Faces of Our Faith: Onesimus | Philemon 1 | 8.23.26

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Today we are closing in on the end of our summer worship series, Faces of Our Faith.

We have this week and then we have next week.

This summer we've been remembering people in Scripture, characters in Scripture, who have to teach us about what it's like to be faithful people.

And we've also been remembering people from history, from church history, from our families and friends, whose faith has been inspiring to us.

And so this week, I do want you to remember that we have these little circles in the pews.

And if if if in our reflection today someone comes to mind whose faith you found inspiring at all, you can write their name on that piece of paper and put it in the offering plate as it goes by, as we collect our sort of faith family history here at Lake Forest.

Next week will be our rally day kickoff.

But in this penultimate week, we are going to have the rare privilege of experiencing the reading of an entire book of the Bible as our scripture reading for today.

Luckily for us, the book of Philemon is only 25 verses, so I think we can handle it.

But you will be able to say you've heard the entire book of the Bible read in worship.

But before we read it together, let's pray and ask God to bless our time in the scriptures this morning.

Let's pray.

God of mercy, you promised never to break your covenant with us.

And in the midst of the multitude of words in our daily lives, pause today and ask you to speak your eternal word to us, that we may respond to your gracious promises with faithfulness, service, and love.

Amen.

Now let's read together Paul's letter to Philemon.

Listen now for God's word to us today.

From Paul, who is a prisoner for the cause of Christ Jesus, and our brother Timothy, to Philemon, our dearly loved co-worker, Affia, our sister, Archipus, our fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your house.

May the grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Philemon, I thank my God every time I mention you in my prayers, because I've heard of your love and faithfulness which you have for both the Lord Jesus and for all God's people.

I pray that your partnership and faith might become effective by an understanding of all that is good among us in Christ.

I have great joy and encouragement because of your love, since the hearts of God's people are refreshed by your actions, my brother.

Therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to command you to do the right thing, I would rather appeal to you through love.

I, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus, appeal to you for my child Onesimus.

I became his father in the faith during my time in prison.

He was useless to you before, but now he is useful to both of us.

And I'm sending him back to you, which is like sending you my own heart.

I considered keeping him with me so that he might serve me in your place during my time in prison because of the gospel.

However, I didn't want to do anything without your consent, so that your act of kindness would occur willingly and not under pressure.

Maybe this is the reason that Onesimus was separated for you from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, that is, a dearly loved brother.

He is especially a dear loved brother to me.

How much more can he become a brother to you personally and spiritually in the Lord?

So if you really consider me a partner, welcome Onesimus as if you are welcoming me.

If he has harmed you in any way or owes you money, charge it to my account.

I, Paul, will pay it back to you.

I'm writing this with my own hand.

Of course, I won't mention that you owe me your life.

I mean, he did kind of mention it, but.

Yes, brother, I want this favor from you for the Lord.

Refresh my heart in Christ.

I'm writing to you, confident of your obedience, and knowing that you will do even more than what I ask.

Also, one more thing: prepare a guest room for me.

I hope that I will be released from prison to be with you because of your prayers.

Epaphras, who is in prison with me for the cause of Christ, greets you as well as my co-workers, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

This is God's word for God's people.

Thanks be to God.

Sending a letter was not a simple thing in the ancient world.

Many of us now take for granted that we have the public service of the post office available to us.

And for less than a dollar, we can send something to anyone in the country.

And if they don't need a physical copy, well then, I mean with the push of a button, we can send whatever message we would like to digitally stuff their inboxes alongside what other spams and scams and advertisers have found their addresses.

But back in the day, in Paul's day, that is, uh, a letter was a whole production.

It required uh scribes, wax tablets, papyrus, leather quivers to carry the scrolls in.

This was not a quick email.

It was weeks of travel, and by today's rates, probably over$1,000 to send a message.

But in this case, I imagine Paul saved a few dollars because instead of hiring a courier, he made the unique and bold choice of sending the letter along by way of its subject.

Philemon's estranged slave, Onesimus.

I can only imagine the anxiety coursing through Onesimus, this slave who had been estranged from his master Philemon, who journeyed back to deliver this letter.

I mean, I know the nervous energy it takes me to tell a barista that he got my order wrong.

I cannot imagine carrying a letter back to the one person who could legally end my life over it.

So why would Anesimus do that?

Why would he do this risky thing?

Well, one reason is because this wasn't really a private letter.

If you look closely at the greeting, you'll see that this letter is not addressed simply to Philemon, but would in fact also be read by the courier to his family members and to their whole church that met in his house.

So while Paul is addressing Philemon directly, the ewes from verse 4 to verse 21 are all singular ewes.

He's addressing Philemon.

But he's not addressing Philemon in private.

It's one of the ways that Paul, tactfully, if not craftily, is putting the pressure on Philemon not to do what the Roman cultural expectations would have him do in an honor-shame society like that.

There would have been a lot of public uh pressure on Philemon to reprimand or even kill his slave upon his return.

So Paul isn't addressing Philemon alone.

