I’ve been preaching for over fifty years, but I’ve only been interrupted once. It was in Port Antonio, a Jamaican port that had once been a hub of the slave trade. ‘What about slavery?’ a lady shouted from the back of the church. I was lost for words and continued my sermon, which was about the encounter of two disciples with a stranger on the road to Emmaus. Those disciples didn’t know that the stranger was the risen Christ. How could they have known, even though Jesus had taught them that whatever they do for the stranger, they do for him? Like them, I too didn’t realise that that awkward interruption was my meeting with Christ the redeemer.
Forty days after Christmas, the Church tells the story of Simeon, who was more alert than I when Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation’. Or less elegantly, ‘Lord, give your slave his discharge!’ This baby was a ‘redeemer’ in a less pious sense than we’re used to. In Jesus, God was paying the compensation for our release and Simeon recognised the redeemer. It took the Church almost two thousand years to catch up with Simeon and abolish slavery. And before the good work of Wilberforce, the forbears of my blessed interrupter rose up with stones in one hand and the bible in the other and escaped from slavery to freedom in the Blue mountains of Jamaica.
Stiiv Knowers (fr) – retired Vicar living in Tallinn
