?It is like sending up for a large block of ice to London in the hot weather; you know that a certain amount will melt away before it reaches you??But that which remains will be quite sufficient for your needs.?

 

So said a certain Revd. Horace Waller, a missionary near what is now called Lake Malawi, in 1871.  He was talking about the slave trade, the awfulness of it, the total disregard for humanity, and the depopulation it brought.  He describes how he had ‘seen children of the age of from eight to ten years bought for less corn than would go into one of  (his) hats’.  This terrible loss of life nevertheless left enough people for a profitable sale for the Zanzibari traders – quite sufficient for their needs, like a melting block of ice.

 

It was the time of David Livingstone, and his campaign against slavery in East and Central Africa.  It was, in fact, the very year in which Stanley, the explorer, went to find Livingstone, and eventually did find him in a state of complete exhaustion.  Two years later, Livingstone was dead.  Ten years ago, we stood by his statue on the cliff overlooking Victoria Falls, and gazed with awe and wonder on his likeness.

 

Livingstone was, and remains, a controversial character, but he more than anyone raise the awareness of the British population to what he described as ‘the running sore of Africa’ – the slave trade.  Contemporary accounts of the way in which it was run leave you feeling sick to your stomach, that humans could treat fellow humans in such a way.  Ironically, it was those awful Zanzibari slavers who, by their charity, kept Livingstone alive in Ujiji when Stanley was looking for him.

 

This year has seen the celebration of the Act of Parliament which Wilberforce saw through in 1807, by which the slave trade was abolished.  The focus quite rightly this year has been on the West African slave trade, but this morning I want to turn your thoughts briefly to East Africa, an area which I happen to know a little bit about, and about the slave trade there.

 

East African slavery was, of course, carried out by Arabs.  That is what Horace Waller was writing about.  But they did not regard their system as any more reprehensible than did Abram.  The ‘persons’ he had ‘acquired’ in Haran (Genesis 12:5) were his slaves.  Neither would their British contemporaries in the West Indies, or South Carolina, or Georgia have questioned it.  No Arab would ever have thought of defending the practise, or trying to rationalise it.  It was simply just there.  It always had been.  East African slavery and West African slavery differed only in the way in which the Arabs treated their slave once they had them in their possession.  The way they were treated in transit, from the time they were captured to the time they were sold, was no different.

 

It is a long and complicated story, with a millennium or more of history – much longer than in West Africa.  Eventually, by the end of the 19thcentury, the British controlled East Africa, and the slave trade was at last abolished there as well – at least, in theory.  The missionaries who were my predecessors in Kenya played an important role in the resettlement of slaves who ran away and sought refuge with them, as well as when they were freed, and that also could take many hours to tell.

 

I tell you this, not to take anything away from 1807, for the two sides of Africa were linked in this common cause.  I tell you this because all to often, the East Africa slave trade has been forgotten, because it was not, as it were, ours.

 

Just 3 days ago, the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade was observed, though it could possible have passed you by.  The day before, in Liverpool, the International Slavery Museum was opened, and the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Reverend Jim Jones, in his ‘Thought for the Day’ on Thursday, following the death of 11 year old Rhys Jones, reported the new Museum’s Director as saying that racism and violence today are the legacy of the slave trade.  We know too that Britain’s industrial and financial success was built on the slave trade – London, Bristol and Liverpool became prosperous on the backs of the enslaved.

 

It is to the credit of Christians in the 19thcentury that they took up the cause of the abolitionists.  But it had started before that, in the 1700s.  John Wesley was, as it happens, among the very first agitators, writing a pamphlet in 1744 entitled ‘Thoughts on Slavery’.  The last letter Wesley ever wrote, just before he died, was to Wilberforce, in February 1791, encouraging him not to give up the struggle.  There were many others, of course, but we would not be wrong to celebrate the contribution of Christians, albeit somewhat belatedly, to the abolition of that terrible trade in humanity.

 

However, all is not well, even 200 years on from Wilberforce’s famous victory.  Slavery still exists.  It and takes many different forms.  Let me run some past you.  They are not nice.  

 

For example, there is the exploitation of human beings still, in the trafficking of women from Eastern Europe to the West as sex slaves. It is estimated that there are 4000 a year to the UK alone.  Now, the Mothers Union, together, as it happens, with the Methodist women’s ‘Network’, has taken up the cause against this sordid, exploitative trade, and I wish that more members of the congregation would support the MU by becoming members!  It is more than cups of tea and knitting!  See Ruth McLellan.  Can I recommend a book on their behalf called ‘Not for Sale’, which seeks to make a difference?  You can read more about this, and how you too can make a difference, on the ‘notforsaleuk.org’ website.

 

Then there is the extremely competitive clothing industry.  When you go to Tesco, just ask yourself ‘how can they sell clothes at that price?’  Well, we know how, don’t we?  We may prefer not to think about it, but a pair of trousers for a fiver ought really to jog our conscience.  We hear stories, always denied by the outlets, of course, of how little workers are paid in countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan or Zambia – just a few pence an hour.  Add to that the appalling working conditions, and cruel treatment, and you will see a parallel between 1807 and 2007.  We are not finished yet.  

 

There are more examples, but no time to deal with them – the illegal drugs trade, for example, which locks people into the slavery of addiction.  The trade in guns and ammunition in our inner cities.  You can hire a gun for £50 a day, I hear.  You could think of other examples, I’m sure.

 

And, to close, what about us?  What about you, about me?  In that epistle we heard, Paul is talking about how we human beings are slaves until we receive what he calls ‘a spirit of adoption’.  Now, that is a theologically loaded word, but put simply, as Paul himself explains it, it means that we can indeed know God as our father, and call him by the intimate Hebrew name ‘Abba’ – we would, perhaps say, ‘Dad’, or even ‘Pop’!  In the previous chapter 7, he describes how so often we are slave to ourselves, slaves to sin, as he puts it.  ‘I do not understand my own actions’ he says.  ‘I do not the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’.  Is that you?  Do you recognise yourself in that?  I would say it is me all over!  I do the things I hate myself for, and all too often fail to do things I know I ought to do.  We are all captives to ourselves.

 

But then, in chapter 8, he goes on to tell us how we can escape this slavery, or, to use the biblical word, be redeemed.  And he says that comes through faith in Christ, and submitting ourselves to his will.  As Charles Wesley put it:

 

?Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.?

 

This is all part of the Christian paradox.  We are not to live unconstrained lives of self-indulgence, for that too is slavery.   But we are to live our lives in the service of the one who is a loving Dad, and whose Son, Jesus the Christ, is a true friend and brother.  As the old collect says:  ‘His service is perfect freedom’.

 

Our gospel this morning puts it clearly – this is John’s way of talking about Kingdom values.  Put your life under the rule of God, then you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free, no longer bound to the past, and the sin which so easily besets us.  Redemption, which means, literally, being bought out of slavery, is about a new beginning, a new life.  It is for everyone, and it is for now.