Onesimus

Propers: The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 23), A.D. 2019 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Letter to Philemon is a funny little book. It’s kind of amazing that it’s in the Bible at all; because it isn’t a homily or a sermon. It isn’t a theological tract. It isn’t a pastoral letter of counsel, or one of the communal epistles that Paul would address to entire congregations, intending for the letter to be read aloud from pulpits throughout the region. Philemon is a personal note on a personal topic. And yet we’ve preserved it in the Bible, which rather tells you the impact it must’ve had.

In it, Paul is imprisoned, as he often is during his missions, for causing trouble by preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ. He is protected somewhat by his high status in the Jewish community and also by his coveted Roman citizenship. In the ancient world, membership had its privileges. Paul’s arrests were often house arrests. And while the story is a touch opaque, it appears that a runaway slave shows up on his doorstep one day, seeking help, seeking sanctuary.

The Roman Empire was built on slavery. In truth, all ancient empires were, to one degree or another. In Rome herself, the slave population may have been as high as 40%, with another 40% being freedmen, and as little as 20% being citizens like Paul. Slavery back then was cruel and brutal as it always is. It wasn’t racial. That atrocity would wait for later societies in later centuries. But it was the ownership of human beings, the reduction of persons to things, subjects to objects.

Slaves could be captured in battle, or born into slavery, or sold into slavery for payment of outstanding debts. Many of them found ways to earn wages and buy their way out—that’s why the freedman population was so high. And for some, believe it or not, slavery could actually improve their social standing. The slaves of a rich man might own slaves of their own. In fact, we have records of this going out to the seventh degree: a slave of the Emperor owning a slave who owned a slave who owned a slave and so forth on down the line.

And what I want to emphasize here is that this system was unquestioned. The entire economy, the entire society, was predicated on slavery. Slaves taught children and cleaned streets and fought in the arena and were raped by their masters. That’s what they were for: to be used. The only person who had ever challenged all this was Spartacus, a gladiator who’d led a great slave uprising a hundred years before Paul. And believe you me, it did not end well. They crucified slaves all along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome, 6000 crosses over some 120 miles.

Christianity was born in a world of slaves. Many of those slaves became Christian. And things got even more complicated when many of their masters did as well.

Onesimus has run away from his master Philemon in the wake of some trouble. It sounds like maybe Onesimus stole something. And Philemon is a Christian—a wealthy one, by the sound of it, hosting a house church in his home. He might be a bishop. And Onesimus knows that his master is close to Paul, so he goes running to Paul looking for help, for deliverance, for an advocate. And in response, Paul sends this letter.

“I thank God for you,” writes Paul to Philemon, “for all you have done for the Church and for me. We are co-workers in Christ, you and I, brothers in the faith. Good on you!—which is why I would be bold to command you to do your duty. But I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to have to tell you to do the right thing. I want you to have the opportunity to choose the right thing, before I tell you to do it.

“See, Onesimus showed up while I was here in prison. And he’s been a great help to me even while you’ve been so very far away. I baptized him, in fact. He’s like a son to me now. But just to keep everything above board, I’m going to send him back to you, because I know that you will not welcome him as a slave but as a brother: a brother in Christ and a brother to me. In fact, you should treat him as you would treat me, exactly as you would treat me.

“I don’t have to tell you to do this, right? I don’t need to force you to do the right thing. I mean, if he owes you something, charge it to my account. I’m good for it. It’s not like I have to remind you—do I?—that you owe me your very life and soul and salvation and all. Nah, I trust you. Indeed, I’m sure you’ll do even more than I say. Refresh, then, my heart in Christ.

“Love, Paul. And old man. In chains. For Jesus.”

He doesn’t mind laying it on nice and thick, does he? And there’s no real question as to his meaning. It’s time for Philemon to liberate his slave. In fact, it’s probably high time for Christians to liberate all of their slaves. And we have evidence that they did precisely that, at least in some areas. In Syria and in China, Christians were notable for refusing to own slaves. Onesimus, according to Church tradition, was not only liberated from slavery but ordained as a bishop.

Christians did not preach violence, rebellion, and uprising. They’d seen how that pans out. Rather, they trusted the love and truth of Christ to change society from within by converting hearts, convincing minds. And maybe that seems naïve. Maybe, in the face of dehumanizing injustice, one should take up arms, like John Brown at Harpers Ferry. But ancient Rome was not the antebellum South. And the fact that this little letter, this personal note, has been preserved and recopied and hallowed in the pages of sacred Scripture shows how seriously Christians took it.

And yeah, there certainly have been Christians who owned slaves. And sometimes they even misused this letter to Philemon to justify it. “See?” they’d say. “Paul sent the slave back!” But Paul’s logic ultimately proved inescapable and inexorable. Slavery has been with humankind forever. But when the back of the international slave trade was finally broken, violently, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was an explicitly Christian endeavor, led by abolitionists in America and the British Empire. And it was because Jesus Christ saw slaves as people. As brothers. As sons and as daughters of God.

“Whoever comes to Me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be My disciple,” proclaims the Lord in our Gospel this morning. But have a care for poor translation. The word He would use, in Hebrew, does not mean hate. It means prioritizing, putting first things first. The love of God in Christ Jesus must come first if we seek to be His disciples, before possessions or family or life as we know it.

And if we do this—if we put first things first, loving God with all we are and all we have and all we know, loving our neighbors as ourselves—this won’t take away from the love that we have for father, mother, children, spouse, siblings, and life itself. Rather, we will find our capacity to love, to act, to liberate, greater than ever. Loving God more than your life allows you to love your life more. The same goes for spouses, children, parents, neighbors, strangers, even enemies. Especially enemies.

In Paul’s day, putting Christ before all else meant that Philemon had to relinquish his power, his dominance, his economic investment in slavery. He had to pay a price to set others free. And it is no easy thing relinquishing privilege. We rarely do so willingly. But lest we imagine the dragon of slavery to have long ago been slain, think of all those today enslaved by debt, by prejudice, by lack of access to education or security or justice or basic medical care.

It will cost us something, personally, to set other people free. We may have to relinquish claims to superiority, to status, to power, to prejudice, yea, even unto money. We will have to bear a Cross, the Cross of Jesus Christ. For to love is to give of oneself for another, and that always hurts. Love hurts. That’s how we know that it’s real.

Understand, beloved, that Christ has set aside everything for you: power, riches, honor, glory, might, yes, even life itself. He has cast down His Crown for you, picked up His Cross for you, harrowed hell and raised the dead and hallowed Heaven all to welcome you, to bring us all home. He put us first. God put us first.

And when that kind of love breaks into time, watch out. Because even a little letter, written to a friend, in Jesus, can change the whole course of the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.