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June 4th, 2002
Received by H.R.
Cuenca, Ecuador.
My dear brother:
Many days have already passed without any opportunity for me to
deliver a message. I hope your condition will improve and become
stable. I still have much to communicate.
In my last message I said that I would speak on how Jesus expressed
himself on slavery, and why those teachings were not integrated
into the gospels.
Some time ago, I wrote:
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“In the following evening, Buni, accompanied
by several servants who served as his bodyguards, came to Joseph's
house in order to speak with Jesus.” |
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It is true, this is the message in which I presented on the meeting
of Nicodemus and Jesus. Remember this sentence.
I have also written that on many occasions that the poor peasants
sold themselves as slaves to the great landowners.
Now, when you in the modern world hear the word “slave,”
you think of the images presented in the historical movies on the
Roman Empire, where enormous armies of slaves worked and died in
the construction of the big public buildings, in the galleys, in
the sulfur mines of Sicily, etc.
Partly that image is correct, because the Roman Empire acquired
immense quantities of prisoners of war during its campaigns of expansion,
and used them for these ends. However, apart from this unhappy group
of people who lived under inhuman conditions, there was another
class of slaves, who worked in the houses of the rich patricians
of the city, and on the large landed properties. They had a better
life, and many of them were even able to save money and to buy their
freedom, since their owners often allowed them to establish separately
their own small business. I need not mention the class of slaves
that dedicated themselves to the education of the children of the
rich Roman citizens, Greek slaves of high culture, philosophers
and poets. It is obvious, then, that slavery was a social institution
with many facets, and the only thing that they had in common, was
the lack of personal freedom. Even that lack of freedom was something
that was very relative.
However, in the Palestine of Jesus' time, things were very different.
Slavery did not exist in such a widespread form as in Rome, neither
had it existed in this form in ancient Greece.
The price of a slave in the markets of Jerusalem fluctuated by
very wide margins, of course, depending on capacity, age, physical
strength, or a slave's education. But for a worker who would work
in the fields, not more than thirty to a hundred denarii were paid.
And considering that a hired peasant received approximately one
denarius per day, it turns out to be a very low price, equivalent
to the wage of a peasant for one to three months. But this one denarius
per day hardly sufficed to feed and dress the poor man. And the
rich landowner also had to feed and dress his slaves, which almost
cost him the same as paying for a free peasant. Therefore, it was
much more popular to hire landless peasants for working in the fields
of the rich people than to buy slaves.
As an "added difficulty" for the rich folk, the Mosaic
Law prescribed that they had to set free their slaves after seven
years of servitude.
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"If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years
he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for
nothing,” |
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determines the Book of Exodus. They certainly
did not consider slavery a good business.
The slaves who worked in the urban houses of the
rich class, as in the case of Nicodemus, often maintained their
own family, they had wives and children. When the seven years of
servitude finished, the slaves could sometimes abandon their master
together with their wives.
Says the Law:
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“If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself:
if he be married, then his wife shall go out with him.
If his master give him a wife, and she bear him sons or daughters;
the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and
he shall go out by himself.”
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That, of course, constituted in many cases a serious situation
for the slave who loved his family and did not want to abandon them.
And he had no money to buy their freedom. Nevertheless,
the Law offered him the following alternative:
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“But if the servant shall plainly say, I
love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out
free: then his master shall bring him unto God, and shall bring
him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall
bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for
ever.” |
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With this desperate act, the poor slave could keep his family,
but he lost his freedom forever.
On the other hand, when the master saw such loyalty, to him or
to the slave’s family, he recognized this man’s great
value. The administrators of the large landed properties, the personal
secretaries, the bodyguards, they all used to be recruited from
the lines of those men with perforated ears.
Similar scenes like that of Nicodemus’ visit happened frequently.
And Jesus always called this our attention:
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"Look, there comes the rich master with the people in
whom he trusts. They are not men of his class, whom he calls
friends, because actually, he does not trust them. They are
not hired people, because their loyalty only goes as far as
the master's money reaches. No, they are his servants, those
with perforated ears, who have given themselves voluntarily
because of love. Although the master may not be aware of this,
but deep inside his heart he knows that people motivated by
love are noble people, the only ones worthy of his trust.
And those are the ones who he recompenses.
And so also our Father in Heaven acts. Those who give themselves
unreservedly and voluntarily, to them He gives His Blessings.
And even more, He adopts them as His true children and the
heirs of His Kingdom."
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Yes, I know you hoped to hear that Jesus had attacked slavery frontally.
But that never happened. Firstly, it did not exist in Palestine
in the form that you have in mind. Secondly, slavery was an accepted
institution and regulated by the Mosaic Law, considered the selfsame
word of the Lord. However, Jesus' teaching, the teaching of unconditional
love, implicitly disqualified slavery as incompatible with the way
to God.
The Master's hard social criticism can only be found rudimentarily
in the Bible, because those Christian leaders who felt uncomfortably
alluded to by it erased much of what he had said. However, in the
letter of the Master's brother you can still hear the echo of the
selfsame Master's voice.
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“Suppose one man comes into your meeting well-dressed
and with a gold ring on his finger, and another man, obviously
poor, arrives in shabby clothes. If you pay special attention
to the well-dressed man by saying, "Please sit here —
it’s an excellent seat", and say to the poor man,
"You stand over there, or if you must sit, sit on the
floor by my feet", doesn’t that prove that you are
making class-distinctions in your mind, and setting yourselves
up to assess a man’s quality from wrong motives?
For do notice, my dear brothers, that God chose poor men,
whose only wealth was their faith, and made them heirs to
the kingdom promised to those who love him. And if you behave
as I have suggested, it is, the poor man that you are insulting.
Look around you. Isn’t it the rich who are always trying
to rule your lives, isn’t it the rich who drag you into
litigation? Isn’t it usually the rich who blaspheme the
glorious name by which you are known?
If you obey the royal Law, expressed by the scriptures, "Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself", all is well. But
once you allow any invidious distinctions to creep in, you
are sinning, you stand condemned by that Law. Remember that
a man who keeps the whole Law but for a single exception is
none-the-less a law-breaker.”
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This is a very fine point that we will discuss
on another occasion.
“The one who said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery"
also said, "Thou shalt do no murder". If you were to keep
clear of adultery but were to murder a man you would have become
a breaker of the whole Law.
Anyway, you should speak and act as men who will be judged by the
law of freedom. The man who makes no allowances for others will
find none made for him. Mercy may laugh in the face of judgment.
Now what use is it, my brothers, for a man to say he "has
faith" if his actions do not correspond with it? Could that
sort of faith save anyone’s soul? If a fellow man or woman
has no clothes to wear and nothing to eat, and one of you says "Good
luck to you I hope you’ll keep warm and find enough to eat",
and yet gives them nothing to meet their physical needs, what on
earth is the good of that?
Yet that is exactly what a bare faith without
a corresponding life is like — quite dead.
A man could challenge us by saying, "You have faith and I
have merely good actions. Well, all you can do is to show me a faith
without corresponding actions, but I can show you by my actions
that I have faith as well." So you believe that there is one
God? That’s fine. So do all the devils in hell, and shudder
in terror! For, my dear shortsighted man, can’t you see far
enough to realize that faith without the right actions is dead and
useless?”
And because of this statement, this letter was almost expelled
from the canon of the Protestants who proclaim "justification
through faith."
Jesus did not call to retire from this world, but to help actively,
to dedicatedly work for improving the situation in this world, your
world. It is a call to all, so that they shall make an effort to
create a world where it is worthwhile living for each and everyone.
This is all for today. I say goodbye with my blessings.
Your brother in Christ,
Judas
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