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Earlier this week somebody asked what the sermon was about. I said, "I'm preaching about slavery." That was a good way to stop a conversation.

Slavery. In Romans 6, Paul talks about slavery. It was an established institution of his time. There is no evidence that he tried to reform it. One of his letters was written to a slave owner named Philemon. During one of his vacations in jail, Paul met a runaway slave named Onesimus. They got to talking, and Onesimus became a Christian. When his sentence was up, Paul put a letter in his hand, and sent him back to his owner, who was also a Christian. And Paul says, "Now you get him back, as more than a slave - he's a brother." It was a nice thing to say, but the young man was still a slave.

You might remember that Paul likes to give advice in his letters. Sometimes he gives advice to all the key figures of a household. "Husbands, give your lives for your wives. Wives, give your selves to your husbands. Children, obey your parents. And slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling" (Ephesians 5 and 6).

Paul was a preacher. Even if he was so inclined, there was no way he could reform an institution like slavery, which was the economic backbone of the Roman empire. Slavery sounds strange and repulsive to us, but it was a part of his life and his culture. So much so, that he could see slavery as an image - or a picture - of some of the fundamental relationships in life.

He signs this letter to the Romans with the words, "Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ." The word in Greek is doulos. That can be translated "slave." It can be translated as "servant."

I was speaking somewhere, and was about to read the opening words from this letter. Right before I read the text, I realized there were a number of African--Americans in the congregation. I didn't know how they would feel about slavery, so I changed it on my feet. I made it, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ." You know, it can be translated both ways.

Afterward, one of the men that I noticed came up to me and said, "I was following along in my Bible. I noticed you changed that word. Why did you change it?" I began to explain how you can translate the word both ways, and all of that. He listened with a smile on his face.

Then he said, "You know, Paul calls himself a slave. And if you're going to belong to anybody, you ought to belong to Jesus. He is a tough master, but he is more than fair. And if you belong to Jesus, nobody else can have a piece of you."

He's right. Paul believes that he has a master. In fact, if you listen to this whole passage from Romans 6, it sounds like Paul believes that everybody has a master. Somebody owns us.

That sounds strange to people like us. We live in a land where freedom is always defined as independence. If you are free, it means you are independent. For over 228 years, we have been independent from British rule. That has become the governing metaphor for American life. I am free. I am my own person. I don't need anybody else. I am an island unto myself.

That's what a lot of people want: to become independent. When I was about fifteen, I sat down to watch the Miss America pageant with my sister. We were watching the pageant for different reasons; you know, I was watching to hear all those meaningful speeches, right?

Debbie pointed to one of the candidates. "Watch that one," she said. "She is going to win."

Why? "Because she gave a really good speech about being her own person." Sure enough, she won.

Our culture would like us to believe that stuff: You are free to do whatever you want, go wherever you wish, buy whatever you desire. Meanwhile, there are a lot of people telling us what to do, where to go, what to buy. We think we're free; what we're doing is merely accepting somebody else's story.

I saw a group of teenagers at the local ice cream store on a summer night. It was a good night for ice cream. It was a typical scene: clusters of teenagers orbiting around one another, trying to think for themselves and trying to fit in. If you asked them, every one would value independence and freedom. But look at them: all the girls were wearing the same jeans. All the boys were driving their dad's expensive cars and looking cool. "Be your own person" means, "Don't be a geek. Buy your clothes at the Gap, and borrow your dad's Lexus when you go for ice cream."

Paul is right. Even in a land of freedom and liberty, somebody has shackled us in chains, whether we know it or not. The question is: Who is yanking your chain?

Some people are slaves to shopping. They cannot pass up a sale, even if they have a house full of things they don't need.

Some people are slaves to cholesterol. They have never met a donut or a piece of bacon they didn't like.

Some people are slaves to their jobs. They do not like their jobs, but the company is paying them too much for them to quit, so they go to work in golden handcuffs.

Some corporations are slaves to greed. Everybody answers to the bottom line. If the bottom line is not high enough, somebody has to go. In the last few years, we have had all kinds of revelations about that, but it's not news to anyone.

I have a friend who is a slave to Budweiser. If he doesn't have a drink in his system, his body drives him crazy. He's admitted that he is embarrassed about it, and he ought to be. Two weeks ago, he wrecked another truck. His friends hope it's a wake--up call.

The question is: Who - or what - is yanking your chain?

