Scripture text: Philemon
Pastor note: I want to offer up both an explanation and a note of gratitude. I say "presumably" above because I missed Sunday morning due to personal illness. (Curse you, ulcerative colitis!) I did email this manuscript to several members of my congregation, one of whom I presume spoke these words in my stead. To me, that's a wonderful statement of the true nature of ministry. As pastor and laity, we support one another in our times of need, walking together and holding each other up on this journey of faith. Whoever of you (which remains unknown as of this post) filled in, you have my thanks. God bless.
I get to break out my archive of useless knowledge this week. (Not that I don’t frequently on other matters.) Where in the Revised Common Lectionary do we get the text of an entire book of the Bible as one of the readings? Today, of course, when we read Philemon in its entirety.
The book of Philemon is more than just fodder for dumb trivia questions though. It stands in a unique place in the New Testament among Paul’s many letters. We’re used to Paul writing letters. He writes to the church of Ephesus, the church of Corinth, the church of Rome, the church of wherever. He writes to all sorts of churches all over the known world at the time, addressing their circumstances, their strengths, and their failures, and we are the better for having his thoughts still with us today. Those letters are often grand treatises of theology and practice, giving us a model to follow for forming and maintaining the church today.
Personal correspondence is much rarer among those letters. Yes, we have the so-called Pastoral letters where Paul writes to Timothy or Titus about their duties as leaders of the church, but most scholars do not believe these are truly written by St. Paul, but by someone speaking in his name and authority. Philemon is, however, authentically Paul, and it is both a wonderful window into the mind of this man who has created so much of the form of modern Christianity as well as a powerful statement on how Christians are meant to conduct themselves in regards to one another.
Here’s the context of the letter. One of Philemon’s slaves, a man named Onesimus has run away and fled to Paul who is serving one of his many prison terms as a apostle of Jesus Christ. Now Paul’s a Roman citizen, so he gets a slightly more relaxed form of imprisonment (membership has its privileges), so he can people assist him while under arrest. Onesimus becomes one of those assistants and proves quite valuable.
But Onesimus is still a slave; he is Philemon’s property. As a runaway, Onesimus is eligible for all manner of terrible punishment, including death. Paul can’t in good conscience keep Onesimus for himself. What to do?
The core problem, of course, is slavery. Here is a human being, a child of God, a baptized child of Jesus Christ, who is property of another human being, another child of God, another baptized child of Jesus Christ. Paul sees the problem as clearly as we do. This isn’t right. These two men, Philemon and Onesimus, are brothers. They are peers. They are equals or at least should be. And it is from that idea that Paul formulates his response.
I could command you, Paul insinuates, drawing upon his well-earned authority as one of the major apostles of the Church, to do what’s right. This is how he begins his appeal to Philemon. But he quickly changes tone, but I’d rather appeal to you out of love. There’s that word again. As I’ve said in recent sermons, we keep coming back to it. It’s about love. It’s always about love.
Here is your slave, Onesimus, Paul writes. I love him. He is my son. He is my brother. He has proven of immense use to me (that comes out of a pun that Paul uses here. The name Onesimus means “useless one” in Greek, so he’s using humor here as well.) He is a good man. Do what’s right, for his sake and for mine.
We don’t know what happens to Onesimus, since we don’t get Philemon’s response to Paul’s letter. One can hope that Paul’s appeal struck a chord and Onesimus was granted the freedom that all people have by right.
But what does it all mean to us? Well, again it comes back to love and Jesus’ call to love our neighbor, ourselves, our enemies, and (most importantly) God. How do we live that out? Jesus himself gives numerous examples. He heals the sick, welcomes the stranger, eats with the outcast, and dies and rises again for the sake of the whole world. Paul is living into that model himself. He has gone to the four corners of the world to spread the gospel of Jesus and it's landed him in prison. And now comes this moment to put into practice all that he’s been taught by Christ. Let Onesimus go. He is your brother. Love him as such.
We in these modern times should take this lesson to heart as well. We here in America carry an ugly legacy of our time of slavery. We fought a bitter and bloody civil war to resolve the question of whether people who are different from us white folk are, in fact, human beings worthy of rights. That battle did not end with Appomattox, but continued through resistance against Jim Crow, and the KKK, and even today we do not give people of color a fair shake in our society. As a certain football quarterback’s defiance of our patriotic traditions has uncomfortably reminded us.
What would Paul’s words to us be about our brothers and sisters who are different by race, national origin, sexual orientation, or whatever other dividing line we’ve put between us and them? It’s not hard to guess because it always comes back to the same thing: love. Love them. What does love demand of us? To do right by them. To treat them with dignity and respect. To listen to them when they speak of what their lives and circumstances are like. To discard unhelpful and hurtful stereotypes like the lazy Mexican or the thuggish gangbanger. To recognize our common humanity, our brotherhood and sisterhood with one another.
Dismantling racism, sexism, and all the other isms, phobias, and bigotries that plague our society is going to take more work than simply abstaining from using certain insults and opposing certain supremacist organizations. It’s about building each other up. It’s about walking together, arm in arm to build a better world.
What would you do if you were Philemon? Most of us, given that hypothetical, would free Onesimus without hesitation. Well, do that, here and now, for all the Onesimus’ of the world! That’s our calling as Christians. That’s what the kingdom of God inbreaking upon the world looks like. For God so loved the world...the whole world to give us Jesus. He came for everyone, regardless of these human-created dividers between us. He loves everyone and the people of the world see THAT when we as Christians live it out in our lives in the world.
Much like Paul talking to Philemon, I’m not really telling you anything you don’t already know. You’ve been taught love here in Church from the first day you came. Just do it. Do it for Christ and do it for them. Love will build us a better world. It starts with you and me discarding the world’s lies about what people are like and choosing that path of love. Go forth and love. Amen.
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