Dear Emanuel
Members and Friends –
“I am appealing to you
for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is
indeed useful both to you and to me. I
am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he
might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the
gospel; but I preferred to do nothing
without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not
something forced. Perhaps this is the
reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back
forever, no 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. So if you consider me your partner, welcome
him as you would welcome me.” (Philemon 1:10-17)
The brief
book of Philemon (just one chapter – flip the pages of your Bible too quickly
and you’ll miss it!) consists of a letter from Paul to Philemon about a slave
of Philemon, named Onesimus, who somehow had found his way to Paul and had become
a follower in the way of Jesus. Paul
sends Onesimus back to Philemon, and asks Philemon to regard Onesimus, not as a
slave, but as “a beloved brother”.
Between the lines of the letter, Paul urges Philemon to release Onesimus
from slavery, perhaps to return to continue to work with Paul.
In the
society of Paul’s day, a slave was considered to be property, considered to be
a living tool, not fully human. Indeed, even
Onesimus’ name in Greek means “useful”- a word that would be used to describe a
tool, not a person. (Paul’s comments that Onesimus was formerly useless but is
now useful are puns on Onesimus’ name.) I believe the heart of the letter is
when Paul asks Philemon to regard Onesimus, not as a slave (i.e. a tool, a
piece of property), but as a beloved brother.
Some historical notes: In
Colossians 4:9, Onesimus is mentioned as accompanying Tychicus to
Collosae. Some church traditions state
that Onesimus was later consecrated a bishop by the apostles and served in
Ephesus until he was martyred. Onesimus
is celebrated as a saint in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faith
communities.
There is a
contentious history connected with this letter.
In America, during the time of slavery, white slave owners and their
pastors lifted up this letter as proof that God supported the institution of
slavery. In our day we may criticize
Paul for not explicitly demanding that Philemon release Onesimus. After all, in Galatians, Paul wrote, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no
longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are
one in Christ Jesus.” Perhaps the
best we can say is that Paul wrote as a person of his time, a time in which the
institution of slavery was largely taken for granted as “the way things were”. It’s a testimony to the liberating power of
the Holy Spirit that Christians were eventually able to look beyond the letter
of this text, to the higher law of love and liberty proclaimed and lived by
Jesus.
As I write
this, Labor Day weekend is rapidly approaching.
While we may think of Labor Day primarily as a welcome day off work, the
intent of the day is to remind us of the struggles of unions and the labor
movement. In advocating for fair wages
and improved working conditions (i.e. for example, a 5 day/40 hour work week),
the movement in essence demanded that employers look on their workers not just
as tools or cogs in a machine but as human beings with lives of their own.
In a broader
sense, we are all faced with the choice of loving things and using people, or
loving people and using things. The
first choice is our society’s default setting, in which our primary motivation
is to accumulate more stuff for ourselves, and we relate to other people (at
least those beyond our immediate family circle) primarily according to whether
they are useful in helping us accumulate more money, more property, more shiny
toys. The second choice is the choice
Paul asks Philemon to make, and a choice God calls us all to make – to love others as we love ourselves,
to relate to others as human beings created in the image of God, with sacred
worth of their own, regardless of whether they are able to help us in any way. May others see Christ in us as we relate to
Christ within our neighbors.
See you in church – Pastor Dave
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