Calling Out The Called -  Called to Reconcile - 21 September 2025

Calling out the called. Have you ever been in a space

where the call out was so abrupt that it stopped an entire room?

When my one of my sons was a toddler, he we went to the

Vancouver Art Gallery downtown because there was this huge

Rodan exhibit that was travelling and we wanted the

kids to learn a little bit. This is the dude that did the

famous Thinker. That's what everybody knows.

And then there's the kiss thing. Not that one's I can't really

show at church. And there are all these other

things that are happening. The preschooler, as preschoolers

do, had to go to the washroom. And so I'm on washroom duty,

Craig's with the other kids, and he comes running into this

gallery and goes, look, yeah, we were in an art gallery.

Everybody was looking at something.

The whole room stopped and looked at us.

It was very awkward. And this is what captured the

almost 3 year old's attention. He was fascinated.

I was embarrassed. And everyone looked differently

at that sculpture that frankly no one was standing in front of

and looking at a minute before. Y'all.

It was just a practice piece of art for a bigger thing called

the Gates of Hell. But it captured him.

And today we are going to read the book of Philemon and we are

going to have several look moments where we know what God

thinks about this already. And so we might miss the call to

our very own lives. So as we go, I want you to

think, what is it that's happening?

But I want us to remember this is a real letter.

Do you see the yellow circle around Colossi?

Philemon was sent to a church leader in this city.

It no longer exists. They kept having earthquakes.

They finally quit rebuilding. But that's where it is.

And I just want us always to remember we're reading this 2000

years later. But it is real people, real

places and real human lives which are about to matter.

As we read these this passage, I want you to ask yourself what is

Paul calling Philemon 2? Now it'll be clear probably

right away the action because Paul's very persuasive and has a

lot to say. But Paul is also calling him to

much more. So let's read Paul, a prisoner

of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our dear

friend and fellow worker. Also to Afiya our sister and

Archibus our fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your

home. Grace and peace to you from God

our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers

because I hear about your love for all His holy people and your

faith in the Lord Jesus. I pray that your partnership

with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your

understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of

Christ. Your love has given me great joy

and encouragement because you, brother, have refreshed the

heart of the Lord's people. Therefore, although in Christ I

could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I

prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.

It is as none other than Paul, an old man and now also a

prisoner of Christ Jesus, that I appeal to you for my son

Onessimus, who became my son while I was in chains.

Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful

both to you and to me. I am sending him who is my very

heart back to you. I would have liked to keep him

with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I

am in chains for the gospel. But I did not want to do

anything without your consent, so that any favour would do

would not seem forced, but be voluntary.

Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little

while was that you might have him back forever, no longer as a

slave, but better than a slave as a dear brother.

He is very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a fellow

man and as a brother in the Lord.

So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome

me. If he has done you any wrong or

owes you anything, charge it to me.

I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand.

I will pay it back. Not to mention that you owe me

your very self. I do wish, brother, that I may

have some benefit from you and the Lord.

Refresh my heart in Christ, Confident of your, confident of

your obedience. I write to you knowing that you

will do even more than I ask. And one thing more, prepare a

guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in

answer to your prayers. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in

Christ Jesus, sends you greetings, and so do Mark,

Aristarchus, Dimas, and Luke, my fellow workers, the grace of our

Lord Jesus Christ, be with your spirit.

Now. Paul answered a lot of letters,

and he often called for grace, sometimes grace and peace.

But this one needed special grace because Oneessimus's very

life hung in the balance. So what, pragmatically, had Paul

called Philemon 2? Freedom to free his slave

Oneessimus. Now, I'm just going to go ahead

and nod to the fact that with two 21st century mindsets, we

want Paul to slam the judge's hammer down on slavery.

And we want him just to say, well, I was about to say a bad

word, just don't do it. But what Paul does in living in

his context is he is confronting the slavery of his time.

That is perfectly legal and still calling Philemon 2 Kingdom

values. 1/3 of the people in the Roman world were enslaved.

It is not race based slavery. It was an economic based

slavery. Many of the people chose it.

They would self sell for a certain amount of time so they

could get out of debt. Or if they were hungry or if

they had more children than they could feed, they would enslave

their children to make sure there was nourishment.

So this is a different system than our mindset.

It isn't still not a good system and Paul is calling it into

Kingdom values, but Paul is doing it within the his culture.

And we're going to talk about how revolutionary this is.

But I am aware that with 21st century eyes, it doesn't feel

that way. So the first thing that Philemon

does, I mean Paul does is calls out Philemon's love.

