For the Lord--February 23, 2021

For the Lord--February 23, 2021

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord.  Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality.  Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven." [Colossians 3:22-4:1]

Sigh.  Ok, this is a challenging passage for about a million reasons.  And to be very honest, we don't live in a time or culture known for its ability to handle nuance, critical thinking, and self-reflection very well, so it's hard to find a venue to dig through the many layers, both of history and of interpretation (and misinterpretation), which have piled up over the centuries like strata of rock and which make it harder to hear these words in their context, and harder still to make the leap to our day and hear what they might say to us.  It can feel so daunting (or foolhardy) that it can seem better to the preacher just to skip a passage like this--and I get it.  This is a minefield.

And yet, we have committed to walking through this book of the New Testament and wrestling a blessing from it wherever we can.  So let's roll up our sleeves and try.

So at the outset, let's just get a couple of really quick but really important guardrails set up.  These each warrant a full conversation on their own, but we're going to use broad brushstrokes here today.  The first thing we need to be really, really clear about is that the Greco-Roman world of the first century practiced slavery in a way that was different from what was practiced for centuries in the United States. (That doesn't let first-century people off the hook--it just means that what happened in our nation's history was, in some significant ways, much much worse than what was the widespread practice in the Roman Empire when Colossians was written.) Our nation's history is mired in chattel slavery in which people were stolen--primarily from Africa--and then enslaved in such a way that their children were doomed to be enslaved as well in perpetuity, quite often then sold off as property, raped to produce more enslaved people, and hunted down by armed patrols if they dared escape.  Enslaved African Americans had their families destroyed for the sake of profits by white slaveowners, and for a very long time, our entire economy depended on this system, creating wealth in the North and in the South that was built on the backs of slave labor.  And perhaps cruelest of all, all of this was done while white preachers regularly told their congregations and enslaved people that the entire system had God's blessing on it, and in fact that God willed for enslaved people to be enslaved.  Bible passages like this one were regularly used (or rather, abused) as endorsements of that system, and often the cruelty and injustice of the American slave economy were ignored.  To this day, the ripple effects of that systemic sin still affect our culture in ways that are so pervasive it is very easy for people like me to imagine they aren't even there, the same way a fish doesn't know it's wet because it is swimming in the water that's all around.  And, just for the record, all that system, was and is wrong. It is always sinful, wicked, damnable, evil, and opposed to the way of Jesus and the Reign of God--full stop.

The slavery practiced in the Roman Empire during the time of the New Testament was still rotten, but was much more of a hodge-podge.  One could become enslaved when your nation was conquered by a neighboring nation, with the possibility that in the next war or raid, you might be freed and brought home.  One could end up as an indentured servant--bascially a debt-slave--required to work off your debts for a period of time. (We can talk about whether that in and of itself is morally just, too, but at least we need to acknowledge that it is different from being born a slave.)  Slavery wasn't tied to particular race in the ancient Roman world, either, so people of all sorts of ethnicities were enslaved, and not necessarily visibly distinctive the way the American practice made "black" equivalent to "enslaved" in so many places.  Because sources of slaves were so common in the Empire (anybody who got conquered or captured by pirates could end up enslaved) and because the buying and selling of slaves was permissible, one doesn't see the same amount of "masters" using enslaved women as "breeders" to produce more slaves by rape, either, in the ancient world.  It was a terrible system, then, too, but it was different from what was practiced in the United States for centuries.

Last, we need to say that while this one passage from Colossians does certainly address the practice of slavery in these verses, it is hardly the only voice from the Scriptures on the subject.  The whole story of the people of Israel in what we call the Old Testament springs from God's freeing the Hebrews from slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt, and freedom from slavery is a recurring theme throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.  (There is a reason that white slaveowners often cut out the Old Testaments from the Bibles they gave to the enslaved people on their plantations, after all.)  So even as we focus in a moment on this passage from Colossians, it is hardly the loudest or most significant voice in the chorus of the Scriptures on the subject--and it is worth remembering that Scripture always speaks as a multiplicity of voices that need to be heard together, not just picking one verse I "like" and using it to ignore the ones that call me out on things I don't want to deal with.

