Well, I want to congratulate our lectors this morning,
because that’s exactly what they did! Yes, you, too, can go home astound your
friends and family by telling them “I read a whole book of the Bible
today!” Or, you can flop down in the
living room chair and exclaim “Whew! Today I sat in church long enough for them
to have read a whole book of the Bible today!”
That’s got to be worth something! Yessiree! Our lector read a whole of Paul's
Letter to Philemon, (well, except for four verses that the lectionary people
cut out for some strange reason, but that’s close enough.)
Okay, okay, Philemon isn't a long theological treatise like
Romans or Galatians. It’s not a double-barreled letter like 1st and
2nd Corinthians. By comparison, it’s kind of a bookmark. Or more
precisely a bookplate. But it gives Paul and a few other early Christians a
very human face because it sheds light on a culture that is so very different
from ours and a glimpse of how real, live early Christians actually lived their
lives.
Here's the story: Onesimus was a slave, and he was a
Christian. Philemon was a Christian, too. But Philemon owned Onesimus. Apparently, Onesimus ran away or else did something
against Philemon's wishes. And after Onesimus ran away he somehow ended up working
with the apostle Paul.
Paul is schmoozing Philemon, laying it on thick, because he
wants Philemon to let Onesimus go so that he would have the freedom to travel
with Paul. Was sending Onesimus home to be freed and reconciled or would he face
the music instead?
Notice that Paul is not above a little Christian
arm-twisting, because even though the letter is written to one man, you know
that the entire congregation or cluster of congregations around Ephesus, where
Philemon lived, was watching to see what he would do. Would he welcome Onesimus home as
a brother in Christ or take him back as a runaway slave and punish him? Of
course, Philemon could have split the difference: welcome Onesimus home as a
Christian slave with little or no punishment. But that’s not what Paul was
asking…he wanted Onesimus to come back to Paul a free man.
Okay. That’s nice. So what? This letter is so short that it’s
practically a bookmark in the New Testament. The average Christian doesn’t even
know it’s there. And, besides, the letter’s context is so totally and completely
different than ours that it might seem totally irrelevant to us. (By the way,
in the ante-bellum South, slave owners hated this letter and either twisted
it justify themselves or wished it was cut out of the Bible entirely!)
But look again. Here are three people (Paul, Onesimus and
Philemon) struggling to live out their faith while being challenged by it over
and over again. There’s an awful lot packed into a couple dozen Bible verses!
I don’t know about you, but what Jesus says in today’s
Gospel makes me pretty uncomfortable, too. He says that when we follow him, we are
to hate—hate! —family, kinship, possessions, and everything we hold
dear. What Jesus means is that it will take work, discipline—and practice! — to put Christ at the
forefront of our living and following Jesus will challenge our priorities and
change our decision-making. If you don’t believe me, ask Philemon.
Paul is asking Philemon to put aside his pride and treat
Onesimus as a brother in Christ. It doesn’t matter if Philemon is right and has
custom (and the law!) on his side. Paul in fact sets that all aside when he to writes
Philemon these words, “I am sending him back to you, no longer as a slave, but
as a beloved brother.” Look at what Paul is doing. He does not appeal to
Philemon on the basis of law, but on the basis of love, in verse eight, he says:
“Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would
rather appeal to you on the basis of love.”
Paul is asking Philemon as a true Christian to accept
Onesimus back as a brother in Christ, and not as a slave under the law! Paul is
asking Philemon the slave-owner to receive Onesimus, as a Christian brother.
Paul is asking Philemon to choose grace.
The brilliance of this move is that Paul neither breaks the
law of the land nor the law of the gospel. He says, “Yes, go back to your
former home, but as new people in Christ.”
I love this little letter because it shows us what faith looks when the rubber meets the road. And it also shines a harsh light on the goings on in today’s world. I mean, what issues and relationships try our faith today? If someone were to appeal to us on the basis of faith to change something in our lives, what would it be? And what would be the effect of that change? In a world where people get wound up over everything from migration to wealth and poverty, to how we might deal with school shootings and who go mildly berserk over how we memorialize the victims of night-club massacres-- I mean, painting over cross walks at 3 a.m. Really?-- what Paul is asking of Philemon cuts to the quick.
And just in case you think that I or someone in the Episcopal Church
chose this passage just to needle us, remember that this letter was written two
millennia ago and was added to the lectionary fifty years ago. After all that
time, the promise of this little letter shows us that the deeper we go in our
Christian living, and the more we conform our lives to Christ, the bigger the
change we will see, the greater the challenges we’ll feel, the more lives we
will touch with grace and hope.
So, how did it turn out? What did Philemon do? What happened to Onesimus? We don’t precisely know but we have some clues.
There's some
evidence in the early Christian church that there was a "Bishop
Onesimus" in the city of Ephesus in Greece, a church founded by Paul. The
story goes that this Bishop was so grateful for the witness and Christian love
of St. Paul that he preserved many of his epistles. And to prove his bona
fides to collect Paul's epistles, he included this little letter showing how he was freed from one
life and set on course for something new.
Today we’ve had a taste of what first century Christianity
was like in the first decades after Jesus’ resurrection. And guess what? It doesn’t look all that
different from what people like you and me must deal with every day!
Imagine what would happen if Christians today approached
each other and our tough choices with the same sense of prayer, compassion,
risk, and hope that Paul, Onesimus and Philemon exercised together! What would
life be like if following Christ was more important in our everyday living than
kinship, politics, country and custom? Would it be easy? Probably not! Ask
Philemon! Would it be life-changing? You bet! Ask Onesimus! Would it make a
difference? Look around! Because right here, right now, is what faith looks
like where the rubber meets the road.
+ + + + + + + + +
Scripture for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, Year C, September 7, 2025
Website for St. Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida
Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here
Here is the bulletin for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, September 7, 2025, St Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida.
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