'I once was lost but now am found': Usha Hull at St Mary's Evensong on 25.3.07

Galatians 4: 1-5

William Wilberforce, who lived 1759 to 1833, is best known among us for having been an MP who was a leading figure in the campaign to abolish slavery. He was also a deeply committed Christian and a social reformer.

As a young man Wilberforce became the MP for Hull at the age of just 21. He was then to have a spiritual encounter which he described as a conversion experience. The experience left him asking just how to dedicate his life to God and raised the question, ‘can one serve both God and one’s nation in Parliament?’ He wondered if the two goals did not contradict each other. His good friend, the hymn writer and former slave ship captain John Newton, advised him, ‘Continue in Parliament. Who knows that but for such a time as this God has brought you into public life and has a purpose for you.’

Because of his faith, Wilberforce was to spend the rest of his life working for the freedom of others and wholly in the service of God through his political life, even though at times this meant vitriolic attacks in the press, physical assaults on his person and continuous death threats. He died in July 1883, just two days after he had heard that the bill abolishing slavery would finally be passed.

In Galatians, St Paul tells us that freedom lies not in slavery to sinful tendencies but in the faith that we are beloved children of our Heavenly Father. Nor are we to be slaves to laws and regulations in order to try and find favour with God but free in the knowledge of His great love. And studying today’s reading we might say that it is concerned with the two subjects that dominated the life of William Wilberforce, those of faith and freedom. And I would suggest to you that indeed it is our faith, the faith that we have as children of our Heavenly Father, that leads to freedom, perfect freedom in the Lord.

I would like to look briefly today at how we progress from faith to freedom under three separate headings: what is faith, what difference does faith make in our own lives and how does our faith set us free.

So, what is faith? Faith, says Hebrews 11: 1 ‘is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’. And if we are the children of our Heavenly Father, as the passage from Galatians tells us, and not slaves, we should be certain that our loving God will continue to look after us, even when the way is dark and we are beset with problems and difficulties.

It is a common mistake among non-believers to think that we who profess to be believers also think that we have all the answers. Having all the answers is not what faith is about. Faith is about trusting our Heavenly Father with the trust of a much-loved child. It is trust that leads to the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Does a child have all the answers? Absolutely not. Yet a child that is loved will trust that the things he or she has hoped for will receive attention from a loved parent, and will trust that those things promised by that parent will come to pass.

Our own lives are full of things we don’t understand and don’t have the answers for. Possibly each one of us can recall dark times when we felt that God was far from us, when we felt God didn’t understand or didn’t hear us, or just didn’t care. Possibly we can recall the suffering of people who have been dear to us, which may have been harder to bear than any suffering inflicted directly on ourselves.

It is faith that will not let us turn away from God because of these experiences. It is our faith that stands with Mary at the foot of the cross, that stays with us in our own suffering as it stayed with our Lord in the agony of his betrayal. And it is faith that will ultimately see us through to joy and redemption, and to freedom. We may not have all the answers but as children of our Heavenly Father our faith means we trust in the assurance of His love, come what may.

So does faith make a difference in our own lives? Absolutely. ‘Faith,’ said Martin Luther, ‘kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith.’ In other words, ours should be a faith that transforms, a faith that is alive, a faith that shows.

The Bible tells us we are surrounded by an unseen crowd of believers, those who have gone before us, people who believed and whose lives were changed forever by their encounters with our Lord. The history of Christianity is full of examples of people whose lives were transformed because of their Christian faith. William Wilberforce is just one example. In more recent times, as notes from our Lent course show, CS Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge were two others. CS Lewis struggled with questions of doubt and faith all his life. Malcolm Muggeridge was to experience a slow evolution towards faith and, as he himself saw it, an unfolding spiritual journey.

So it is with us. Our faith means that we are all on a spiritual journey together, a journey towards freedom, light and life. It means that in the circumstances of our lives we continue to show forth the belief that come what may we seek to be reunited with our Creator, that whatever life may throw at us we wish for His will to be done in this world, that despite our doubts we continue to want what is right and loving and true. Our faith demands that we act so that others may have the same good things we ourselves wish for.

And finally, how does our faith set us free? Two hundred years ago William Wilberforce battled with the forces of slavery. For many of us, when we think of slavery, we think of the transatlantic slave trade. Yet in today’s world, believe it or not, there are far more slaves than in the world in which Wilberforce lived. Today, millions of men, women and children across the world are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay and are at the mercy of their employers.

Ours is a world where the divisions between rich and poor grow ever more acute. The comment from this week’s Church Times tells us this, the world is now such an unequal place that there is little prospect of escaping the grip of material goods and the power that attaches to them. The poor do not know how to get them, the rich do not know how to do without them. There are many forms of slavery in our world today. Yet deep within the gospels is the message that service is perfect freedom.

William Wilberforce put his faith to work through his life-long service dedicated to basic human rights. Our faith, as children of our heavenly Father, should be of the kind that ever works to uphold basic human dignity in this world, that works to change our own lives and that of others wherever there is addiction or injustice of any kind, a faith that responds to the needs of this world wherever we find these needs.

I’ve talked about how men, women and children across today’s world are forced to work for little or no pay, and often this can be in the most dangerous and inhumane conditions. To end I’d like to tell you a little story about one such little girl and an encounter I had with her.

She was a tiny little girl, bare foot and ragged like millions of little children across India who are born and die in poverty. As I sat in the taxi when it had stopped at a red light she came up to the window to sell me something. Sitting in a car, in India, at a traffic light, you can be sold lots of things, flowers, food, newspapers, drinks, CDs, cassettes, magazines and so on. This little girl was selling staplers, cheap little ones.

Now I had no need of a stapler. But looking at that little girl, I thought I’d give her some money, instead. I was wrong. Poor as she was, she wouldn’t accept money for nothing, and shook her head her head while backing away. It was only when I accepted her stapler that she accepted my money, and then her joy was great. She literally danced around the car with joy.

To her mind she had completed a transaction. She had been given some means for her support without having to beg for it. Tiny and poor though she was, her human dignity mattered to her. And she had taught me a lesson.

Very often we believe that by throwing money at something we have done our duty as Christians. Wrong. Very often what is needed is not necessarily money but the knowledge that we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, with the same dignity, the same rights, the same need for love. What was needed in the situation I have just spoken of was primarily not money but love, a love that recognises the dignity and true needs of another human being.

The life of our Lord was underlined by the deep faith he had in the sanctity of love and of life. Our belief that we are all children of our Heavenly Father must also be the starting point for the service we offer to others and must come from the heart.

As children of our Heavenly Father, may ours be a true and living faith that begins in our hearts and works to transform our lives.

Amen