I want to talk this morning about St. Paul and the institution of slavery. As an American history teacher, I think often about the Bible and its relationship to slavery, but today it’s especially relevant, since Titus 2 was appointed as a reading in Morning Prayer (1928 BCP). I saw that, and then I saw that today’s blessing in Seeking God’s Face (a shared faculty devotion) comes from the Sermon on the Mount--and I think St. Paul’s instructions to the enslaved are intimately connected to Jesus’ instructions to the persecuted.
St. Paul on slavery might seem to be odd devotional material, but I think the apostle provides great (though certainly troubling) insight into what it means to love on a day-to-day basis.
“Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.” -Titus 2:9-10Slavery in St. Paul’s Roman world was different than whatever modern Americans think about when they hear the word “slavery.” But it was still a fundamentally wicked institution. So what are we to think of this?
For one thing, St. Paul’s instructions do not endorse slavery--any more than Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount” endorses persecution.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” -Matthew 5:10To say that Christians must bless their persecutors does not endorse persecution. It just says, when you encounter this situation, this is how you must act. Jesus’s instructions to the persecuted and St. Paul’s to the enslaved both result from the biblical injunction to love, no matter the circumstances. The Christian is called to sacrifice self and to love others, even persecutors and slaveowners.
“...pray for those who persecute you...” -Matthew 5:44
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you…” -Luke 6:27b-28a (Luke’s account of the same or a similar sermon)
Now, as I was talking through this devotion with my wife, she pointed out how selfish and manipulative people can abuse this idea, which is something you see in unhealthy marriages and unhealthy churches--cycles of exploitative selfishness from one party and enabling self-effacement from the other. So how do we deal with that?
Well, the response is sometimes that we need a balance--you need selflessness but also self-care. You should generally be a selfless person who serves others, but that you also need to stand up for your rights and never let anyone take advantage of you.
But the Titus 2 passage doesn’t leave any room for asserting one’s own rights, nor do Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.
“Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” -Matthew 5:39b-41Jesus, of course, lives his message out--as the only human being worthy of worship, he nevertheless “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). In a certain sense, you could say that our Lord really failed at self-care, right?
If you feel a certain resistance to this, I’d suggest that perhaps you’re getting a taste of the conflict between our culture and the Church.
So am I saying we all become punching bags and let people take advantage of us? It’s possible that at times that may be exactly what Christian love requires... but I think that’s pretty uncommon. This is where a robust understanding of love is so important. Because love means wanting what’s best for someone, and allowing a manipulator to manipulate, an abuser to abuse, an oppressor to oppress… is not loving. Not to the community in which the abuse occurs, and not the abuser himself. I don’t agree with all of Martin Luther King Jr.’s theology, but I’ve yet to read anyone who does a better job of expressing what it looks like to love one’s community, including the oppressor. Most of the time it looks like accountability. So if you find that loving your neighbor seems to be interfering with your pursuit of justice--or vice versa--then you’re doing it wrong. You’ve misunderstood one or the other or both.
Consider the book of Philemon. St. Paul is sending back a runaway slave named Onesimus to his Christian slaveowner.
“I am sending [Onesimus] back to you, sending my very heart… no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother... So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.” -Philemon 12, 16a, 17Understanding the book of Philemon properly is not entirely easy. The logic of letter strongly implies emancipation, though St. Paul stops just short of explicitly ordering it--so that, I think, Philemon’s emancipation of Onesimus can be freely done rather than under compulsion.
It’s interesting that in both of these cases--in Philemon and in Titus--the demands of Christian love work directly against the person’s apparent self-interest. Philemon must give up his slave, and, as Fr. Sean can better explain, this letter may very well have led to the complete unravelling of Philemon’s household. On the other hand, in Titus, slaves are commanded to serve their masters wholeheartedly.
When our culture says, “Love wins,” is this kind of dying to self part of the picture?
Our culture can’t stop talking about love, and neither can our Lord--but they aren’t always talking about the same thing. To love someone means to seek out their best, but our culture basically doesn’t believe people are for anything--that there’s any ultimate purpose for which people are created. And if you don't believe that, then loving someone--seeking their best--can never mean anything more than affirming whatever they freely choose.
But if we are created to flourish in a particular way towards a particular end, then you can only love people by encouraging them towards the end for which they were created. You have to have a strong sense of what’s good for a person, which means we have to understand what a person is for. Love requires more than just good intentions! All our parents want the best for their kids--they love them. But if they don’t understand what’s good for their child, they can’t love them well. Loving well requires wisdom, and true wisdom requires theology.
And it requires courage. To love someone will almost always at some point require confrontation and conflict. If it never does, there’s a good chance that, at some point or another, you’ve failed to love--you’ve taken the easy road of accommodation rather than the hard road of love.
So Christian love is doubly demanding. It sometimes requires bearing injustice graciously, and it sometimes requires uncomfortable, dangerous, and risky confrontation rather than easy affirmation.
So, okay, what’s that got to do with our lives here as Covenant teachers and as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, friends? For starters, I think we need to be able to talk honestly about how the life promised by Jesus comes through participation in his crucifixion. We need to be willing to place the truth in front our students, dangerous as that may be, because they’ll never experience life in Christ if they don’t also participate in his death.
And we need to participate in that death ourselves. We need by the grace of God to take up our cross. Every day we’re tempted towards selfishness, towards asserting our comfort, needs, and desires over others. When we’re treated poorly, we want to denounce the offender, put him in his place.
Love requires us to confront manipulation and to expose mistreatment--but in those instances, love is not expressed by stewing in a sense of grievance or by grumbling or gossiping. Love is more likely to compel us to have that hard conversation we dread, to risk the confrontation we’ve been avoiding… And there is no guarantee that these risks will turn out well for us, at least in the eyes of the world. After all, at the center of our faith, there’s a cross.
Let’s pray.
“Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified; Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace, through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (Collect for Monday before Easter, 1928 BCP)
