Lent 3 B 2009Slavery isn’t Just a thing of the past.
A story emerged this week from
Florida: In December, members of a family went to federal prison for enslaving 12 migrant workers. The bosses took their captive crews to work on farms owned by some of the state's major tomato producers.
Federal prosecutors have successfully tried and convicted people responsible for 11 slavery rings among the state of
Florida’s tomato growers since 1998.
This is real slavery with actual chains, forced labor, beatings, deprivation, and captivity.
This is real slavery in our lifetime.
Other stories are emerging about human trafficking rings throughout the
United States.
Here’s a story a story that hits a little closer to home from the Student Newspaper of Northern Michigan University:
Theresa Flores, a survivor of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, spoke at Northern Michigan University on March 11 in the Whitman Commons. Flores, a licensed social worker and author, was 15 years old and living in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit when she unwillingly became involved in a large, criminal trafficking ring.
One of the organizers of Flores’s speaking engagement gives his motivation for inviting her to come and speak. He says, “Most important is the idea of how unknown human trafficking is all over the world. The awareness is so narrow right now, recently the media has begun touching on it more, with movies like 'Slumdog Millionaire,' and 'Trade,'… we're all aware of it in the Third World slums, but Theresa was in a suburb."
During the speech, Flores shared her story with the crowd. She said that it all began when her family moved to Birmingham, Mich., and after accepting a ride home from a boy she went to school with, he invited her to his home where he drugged and raped her.
"I was a virgin, and I was Catholic … My parents had had many discussions with me and wanted me to stay a virgin until I was married … it was something I really wanted too … it was tragic to have that ripped away from me," Flores said.
She later found that while the boy raped her, male family members had taken pictures. If she didn't do what they said, they would show the pictures to her friends and family.
Not wanting to experience shame, she was bound to the life of a sex slave and trafficked to other men to gain the pictures back.
This continued for two years until she was 17 years old when her family moved again, and she was free.
She said in her speech, "One of the biggest misconceptions about human trafficking is that prostitution is not (an example of human trafficking, but) … we see prostitutes on the street and we don't think of them as victims because we think they choose to do it,"I am not sure if there is any kind of slavery more horrendous than this, to be bound by shame and guilt: to be held in captivity as the victim of sexual, emotional, and physical violence, and to be the victim of something that seems too atrocious to be true.
Flores concluded her remarks with this statement, "You have to get angry … we think we are exempt from this, that it doesn't happen here.
Slavery did not die … I know, [she says] because I was [a slave]."
Slavery did not die.
Those are just two examples that show slavery is very much alive right here in our country, right here in our state, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there have been instances of it in our own community.
Slavery is not some extinct phenomenon of the past.
Slavery is not some sinful artifact to be gazed upon in a museum.
It is real with actual chains, forced labor, forced sex, beatings, manipulation, deprivation, captivity, and bondage.
The abolitionists of the 18
th and 19
th centuries did not start the fight against slavery, and they did not end it either.
It continues for as long as someone is willing to see someone as less than human they will be willing to enslave them.
It continues as long as we as a larger society choose to turn a blind eye to the reality of it in our own lives.
It continues as long as we don’t get angry about it.
You might ask, what does this have to do with our church?
Does this kind of speech belong in the pulpit?
Let me answer with another question?
What do you think the Ten Commandments were all about?
After fleeing from Pharaoh and his armies and their enslavement in
Egypt, the Israelites come to Sinai, where God teaches them how to live as a newly freed people, as the liberated people of God.
God spoke these words, the only words that were directly spoken to the Israelites with out a prophet or other kind of mediator like Moses.
“God said,
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other God’s before me.”
The very purpose of the Ten Commandments is to order a free, just, and equitable society.
The very purpose of the Ten Commandments is to be a gift to a people who have been held in bondage, so that they will no longer hold each other in bondage, but will have a society that honors God, rests on the Sabbath, takes care of its elders, prohibits violence, the misuse of sex, theft, lies, and jealousy.
The Ten Commandments are the framework of a free and peaceful society that will not tolerate slavery of any kind.
The Law of Moses was given from God as a gift to the Israelites so their days would be long in the land that the Lord was giving them.
It was given so that the people would not exploit their neighbors for the sake of personal gain.
The law protects you from me and me from you.
The law at its best is for the sake of our neighbor, so that we do not sell them into slavery or turn away when the reality of slavery and sexual exploitation is too much to bear.
When the Passover was near and Jesus went up to the temple in
Jerusalem.
There he found people selling cattle, sheep, doves, and changing money.
Jesus got mad, made a whip of cords and drove them out of the temple; he dumped all their coins on the floor, and yelled—this is not Jesus meek and mild—He yelled, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my father’s house a market place!
Stop trying to sell salvation!”
You see, when you sell salvation for the price of a sacrificed calf, sheep, or dove, you are selling people into a system of bondage whereby people become indentured to the church or temple.
When you sell salvation you are manipulating and exploiting people’s worst fears.
But Jesus was not only upsetting one day’s trade of exploitative temple merchants and money changers.
Jesus upset a whole system—a whole temple cult that kept people in bondage to their fears.
Jesus set them all free and taught them how to live, just as he sets us all free and teaches us how to live.
The temple was destroyed and still lies in ruins.
Jesus’ body was destroyed, but he raised it up in three days.
Jesus did this so that we could be free from sin, death, and every evil.
And I am convinced that Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, still gets angry when He sees slavery, captivity, bondage, and violence.
His love for us is what makes him angry.
Jesus gets angry when he sees us falling captive to slavery of the body, mind, and spirit.
He gets angry when we economically exploit others for sex or labor.
And we learn of such exploitation in our country, our state, or our community, we should be angry too.
