Call and Response: Reflections

As with any presentation on an issue of justice, I was moved.  It’s just a fact.  I don’t know that ending slavery worldwide is going to become my driving passion, (how could it be, when I am already driven by so many others?) but I will be an advocate when and where I am able, even if it just means telling others about this film.  What was interesting to me was the film’s integration of a social justice issue with a response by musicians.  The quote that jumped out at me was by Emmanuel Jal, a hip-hop artist who was himself once in slavery as a child soldier in Kenya. 

“Music is a form of communication,” he said. 

“It’s the only thing that can enter a person’s heart and mind without their permission.”

How this happens, I don’t fully understand, but I know it to be true.  Music has always had a unique power to pull at my heartstrings.  Music moves me- it moves all of us, I daresay- to tears, to dance, to memories, to worship; and perhaps, as this film suggests, to action.  When a need is presented, we have the choice to either respond, or to ignore it.  This group of musicians has chosen to respond as they know how, in song.  And their response functions as a call to the rest of us; a call that enters our hearts and minds in a way that only music can.  Now I have to choose how to respond, in my own language, with my own abilities, in my own realm of influence.  27 million people woke up today around the world in slavery.  And I woke up free.  What am I going to do with that knowledge?

As a Christian, (you knew this was coming) my understanding of slavery and freedom is even more complex.  It’s been said, heard, taught, studied in different movements of slavery throughout human history, that slavery is more than just physical captivity.  It’s mental, emotional, psychological, spiritual- a total breaking of the human spirit, submission of the will… and not easily overthrown by simply “unlocking the chains,” so to speak.  Whether it was the African slaves on American plantations, or Jewish prisoners in concentration camps, or young girls in brothels in Mumbai, slavery was a way of life.  It was familiar and known, albeit horrifying.  While those in slavery hope and dream of freedom, they don’t always know what to do with it when it is offered.  Such is my story:  once I was a slave to sin, which leads to death… but don’t you realize that you become a slave of whatever you choose to obey?  You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.  (Romans 6:16-17 NLT)  And though I have chosen to allow God to set me free from my slavery to sin, I don’t always know what to do with the freedom I live in.  Sin is such a habit; its routines, its patterns so imbedded in my nature, that I often forget that I am free to choose not to obey it. 

So, the young girl in India whose freedom from the brothel was bought by a journalist for a mere $200 chose to return to her slavery after only a few days.  It was the life she knew, and the only place where she could hold her head high; out in the freedom of the real world, she was ashamed of what she had been forced to become.  Rescuing her, and the millions whose spirits are broken just like hers, will take more than the money it takes to buy their freedom.  It will take love, compassion, counseling, patience, and most certainly, the hope of Christ that can change their very identity from slave to Child of God.  It’s funny to me as I write this that I attend a church named  liberti. Our very name, chosen to identify with the city of Philadelphia, where many of our nation’s liberties were founded, belies the foundational element of Christianity that I am pondering this morning.   It was for freedom that Christ set us free; I have been called to choose this freedom, daily, and to not put the yoke of slavery to sin back around my neck. 

When Jesus stood in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, he was handed a scroll of the Hebrew scripture to read, and he chose these words:

 ¹⁸"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
      because he has anointed me
      to preach good news to the poor.
   He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
      and recovery of sight for the blind,
   to release the oppressed,
    ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
(Luke 4:18-19, NIV)