He's addressing his household and the whole church that met there.

And I'm gonna suggest that Paul knew exactly what he was doing, kind of like how he didn't mention that he owed him his life.

Right?

He was being asked in this honor-shame culture, he was being asked to do the right thing in public by someone as respected as Paul.

And that is a different kind of pressure than being asked in private.

Onesimus wasn't just carrying a letter, he was walking into a room that Paul graciously had already begun to stack in his favor.

And one of the questions this letter raises is that it asks us to notice the difference between internal conviction and external accountability.

My internal conviction that I want to be healthy and the external accountability of not wanting to pay$5 to go to the gym.

Maybe Paul trusts that his brother in Christ Philemon will want to do the Christ-like thing and offer Onesimus his freedom to manumit his slave into freedom from slavery.

But he doesn't only rely on Philemon's desire to do it, he also makes this ask of him in the presence of the whole church community, so that others will know what his response is to that request by his action.

They will see by the way of his life whether he's doing the thing he says he's going to do.

You see, sadly, it is not enough for us as a church to just trust that people in positions of authority will do the right thing.

We must also use the power of community as a whole to hold them accountable to it.

Both Paul in his writings and also the letter, uh, the author of James, those two don't always agree on everything exactly, but they both point to this distinction between works of faith and works of the law.

I think of it as what you may have heard as like the shopping cart theory.

Have you heard of the shopping cart theory?

After you put your groceries in the car, do you return the shopping cart to the corral because it's the right thing to do and it will help the people who come after you?

Or do you not return it?

Or do you return it because there are other people watching you?

Or do you return it because there's a sign that says you might get a fine if you leave it unattended?

Or do you do it uh because you want to make sure to get your quarter back if you're at Aldi?

Right?

Why?

Why do we return our carts?

Works of faith are things we do because the Holy Spirit has convicted us and is transforming us internally such that we both know and desire to do the Christ-like thing.

And works of the law are just that.

Those are things that we do because there are rules, and there are external consequences to breaking those rules.

Do you drive the speed limit because you want yourself and others to be safe, or do you do it to avoid a ticket and points on your license?

Both are valid reasons.

Paul calls us toward growing in the works of faith.

Sometimes the right thing to do isn't something that is enforced by current laws, or even pressured by the culture around us.

In fact, sometimes it's the opposite.

Often, as was Philemon's case, both the legal and external cultural pressures were inviting him to do the wrong thing.

He was expected to do the wrong thing, to kill Onesimus at worst, and to continue enslaving him, maybe at best.

What does the church do?

When there is public pressure to continue engaging in things we understand are wrong, or to support them publicly, or at least not to speak out against them.

I want you to fast forward with me about 1800 years, and you'll find this same letter, this same tender pointed communal appeal sitting on the desks of American Presbyterian ministers who are reading Philemon and trying to figure out what to do about the slavery that is within their own pews.

And here's the thing: they read the same exact words we just read, the same Onesimus, same Philemon, same Paul, and American Presbyterians were split on their conclusions.

They came to opposite conclusions.

Southern Presbyterian theologians, men like James Henley Thornwell, one of the most prolific theologians our denomination has ever produced, they looked at this letter and said, See, Paul had every opportunity to condemn slavery as a practice outright, and he chose not to.

He sent Onesimus back, and in sending him back, case closed.

If the apostle himself couldn't call slaveholding a sin, then who are we to say otherwise, he wrote.

Right?

The very core of the thing that undercuts and recasts the entire premise.

And Thornwell didn't stop at Philemon, by the way.

He went on to help build something even more useful for his purposes, a doctrine that came to be called the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, which was held by the denomination that this church was in until 1983.

And that doctrine said that basically the church's job is only spiritual, strictly about souls and sacraments, and it has no business speaking to social or political questions.

And slavery, on this view, just wasn't something the church could outright condemn.

It wasn't the church's lane, which is, of course, a very convenient doctrine to help you develop if you happen to need the church to not talk about something.

We've seen this move before, haven't we?

Every time Scripture becomes a tool for silence instead of liberation, every time spiritual matters only gets used to wall off the very people that scripture was written to set free.

We're watching Philemon get read backwards.

Paul was putting public pressure on a slaveholder in front of his own congregation to free a man.

And everyone reading this book back then would agree with all of those things I just said.

Paul was putting public pressure on a slaveholder in front of his own congregation to free a man.

And yet, 2,000 years or so, those two different readings couldn't come together until 1983.

And that rupture, Thornwell's side and the abolitionists' side, split the Presbyterian Church for over a century, North and South, PCUSA and PCUS.

They walked apart in 1861 and did not come back together in reunion until 1983.

It only took our church 122 years to read its way back to the end of the letter.

Paul says to Philemon, essentially, look, I could command of you to do the right thing and free Onesimus and to treat him as your equal.

But I won't command it.

I'm going to trust you that you will do the right thing because of the faith that is within you.

Paul says, I'm going to give you the opportunity to do the right thing because it's the right thing.

I'm not going to exact it from you by demanding your obedience to my explicit command, but I will also hold you accountable for your response.

