[He was late for an important meeting and so he took the short cut, the road that ran behind the airport. A Landcruiser with four men in it slowed down as it passed him going the other way. Then it turned and started to follow him…
They found the car about an hour later, pulled over to the side of the road - empty. Paul was gone, but - surprisingly - the briefcase full of cash that he had been on his way to deliver to the office was still there, on the floor of the car…
The ransom call came a few hours later, and everybody heaved a sigh of relief. It was just a regular kidnapping, nothing political, purely commercial…
This was in early 1990 and, less than six months before, another Canadian by the name of John Tarswell had been abducted and killed, probably by members of Hezb-i Islami. Paul's situation was much less dangerous. He had been kidnapped by members of the Afridi tribe. The Afridis had a long history, generations in fact, of kidnapping people for ransom. They didn't have much in the way of farmland, mainly rugged mountains, so the Afridis supplemented their income by kidnapping people, taking them off into the mountains and holding them for ransom.
What they didn't know was that Paul was a
missionary. Although he was Canadian he was married to a Finnish woman and a
member of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission. Like most missions the
Finns had a policy that they would never pay a ransom to release a hostage. I'm
on the board of WEC International so I happen to have access to their
statement, but it is basically the same as the one we signed when we went out
to
"I, the undersigned, fully recognise that the nature and location of my work may result in kidnapping, extortion, unlawful arrest, accusation, imprisonment, personal injury or death. I voluntarily choose to accept the risks involved in my work and hereby release WEC International from any and all claims which I, or anyone of my family of friends, may make against WEC International in connection with such events. If abducted or imprisoned, I understand that appropriate officers of WEC International will do all in their power both directly and indirectly through my Government or other channels to obtain my release, but that they will not agree to ransom demands or engage in political bargaining."
(Of course there’s a good reason for this.
Since the Korean government gave in to the demands of the Taliban last year in
order to get their citizens back it has been open season for kidnapping in
In the end Paul was released after a few
days, not by negotiation but because God intervened supernaturally. Another
friend, Joel de Hart, who was held in central
It’s strange, but when people like me (pastors,
theologians) talk about the cross, we tend to jump straight to what Paul said
about it and not really deal with what Jesus himself said about his impending
death. True, the main focus of Jesus’ teaching was the
[slide 1]
For most of us the idea of ransom is restricted to TV shows and movies, or something that happens to strangers in far away countries. But for Jesus and his disciples it was much closer to home.
The basic idea behind a ransom is that a price is paid to set someone free. Most of the time when the word appears in the news these days it’s about a kidnapping for political or financial gain. But in Jesus’ time it had a much wider usage.
One of the main ways in which ransom was
used in Jesus’ time had to do with prisoners of war.
[Most people know the story of Robin Hood.
There have been at least 17 movies or TV shows made about him. That story took
place in the 12th century when Richard I of
Compare that with the $4 million that
That kind of money was a long way from the experience of most people in Jesus’ day, but a way that ransom touched the lives of a much larger number of people had to do with the release of slaves.
If you had a family member or a friend who
was captured in war and made a slave, you could buy their freedom. You could
ransom them. Essentially what you did was buy them, so they then became your
slave, then you set them free. In the 17th century, Quakers and
others would do the same with slaves in
So, whereas for us ransom is this really obscure idea, for Jesus’ disciples it was something that was well understood. All Canadians understand the idea of having to pay a speeding ticket. Even if you’ve never have had to do it yourself, you know what I’m talking about. You know about speed limits and what happens when you break them and are caught. It’s just something you know as a Canadian. In the same way, understanding how ransom worked was just part of living in the first century.
But it goes further than that. Not only did
the culture around them understand ransom as a way to set people free; Jesus
and his disciples were Jews, steeped in the Old Testament. And, according to
the Old Testament, if you had a family member who had sold themselves into
slavery to pay off their debts, you had a responsibility to try and pay
whatever it cost to set them free. Lev 25 says, 47
‘If… one of your countrymen becomes poor and
sells himself… he retains the right of redemption after he has sold
himself. One of his relatives may redeem him: 49 An uncle or a
cousin or any blood relative in his clan may redeem him…
[slide 2]
This passage talks about redemption. It says that a relative can redeem someone by buying them out of slavery. “Ransom” and “redeem” have the same root. A redeemer is someone who ransoms someone else. There’s an Old Testament word for someone who does that. They’re called a go’el, a kinsman redeemer, someone who is part of the family and who will step in to rescue a relative in difficulty.