I know that's a lot of background to wade through.  And at the same time I know it's hardly scratched the surface of each of the issues that we can't avoid dealing with.  But we needed to at least have said those things so we didn't just skip verses because they make us squirm or because we don't know how to deal with them. And we couldn't afford to just focus only on some quick warm, fuzzy pick-me-up that didn't at least touch on the real harm that previous generations of Christians have done by misusing these verses to justify the practice of slavery rather than to offer a way for enslaved Christians to survive with hope when they found themselves held in captivity and forced labor.  And sometimes each of us needs to let ourselves be humbled by the realization that I am not at the center of every Bible verse or story--sometimes I need to consider that someone else, whose situation or circumstances of life are different from mine, need to be at the center.  

So for all those dangers from centuries past that we are trying to avoid in approaching this passage, what are we going to make out of it?  What does it say to us, who are neither enslaved nor (God forbid) in the position of owning another person, to read these verses?  I want to suggest that there is a great power here in the idea that when we choose to do good work in our lives as a way of loving God, it has a way of liberating us from the other forces around us that push on us. It can seem like a subtle shift, but it is an important one:  when we choose to see our daily tasks as acts of loving God by loving our neighbors, then whatever power a supervisor/boss/overseer (or in the case of enslaved people, masters) previously had to intimidate me is lost.   To see one's work as a way of loving God--done "for the Lord"--can be a way of strengthening one's spirit to keep it from being broken.  It is a way of helping us to see the dignity and importance of what we do, even if we feel like are unappreciated, exploited, or taken for granted by those above us in positions of power.

I know there are obvious and critical differences between having a paid job, however low-paying or unappreciated one may feel in it, and being enslaved.  But it seems that in both cases it is very easy to feel trapped, like your worth is determined by the profits you bring into the boss, and that there's no way for things to ever change.  Lots of people working minimum-wage jobs feel like their work is dismissed as unimportant or that they are less valuable as people because their job pays less, and that they are stuck between a rock and a hard place working harder all the time but feeling like they are losing ground rather than getting ahead in life.  And in the midst of that, these verses from Colossians at least offer the possibility that I can do the work I do as an act of love to God, in a way that gives my work honor and dignity no matter how rude the customers are, how low the pay is, or how mean the boss might be.  It gives me a way of seeing something noble in work that doesn't often get regarded as noble.  And by focusing on Jesus as we do thankless or unpleasant tasks, then whatever abusive words or belittling customer complaints or weariness we have to put up with lose some of their ability to pull us down.  By seeing our work as a way of loving God, it's like knowing that when we go through bad situations in our work life, that God sees and can hear us saying to God, "I am doing this, not for the boss' sake, or because I'm afraid of this customer, but for you, God.  This is my offering to you."  And that has a way of taking away the harmful power of abusive bosses, soulless corporate entities, or crude customers to intimidate or dehumanize us.

And maybe that's it: we human being keep inventing new and terrible ways to dehumanize each other in society--from the ancient evils of slavery to the modern bleakness of having to work multiple low-paying jobs to feed your family and keep the lights on while being treated like a cog in a machine for someone else's profits.  But when I choose to see my work as an offering to God, it has a way of thwarting the attempts to dehumanize me: it helps me to recover seeing the dignity in doing good work for a good God, no matter what anybody else says or does to me to try to belittle me and what I do.  And that--that is much needed good news for folks feeling desperate and unappreciated.  It doesn't give the rest of the system permission or divine blessing to take advantage of people, neither by enslaving them or trapping them in dead-end work, but it does give us a way of coping when we do feel trapped.  Seeing my work as an offering to God makes no other person my "master"--what I do is a precious offering to God that nobody else can steal the value of or belittle.  

There--a blessing wrestled from the text after all.

Lord God, we offer today to you all of who we are and what we do.  Help us to see the worth and honor in what we do when we are feel lowly and less-than.  And help us to empower others when they are treated as less-than as well.