What struck me most of all of was the character of William Wilberforce beautifully played by Ioan Gruffud. One of the important Christian influences on his life was John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace” (again well cast in the film by Albert Finney) who as an ex slave trader turned preacher had known Wilberforce since his youth. It was from Newton’s influence and from his own evangelical conversion and association with what was known as the Clapham Sect, a group of activist Anglican evangelical Christians particularly concerned about the slave trade, that Wilberforce developed his passion to see the slave trade abolished. The film focuses on the thirty years of hard work and the many, many disappointments and set-backs that intervened to delay the eventual success of the cause.

It is well known that in England as in this country (as well evidenced by the current exhibition at the New York Historical Society on Slavery and the Civil War) the commercial interests that benefited from the slave trade were enormous. On the first vote on Wilberforce’s legislation only 6 people voted in favor! What with his own health issues plus the political realities including the intervening French Revolution lesser persons than Wilberforce would have given up long ago. But with the unfailing support of people like Hannah More, Thomas Clarkson and his own wife, and the parliamentary support of William Pitt the Younger and Charles Fox, plus his extraordinary faith, Wilberforce never gave up although he was near to doing so many times in his career. The last scenes of the film show the final vote on the Emancipation Act in 1830 although partial victory had been won much earlier with the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Wilberforce who had labored for so many years and against such odds was applauded to the rafters even by his enemies for sheer persistence and utter belief in his cause.

The story of Wilberforce is a good illustration of an important theme in the readings for today. Abraham was fed up with God. He had left hearth and home at God’s call and all he had got were desert wanderings, a barren wife and strife with enemies. And the last straw was a vision in which God talks of his reward “which shall be very great”. “You’re telling me” says Abram (yet to get his full name Abraham). Abram’s basic complaint is no heir and no land. How can he succeed in ancient society without both? God’s initial response is to get Abram to open his eyes to the world around him. “Look toward the heaven and count the stars”. That wouldn’t work so well in Manhattan. However I remember vividly spending several nights camping out in the Sinai desert and lying on my back on the warm sand looking up at the night sky. There being nothing to impede your view of the sky the stars stood out like bright crystals and you felt you could almost count them. In fact in our evening prayers on one of those desert nights we read part of this same passage.

Abram was humbled by the sheer immensity of the universe as against his concerns which though they were real seemed small by comparison. God’s promise “so shall your descendants be” moved Abram to believe the Lord. And we are told “the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness”. This leap of faith on Abram’s part becomes the basis of Paul’s great argument about Faith and Law in the letter to the Romans. And God continued in his promise to outline the gift of land. Once again Abram’s patience is strained. “How will I know that I shall possess it?” That brings us to the strange and mysterious covenant ceremony of the animal parts and the burning pot etc, a ritual the origins of which go way back into the ancient Near East. We are told Abram was over come by a deep sleep (reminiscent of the sleep of Adam at the creation of Eve) and surrounded by a terrifying darkness. All this was part of some ancient covenant ceremony by which God’s promise to give Abram a land was ratified. This is the first of two covenants God makes with Abram the second being circumcision. Wilberforce discovered “Amazing Grace” which sustained him through “dangers, toils and snares”; so Abram believed in God’s promises which were ratified in covenantal form.

Paul in the Philippians passage was dealing with some sort of setback. Clearly the Philippians faith had been unsettled by unnamed enemies described as “enemies of the cross of Christ”. Perhaps they were former converts who had gone back to their former ways and were giving the Christian community a hard time. Paul counsels the believers to “stand firm in the Lord in his way” and not to forget that “their citizenship is in heaven” and that God will transform and transfigure “the body of our humiliation” (all that diminishes and frustrates our full personhood) into “the body of his glory”. In other words “Amazing Grace” will win out ultimately and overcome all the seeming obstacles that confront us.

Finally the Gospel on this second Sunday in Lent reminds us that opposition to Jesus and the threat to his life were ever present. To news of Herod’s desire to kill him Jesus responds “I have work to do and I will do it because that is the will of God”. And furthermore nothing will keep me from my destination Jerusalem for “it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem”. Already in Luke’s gospel Jesus has predicted his coming passion, death and resurrection. Here he speaks clearly about its location. As I have said before Luke’s gospel is shaped around Jerusalem: Jesus journeys to Jerusalem where he is crucified, buried and rises from the dead. In Luke part 2, the Acts of the Apostle, the mission of the church begins in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost and goes forth to the ends of the world. So Jerusalem is the center-piece of the Gospel narrative, as enigmatic then as it is now. And so Jesus utters his lament over Jerusalem which could be made today as he made it long ago. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing!” I well remember repeating those words on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Temple Mount and the Old City a day after riots had closed down the city.

What we hear today about William Wilberforce, about Abram, Paul and above all of Jesus is that whatever we are facing, whatever the trials, temptations, fears or disappointments that confront us now, God’s promises, God’s Word, God’s Love, they abide and will not fail us and it is that belief which is the foundation of our faith. Jesus, the Savior, not only keeps journeying but journeys knowing what lies ahead, and it is precisely that faithful obedience that opens the way to Resurrection and New Life. It is that journey we are invited into as we observe this Lent. “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound”; yes the fact that God made us and loves us and wants us for his own and demonstrates that to us in the life, death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ, is truly amazing.   Amen

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