Exodus 12:31-42 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron in the night, and said, “Rise up, go away from my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord, as you said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone. And bring a blessing on me too!”

33 The Egyptians urged the people to hasten their departure from the land, for they said, “We shall all be dead.” 34 So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls wrapped up in their cloaks on their shoulders. 35 The Israelites had done as Moses told them; they had asked the Egyptians for jewelry of silver and gold, and for clothing, 36 and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. And so they plundered the Egyptians.

37 The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children. 38 A mixed crowd also went up with them, and livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds. 39 They baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt; it was not leavened, because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.

40 The time that the Israelites had lived in Egypt was four hundred thirty years. 41 At the end of four hundred thirty years, on that very day, all the companies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. 42 That was for the Lord a night of vigil, to bring them out of the land of Egypt. That same night is a vigil to be kept for the Lord by all the Israelites throughout their generations.

Today is Reformation Sunday! Each year Protestant churches around the world set aside today, the last Sunday of October, to celebrate the Reformation. We celebrate that we are reformed and reforming; we, as individuals, and we, as the church, are still a work in process; that God is still calling us into a fuller understanding of what it means to be church; that God is still moving us to respond to our world and become a more Christlike beloved community. Last year on Reformation Sunday, we explored the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. This year we are remembering another 500th anniversary, but this anniversary is not a joyous occasion. This year marks the 500th anniversary of the starting of the Middle Passage. Five hundred years ago in 1518, Emperor Charles V abolished the regulations that limited the slave trade from Africa to the Americans and with that the Middle Passage between the Africa and the Americas became a highway of human misery.

As we heard in our scripture reading, the struggle between freedom and slavery in light of our faith is an ancient struggle. “Let my people go!” is a cry that has echoed down through the centuries. Today it is easy for us to understand that slavery is totally and completely incompatible with the Gospel message, but for thousands of years the vast majority of people couldn’t imagine any other way. Slavery was so interwoven with the economic and political realities of their world that they couldn’t see any other way. In ancient times, slavery was a byproduct of war or a result of falling into debt; the losing side became the winning side’s slaves. But early in the 15th Century when the first group of African men and women arrived in Europe and were sold into slavery, slavery started to become rooted in race. After Emperor Charles limited the regulations banning the direct trade between the Americas and Africa, the Atlantic Ocean became a highway of human suffering. Scholars believe that between 12 and 15 million humans were sold into slavery from Africa to the Americas and of these approximately 1.2 to 2.4 million men, women, and children died in the average 8-week Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean. Up to 600 people were forced onto each ship for the journey of the Middle Passage, and rapes, beatings, force feeding, and torture were commonly used against them to break their spirits. Of those who survived the Middle Passage, scholars estimate that another 1/3 died in their first year of slavery.

Like the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, or the Rwandan Genocide in the 1990s, most of us can’t even imagine the horror and sheer scale of this terror that one group of human beings inflicted upon another group. But this year, we need to remember the Middle Passage. We need to remember that even the Christian Church was complicit in the slave trade. Christian groups owned slaves, invested their funds in the slave trade, religious orders ran plantations on the backs of slave labor, theologians developed rationales to defend slavery such as the Curse of Cain and wrote statements that God must have preordained slavery because it was in the Bible to help people who were struggling with guilt of being part of slave trade.

But we also need to remember that since the birth of Christianity, holding other human beings in slavery had bothered some Christians. We have the stories of early converts freeing their slaves, and references to early churches who took up offerings to buy fellow believers out of slavery. Throughout the ages, from Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th Century down to the 17th Century Quakers, many believers had kept the chant “Free, my people,” alive as they condemned slavery as unchristian and morally wrong. Today, I want us to consider the careers of two Christians who fought to end the slave trade.

Today, we remember John Newton as the author of the famous hymn “Amazing Grace,” but there is a lot more to his story. John Newton was born on July 24, 1725. He was baptized two days later and named John after his father, a ship captain who was often absent on sea voyages and did not play a major role in young John’s life. He was raised by his mother, Elizabeth, who worked to shape him intellectually and spiritually. Unfortunately, his beloved mother passed away when the young John was only six years old while his father out at sea.

When the Captain returned, he quickly remarried but as John wrote years later, he was left “to run the streets” for a few years until being sent off to boarding school. But at the age of 10, John’s father decided his son’s formal education was over and sent his son to sea. John spent the next several years working as a sailor on various ships around the Atlantic Ocean. In 1744, when he was back in England visiting family and meeting a young woman named Polly who he felt deeply in love with, John was seized by a press gang and forced into service with the Royal Navy. In the Navy, John was known for his bad attitude, his foul mouth, and his laziness.

After less than a stellar career in the Navy, which included being flogged, John was dismissed from the Navy and began working as a slave trader. John had heard that the slave trade was a sure ticket to getting rich. But John didn’t get along with the captains on the slaver ship any better than the Royal Navy and he was left to work in Africa. In 1748, a captain who had been asked by John’s father to look for him, found John, and brought him back to England. On the voyage back to England, the ship began sinking during a storm off the coast of Ireland. As the ship was filling with water, John cried out to God for help and the cargo shifted and stopped the leaks. John marked this as the beginning of his conversion to become a true follower of Christ.