Did you see and verse 4 I hear about your love for all his holy

people and your faith in Jesus. So there is no division between

Philemon's works and actions. His faith is borne out in loving

actions. He's already known for being

someone who is loving, and in calling out this love, Paul goes

through several different relationships.

He calls him his friend. He calls him his brother.

He says we are in partnership. He acknowledges that Philemon's

a person who refreshes other people's hearts.

Y'all, I think we would like Philemon if we met him.

He is calling him into reconciliation.

He calls Onessimus. Paul does his own heart and he

also acknowledges that he can assume upon Philemon's

hospitality. So he knows this man's

character. Now, when he calls him out in

love, he is not calling out something that Philemon doesn't

already exhibit, but he is calling it at a new level and at

a level that would confront his society.

Because you see, when Oneessimus brought this letter, Oneessimus

doesn't know what Philemon's going to do.

And within the bounds of the law, anything could have

happened. Oneessimus could have even been

killed as a way to, say, deter other slaves from running away.

But what Paul does is calls out his love and he says in verse 9,

I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.

Now I want you to think about things that are wrong in our

world today. And when you hear news posts,

comments are the appeals to peace on the basis of love, you

are right. Wisdom they are not.

They are not by and large. And yet we are the ones that

know the one who loves the most. And how do we make appeals?

I'm not saying don't ever speak prophetically, but it Paul is

speaking prophetically and calling out the love in the

midst of what's really a rough situation.

And then Paul calls to the relationship.

And so he says in verse 6. I pray that your partnership

with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your

understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of

Christ. All right, Philemon's a church

leader. He's got some understanding.

And Paul's saying, and now it's time to go deeper.

And so when we get called out in love by others, we have the

opportunity to grow and deepen in our understanding of God, of

the way the Kingdom works, and of how our relationships can

work. Now I want to talk about this

word partnership, and I want to talk about the Greek word

Koinonia with it. So partnership, we think

partnership is like a business. And if I don't want to work with

you, we just change our contracts.

Somebody buys the other person out.

We use partner now in our spousal language.

I remember the first time somebody called Craig, my

partner, I looked her and said we have 4.

She well, she got embarrassed and I was trying to make it OK

for her. I probably wouldn't have said

this, but she she said your husband, oh, I mean your partner

because she was trying to correctify her language.

And I looked and I said we have four children.

He is my husband. He is stuck with me.

I am not getting stuck with these children alone.

Partnership language you can dissolve, but husband, he is

stuck. And So what I want to say is our

Koinonia is fellowship. Now we have trouble too, because

we churchified fellowship and when I was growing up with the

fellowship hall is where you got ice cream and you'd had

Christmas parties, my wedding reception and it was fun, but

there wasn't necessarily a thought of commitment.

And so I'm just going to read to you very quickly from first John

1 John 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1 because I want you to think about what fellowship is.

John was writing and he says, we proclaim to you what we have

seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us, and

our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus

Christ. We write this to make our joy

complete. So when we are called into

fellowship and partnership, we are being called into the

relationship with the Heavenly Father, with the Spirit of

Jesus, and with Jesus. And So what Paul was calling

Philemon to was to know community with the Father, Son

and Spirit and to know more deeply to know Jesus.

He also deals in this Koinonia. And back in Philemon he says in

verse 17, if you consider me a partner, welcome him being

oneessimus as you would welcome me.

OK y'all, Paul has been walking with Jesus long enough that he's

starting to talk like Jesus in the very next verses 18.

If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to

me, OK? He did.

He owed based on their legal system.

He owed Philemon money for his liberty.

Paul is taking the charges now. Y'all, he's in jail and we're

like, how's he? He's not tent making right now.

How's he going to pay it? But I believe Paul was

resourceful. These are not empty words.

Because in the next 1 he says, I Paul, I'm writing this with my

own hand, riding it with his own hand obligated him contractually

to pay for this man's liberty. So Paul is not calling Philemon

to something without being able to sacrifice for himself.

He's saying I'll pay. But you know, Paul is courageous

and is demanding courage from Oneessimus because when this

letter gets delivered, what if Paul had just sent the money?

But he wants the reconciliation of the relationship.

And that's what Koinonia Fellowship Partnership does is

I'm not just going to make amends, I am going to be

reconciled. When Paul refers to himself in

verse 9 as an old man and he's in jail.

This old man term is also the term for an ambassador.

What does an ambassador do? Well in our best moments,

ambassadors bring 2 warring sides and wakes a new way

towards peace. And that is what Paul is calling

for is he is saying I will take the charges.

