Text: Philemon 8-21
Focus: Forgiveness
Function: to help people see how to lay down their privilege to love one another
8For this reason, though I am more than bold enough in Christ to command you to do the right thing, 9yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. 10I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. 11Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me. 12I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. 13I wanted to keep him with me so that he might minister to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel, 14but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. 15Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for the long term, 16no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
17So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to me. 19I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. 20Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. 21Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask.
Let me just sum up what is happening in this letter. Paul is in prison and nobody fed prisoners. They were dependent on others to bring them food. Paul was a model prisoner and was granted some freedom. He had enough favor to have a person call on him regularly to help with his needs and that person was an escaped slave named Onesimus.
Previously Paul had introduced Philemon, the slave owner to Jesus Christ and he became a convert. And Paul tells him that he owes him his life for that. And now Paul is faced with the moral dilemma of what to do with this escaped slave. He wants to free him, but doesn’t have the authority.
This is a good story of what it meant to the early Church to flesh out the teachings of Jesus in the new Kingdom that Jesus came to establish.
The Bible, taken literally, can be used to justify about anything. During the years that America allowed the enslavement of what they called colored peoples, Slave owners justified their position of oppression sort of through scripture.
It isn’t that old of a history. My own mother, as she was grappling with what it meant to be anti-racist after being exposed to the meanness of Jim Crow laws while she was serving the Lord with my father at a Church in Tennessee had to overcome what she was taught in Sunday School in order to give black people the same love and affection that we give our fellow white folks.
She was taught that slavery was justified when Caan sinned by looking at Noah’s nakedness. They claimed that he was turned black and cursed by God. Of course, there is no mention of his skin changing color in the bible.
And it is important to remember that all of the stories of faith that we enjoy, the story of David and Goliath, the Story of Jesus and the Resurrection, the Story of Daniel and the Lions den, the Story of Moses and the 10 plagues all happened to people of color.
Mom was raised in a white supremacist Christian community.
She too, like the early church had to learn to overcome worldly notions like racism.
The church has continually had to examine itself in light of Jesus teaching and grow to include more and more people.
So, here we are the first century Church with fresh story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection compelling them to live a different way of life.
And although slavery was legal, the church is wrestling with the question of whether or not it is right.
Remember, the first thing the early church did in response to the command to care for the least of these in their midst was to start a commune where they all shared. The rich believed in the Kingdom of God and gave up their greed and the poor got a chance. Now we don’t know why the commune disbanded, but we do know that Jerusalem fell to the Romans and was destroyed in the next generation that saw Jesus’ resurrection.
And all of that goes to show that the Church took seriously the command of Jesus to care for the least of these. It did that by voluntary action until the Romans took over the Church benevolence program in the 3rd Century.
And then, as now, Charity came under the purveyance of government in the form of taxes.
The early Church had a lot to wrestle with when it came to slavery.
Abraham was the great Patriarch of the faith and he is recorded as having 276 slaves and or servants at his disposal. A slave owner was a Patriarch of the faith and the early Church had to make sense of what it meant for there to be equality in the name of Jesus when some people were not permitted basic human rights because they were enslaved.
The Roman culture survived by slavery and the exploitation of the poor.
That was the very thing the Jesus preached against.
The Church knew that inherently, slavery was an abuse of the principle that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.
But the call to action is voluntary and Paul has no legal authority to free this run away slave.
So he sends him back to his master appeal to his conscience to do the right thing and free the slave.
I like the way Paul ends the letter with the request to prepare a room for him to visit. In other words, Paul is going to check up on him and see if this person’s actions meet with their language. Does Philemon walk the walk or just talk the talk?
I titled the sermon, Applying the principles of love.
I want to remind everyone that God has given the Holy Spirit to everyone who believes in Jesus and the Spirit is there to lead us to love one another.
When Jesus was talking with an educated scholar and they were debating what the most important command of the entire Bible was, Jesus answered with two commands. Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself.
In Matthew 25, Jesus shows us that we love God by loving others. 1 John tells us that we can’t see God, but we can see others and we love God by loving others.
What am I saying?
The OT is full of commands that are derived from the principle that we are to love God and others. And all the Jews had to do in order to justify their greed was figure out ways to technically obey without actually obeying.
They came up with 13,000 laws to validate the 1,100 in the OT when they created the Talmud.
It is a beautiful work, but all of that showed us one thing. We can’t do it in our own power.
The Jews had a law that they were supposed to follow and instead they got greedy and selfish and refused to care for the least of these in their midst.
Jesus’ hope was that people would be filled with the Holy Spirit.
How does that happen?
We confess Jesus and we are filled with the Spirit. I am filled by the Spirit whenever we partake together in the bread and cup. Because in so doing, we are confessing Jesus as our way to love one another.
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