C. S. Lewis has a great little book about heaven and hell. It is not so much a story about the next life as it is an allegory for understanding this life. In the book, some people have been reduced to shadow creatures. Others are solid people. These divisions happen because of the choices and commitments that people make, or refuse to make, right here and now.

In one scene, a woman who is a solid person, encounters her husband, who is a shadow creature. Actually he is not one phantom, but two. The first is a great tall ghost, horribly thin and shaky, who seemed to be leading on a chain another ghost no bigger than an organ--grinder's monkey. Her husband is the little guy, and he's holding the chain, which is attached to the collar of the tall ghost.

Every time the wife asks a question, the short man yanks on the chain, and the tall ghost speaks for him. He always speaks in large, self--important tones, as if he has a reputation to maintain. She tells him that she loves him, and he yanks the chain, so that the tall actor can respond with a theatrical flourish. She tries to have a real conversation with him, for the first time in years, and he pulls the chain, so that the tall dummy will speak for him.

Pretty soon, you know why he is the ghost.

Finally she says, "Frank! Frank! Look at me. Look at me. What are you doing with that great, ugly doll? Let go of the chain. Send it away. It is you I want. Don't you see what nonsense it's talking?" Lewis says, "Merriment danced in her eyes ... her laughter was past her defenses. He was struggling hard to keep it out, but already with imperfect success." The short man was struggling against joy.1

Who pulls your chains? Whom do you serve?

About twenty years ago, singer Bob Dylan went through a brief spiritual phase. A lifelong Jew, he got serious about God, even thinking about becoming a Christian. He wrote some new songs, hired a back--up group of gospel singers, and went on tour. One of the songs said, "You gotta serve somebody. You gotta serve somebody. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody."

One night on tour he sang that song and the crowd began to boo. The more he sang, the more they booed. He stopped playing and left the stage. Afterward, one concert--goer said, "I didn't come to hear that kind of bologna. I'm free. I don't serve anybody but myself."

Believe me, friends, there is no greater slavery than serving only yourself.

Paul says he is a slave of Jesus. He struggles with his own urges, just like anybody else. But he knows in his gut that no good can come from listening only to his own desires. He is bound to a greater purpose than following his nose or listening to his stomach. He belongs to Jesus Christ. That is his identity. That gives him a purpose.

He says this because he knows if the only thing he does is what he wants to do, if the only opinion he listens to is his opinion or his friends' opinions, if the only purpose for his life is to cover his tail or save his skin, then he is in a whole lot of trouble.

The power of sin is so pervasive that it can take and twist our best impulses into something foul. There are so many kinds of sin that work on us and bind us. It's hard to be free for all of it.

But it's possible.

In a few minutes, we baptize a little child. We're not doing this because it's the fashionable thing to do. It's not a rite of passage. It's not a culturally sanctioned event. We are not announcing, "Here is a little child who from this day forth will be her own person." No, we're saying, "God has one more child. Before she even knows it, she belongs to God through Jesus Christ." From this day forward, we will do everything we can to nurture her into that new identity.

Just like any other child, we're going to give her something important to think about. We are going to tell her how much she is loved. We are going to teach her the story of Jesus, which is now her story and ours.

The day may come when she'll say, "Mom, do I have to go to church?" We can laugh about that; most of us have said that, some time or another. There are a lot of things in church that seem like forms of imprisonment. Like one parishioner once said to me, "Reverend, how long am I supposed to serve on this committee? It's been 42 years."

There are a lot of things in church that seem like slavery. We come here, and pray for forgiveness, and somebody tells us we're forgiven. Then across the aisle we see somebody we'd rather not ever spend any time with. And we pray, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," and we think, "Oh, I don't want to forgive him. I'm not going to forgive him." But we've said those prayers, and we are bound to those words.

There are some things we learn through the church that feel like burdens. We get to know somebody, and discover that they are hurting, and we don't know what to do. We don't know how to help. It would be a lot easier to slip away and ignore them. But we can't do that because we are bound together through Christ, even when we'd rather go our own way.

There are some occasions when the church decides it has to do something. A widow with seven kids comes to our neighborhood. She speaks with an accent. We don't know where we're going to put them. We are wondering how much money this is going to cost, and what else this is going to put off the plate. But we know it's the right thing to do, and we are bound to the work of justice and new beginnings.

There are a lot of times when it would be easier to do our own thing. To play it safe. To back away. To retreat in comfort. Then we come to church and remember that we are bound to Jesus Christ. Not only that, he has bound himself to us. We are never free from him.

The good news, of course, is that in this kind of bondage, there is great freedom.


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1. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1946), pp. 113--114.