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Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – April 18, 2010
“So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the slave trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.”
Such powerful words originated from a decidedly less than prepossessing personage. At five feet, four inches tall, possessed of a big nose, weak eyes and poor health, William Wilberforce, who lived from 1759 to 1833, was hardly a commanding physical presence, yet he became a political and religious celebrity in 18th century England. His personal magnetism, people of the time said, was a result of his charm, his wit, his energy; but chiefly what drew people to his side was his ability to do one thing really well, and that was talk. Possessed of a melodious sounding speaking voice, and his eloquent language, Wilberforce, as a Member of Parliament, was known as the “Nightingale of the House of Commons,” as he campaigned actively for repeal of the slave trade.
Such a campaign, however, was not always a high priority for him; note the phrase, “I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.” “That time” would come when he was 25 years old. Before then, he occupied himself as most wealthy young men of his class did.
A merchant’s son in the English port city of Hull, Wilberforce was educated at Cambridge University where he was an exceedingly popular but not especially serious student, attracting “swarms” of visitors to his room for wining, dining and conversing. One classmate recalled, “When Wilberforce returned late in the evening to his rooms, he would summon me to join him. He was so amusing that I often sat up half the night with him, much to the detriment of my attendance at lectures the next day.” As Wilberforce himself remembered, “As much pains were taken to make me idle, as were ever taken to make me studious.” Some things about college life never change, do they?
Yet for all his pursuit of personal pleasure he also had political ambitions and, at the age of 21, became the youngest member of the House of Commons. At the time, he said, his only aim was to achieve personal success. Close friends with William Pitt, the future Prime Minister, the two men enjoyed the assorted pleasures London had to offer gentlemen of power and means. Some things about politicians don’t change either.
His self described “dissolute life” came to a screeching halt in 1784 when he took a trip with one of his former teachers who lent him a copy of “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,” by William Law, a noted Anglican spiritual writer who took his inspiration from an even earlier, and still much more famous devotional guide, “The Imitation of Christ,” written in the fifteenth century and still in print.
Law’s book, with its emphasis on exercising moral virtues in everyday life, had a profound effect on young Wilberforce and caused him to question both his manner of life and his casual unbelief. As he found himself moving closer and closer to Christianity, he began to experience doubts over whether it was possible to serve both God and his nation in parliament. Seeking guidance, Wilberforce turned to John Newton, whose name you may not recognize but whose story is fairly well known.
Newton first went to sea at the age of eleven and was forced into service on a British man of war seven years later. Deserting, he was recaptured and sent to serve on a slave ship bound for Africa.
At that time, the business of human trafficking generated an enormous amount of wealth for the British Empire. English traders would raid the African coast and capture some 50,000 people a year, ship them across the Atlantic and sell them into slavery. It was a lucrative business that powerful people had a powerful interest in preserving.
It was as Newton was serving on one of these ships that he found a copy of “The Imitation of Christ,” which prompted his own exploration into the Christian faith. When a ship he was on nearly sank in a storm, Newton said he offered his life to Christ. Still, he remained in the slave trading business, eventually becoming captain of one of the notorious vessels. Eventually, the disparity between what he did and what he professed grew too much for him and he left the sea, became a pastor, and wrote over one hundred hymns, none more famous than “Amazing Grace.” He had been converted.
Newton encouraged Wilberforce to remain in Parliament and maintain his friendship with the prime minister who did not share his religious fervor. “Who knows,” the older clergyman told the young man, “that but for such a time as this God has a purpose for you.”
Wilberforce would eventually discover his purpose, but not until a few more sorrowful, uncertain years would pass. “I am sure that no human creature could suffer more than I did for some months,” he wrote. Finally, on Easter Sunday, 1786, his gloom lifted as his spirit was reborn. He had been converted. From that time the newly energized, newly committed Wilberforce pursued his God given purpose.
