It's a terrible story but sadly not a one-off, for during 2005, at least 40 Lithuanian women were brought to Britain as sex slaves. And this is probably only the tip of a very large iceberg, since there are thought to be something like 500,000 illegal immigrants in the UK alone. The illegal sex trade using young girls is world-wide.
There are still many people in the world today who need rescuing from lives of utter degradation and misery and if we were to open our eyes and move out of our churches, we could find misery and degradation on our own doorsteps. There are lots of young people who are slaves to drugs and lots more who are slaves to alcohol. There are young people who are prostitutes, young people who are thieves and young people suffering from sexual diseases.
Of course, this is not restricted just to young people and there are millions of youngsters who have none of these problems. But as Christians, should we be doing something practical and active to try to help rescue the disadvantaged in our own society?
The author sometimes know as Third Isaiah is thought to have written towards the very end of the Old Testament period, some time after 432 BC when all the different groups had returned from exile in Babylon. Now that the exiles were settling down to life back home, Third Isaiah could see that social justice was a big issue and he was very concerned that the disadvantaged should be properly cared for within the "new" society.
The prophet starts by confirming his credentials. He tells the people that he has been called by God and is speaking in God's name:
"The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me."
Then he goes on to say what God has called him to do:
"He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
This is a well known paragraph because it was the text Jesus used when he preached his first sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19.) It didn't go down too well, especially when Jesus added, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," whereupon the people became so incensed at Jesus' words that they tried to murder him (Luke 4:28-29).
The original Isaiah scroll is much longer than the few words chosen by Jesus, so that the Isaiah passage reads: "God has sent me . to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour and the day of vengeance of our God." But "the day of vengeance of our God" may be more to do with God exercising his judgment on behalf of his people rather than against them, for the word translated as "vengeance" can also be translated as "rescue", and the passage goes on to spell out the comfort and healing which God is offering to his people.
"The year of the Lord's favour" comes from Leviticus 25:10 and refers to a jubilee year. This was a year dedicated to God, a year of liberty in which all should return home to their families. It was also a year of rest in which the land produced without being sown.
In today's passage, all this comfort and joy and delight is promised not just to the Israelites but to all nations, because God promises to rescue everyone and to heal humanity's rift with himself. Just as seeds grow into plants that can be seen, so God will cause people to be joined with him and to grow in him.
Christians see this healing and growth as happening through Jesus. Jesus rescued humanity from its slavery to all those things which keep it in thrall, things like the constant need for more, the worship of power, the desire to put self at the centre of life. But Jesus also came for a more practical rescue act. He came to rescue the downtrodden, convicts and criminals, and the deeply unhappy. Jesus fulfilled this mission in his own life, for we know that the poor and the outcast flocked to him and that he made friends with those outside society's boundaries.
We are now Jesus' workers on earth. How do we fulfill his rescue mission? How do we care for the homeless and the hungry, for the careworn and for criminals, for the depressed, for drunks, for the mentally ill and for drug addicts? How do we care for our young who have lost their way? What sort of rescuers are we?
Like God, do we love justice so much that we'll do anything to get a fair deal for the disadvantaged? Or do we sit back, spending our Christmas money and enjoying our Christmas cheer and conveniently forgetting that our society has its own poor?
We are God's workers on earth. Let's prove that we follow him.
