutes a Sabbath day. A day of rest because you are not how much money you make or what you produce. You are not a human doing but a human BEING. Rest and restore and just be and take to wonder at the gift of creation.

As Christians, we follow a savior who came to liberate the oppressed and set those in bondage free. That’s what the abolitionists stood for. And so should we. We have a marvelous witness in Blake, who after the Civil War led the two churches to reunite.

We today can learn from his example. We here can learn how to live with disagreement as we figure out how to liberate those in the bondage of racism. Of a for-profit prison system that disproportionally locks up black people. For those who can’t make a living wage. For the predatory payday loans who seek to trap the poor in a never-ending cycle of debt. For those who are being trafficked. We need a Jubilee Year or something like it. An idea so ancient, found in one of the strangest books in the Bible, yet an idea so radical and ahead of its time, we’re afraid to try it.

We exist to follow a God who frees the slaves. Who brings Good News to the poor. That good news is you, my kind and empathetic people; you are the chain breakers. You do this by listening to a women’s choir in the county jail. Or delivering Easter bags to families of the incarcerated. Yet these are just scratching the surface. There is still so much work we need to do to let the oppressed go free and declare the year of the Lord’s favor. Amen.

Continued Reading

Ava DuVernay, dir. 13th. Kandoo Films, 2016. Netflix

Bryan Stevenson Just Mercy, A story of justice and redemption

Henry Louis Gates Jr. America After the Civil War documentary on PBS

Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute at the University of Toledo https://www.utoledo.edu/hhs/htsji/

Ken Burns, Civil War documentary on PBS

James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Martin Luther King Jr. The Strength to Love; Collected sermons of MLK Jr.

Rahab’s Heart: http://thedaughterproject.org/rahabs-heart

United Church of Christ firsts; www.ucc.org/god-is-still-speaking/firsts

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Works Cited

[1] Story heard at the Underground Railroad presentation for Medina’s Bicentennial on February 11, 2018 http://www.medina-gazette.com/Medina-County/2018/02/11/lessons-from-Underground-Railroad.html

[2] https://vimeo.com/331431017

[3] Specifically, Deuteronomy 15:12-18

[4] Leviticus 25:39-55

[5] https://www.toledoblade.com/local/2010/02/11/Toledo-rated-fourth-for-youth-sex-trade-in-U-S-city-tops-per-capita-for-arrests-rescues-of-children.html