[slide 3]
That passage in Leviticus goes on to say, 54 ‘Even if he is not redeemed… he and his
children are to be released in the Year of Jubilee, 55 for the
Israelites belong to me as servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out
of
The Year of Jubilee was supposed to come every 50 years, when all debts were released and everybody got a fresh start. And, as Eric pointed out for us a couple of weeks ago, when Jesus began his ministry he began it in Luke 4 with these words from Isaiah 61
[slide 4]
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And what is the year of the Lord’s favour? The Jubilee, when all slaves are set free and all debts cancelled. Jesus clearly understood his ministry as being about setting people free.
So, when Jesus spoke of his coming death as a ransom, it resonated with his disciples at one level; the level of their Greco-Roman culture where ransom was the standard way to gain freedom for prisoners of war and slaves.
It also resonated at a deeper level. As Jews, it connected with the Old Testament idea of a kinsman redeemer, someone who would pay a price to set a family member free.
But it went even deeper than that, because of the time of year that Jesus died. Jesus was crucified in the week of Passover.
Every spring for the last three and a half
thousand years, to this very day, Jews have celebrated Passover. Passover
remembers when God stepped in and rescued a rag-tag bunch of slaves from
slavery in
The story is told in Exodus 11. Moses
had been bugging Pharaoh to let his people go free. (He used real bugs!) And the
last plague, in Exodus 11, is the death of all the first born of
This is what the people were celebrating in
[slide 5]
And in the midst of all that expectation of
liberty and freedom, at the table as he eats his last meal with his friends,
Jesus says, 24 “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out
for many,”
Jesus is saying that, like the original Passover lambs, his death will set people free and create a new community under God. But there is a price. The price is his death on the cross.
Last week we looked at Genesis 3 and we asked the question, “What’s the problem?” We ended up with the answer that the problem is a whole mess of things; starting with not trusting God and spiralling down into deceit, shame, fear, brokenness and failure. What the Bible calls “sin.” These are things that control our lives. We’re prisoners to them. In the same way that slaves are forced by their masters to do things that they don’t want to, so our sin (our distrust, our fear, our shame) forces us to do things that we know aren’t right. We’re slaves to our own brokenness.
Even though God made us for fellowship with himself, we’re lost. We’re separated from God and imprisoned in destructive habits and lifestyles that will destroy us. We need a liberator, a redeemer, someone who will ransom us and set us free. Jesus is that someone. He has paid the price for our freedom and he calls everyone to come and accept his offer of release.
[A young boy once built a small
sailboat. He spent weeks carefully carving the hull, tying the rigging, sewing
the sails and the painting it all. Once complete this sailboat was the best
sailboat the little boy had ever seen, it was beautiful, it was his.
Every day after school the young boy would
take the sailboat down to the creek and sail it for until the sun went down.
One day however, after some rain, the current was much stronger that usual and
the young boy could not keep up with his sailboat and it got lost.
Every day after that, the young boy would
walk down the creek hoping to find his lost sailboat. After a few weeks the
young boy had walked further than he had ever gone and around a bend in the
creek he came to a small swimming hole with a small sailboat in the centre. It
was scratched and the sail was a little torn, but it was his sailboat, found at
last.
Just as he was about to reach for his
sailboat another boy appeared and shouted "Get away from that. It's
mine!"
"But it isn't yours, it's mine. I made
it."
"I found it so it's mine!" cried
the second boy.
"Let me buy it back then?" pleaded
the maker of the little sailboat.
"How much do you have?"
"Promise to come back here tomorrow, and
I'll show you." With that the young boy ran home as fast as he could.
He gathered all his toys, his comics, and
marbles, his soccerball and boots, even his most prized pocket knife and
bundled them all into a backpack.
When the next afternoon came around the young
boy took up his backpack of treasures and ran of to the small swimming hole.
There waiting was his sailboat, in the hand of the other boy.
The young boy put his backpack on the ground
and opened it, allowing the other boy to see all that was inside. The other boy’s
eyes lit up for a moment and then a very serious look came over his face.
"How much of that can I have for the
sailboat?" he asked.
"I’ll give you everything." was the
young boy's reply.
The deal was done.
The boy took his boat, started home and said, "Little boat, I love you even more now. You are twice mine. Once because I made you, but then you were lost to me, and now I have bought you."]
This is a picture of what Christ has done for us. As our Creator, He made us and owned us, but by our rebellion we were lost to Him because of our sin. It took Jesus' death—an unbelievable price—to buy us back. Those who are His children are twice his. He has bought us back from slavery to sin and set us free to live for him.
[slide 6]
When you put together the two things that Jesus says about his own death in Mark, you find that in one act, dying on the cross in our place, he does two things. He ransoms us (he sets us free from our sin and our past) and he calls us into covenant, into the new community of those he has ransomed with his life.
This is the gospel.