First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Mark 10 and Philippians 3

“Whose Slave are You?”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

September 24, 2006

Dunlap, Macintosh, and Goodyear. These might be the clues of a "Jeopardy" question. "Who are men that invented products using rubber in the 19^th century, Alex?" I feel so smart when I know things like that. As I was reading Adam Hoschschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost if felt like I was building an arsenal of interesting facts to win the next time I played Trivial Pursuit. With each page I could imagine smiling when the final Jeopardy category was 19^th century Africa. Oh, yeah. Bring it on.

For instance the title, King Leopold’s Ghost, I had never connected the dots of this man to the Belgium Congo, to the adventurer Stanley, to the failed Mexican monarchy of Maximillian and Carlotta, let alone the manufacturing revolution that emerged with the use of rubber products before reading this book. Now, the connections are very, very clear.

Before reading this, I had no idea that rubber grew in vine form as well as a tree. I’ve actually seen rubber plantations in Malawi, driven through them and never connected the dots of what this meant until reading the book. And what a book it is. Highly commend it. I would describe it as a page turner if that didn’t infer the image of a cheap novel. And that, I have to say, is the most fascinating part of the story: while it sounds and reads like a crazy tale, it’s true.

The story of Leopold II who felt terribly incomplete without an empire to match his royal counter parts in France and England, how he created a society to foster the end of slavery, convinced the world he was on a mission to set up a “free state” in Africa, and boondoggled everyone. Leopold the II of Belgium simply hoodwinked the well intended of the world and ended up with a colonial empire of massive size and scope. He convened international conferences, gave out medals to those trying to aid Africa and the world applauded him as his agents forced village after village into slavery to build railroads and collect ivory. Yet, this was small scale before rubber.

Had the industrial use of rubber products not occurred at just the right time I think Leopold could have explained away the abuses, yet, at the end of the twenty year rubber boom, with the all wild profits reaped and the world’s attention brought to bear by crusading journalists and missionaries it was even beyond Leopold’s control to explain away 10 million dead. In order to harvest the rubber vines in the Congo, Leopold’s army and officials had starved, killed, or destroyed 10 million people.

But there was a real motivation for this. When discoveries and inventions enabled the use of rubber, making it a catalyst for manufacturing, it became clear that it would take twenty years to grow plantations where the rubber trees could be tapped like maples and their harvesting would be more predictable and economical. In this twenty year gap Leopold recognized that in the Congo lay the largest cache of vine rubber which could bridge the gap and market demand. Yet he only had those twenty years, for as soon as the plantations were ready the vine rubber would lose its value. So for twenty years the Congo was decimated to fuel the rubber boom (bicycle tires, belts for machines, waterproofing agents, etc.). The fuel in this instance was 10 million people.

Now Leopold did achieve a great fortune, build fabulous parks and royal halls and provide the Belgium government with a source of income in the 1880s and ‘90s. So these 10 million Congolese didn’t die in vain as it were. They did, though, die in haste. Haste, when ambition and greed and opportunity blend into a wicked brew.

Leopold is certainly not solitary as an empire builder whose haste kept up a breakneck speed at the expense of millions. His haste, though, is perhaps the most transparent. For it was really clear, the twenty years that is, which drove the vine harvesting, drove the brutal slavery, drove the decimation of the Congo. A real decision was made: do whatever it takes to get as much as you can.

As fate would have it I started another book the same time I was reading Hochshild’s Leopold’s Ghost. This second book was 180 degrees from the story of the rubber boom in the Congo. The title, Better Off, is the conclusion of an experiment. Eric Brende graduated from MIT and did something strange: he found an Amish community that would let him live in their midst for a year and half. Here was a man trained in the pristine chapel of technology going to live with a group of people who had rejected technology for more than a hundred years.

I tried to stop reading this book as I needed to focus on the story of Leopold for an upcoming forum, but I couldn’t. And I couldn’t help but feel they formed a strange compliment in contrast. For on the one hand in the Leopold story was the most transparent picture of haste, of ambition fueled with technological advance and the destruction it brought, and on the other hand was a very clear image of what happens when you don’t get caught up, when you are not fueled by haste. Even though one was a historical description of Europe and Africa and the other was a mundane account of daily life on a Pennsylvania farm, they were both looking at the same thing. They were both looking at haste.

It was truly a matter of a few moments before Brende and his wife saw this. Almost walking on the farm they felt the haste of their lives called into check by the absence of electricity and the way life gets slowed down without a car. All of sudden things were moving much slower. And yet, they weren’t standing around. The couple of suburbanites from Boston soon realized the hard work of a garden and cooking from scratch and keeping a fire going and hauling water and going to the bathroom outside and on and on and on.

Yet, as hard as it was, Brende’s conclusion dripped from every page: he felt better off. He soon lost the extra pounds he carried and gained a great appetite. The rhythms of the sun and moon and the seasons became his first glimpse of real time. He really had to plant at a certain time, harvest at the right time, pull weeds before it rained, milk the cows before they burst, eat when the food was cooked. Where conversations were to be had or not before, now his neighbors’ words were his television and radio and church was a gathering of a community and not the choice he made for spiritual growth.

