Foretaste Of The Sermon To Come
A little nibble of the Revised Common Lectionary
Sunday’s scriptures are Jeremiah 18:1-6, Philemon 1 & Luke 17:7-10
It was commonplace in the Roman empire of the Apostle Paul’s time for people to own slaves. In the USA of 2022 our hackles are prickled by any mention of slavery in the Bible, because the book was so terribly misused to condone it for the 400 years that chattel slavery was legal within our shores and borders.
A good question to ask is, why doesn’t Paul speak to ending the construct of slavery rather than speaking about granting the freedom of an individual person? Paul writes to Philemon asking him to grant Onesimus his freedom, but he does so in a very interesting way. Paul appeals to the Christian family-hood we all participate in through the cross, a much stronger case than a simple command would have been. Let’s dig into that a bit more.
In naming Onesimus as his son and as Philemon’s brother in Christ, Paul makes an important distinction that in the civil world would preclude not only Onesimus’ status as a slave, but would preclude any Christian from owning slaves at all. Under Roman law, an adopted child enjoyed all the same rights and privileges as a natural born child. It follows then, that one would never enslave one’s own child or one’s own sibling
Paul also uses the language of reversal, where he points out that Onesimus is his very heart — that which Philemon does to Onesimus, he does to Paul, an apostle in status. Paul asks Philemon for prayers for his release from prison, just as Paul is asking Philemon to release Onesimus from the prison of servitude. We’ve seen in our lectionary this year that the gospel of Luke is full of reversals, with the last first and the first last. Paul, on his release, will be once again a servant in Christ.
God’s original design for humanity did not include slavery, but sin brought it into society so God gave laws beginning with Moses to protect a slave’s rights. Of course God was especially concerned about slavery because he delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt, Israel’s seminal, defining event. Antebellum slave owners read codification of slavery into its presence in scripture, but that was a blatant misuse of scripture. Slaves read liberation in scripture because of Israel’s liberation, and read God’s sovereign plan for freedom once and for all through Christ. Philemon, this little 25-verse book of the Bible, if properly preached from pulpits far and wide in the Americas, could have ended chattel slavery if not precluding it from ever starting in the first place.
In On the Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther wrote “A Christian is an utterly free man, lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is an utterly dutiful man, servant of all, subject to all.” This is a great summary of the book of Philemon