He returned to England, married his childhood sweetheart, adopted his orphaned nieces, started preparing for a career in the ministry, but he continued working in the slave trade. He served as first-mate aboard the Brownlow and then captained three voyages himself shipping humans from Africa to the Americas. He rationalized his slaving that he was a better, more Christian captain than many of the other captains because he treated them better, fed them better, and didn’t rape the women who he was shipping. And even after he ended his seafaring in 1754, he continued to invest in slave trading operations.

As John worked as a tax collector back in England, he studied for full time ordained ministry. He spent seven years trying to be ordained, but time and time again he was turned down. He applied to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England, a Methodist pastor, a Presbyterian pastor, and an Independent Congregationalist pastor, but no one would accept him. He appealed to the Bishop of Chester, the Bishop of Lincoln, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Archbishop of York. Finally, after seven years of work, he was ordained and assigned a small Church of England parish. He became known for his loving pastoral care, passionate sermons, and his hymn writing. And one of the young boys that John’s sermons and hymns impacted was William Wilberforce.

William had been born in 1759; the only son of a wealthy merchant family with strong political connections. He was a small, sickly child with poor eyesight, an average student, with a quick wit, and a friendly nature. After college, he was elected to Parliament at the age of 21. And a few years later as he was taking a grand tour of Europe with his mother and sister, William had a profound experience of God. When he returned to England, he sought out his old pastor, John Newton, and asked if he should quit politics and become a pastor, but John urged the young William to stay in Parliament and apply his faith to reforming unjust economic and political systems. And in 1789, William did just that as he began his crusade to end the slave trade with the introduction of a bill in Parliament to outlaw the slave trade. And for the 18 years William, as he struggled with addiction and set-backs, continued that crusade as year after year he reintroduced that bill. He campaigned against the slave trade around the country, organized petitions, gave public lectures, and worked tirelessly.

As for John Newton after 16 years of ministry in his small parish, he was transferred to a larger church in London. In 1788, after 34 years since he retired form the slave trade, John Newton broke his silence on the slave trade. He published a booklet, Thoughts upon the Slave Trade, that described the horrific conditions of the Middle Passage and apologized for his role in the slave trade. In it he wrote, “it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.” He mailed a copy of it to every member of the British parliament. In 1793, William Wilberforce’s bill got within 8 votes of passing but the tide turned against the bill then and for years it was one defeat after another.

Finally, after 18 years of struggle and just a few months before the death of John Newton, the tides turned again and the Wilberforce’s bill was passed 283 to 16 opposed in 1807. After the slave trade was abolished, William Wilberforce continued the struggle to end slavery in the British Empire. And that would take another 26 years and William Wilberforce was on his deathbed when news reached him that a deal had been reached to guarantee the bill’s passage ending slavery in the British Empire.[i]

On this Reformation Sunday 2018, I want us to not only remember our past history, I don’t want us to only focus upon our history of reforming to celebrate the past, I want us to hear the voice of our still speaking God speaking from our past to give us a vision for our present day. And as I struggled with today’s message, God reminded me of two important lesson of being reformed and reforming.

First, we need to remember that the impossible is doable. When Moses yelled “Let my people, go!” no one imagined a world without slavery. And thousands of years later during the age of John Newton and William Wilberforce, only a few believed it was possible. Scholar Stephen Tomkins writes that when William Wilberforce introduced his bill to abolish the slave trade, “slavery, it was assumed, like poverty, would always be with us. Like war, it was an unpleasant business, but without an alternative.” But with the help of God, the impossible was doable.

Second, we need to remember that change is often a slow process that will wear us down. It will wear us down emotionally, intellectually, physically, and even spiritually, the stories of Moses in Exodus, of Rev. John Newton, and of William Wilberforce show us that time and time again, but it also shows us their determination and their dependence upon God for strength and hope for tomorrow.

As we close our celebration of Reformation Sunday today, let us remember that God reminds us of our history to guide our future. We celebrate what our ancestor in the faith have accomplished to remind us of the work that still needs to be done. And that are so many seemingly impossible moral problems that our society is facing today. Just this last week, our headlines told us about three hate filled crimes in the United States. On Wednesday, racism the legacy of slavery, reared its ugly head in Kentucky as a man who couldn’t get into an African American church, stormed into a Kroger grocery store and murdered two African Americans. On Thursday and Friday, mail bombs started showing up at the homes and places of business as a man sought to kill those with whom he disagreed politically. And on Saturday morning, a man yelling anti-Semitic slurs started shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue.[ii] Racism, political intolerance, religious bigotry, violence, and then we can add on any number of other of impossible challenges that our society faces environmentally, the world’s refugee crises, our worldwide problem with sexual violence and assault. There are mountains all around us. We need some amazing grace today!

[i] Jonathan Aitken. 2007. John Newton: From Disagree to Amazing Grace. Wheaton, IL: Crossway., Stephen Tomkins. 2007. William Wilberforce: A Biography. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans., Jennifer. 2011. Slavery as Moral Problem in the Early Church and Today. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

[ii] Ray Sanchez and Melissa Gray, October 28, 2018. 72 Hours in America: Three Hate-Filled Crimes. Three Hate-Filled Suspects. CNN. Available at: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/28/us/72-hours-of-hate-in-america/index.html.