Old Testament: Jeremiah 18:1-11
or Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Gospel: Luke 14:25-33
Epistle: Philemon 1-21
This Sunday I think the most appropriate thing to do is to talk about Philemon. The Epistle is so short it is only one chapter long. And you will notice that the reference from the Lectionary doesn't even give a chapter number. But to add insult to injury, the whole thing is only 25 verses, and the Lectionary doesn't even include the last four verses! So, I think when Philemon is read one time in the 3 year cycle, it ought to get its due.
Philemon was written by Paul at some point when he was prison, the consensus date among scholars is some time around 60 AD. If you follow New Testament and specifically Pauline scholarship, then you know that the authorship of virtually every book has been questioned and in certain cases the consensus has become that Paul did not in fact right a letter bearing his name. Saying that however, Philemon is one Epistle where it is generally agreed that Paul did indeed write this letter. There are numerous reasons for this, but they're not that exciting, so I'll move on.
The first thing to get straight when reading Philemon is who all the characters are. Obviously, we have Paul who wrote the letter. Then there is Philemon the recipient. He is a wealthy man who Paul describes as a "fellow worker." (vs. 1) He is a Christian, but he is also a slave owner and this is where the conflict comes in with the third character Onesimus. Onesimus was a slave of Philemon's who had escaped and had somehow met up with Paul. We don't know fully all the details of the relationships between any of these people. For example, we don't know how Paul met either one, and we don't know Onesimus' role in the house of Philemon or why he was a slave. But what he do know is that Paul had a relationship with both of them and he was trying to do what was right for both of them.
The purpose of the letter is that Paul is sending Onesimus back to Philemon in possession of this letter. Over the course of the 25 verses, Paul used a number of rhetorical devices to appeal to Philemon to treat Onesimus as a "brother" rather then the slave he formerly was. What is interesting is that Paul doesn't demand anything of Philemon or use his Apostolic authority to force him to obey. He mentions that he could...which in a way brings up his authority, but he doesn't actually officially use it. (A rhetorical device)
Rather than demanding anything, Paul appealed to his brother in Christ to do the right thing out of Christian love. Onesimus wronged him, there was no doubt about that, yet Paul requested that he receive forgiveness for his actions. It is not clear, but perhaps both Onesimus and Philemon became Christian's after Onesimus had run away. In this regard Paul is asking for more than a personal favor between friends. He is asking both Onesimus, remember he is delivering this letter to his former master, and Philemon to put past hurts behind them and move forward in Christ.
I tag a lot of blog posts under the heading of "Christian living." This is just my catchall for posts that have to do with how we should act. The fact is almost every blog deals with this in some ways, but I generally reserve it for posts when it is one of the main ideas. But in the case of Philemon we have a passage that deals directly with the idea of Christian living. It is not vague or pie-in-the-sky. It doesn't just mention love, joy, or patience. Rather it is practical, it is gritty, and it is difficult. And it is the essence of what Christian living is all about. It takes all of the nice sounding Christian words and demands an action in a very real context.
In 2 Cor. 5: Paul says, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." Philemon shows us a real life example of how this looks. Although the text doesn't say that Philemon and Onesimus reconciled in Christ, the presence of the letter in the New Testament lends itself to believing so. Why else would the letter be preserved, retold, and accepted by the early church?
Life gets hard, and it gets messy. But in Christ the old is passing away and new things come.
Grace and Peace.
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