Although I did find myself wanting to garden more after reading Brende’s book, I wasn’t ready to go Amish. And neither was he. After a year and half Brende and his wife and new born daughter while not ready to go Amish were ready to live without haste. To live recognizing that with every piece of technology we picked up we gave away some freedom, with every convenience we lost a part of our soul. And this is true.

What Leopold story offered as a kind of morality tale to the nth degree, Brende’s was a quiet suggestion that there are other choices than wringing our hands in collective guilt simply feeling trapped. Reading of the 10 million Congolese who died to feed the rubber boom of the 1880s and ‘90s, there is a kind of collective guilty head bow we’ve grown to do in the West. A kind of if only we’d known we wouldn’t have raped and pillaged and destroyed a continent for a few parks and a palace. Yet, what Brende’s time with the Amish showed so well is that its not simply feeling bad about the disasters technology has brought or divesting ourselves of them (which is not going to happen), it is simply a persistent question of how do we live with haste.

How fast do we live, believe we must live? None of us are destroying the Congo for rubber or deceiving Europe with medals and speeches. I didn’t read the story of Leopold and see an image of myself. I did though see the image of haste. The Amish, Brende came to see, use plenty of technology. They just don’t use it with haste. With every new possibility, every new invention, advance, leap forward, they say, “is this where we want to go?” Can we continue to be a people who raise our family, worship our God, and respect the earth if we use this?

While Brende found all the human foibles that dog the human soul living amongst the Amish, they were all there; he found them not in the newspaper, but in the conversations and life together. He didn’t find them in the tabloids or Dr. Phil, but on his porch and barn raising. Here, instead of being a something he could turn off or change the channel, they were his to keep. People living without haste, it turns out, live together.

When James and John say let us sit at your right and left, this has traditionally and perhaps correctly been interpreted as a warning against ambition. Don’t seek to be more than you are, be humble, be a servant. And that is not bad advice. When Leopold wanted an empire he wanted to sit at the right hand as it were, he wanted to be a big dog. The story of James and John’s request is just as transparent as Leopold. Yet, it leaves the impression that the only alternative to ambition, to haste as it were, is a kind of quiet, docile, submission of slavery.

I hear this voice when I am knee deep in an effort, a project. I hear the voices saying for whose glory are you working? And we should hear this voice. We should look to our life and wonder for what end are we striving? Yet, the alternative to doing too much or being ambitious, being driven by haste is not doing nothing.

Listen to Paul. He says, I was ambitious, my life was haste. And then I put that aside and now I am striving toward one purpose, one calling, one goal. Forgetting what lies behind I press on. This is something Brende found among the Amish. The opposite of haste wasn’t inertia or abandoning the soul’s need to strive; it was to find the right direction. We should be working hard, playing hard, and loving life; we should be doing these things with zest. Yet our lives should be moving in a direction that calls us to worship, brings us close to our family, let’s us know peace.

When Paul said, I am pressing on he was in prison. This wasn’t a career change he was talking about or a promotion like James and John were looking for. He was forging ahead toward a life of peace and purpose.

Now, when I look out here I am not finding a lot of Leopolds and would never suggest we turn Amish. As little style as I possess I want buttons and a shave. Yet, I can’t help but give pause when I hear people say their lives are too busy for worship. With all the opulence we possess I am struck by my desire for more as a sin. Do we want more things more than we want to know Christ?

Again, I don’t see Leopolds in the pews or the mirror, but I do see haste in my heart. Do you see haste? Can you hear it when you say things like I just couldn’t go to church I was too tired. Can you hear it when you think of your pledge and believe a tithe is beyond a possibility? What if the haste that takes away from worship from faithful stewardship from our families and our community is not worth it?

No one will ever look at Leopold’s castles and parks and say the 10 million Congolese lives lost were a worthy sacrifice. Yet why do we look at our life without a devotion to prayer, without a Sunday rest, without faithful stewardship, without forgiveness and peace, why do we look at these and say our haste was worth it?

It’s not. Keep your electricity, but stop watching hours upon hours of television and yet feel put upon coming to worship for an hour. Keep your phone, but invite your neighbor to worship. Keep your car, but walk your street in prayer, hoping for the families that they will find a life without haste. Keep your portfolios, but know that if you gain the world but lose your soul, it didn’t work out quite right.

When Paul said the former things are trash to me, he meant the life gained in haste. He didn’t put haste aside and become complacent; he put it aside so he could truly run, truly strive toward the kingdom of God. As long as we believe we can find what is good in life all the while living without worship, living without faithful stewardship, living without prayer, then we have exchanged the glory of God for our undoing. Lay aside the haste that keeps you from worship, from faithful living. Keep the buttons on your clothes, plant a garden in the spring to remember how it is we are a harvest of God’s love. Amen.