He started in 1787 when he delivered a three hour long speech before parliament, setting forth the case against slavery. When he was finished he told the lawmakers, many of whom were making a fortune off the trade in human beings that, “Having heard all of this you may choose to look the other way but you can never again say that you did not know.”
Wilberforce’s mission was not without personal consequences. He endured vicious attacks in the newspapers and eventually had to travel with an armed bodyguard.
Persistence paid off, though. In 1807 Great Britain abolished the slave trade. It took twenty years but the capturing, transporting and selling of enslaved Africans was now illegal. However, the practice of slavery itself remained legal in Britain’s colonies, as it did in the United States, a former colony. So Wilberforce kept at it, even though his health failed him, forcing him to give up his seat in the House of Commons and become essentially a figurehead for the campaign. On July 23, 1833, he rejoiced that the bill to abolish slavery had become law. Three days later he died and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Neither William Wilberforce nor John Newton can be said to have had a “Damascus Road” experience as Paul did; an encounter with the Divine that is so overwhelming it instantly transforms one’s life, setting the recipient off on a brand new and better direction. Indeed, what happened to Paul is the archetype of Christian conversion, an event so important it is described three times in the Book of Acts and once by Paul himself in his letter to the Galatians.
“You have heard, no doubt,” he tells them, “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it…But God…called me through his grace (and) was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.”
On his way to Damascus from Jerusalem, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” Paul, then known as Saul, was blinded by a heavenly light and was knocked to the ground where he heard the voice of Jesus calling to him, much as God had earlier called to the prophets, saying his name twice, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Without waiting for an answer, Jesus told him to “get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” This is crucial for our understanding of what it means to be converted, what it means to be the church. Paul is not just overwhelmed by the presence of the Risen Lord and instructed to go meditate on that experience. He is given a specific mission – to preach the gospel to the Gentiles – a mission which would occupy him for the remainder of his days, whatever the consequences.
But notice that Paul’s conversion did not occur in some sort of spiritual isolation and it did not happen immediately, either. Blinded by the light, he required the assistance of the men traveling with him who heard the voice but did not share in the vision. They led him by the hand into Damascus, watching over him for three days, the same time, of course, that Jesus spent in the tomb before rising to his new life. He may have been unable to see, but he was not alone. And for Saul to “regain his sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit,” afterwards gaining a new name and a new direction, it took another, at first somewhat reluctant, disciple to lay hands on him.
Few of us have had a Damascus Road experience but many of us have wandered blindly down roads which led in no fruitful direction only to discover, through persistence and patience, and a modicum of courage, a better way. Many of us have waited, seemingly isolated and alone, for hope’s morning to dawn slowly on our horizon, only realizing later that the light has illuminated the faces of those who have remained by our side and are willing to lend us a hand and walk with us on the way, people willing to do what they can to help free us from the shackles of our pain and fear.
And still, for far too many people those shackles remain. Recently, a report issued by a special meeting of the UN General Assembly said, “We celebrate the fact that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, yet around the world, millions of people are still deprived of their most fundamental human rights and freedoms.” The UN Children’s Fund estimates that today 1.2 million children are trafficked every year and are used as domestic servants, factory workers, soldiers and sex slaves. Children - the most vulnerable to human rights abuses; children – the least able to defend themselves; children – sheep who need tending; lambs, really, who need a voice raised on their behalf; one unafraid to speak the truth that the wickedness of the past has not entirely vanished.
In a sermon commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, Archbishop Rowan Williams said that it is “a fiction” to believe that we can be totally free of the events that have contributed to our past. “We are not born free,” he said, “but we are born for freedom…born with a task before us,” and that is “to learn how to be free.” Often that means asking others to tell us the truths we can’t see for ourselves.
Conversion requires the courage to hear and speak the truth; for it is only truth that will set us free. Conversion takes time to come about and when it does it takes time to develop. Conversion is best displayed not in one life altering, blazing event; instead, it is a series of day to day graces that guide us as we navigate our way through life’s dangers, toils and snares – facing the consequences, seeking to follow a holy way that leads to light, to truth, to freedom.