Doulos Christou

Exodus 1: 1– 14; 3: 1– 15

John 8: 1– 11

Galatians 5: 1, 13– 15

When Moses encountered God through the burning bush, the Israelites had become slaves in Egypt. God called Moses to participate with God in liberating the people of Israel. God tells Moses, “when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” God tells Moses to say to the Israelites, “The Lord has sent me to you.” Not “an alternate Lord”, or “a new Lord”, or “a different Lord” – but THE LORD.  The one and only. The people will be freed from slavery in Egypt, so that they can worship and serve THE LORD. The one and only. Not the Pharoah, or any other king – but THE LORD. In fact, that becomes the First of the Ten Commandments.

In the story in John’s gospel telling about when Jesus encountered the woman who was about to be stoned for adultery, Jesus says to the scribes and Pharisees who have decided her fate, based on the Law, “which one of you is without sin? Let that one throw the first stone.” And one by one, they go away, until only Jesus and the woman are left. He frees her from their condemnation and from his. He redeems her.

And in his letter to the Galatians, Paul is reminding a group of Gentiles who believe they need to be circumcised in order to be Christian, because of the Law requiring it of the people of God, that they have been freed in Christ, so they should not submit to another form of slavery to the Law. He also reminds them, though, that this freedom is not the same as autonomy, not the same as defining their own laws. Rather, they are called to follow the commandment that Christ said encompassed the whole law – to love your neighbor as yourself. And so, according to Paul, they must become slaves to one another.

I think I have said this to you before, but one of the things that draws me to be a follower of Christ is the kinds of paradoxes that our faith is based upon. In weakness is strength; in death is new life; and in freedom is slavery. It’s kind of discouraging, isn’t it, to think that the freedom we have been given in Christ is freedom to be slaves to Christ, to one another, to God as Lord and Master? But that is what we are. The title of today’s sermon is “Doulos Christou”, which is Greek for “slave of Christ”. And that is what we are.

When I’ve talked to some of you about this over the past week, we have talked about the fact that sometimes this term “doulos” gets translated into English as “servant” rather than “slave”, and that we tend to like that word better. We like the way it reflects the choice we make to follow Jesus, the free will we have in how we live our lives.

But the Greek word literally does mean “slave”. So I would like for us to consider the distinction between servanthood and slavery, as we seek to understand what it means to be a slave of Christ.

And what better way to think about servanthood, really, than Downton Abbey? How many of you are Downton Abbey fans? How many have ever watched it?

Well, for those of you who have never seen it, Downton Abbey is a British show, carried on PBS, that is about the lives of the people of Downton, Earl Grantham and his family, “the upstairs people”, and the staff of servants who keep the place going, “the downstairs people”. The time frame for the series is between 1912 and 1924, or maybe a bit longer depending on when the last season will take us to. I am a Downton Abbey regular, and I have totally been taken in by the lives of both the upstairs people and the downstairs people, the servants. So it has given me a bit of a glimpse into what it means to be a servant, what the life of a servant is like.

In addition, I recently read a book called The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd. This book is about a judge and his family, who own a plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1800s. It tells the story of a family who owns slaves, and also the story of the slaves who are owned by them. So we have the same sort of upstairs / downstairs comparisons as with Downton Abbey. In particular, one of the judge’s daughters is born at the same time as a daughter of a woman who is a slave. They spend their early years playing together, but as soon as the judge’s daughter, Sarah, turns 11, she is given her playmate, Haddy, as a slave of her own. As soon as she figures out what this means, she writes a letter of emancipation, trying to free her friend, but her parents tear it up, and punish her, and so the two of them grow into adulthood in this strange relationship.

From these two stories, both historically-based fictions, we can see a glimpse of the distinctions between servant and slave.

·      First, a servant is hired, and a slave is bought, or is born into the slavery of the parent. Downton Abbey’s servants come and go, either of their own free will or if they are let go for some work-related reason. The Charleston slaves have no say in where they are slaves, or for how long. They are property. They are owned by the master, and the only way to get out of being a slave is to escape, and spend the rest of their life on the run and in hiding, or to try to save money if they somehow can take on an additional job, and then to try to convince their master to let them buy their freedom.