But I want you to have in verse 17 that partnership welcoming

Koinonia fellowship with Oneessimus, who is now your

brother, who is my son. Reconciliation cost Jesus his

life on the cross. Reconciliation here is about to

cost Paul Simula. What has reconciliation cost

you? Or do you do the Canadian way of

moving on? That is uncomfortable, so I'm

just going to go somewhere else. I'm going to say I forgive, but

I'm moving on. That is not Koinonia,

fellowship, restoration, reconciliation.

And so I call us to be courageous as Paul and call out

reconciliation. And I call us to be Paul as

ambassadors and I call us to be Philemon who have to learn a new

way. We are called into fellowship.

And So what else is happening? Well, the rest.

Did you notice all the names in this church?

See, this is OK. This is a house from Ephesus.

It's still standing for you to go be a tourist at because

Ephesus is about 100 miles towards the coast and it's going

to become important later. But it's something like it's

from the same time period as Philemon's house.

Philemon was influential. Paul is not calling Philemon to

this in a vacuum. He had wealthy professional

neighbors who did not want this slave forgiven.

Why? Because then their slaves would

think they could run away too. So Philemon is in the context of

other people who felt all this was all right, and he is being

called to act and the ways of Jesus into the Kingdom in a way

that was countercultural. How are you at times

countercultural? We've got the book.

And as Gordon Fee says, well, we probably wouldn't have the book

of Philemon unless he had freed Onesimus, because who'd want to

get this letter and have it saved for 2000 years if you

hadn't freed the man? But I want us if you were

filming this. There's a lot of anxiety on the

trip, travelling from being with Paul in prison all the way home

to Colossi. Imagine giving the letter you

didn't get to see Philemon probably first, but to the head

servant and thinking, oh, I'm going to get beaten before the

letter gets read. And then he gets the letter and

Philemon's got Oneessimus. He's got the head servant, he's

got his house that's greeted in it.

And he knows because Paul listed all these people.

All these people are waiting and watching.

Y'all? When you are making ethical

choices, there are people watching that you don't even

know. There are people impacted that

you don't even know. Through work, I've been in

conversations where a poor decision was being made and they

said, well, nobody will know. And I'm thinking everybody will

know. They may not know who called it,

but everybody knows the results. And Philemon has this.

Now I highlighted Mark because I want you to notice that Paul is

not calling Philemon to something that he hasn't in his

own way, had to do. As far as we know, Paul had not

had any slaves, but he had been done with Mark.

If you remember in Acts, Barnabas and Paul separated ways

because John Mark got homesick and Paul is like I got Kingdom

work to do. I cannot be putting up with his

silliness. OK, that's Ellen's paraphrase.

It doesn't sound quite that way in Acts, but he did.

They literally broke a ministry partnership over Mark.

And now who is with Paul while he is in jail.

Paul had learned how to be gracious.

He had learned how to receive back someone who had

disappointed him, someone who had not lived up to their

responsibilities in God's work. And so another example of where,

yeah, Paul is calling out to Philemon, but not something he

had not done. And here is oneessimus waiting

to find out his future. Sometimes when the Spirit of

Jesus is calling out in love and is calling for reconciliation,

in the Koinonia, in the fellowship, in the

relationships, in the partnerships, in a Christian

community, there's a lot of people waiting and watching and

praying. Because just as Paul appealed on

the basis of love, our heavenly a Father appeals to you on the

basis of love to do what is right, to do what is right.

When someone in your class somehow got a copy of the exam

and you know it's going to be skewed in everybody's favor.

And if you don't get it, you're going to not just be skewed, but

you're going to be messed up watching and waiting and praying

to see if someone else will have the courage to trust Jesus more

than to live within. What is their right?

Watching and waiting to see. So what is Paul calling for?

Lehmann too. He is calling him to emancipate

an SMS. But that's not the biggest call.

He is calling for him to be a brother to his slave.

He is calling for a redefining of human relationships.

Do you know the person that cleans your Community Center?

If you're in residence, do you know the name of the person who

is cleaning the washrooms in residence?

Might be you, might be your roommate.

Do you know the person who cleans the building where your

faculty lies? If we're going to redefine

relationships, it means that we acknowledge the dignity and

worth of every human, and it changes the transactional

relationships into something of a partnership.

And so the call out of look, as you look in your relationships,

is there a space where the Spirit of Jesus is calling you

to appeal for someone else, to act with grace and to reconcile,

to do what is just and right, but may not be what the society

thinks they have to do? Because the Spirit of Jesus and

what the Bible teaches us about conflict is very different than

what is the prevailing notion. And frankly, I have been in

Sunday school classes where my teacher said, well, Jesus

wouldn't want you to be in danger. 15 year old Ellen raised

her hand, said, well, he did die on the cross.

