Sunday Sermon - 26 July

In June 2025 our General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada designated the last Sunday of July as Emancipation Sunday. 

August 1st marks the anniversary of the Slavery Abolition Act coming into effect across most of the British Empire in 1834. It is a day to remember both the joy of emancipation and the painful history that made emancipation necessary. It is also a day to recommit ourselves to God's work of justice, reconciliation and the dignity of every human being.

Most Canadians know very little about Emancipation Sunday or about The Slavery Abolition Act of 1834.  I know I learned much more about it in preparation for today.  

At first glance, today's Scripture readings and the observance of Emancipation Sunday might seem to have very little to do with one another. But as I spent time with these texts this week, I kept finding myself drawn back to last Sunday's Gospel. We reflected then on Jesus' parable of the wheat and the weeds and were reminded that, despite all the evil and brokenness we see around us, God is quietly growing a harvest that no enemy can ever destroy. We ended with the assurance that the field still belongs to God, the harvest still belongs to God, and by God's grace, so do we.

The more I prayed with this week's readings, the more I realized Jesus hasn't changed the subject. In many ways, this sermon became part two. The Kingdom that was quietly growing beneath the weeds last week is the very same Kingdom Jesus describes today as a mustard seed, as yeast hidden in dough, as treasure hidden in a field. 

And seen through the lens of Emancipation Sunday, those images invite us to ask a profound question: What happens when we stop seeing people as beloved children of God and begin treating them as commodities? The answer is slavery in all its forms. But the Gospel proclaims something even greater: that the Kingdom of God is God's quiet, persistent work of setting people free—from every chain that diminishes their dignity and every bondage that keeps them from living as the children of God they were created to be.

Last week we asked ourselves: What kind of world do we live in? A field where wheat and weeds grow together with God calling us to focus on the wheat, to be the wheat, the goodness in this world. 

This week we ask: What kind of Kingdom is God growing in that field? The message of Emancipation Sunday provides us with the answer.  

This morning, Jesus doesn't leave that conversation behind. He simply continues it. "Now," he says, "let me tell you a little more about what this Kingdom actually looks like."

As I mentioned, most Canadians know very little about Emancipation Sunday. Perhaps we know that slavery existed in the United States, but it also existed here in Canada and in the other British Colonies.  

We may also know something about the Underground Railroad and, as proud Canadians, we often pat ourselves on the back for being good freedom-loving Christians but we often forget that slavery was woven deeply into the history of the British Empire, whose traditions, systems and institutions have shaped so much of our own Canadian history.  

Britain did not invent slavery. Slavery is as old as human civilization itself but Britain became one of the greatest participants in the transatlantic slave trade. Millions of African men, women and children were captured, bought, sold and transported across the ocean. Human beings became commodities. Lives became cargo. Families became economic assets. The wealth generated by enslaved labour helped build ports, cities, industries and empires.

Even more tragically, Christians sometimes used theological language to justify slavery and oppression. Ideas such as the Doctrine of Discovery claimed that Christian European nations could claim lands already inhabited by non-Christian peoples. Over time, those ideas became part of the machinery of colonialism and contributed to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, throughout the European Empires including here in Canada.

Sadly, the Gospel was too often used to justify the establishment of the empire of Christendom and the oppression of peoples in the New World. Instead of asking, "How do we love our neighbour?" society was asking, "How can we profit off of our neighbour?"

This is why Emancipation Sunday matters. Not simply because slavery was abolished in much of the British Empire on August 1, 1834, but because we remember what made emancipation necessary in the first place.

People forgot that every human being bears the image of God. They stopped seeing neighbours and started seeing products, humans as commodities.

So let’s start today by first looking at the story from Genesis. At first glance, it sounds like a romantic story. Jacob has fallen in love with Rachel. He agrees to work seven years for her hand in marriage. We read that those seven years seemed but a few days for Jacob because of the depth of his love for her. It's a lovely and romantic First Testament story.

As we read on, the story changes. Laban deceives Jacob. Instead of Rachel, Leah is brought to him on the wedding night.  

We usually focus on Jacob's deception and how he tricked his father to earn his family’s birthright. Now Jacob, the deceiver, has finally been deceived himself but this isn’t the real tragedy of this story, the deeper tragedy rests in the plight of the women.  

No one asks Leah what she wants. No one asks Rachel what she wants. The daughters become bargaining chips in a ‘business’ negotiation between two men. Laban treats his daughters as part of the family business. Rachel and Leah become commodities.

Isn't that exactly what slavery does?

It doesn’t ask, "Who are you?" It asks, "What are you worth?"

When you really think about it, this may be the oldest question in the world. We simply keep updating the language. What do you do? What do you earn? What can you produce? How useful are you? How much influence do you have? Today we measure ourselves, we commodify ourselves, in followers and likes, views and shares, asking, "Does anyone notice me? Do I matter?" And we measure others by what they can offer us: "What can you do for me? What can I get out of you?" Beneath it all lies the same ancient question: What are you worth?

