A Sermon preached at St Mary’s, Primrose Hill on Passion Sunday, 25 March 2007

John 12.1-8: 

The law banning the Slave Trade came into force two hundred years ago today – on the 25th March 1807. It has been estimated that over the centuries, between twelve and twenty million people were transported as slaves from Africa by European traders, of whom some 15% died during the terrible crossings of the Atlantic, chained in the holds of the ships as if there were animals.

The Member of Parliament for Hull, William Wilberforce was motivated by a sense of an injustice that had to be righted. ‘So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the Trade's wickedness appear,’ he said, ‘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.’

If you have participated in one of the Lent groups, or have seen the film about Wilberforce which has just been released called Amazing Grace, after John Newton’s hymn of that title – himself a former slave trader – you will know that the fight to abolish slavery in Parliament was long and hard. Powerful people with vested interests fought against it and for many years it was unclear who would emerge victorious. Eventually, however, thanks to the dogged persistence of an alliance of campaigners led by Wilberforce, the battle was won.

But before we put out the flags to celebrate the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, we ought to pause. Contrary to most people’s expectations, slavery still goes on today even here in Britain. In the year 2000 a Home Office research paper estimated that up to 1,420 women and children were being trafficked into the United Kingdom for sexual exploitation each year. There are still battles to be fought and won.

Of course, we are different! We like to pride ourselves that we are free, that we take responsibility for our lives, that we exercise choices, that we live authentic lives. Yet even the most basic knowledge of finance, marketing or psychology shows that many of us are far from free.

We all know people who want to give up smoking and have tried again and again, but can’t kick the habit. Are they free?

More than two million people in this country were brought up in families in which someone had a serious drink problem. Are they free?

In a recent newspaper it was reported that more that 100,000 people in the UK each year are in such crippling debt that they go bankrupt or are in special debt recovery schemes. Are they free?

And before the rest of us sit back feeling smug because we don’t have to grapple with those particular things, do remember that there are marketing companies that hold detailed data on all of us and can predict many of the choices we are going to make. Maybe none of us are actually as free as we would like to think.

When we turn to today’s gospel we find another, deeper truth about our human condition. Mary and Martha give a dinner for Jesus. In their action the sisters reveal how we find true freedom when we choose to live a life of service.

The supper takes place in their home in Bethany – the very name of the village is important if you want to understand the full implications of the event, since it literally means ‘House of the Poor’. I visited Bethany during my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It lies about four miles east of Jerusalem in what is still the poorest district of the city. The prevailing winds in Israel are from the Mediterranean, from the West, and for centuries the inhabitants of Jerusalem have constructed their cemeteries and rubbish dumps on the east of the city, so that the wind blows away the stink. Today as then the rich people live in west Jerusalem; the poor live down-wind in the east, in Bethany. And it is here that Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus, have their home. And it is here, amongst the poorest of the poor, that Jesus has his home too.

The sisters express their service in offering hospitality, in opening their home to Jesus, in giving a welcome to friends and strangers and serving food. Their generosity is wonderful in itself, but suddenly in the midst of it all, Mary does something totally unexpected: she empties a bottle of costly perfume, pure nard, over Jesus’ feet, and most shockingly of all, wipes them with her hair.

It is scandalous for two reasons. First, because of the intimacy of the act. Wiping a rabbi’s feet with your hair is hardly kosher. Secondly, it was such an extravagant gesture. A denarius was the average daily wage. We are told that this ointment cost 300 denarii: in other words, the equivalence of an entire year’s wages. If you had gone out and spent your entire salary on a bottle of Chanel no:5 and emptied over someone’s feet, you might have got some stick.

‘Why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor?’ asks Judas. Good question.

But Jesus refuses to condemn her extravagance – perhaps recognizing in her action the outpouring of love. It was a prophetic action, he says, preparing his body for burial. Throughout his ministry we see Jesus challenging taboos and breaking down the barriers between rich and poor, men and women, Jew and Gentile. His was a highly stratified society, policed by warnings and notices of ritual purity proclaiming, ‘Don’t touch’ or ‘Keep your distance’. And Jesus crossed every boundary.

St Luke’s records slightly different words of Jesus at this point. ‘Let her alone,’ says Jesus. ‘She has done a beautiful thing for me.’

A beautiful thing. It was this event and this text that inspired Mother Theresa to go to Calcutta to work in the slums, rescuing the poorest of the poor from their degradation, and restoring human dignity to the dying. Like Mary before her and indeed Wilberforce, she too wanted to do ‘a beautiful thing for God’.

So what does all this mean for us today?

First, it challenges our understanding of what is truly beautiful in life. Goodness knows how much money the cosmetic industry makes out of our preoccupation with the body beautiful. But in the Christian tradition, it is not how we look that counts, but how we live.

Secondly, being a Christian is not a private matter which has nothing to do with the rest of the world or with my life Monday to Friday. Being a Christian is to set off on a path in which we discover that ‘in God’s service lies our perfect freedom’. We are called by God to be instruments of liberation: to bring the freedom that we enjoy to others. It’s why it is so important that we in our generation throw ourselves behind the campaign to end human trafficking in all its forms in the world today.

Finally, we are also called to be people who speak words of freedom to one another.

Harry Williams, an old Mirfield father, now alas dead and gone, used to say that the most terrifying verse in the Bible were the words of Jesus, ‘And the truth shall set you free’. Sometimes we prefer slavery to freedom in life, because the truth is too painful.

As I look back on my life I give thanks for a number of people who could see what I might become. They encouraged me when I was down, challenged me when I was defeated, built me up when I was discouraged, goaded me when I was being complacent. In other words, they spoke words of truth to set me free. Can we be the sort of community that does that for each other?

On this Passion Sunday as we commemorate the abolition of the slave trade and begin the journey to Jerusalem in the company of our Lord, let us enter into his freedom and help one another to experience the liberty that alone comes from being a child of God.

Robert Atwell