·      From a financial standpoint, servants are considered to be a liability. In other words, their pay is considered to be part of the cost of keeping up Downton Abbey. Slaves are considered property – owned assets, from a financial standpoint. They have a value specific to what they can be sold for.

·      If a servant is ineffective, or disobedient, they are either reprimanded or let go, often with a reference to help them find other work. A disobedient slave will be beaten or killed, or sold off to someone else.

·      So being called a slave in this world indicates a much, much greater commitment than that of a servant. And it also, truly, does indicate a lack of viable options.

So being a slave of Christ is a life commitment, a truly big deal. To be a servant does imply a willing choice that we make to follow Christ. But our scripture passages tell us that we have been freed from slavery to other things, so that we can worship God. So that we can be slaves of Christ. So that we can be slaves of one another. So what is this saying about us, about our lives?

First, it tells us both who we are, and also Whose we are. We belong to God. God is sovereign. God is The Lord and Master over us all. Those are terms we do not really use in any other context in today’s society, in the Western world. The head of the family in Downton Abbey was called “Lord Grantham”, and there are still those in Great Britain who receive the honorary title of Lord. And of course, those who still experience slavery around the world have someone who is their master. Even here in the US, with the sex trafficking trade that goes on, women and girls and children are “owned” by the one who sells their bodies to others for a night of pleasure.  But as free people, we do not have an earthly Lord or Master. So when we call the Triune God by the titles of Lord, Master, it matters that we really consider what these terms mean. God is a different kind of Master or sovereign from any that we have ever experienced on earth; and God’s purposes are different from any king or sovereign or ruler on earth.

Because God is good. Because we are beloved. God is our kind and compassionate Lord and Master, our loving parent. God has given us dominion over all things – we are responsible for tending to God’s creation, just as slaves or servants would be responsible for tending the Abbey, or the plantation. We have been given dominion over the earth – but – God has dominion over us. God is sovereign over us. God is Master over us. This is not a question we answer or a choice that we make. This is a truth, it’s a reality, regardless of what we think or decide. Our only choice is how we respond to God’s sovereignty. The degree to which we live our lives and tend the earth with God’s love and compassion in mind is the measure of our faith and our obedience. Scripture shows us the destructiveness and brokenness of lives lived in rejection of this reality, in disobedience to God. Scripture also shows us that God, as our Master, is loving and forgiving beyond our comprehension. Christ modeled this for us, as God Incarnate, as God in the flesh, here on earth. God is loving and forgiving not only to the people who we believe do not deserve it, but also to each of us, even – and especially when we are certain we do not deserve it.

God has freed us from other forms of slavery to worship God, to serve God with all of our lives and our selves. God has freed us from being slaves to fear, slaves to anger, slaves to sin. God has freed us from being slaves to the shiny things we like and want and think we must have. We are freed to take on the yoke of Christ, who said, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. A yoke is the controlling bar that goes over the shoulders of oxen in order to guide them, to turn them, to keep them on the right path. Jesus says, “take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.” Jesus has to guide us into that kind of learning, because it does not come naturally to us, to be gentle, to be humble of heart. And who would we be gentle to? Who would we be humble to? Well, to one another. That is how we become slaves to one another, as Paul says. The way we live as a slave of Christ is to be slaves to one another. To give of our selves in love to one another. And to whom? Jesus says we give to only two types of people – our neighbors and our enemies.

To take on the yoke of Christ is to be guided into the love of our neighbors and our enemies; to turn the other cheek; to go the extra mile. It’s to be redeemed for a life of obedience to Christ.

I spoke to you recently about our relationship with God as I-Thou, and our relationship with everyone and everything else as I-it. I-Thou – us and God, is the primary relationship in our lives. And by that relationship we received the way to handle every other I-It relationship in our lives. In obedience to our Master, we live out our days in generous giving to one another.  The I-Thou is how we fill ourselves up, first and foremost, so that we can then empty ourselves in generous giving to one another.

The good news is that we are owned, in life and in death, by The Lord of heaven and earth, who loves us and forgives us and welcomes us home, over and over again, to live our lives in generous giving to one another,  in the name of the living, loving, eternal, triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.