The Kingdom of God asks an entirely different question. Not, "What are you worth?" but, "Whose are you?", “Whose image do you bear?”

The answer is God's, for every single human being. We are God’s.

This is why Jesus' parables today are so important to understand: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed. The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast hidden in flour. The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

Notice what Jesus doesn't say even though this is what his disciples want to hear. He never says the Kingdom arrives through armies. He never says it comes through empires. He never says it advances through domination.

Instead, as we discussed last week, it grows quietly. Patiently. Almost unnoticed. Like a seed. Like yeast, slowly fermenting. Like treasure waiting to be discovered.

The Kingdom changes the world not by making people more powerful, but by helping us see one another differently, with humble, selfless, eyes. I would like to specifically draw our attention to the parable of the pearl and perhaps a new interpretation of Jesus’ words. Traditionally, we hear it this way: We should be like the merchant who gives up everything to possess the Kingdom.

Okay, that is certainly true, but let’s be creative for a moment. Let’s turn the parable around and think of Christ as the merchant and human beings, you and me and all others, as the pearl. What does this do to our understanding of the parable?  

Christ gives up everything—even his own life—to redeem what the world has forgotten the value of. Christ gave up everything for us. We are Christ’s pearls.

I don’t know whether this was Jesus’ intention in telling this parable but when I read it in this way I find it to have even deeper meaning. It is a profoundly beautiful statement about God’s ineffable, selfless, love for us.  

The world puts a price on people. Christ refuses. Instead, he pays the price to bring them home. That is the Gospel message and it is also the deepest meaning of emancipation.

You see, emancipation is about much more than breaking chains. It is about restoring dignity. It is about recovering the truth that every human life is infinitely precious because every human life reflects the image of God.

Now before we become too comfortable congratulating ourselves for living in a different century, and judging with scorn on those who lived in the past, perhaps we should ask an uncomfortably probing question. Have we really stopped turning people into commodities? Or have we simply become more sophisticated in the process?

Human trafficking still exists. Forced labour still exists. Children are still exploited. Entire economies still depend upon people working for wages that barely allow them to survive. We still judge people by what they own, what they earn, what they contribute. If we're honest, we even do it to ourselves. We monetize our own value as human beings. Just like Bob Marley reminds us about in one of his classics - Redemption Song. Marley sings: Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our mind.

How many people quietly believe, “I’m only valuable if I'm productive”, “I’m only worthwhile if I'm healthy”, “I’m only important if people need me”, “I’m only successful if I achieve enough.”

You know, those are chains too. Different chains. Invisible chains but chains nonetheless. Perhaps that is the question these readings ask of us today on Emancipation Sunday. What have I allowed to define my worth - money, success, status, power, approval? What have I allowed to define someone else's worth? The difficult neighbour. The addict. The refugee. The homeless person. The political opponent. The elderly person who can no longer contribute as they once did. The person with dementia. The person who frustrates me.

Have I stopped seeing a child of God and started seeing a valueless problem to solve or to outright avoid?

The Kingdom of God quietly breaks those chains. As the wheat that grows in God's field, we are called to become instruments of that freedom — to be the bolt-cutters through which Christ breaks the chains that bind, helping to liberate not only bodies, but minds and spirits as well.

Paul says in Romans that nothing — not death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation — can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

That means no government can take away your dignity.  No employer can define your value.  No diagnosis can diminish your worth.  No failure can erase the image of God within you.

You belong to Christ and because you belong to Christ, your value is beyond measure. You are Christ’s beautiful pearl.  

Last week we imagined the Kingdom as wheat growing quietly in a field full of weeds. This week Jesus tells us that same Kingdom is also like a mustard seed, like yeast hidden in dough, like treasure buried in a field.

Different pictures. The same truth.

God's Kingdom grows quietly wherever people begin seeing one another as God sees them. The world asks, "What are you worth?" The Kingdom asks, "Whose are you?"  “Who loves you the most?”  “Who died to save you?”

The world builds markets where people become products. Christ builds a Kingdom where people are loved and become family - and in our little corner of the world, the St. John's family.  

Perhaps that is the deepest meaning of Emancipation Sunday. We remember today not simply because chains were removed nearly two hundred years ago, but because Christ is still setting people free and calling us to set ourselves free. Every time we refuse to measure another person by what they own, what they earn, what they can produce, or what they can do for us. Every time we honour the image of God in someone the world has overlooked. Every time we choose dignity over utility, mercy over power, and love over profit, another mustard seed is planted. More yeast is mixed into the dough. The harvest of wheat continues to grow.

So we continue trusting that, beneath all the weeds of this world, God is quietly growing a Kingdom that no empire can conquer, no market can purchase, no tariff can tax and no enemy can destroy.

Because the field still belongs to God. The Kingdom still belongs to God and in that Kingdom there are no slaves and no masters, no commodities and no castaways - only beloved children, equal in dignity, created in God's image, and redeemed by Christ.

For that we say, “Thanks be to God!”

Amen.