Because you are going to live out your faith in the presence of community.

That's just part of it.

And we are not exempt from this same challenge either.

There are still many ways that empire and our culture tempt us to label and dehumanize our fellow humans.

Paul's advocacy for Onesimus offers us a clear and compelling example of ways that you and I can also participate in the subversive and liberating work of the gospel.

We can hold each other accountable to our promises.

You can say to me, Chad, you said you were going to do this thing and then you didn't show up.

That's okay.

You can tell me that, right?

And we can tell each other, look, we said we were going to do this.

We agreed at the session meeting that this is what was going to happen.

Why hasn't it happened yet?

Right?

We hold each other accountable.

We can say to our city council members and our county council members, you said when you were running, you were going to do this thing.

Has it happened or not?

Right?

And that's part of public accountability for the common good.

New Testament scholar Eric Barreto says it this way.

Paul here is calling for a radical reorientation of the community's understanding of who Onesimus is, of Onesimus' identity.

He is no longer merely a cog in the machine of the household, no longer worthy because of the utility he provides his master.

Onesimus is now a beloved brother.

He is kin.

And this transformation is a vivid embodiment of the gospel.

He is a walking reminder of the power of the good news, he writes.

We've seen it.

We have seen people come back together after being apart.

But it is not possible through merely the spirituality of the church.

It must come through the deep relational work of accountability and advocacy for the liberation of all people.

And accountability is a good thing.

There are things today that I do that I pretty much only do because there's an app that reminds me.

And we, and there are things that we do as a church that only happen because of the accountability of this community to each other and to our neighbors.

And I wish, I wish that we all only ever wanted to do the right thing out of the goodness of our hearts.

But that is just not the case this side of heaven.

And that's okay.

We are people, and accountability is good when it is pressure to do the right thing.

We are all in a process of becoming.

The Spirit is growing us, opening us, and challenging us to live out our lives in a manner worthy of the freedom we have been given in Christ's life, death, and resurrection.

But we aren't there yet.

We need each other.

Faith is a team sport.

It's one of the reasons we are Presbyterian at all, actually.

We are Presbyterian because we trust that in the Spirit and through accountability to each other, then we can become the outposts of God's beloved community as it ought to be.

On earth as it is, in heaven.

You see, on the one hand, Thornwell was right.

He was a gifted scholar.

Paul doesn't, and Scripture as a whole, on reading at face value, does not outright condemn slavery.

And yet no one I know who takes Jesus seriously thinks that that is ever acceptable.

And this is why we cannot allow our spiritual imaginations to be crushed by legalism and doctrinal purity.

Because bringing the gospel to bear in the world today, to bring it to bear on the ways that empires continue to crush our neighbors, will not be accomplished by treating scripture as a rule book or a law text or a science book.

The thing that makes scripture holy, we believe, is the reading of it together in community.

The Holy Spirit is intimately involved and explicitly involved in our shared understandings as we do faith life together.

There are lots of issues that the church has faced and will continue to face that are not directly addressed by the Bible's authors.

They did not have cars, they did not have AI, right?

But we have to be talking about it.

What are we going, what are what are what is the faithful response to the world around us today?

We cannot rely merely on the letter of the law, but we can rely on the word of God as it has been expressed to us in the person of Jesus Christ and through the community of believers.

As Rachel Held Evans so accurately put it, if you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them.

And if you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them.

If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them.

But if you are looking with verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find those too.

This is why there are times when the most instructive question that we bring to Scripture is not what does it say, but what am I looking for?

And what is the Holy Spirit saying to me through this, saying to us through this.

She writes, I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, Ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find.

Knock, and the door will be opened unto you.

If we want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons, yet if you want to heal, you will always find the balm.

You see, that's the same dilemma that Paul posed to Philemon.

The works of faith are the rule of law.

And the truth is, we don't know what Philemon did.

We trust.

We trust that he received Onesimus back as his brother, but the letter just ends.

There's no verdict, there's no follow-up, Philemon II, electric boogaloo.

It doesn't say, and then Philemon freed him, and they lived happily as brothers ever after.

Paul stops writing, and at the door of that house in Colossae, it swings shut, and we are left standing outside it, straining to hear, what will we do when we get our letter?

Maybe that's not an accident.

Maybe Paul knew something that we keep forgetting.

You can't write the ending of somebody else's obedience.

You can only ask plainly and publicly, and then wait, and let the waiting be its own kind of witness.

So we picture Onesimus walking back up that road with that letter folded against his chest.

I can only imagine the anxiety and fear coursing through his veins because he doesn't know either.

He's walking back into a house that owns him, carrying a piece of paper that calls him beloved.

And he has no idea which word is going to win on that day.

I pray he did know which word was really true about who he was.

And that's where we live too most days, somewhere between the label and the beloved, between the door closing and the door opening.

And though Paul doesn't give us how the story ends, he hands it to us mid sentence and trusts us to take it forward.

Friends, God trusts us to take the message forward.

And I pray that we will go boldly.

Amen.