9 September 2007

Philemon 1-21

Don’t you love to get letters? I don’t mean junk mail and bills. I mean real mail: hand-addressed envelopes, a note inside from a loved one, words penned just to you. Of course, with email and the telephone so prominent these days, mail such as that has decreased. Now, I’m the last person who’s going to complain about email, so this sermon isn’t a complaint against modern communication methods. But I must say, there is something about going to the mailbox and finding a letter, a card, a note there that’s addressed to you.

Of course, for most of our human history, written letters were modern communication. For centuries, that’s how people at a distance communicated. Letters conveyed everything from negotiations between kingdoms to people expressing their love for each other. But even letter-writing was a luxury during certain periods of our history. Paper, ink and writing utensils were not as common as they are now. So letters, during these eras, were something extremely special.

And so it was during the first century, c.e. But spreading the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ was fortunately considered important enough. Thus we have a catalog of letters, mostly from Paul, to others about what it means to be Christian.

Today’s letter, which morphed into a book of the Bible, one of my favorite books, in fact, is no different. Corey read it pretty much in its entirety; there’s only a few closing verses missing. Paul wrote his letter to an important person, Philemon, about Onesimus. Onesimus is Philemon’s slave. Slavery was a common condition in the Greco-Roman world. In fact, it probably saved many people from starvation. But don’t get me wrong; for any positives of slavery, the negatives far outweighed them. Oddly, enough, this book, which deals with the slave Onesimus, was used by both sides of the slavery debate in our country’s history. Both pro- and anti-slavery proponents prior to and during the Civil War found it useful in their attempts to move good Christian folks to their side. But that’s getting ahead of my story.

Paul is in prison as he writes this letter. He has come in contact with Onesimus there. We don’t know how or why. Is Onesimus also a prisoner in jail with Paul? Or has he come to visit Paul in prison knowing Paul from Paul’s stopovers at Philemon’s house? Has Onesimus run away from Philemon’s household? We’ll never know the circumstances of their being together. But clearly Paul has a fond admiration of the slave, even going so far as to say Onesimus is his son.

Paul’s letter to Philemon is very personal. It’s a request that Philemon accept Onesimus back as a Christian brother. It’s that simple. There is disagreement among scholars and others though as to whether Paul is asking Philemon to free Onesimus. It’s a tricky thing, either way. But Paul is pointing out that Onesimus, as a fellow Christian, should have a special status with Philemon.

As I said, slavery was very common during this time. It was accepted as an economic fact of life. But there were roots of differences in the Jewish community, as Paul would have known. There were evidently rules that a Jew could not have another Jewish slave for life. There were conditions under which a Jewish slave would have to be released into freedom.

But in the Greco-Roman world, there were no such prohibitions. People, rich people, had slaves. It was a fact of life. Paul’s request, if indeed he was requesting that Philemon release Onesimus, was first of all rooted in Jewish law and secondly an odd request in the Roman world. But he made it nonetheless.

It may have been a bit of a surprise to Philemon when he read the letter. Is Paul meddling? Is he going where he shouldn’t go? Of course, Paul wouldn’t think so, because this is a matter of faith; of faith in Jesus Christ. Paul famously writes elsewhere that there is no more slave or free but all are equal under Jesus Christ. But to Philemon, a church leader, it created at the least undoubtedly some discomfort.

Because here was slavery, the status quo, on one hand,. And on the other hand was this new Christian way of being that may have been calling Philemon to a doing things a different way. Philemon was caught between two worlds; the old Roman way of being and the really new Christian behaviors, still a world that was being explored. Philemon probably never gave a thought about owning slaves until Paul’s letter arrived in his 1st century mailbox. Paul’s letter put a new perspective on everything in his world. The blinders came off and Philemon had to look anew at how things were done.


What in our culture might come under the same scrutiny if we stopped and looked at it through the lenses of our Christian faith? What might change if we actually took our faith completely seriously and applied it to our culture? What letter is going to arrive in our spiritual mailboxes that will change the way we look at things?

The place of women in the church and in our culture is one such example. Some of us believe that the Bible calls us to new understandings of the equality of the sexes. Now it’s not much of an issue for us in our congregation, perhaps. But there are plenty of congregations and entire denominations which still struggle with this issue. We’ve been called to pull off the blinders of sexism and recognize that women and men are equal under Jesus Christ. Just as Philemon was called to do with slavery in the person of Onesimus.

Perhaps we can count the struggle for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people in this. Perhaps that’s something we have cultural blinders on and can’t see what we are called to do. It’s more difficult, for sure, but is it possible that Jesus Christ, through our Christian faith, is calling for a new way of being that explodes cultural understanding? Is it possible that the marriage issue, allowing people of the same gender who love each other to marry one another, is an issue for which our cultural blinders need to come off and we need to come to an new understanding of?

What other issues might we be blinded to? Of course, we can’t tell, because we are blinded by our culture. But what we have to be observant for are those letters—letters of and from our faith—that will guide us away from our culture and into a new faithful way of understanding. Once those letters arrive, in whatever form they might come, we must pay attention to them and heed them as if they were from Jesus himself.

Don’t you love to get mail—real letters that are for you—just for you? Watch for epistles of love that change the way you act, the way you behave. Watch for signs that the blinders need to come off and that the new is about to begin. Check your mailboxes.