That doesn't seem very safe. And yet have you been told, oh,

don't talk to that person, they might be mentally ill.

Oh, don't go to that part of town.

Oh, don't go to that country. And yet Jesus calls us where it

is dangerous and it is countercultural.

And so you may be like Paul and you're in the awkward space of

feeling called to call someone else out.

Or look, you might be Philemon and someone else has called you

into more love, into more grace, into more of the power of Jesus

to call you into true partnership.

And you've got it aside because no one in the broader society

will think less of you if you don't.

In fact, in the broader society, they might be offended if you

forgive something so horrible. Or are you an SMS and in trying

to be healthy and free, you have hurt someone else and you owe in

some way, physical or metaphorical, some kind of debt

to someone that needs to be made right.

And so for you to grow in your walk with Jesus, you're going to

have to make right the broken relationship.

And you don't know how they're going to respond.

So you and I are all called to radical living.

We are called to love. We are called to a different

kind of economic policy. We are called to a different way

of conversing. And so on the basis of love or

Koinonia, or in the season of waiting and watching, are you

doing this with your heavenly Father?

Jesus said that a new command I give you love one another is I

love loved you, so you must love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love

one another. Now most of you don't know my

father, but if you knew him, you would know I'm his daughter.

Now I look more like my mum, but I dance like my father.

I play football. Oh, and just so you know, I'm

not meaning soccer for those of you that use it.

I'm meaning like actual tackle football, like my father because

that's what he loved. And it was in high school.

My mom had to call me in and said, Helen, the church ladies

are getting nervous. You've got to stop playing.

And I was like, well, can I at least throw?

But I was I was a running back in my neighborhood.

And so it was very traumatic. So but I'd have this love the

way I scream at the screen and call the plays and say, would

you log? That's not what that's my

father, but also the way I will show up when you have a problem.

Anytime I've done that, that is my daddy and the way that I keep

in touch with friends from high school, that's my daddy.

And if you knew my father, you would know I am his child

because of how I behave and as our Heavenly Father's children

not I can't be a good daughter to Jesus if I don't know how to

be a good sister to you all. I am a baby until I learn how to

sister well and until we continue to grow.

Philemon was already a church leader and there was more to

know in how to love and how to forgive and how to pursue

justice and how not to worry about what the surrounding world

thought. I want to tell you away.

A few originals have done this. They've graduated.

UBC could have had a very posh job and chose to go live in

community with displaced people. Or another original got the

great job with one of the big four and then left it to go with

the Tony Blair's association. I don't know the last title to

go work in the Ukraine where his block was getting bombed because

he was trying to build peace. Other originals have gone and

they're working at hard jobs and they pursue and are choosing to

treat everyone with respect in the environment.

There are many ways to live out this command, but through

walking with Jesus you will be keep on being called in to

deeper and deeper, as Paul said, your understanding of every good

thing we share for the sake of Christ.

So this isn't an arrived kind of thing, but the grace and the

love of Jesus will keep calling you into more.

And so I would like to ask, what is the Lord calling you to?

Let's pray. Jesus, I thank you that you have

loved us sacrificially, that your agape unconditional love is

the standard. I thank you for the

encouragement that someone like Philemon could already know you

and be serving you, and yet you called for more.

And Lord, what I ask for our congregation is courage.

Courage when we are called to speak the truth in love, courage

when we are called out to live differently in your name, and

courage when we need reconciliation.

Make us a people that are a beautiful example of your love

and Lord, we cannot do that without learning how to be your

ambassadors and your reconcilers.

And so we ask help Lord in Jesus name, Amen.

I want to tell you a we quote Ignatius was martyred, but on

his way to Rome to be martyred. And also we have to define terms

because they're getting redefined.

A martyr is a witness and in the case of Christian martyrs, they

are people who have died because they are telling that Jesus is

the way the truth of life that he loves and causes to radical

living as he went. He wrote a letter to the church

in Ephesus, it's about 60 years after this, and he commended the

love that their Bishop Onessimus had.

We're not 100% sure, but they're pretty sure that this is the

Onessimus that got freed and he is loving a church as an old man

60 years later and Philemon would have been gone by then.

And Philemon did not know all the fruits of his love.

And when you choose to forgive and when you forgive

sacrificially, you also will not know all of the fruits.

But I pray that the fruits of your courage to forgive, to live

out your faith in Koinonia, and to love deeply and sacrificially

will also bear fruits of those that are loving others into the

Kingdom. In 60 years, that's where she'll

be taken there if you're helping him out.