When I moved to Bristol about 32 years ago to train at Trinity College it took me some while to figure out why our road was called “Black Boy Hill” and the road next door with all the shops was called “White ladies walk”. I late discovered the ignominious role ports like Bristol and Liverpool played in the slave trade. The many fine buildings in these cities were built with the profits, as was this very church. It is easy to become desensitised to the suffering that occurred in our distant history. The British government has been careful in the way it has expressed sorrow for the past, to avoid a flood of legal claims by the descendants of slaves demanding compensation. Even art does not escape politicisation. We can recognise paintings that epitomise our national heritage – scenes like these painted by John Turner. But what about this one? Recognise it? Painted in 1840, it hangs in Boston’s museum of fine art. Know what Turner is saying? Its title is “The Slave Ship” but Turner wasn’t satisfied. It has a subtitle, “Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying, Typhoon coming on.” “It kicks you in the gut” says art historian Simon Schama. Turner has captured one of the most shameful episodes of the British Empire, when 132 men, women and children, their hands fettered, were thrown into shark-infested sea, so that traders could claim the insurance for their loss. When the transatlantic slave trade was abolished in the British Empire, two hundred years ago, estimates suggest there were around 11 million slaves in the world.
Today there are more, at least 12 million. Tearfund tell us that “vicious illegal forms of slavery are flourishing across the world. Aside from guns and drugs, no trade is more profitable. Despite the fact that slavery is banned in most countries where it is practised, and prohibited by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the slave trade is flourishing throughout the world right now.”
Andrew Murray was a pastor and teacher who lived in South Africa in the 19thCentury. He wrote the classic “Abide in Christ”. He set an example few of us have equalled since. Among those on whom his influence was the greatest were his children and grandchildren. Five of his six sons became ministers and four of his daughters became minister’s wives. Ten grandsons became ministers and thirteen grandchildren became missionaries. And that was just his close family.
Ed Kimball was a Sunday School teacher. He was rather timid too. For a year a young man who worked in a shoe shop had attended his class every Sunday. Ed felt prompted to visit the guy at work. But as he approached the shop, he decided to come back another time. He was halfway down the street before he found the courage to go back and talk to the young man. Ed found him in the back of the store, wrapping shoes. He heard himself say, “I wanted to let you know how much Christ loves you.” Ed didn’t know the young man had recently become so earnest to improve himself, he had signed a pledge with God in his own blood. The Lord brought his Sunday School teacher to talk to him at just the right time. Dwight listened to the good news, bowed his head in the back of shoe shop and received Christ. He later wrote: “I was in a new world. The birds sang sweeter. The sun shone brighter. I’d never known such peace.” After moving to Chicago to be a salesman, like his teacher, Dwight also became a Sunday School teacher. He organized a Sunday School, recruiting both the students and the teachers. God so blessed his efforts that D. L. Moody, as he became known, left the business world to work full time for the Lord. By the time his life work was over, he had made such an impact on both America and England that he was described as: “the greatest evangelist of the 19th century.” All because a timid Sunday School teacher named Ed Kimball stepped out in faith. Nothing unusual in that. This is the way God has been building his church for 2000 years, one person at a time. It began with the very first followers of Jesus.