Remember You Were a Slave

 Jesu Juva

Deuteronomy 5:1-5, 15                                   

March 12, 2025

Lent Midweek 1        

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Were you there?  The hymn we just sang asks that question a dozen times, by my count.  Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  When they nailed Him to the tree?  When they laid Him in the tomb?  When God raised Him from the tomb?  Were you there?

        This question is more than just a poetic device.  In fact, those words weren’t conceived by any poet, but by slaves.  This is an African American spiritual.  The precise origins of the hymn are unknown; but both text and tune were conceived within a community of slaves in the American south in the 1800s.

        Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  Taking the question at face value, the obvious answer is, “No, I wasn’t there.”  We were all born on the wrong side of the world, about two thousand years too late to be there.  But for the original singers of this spiritual song, the answer wasn’t so clear cut.  They were there—or they were at least close enough to Calvary’s cross that it caused them with emotion to tremble, tremble, tremble.

        A similar question pops up in tonight’s text from Deuteronomy.  The Israelites are amassed on the edge of the Promised Land.  Before them lies the destination of their dreams and the fulfillment of God’s promise.  Moses prepares the people for this new beginning with a reminder from history:  Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today.  The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain. . . . Remember, you were a slave in Egypt.

        Those statements from Moses are problematic—from the perspective of history.  For in Deuteronomy Moses is addressing an entirely new crew of Hebrews.  The crowd that was about to take possession of the Promised Land was an entirely different crowd from that group of slaves that had marched through the Red Sea on dry ground and received the Law at Sinai.

        The witnesses to those events—the ones who were indeed there when God parted the waters and delivered His people—they had all perished.  Forty years had gone by.  The exodus lasted forty years—not because it took that much travel time, or because of some glitch with the GPS—those forty years were a divine punishment levied against all the faithless naysayers who did not believe God’s power to provide victory over the gigantic, well-fortified residents of Canaan.  Apart from Caleb and Joshua, nobody who exited Egypt would enter the Promised Land.

        How then can Moses tell this new crew of Hebrews:  You were there?  How can Moses say:  Not with our fathers, but with us?  How can Moses say:  You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt?  How could they remember what they didn’t experience?  Were they there when the Lord brought them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm?  No, they were not there.

        Behold the power of remembrance.  Where the things of God are concerned, shared remembrance can create a communion in past events.  It’s a communion so strong that it may be said as a statement of fact:  I was there.  Not hyperbole.  Not just a figure of speech.   I was there.  I saw it happen.  I was a slave in Egypt.  With the things of God, time can be transcended by the power of remembrance.  Where the living Word of God is concerned, the past is discovered to be mysteriously present.

        By recalling the memory of slavery—by embracing that memory—God’s people can confess that they have personally experienced God’s power to save.  Redemption is real.  Even as the Israelites were about to begin a new life of freedom in the Promised Land, Moses calls them to remember that they were not always free—and that their freedom is a gift of grace and mercy.  Don’t forget the desert.  Don’t forget the shame of slavery.  Only by recalling what I was can I confess what I have become by grace through faith.  Remember you were a slave in Egypt.  You were there.

        Like Israel, we should remember where we have been.  We too are called to look back on the shackles of our past.  We must descend into what St. Bernard memorably called the sewers of remembrance.  Even St. Paul who enjoyed the full freedom of faith in Christ—even Paul remembered his own Pharisaical captivity:  You have heard of my former life . . . how I persecuted the church of God violently (Gal. 1:13).  Paul shows us the need to remember even those things we might prefer to forget.  We shouldn’t dwell on those things or wallow in them.  But we must remember where we have been.  Remember you were a slave in Egypt.

        Remember when you were enslaved by some vile idol.  Remember when you were a rebel.  Remember when you set out from home and proudly embraced the life of a prodigal.  Remember when you were enslaved by your passions—the months and years you wasted—living like a slave to sin.  Remember when in pride you turned your back on God, and on His gifts, and on your family in Christ.  You were there.  And sometimes, that should cause you to tremble with tears.

        God would have you remember such things not to cause you guilt and shame, but so that you might remember and re-live your ransom—so that you might dwell on God’s gracious deliverance.  And to keep thanksgiving alive in you.  Only in remembering where we’ve been can we rejoice in all the ways God has led us and fed us and loved us, and made us to be His honored guests of grace.

        Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  You were there.  Even as Jesus said, “It is finished,” that ending was just a beginning.  What Israel thought was the end of the Exodus, turned out to be much more than the beginning of Promised Land living.  That journey onward and upward into the Promised Land foreshadows the very journey you are on.  Heaven is your home.  Because you were there. 

        Surely you remember the water that flowed from the Savior’s side—the same water that washed you and purified you from all sin and shame in the splash of your baptism.  Surely you remember the blood that flowed from the Savior’s side—blood that flows through time and space from the cross to the chalice to your lips, for the forgiveness of sins.  Through these precious means you enter the story of salvation.  Your history is redeemed by the eternal God who entered the tyranny of time, to give you life eternal.

        When you look back at where you have been, you will see it.  In each act of deliverance, in each episode of rescue, every time God snatched you from slavery—each of those moments from your history is a sign of God’s great love and His amazing grace, which culminated at Calvary.  He did this for all of us, who are all of us here alive today:  We were there.