More Than a Slave

Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis
October 5, 2008, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

Leviticus 25:39-46
Philemon

"I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.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."

Onesimus had run away from his master Philemon. We do not know the circumstances. Neither do we know whether Onesimus had been imprisoned with Paul or had sought Paul out for refuge under Athenian law. What we do know is that Onesimus had become a Christian under the tutelage of the apostle who had written elsewhere that "there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, neither male nor female because all are one in Christ."

Yet after his conversion and in spite of the danger involved, Paul sends Onesimus back to Colossae. Tychicus, a fellow worker with Paul, accompanies him, carrying a letter from Paul addressed to the owner of Onesimus. This is the same Tychicus, by the way, who had delivered another of Paul's letters to the Colossians, a letter in which Paul had instructed slaves to "obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord" and had instructed masters to "treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven."

Given every other word in Paul's letters concerning the place of slaves in the order of the household, we might expect Paul to have repeated these instructions to Philemon, in whose house the church met and under whose leadership the church gathered. Instead Paul winsomely asks Philemon to receive Onesimus back not as a slave but as a brother in Christ and member of Christ's church. Why the discrepancy?

Had Paul himself been converted in that prison by Onesimus and so come to see slavery as a sin against the God whose own son emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness? Again, there is no evidence of this in the letter and no reason for us to think of Paul as a radical social reformer. In fact we know Paul generally counseled Christians to obey earthly rulers and, as much as possible, to fly under the Roman radar until Christ returned to reign. Because revolution rather than reform would have been necessary if the enslavement of half of the population of the Roman Empire were to end, Paul was unlikely to oppose the institution of slavery. Nevertheless he had come to believe that this one particular slave named Onesimus was, in Christ, more than a slave and that he should be received into the church as a brother.

Today we might call Paul's assent to slavery alongside his command to free Onesimus "cognitive dissonance": the ability to believe two seemingly contradictory truths at the same time. Our minds are no strangers to this way of thinking. How often the categorical judgments formed by our upbringing, our own social position, our ignorance, our politics or our religion cast the other as less human than we are until a personal encounter with a random representative of that category takes us by surprise and leads us to say, "Well, he is an exception" or "She must be an aberration." In order to continue to hold to our prejudice, you see, we judge the person whose behavior and being refute our intolerance as an exception. Cognitive dissonance! Yet to impose this modern psychological theory on Paul's words or to place our enlightened views on slavery over against the text may lead us to miss the gospel in Philemon for such a time as this.

Two relationships bear examination between the lines of Paul's brief epistle. The first is the relationship between Paul and Onesimus. "I am appealing to you for my child," Paul writes, "whose father I have become during my imprisonment..I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you." The depth of feeling Paul expresses towards Onesimus is extraordinary. This man who was no man, this less than human being in the social order who was no more than a slave, has become to Paul not only an adopted child but a child who resides at the center of Paul's being: his very heart. What happened in a jail cell to bring this about?

I return again to the hymn in Paul's letter to the Philippians, a hymn in which Christ is said not to have counted equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. Here standing before Paul is a slave; Christ, he confessed, had become a slave. In Onesimus I imagine Paul believed himself visited by Christ and so emptied himself as a Roman citizen and as a free man to become a slave and so a brother with him and for him. "Our community," wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer "consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us..We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we really to have one another. We have one another completely and for all eternity." Paul in Christ has become the father of Onesimus-inextricably related to him through his birth in Christ-so much so that Onesimus has become Paul's own heart.

Then there is Onesimus whose name means "useful." To all others he has been no more than a useful object-something that hauls, fetches, bows, scrapes, responds to orders. Though some of us may occasionally have been treated by another as an object, never having known what it is to be a human being in the eyes of another is unimaginable. "I can't remember much 'bout slavery 'cause I was awful small" begins Alice Alexander in her 88th year. Hers is one of 2300 narratives compiled by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. "I can remember" she goes on
    that my mother's master, Colonel Threff.owned about two or three hundred head of niggers, and all of them was 'tributed to his poor kin [when he died]. Ooh whee! He sho had jest a lot of them too!.We had an overseer back on Colonel Threff's plantation and my mother said he was the meanest man on earth. He'd jest go out in de fields and beat dem niggers and my mother told me one day he come out in de field beating her sister and she jumped on him and nearly beat him half to death and old Master come jest in time to see it an fired dat overseer. Said he didn't want no man workin for him that a woman could whip.

Imagine Onesimus, a useful object, an expendable thing whom Paul took to be Christ. Paul became as a slave but in Paul's self-emptying presence Onesimus became as a man, a human being, a child of God. Do you not see? This is the gospel made flesh, a gospel we fail to proclaim with each breath that categorizes another as more flawed and therefore less human than ourselves. "Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions" writes Bonhoeffer again, "Jesus Christ will tell me what love for my brothers and sisters really looks like. Because [it is a love] that does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy [an alien, a slave] as a brother or sister. It originates neither in the brother or sister nor in the enemy but in Christ."

In other words, Paul did not say of Onesimus, "Compared to other slaves I have known Onesimus is one of a kind" and so deserves to be treated differently when he returns to Colossae. Through the humanity of Christ-through him who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness-the humanity of Onesimus stood face to face on equal ground with the humanity of Paul.

It occurs to me on World Communion Sunday that this should be no less the case with each one of us in relation to the other for whom Christ died: there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female but all are one in Christ. Contrary to our own opinions and convictions, Christ tells us what love for our brothers and sisters really looks like. Categorical judgments cannot avail when the one whose disciple you mean to be emptied himself and assumed the humanity of the very ones categorically despised and rejected down the dark corridors of history by Christ's followers.

All of which brings us to the second relationship that bears examination in Paul's brief epistle: the redeemed relationship proposed by Paul between Philemon and Onesimus. After praising the quality of Philemon's love and the love of the church that met in his house, Paul appeals to Philemon on the basis of the love of Christ, hoping that the good deed in question might be voluntary and not forced. He even speculates that God's intention all along had been to separate Onesimus from Philemon so that he might return "no longer a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother" to the church in Colossae.

"Paul has placed [Philemon] between the proverbial rock and hard place" writes Professor Norman Petersen:
    By demanding that Philemon receive his runaway but now converted slave as a brother, Paul puts Philemon in the position of having to perform an action in the domain of the church that will necessarily affect his position as a master in the domain of the world..The worldly responsibility for acting as a master with his slave is placed in conflict with the churchly responsibility for acting as a brother with a brother..

Put another way, Paul is pressing a prominent citizen and member of Christ's church to empty himself of his status and power and judgments that he might be given his true identity as the slave of a slave whose name is Jesus.

But Paul says more and the more should set off theological bells in our heads! Paul writes that he will take care of whatever Onesimus might owe Philemon. "Charge it to my account" he writes in his own hand, "and I will repay it." The Good Samaritan, the rejected and despised one who wills God's will while others pass by, comes immediately to mind, prefiguring the Son of God who on a cross charged to his account the consequences of our sin.

But Paul is not willing to leave it at that and almost chides Philemon when he writes, "I say nothing about your owing me even your own self." The implication is that Philemon's debt to Paul for his life as a Christian can only be paid as he loses his life to find himself anew in Christ, as he relinquishes his worldly relationship to Onesimus, lays down his power and position, to receive him as a brother for whom Christ died no less than Christ died for him.

We do not know what Philemon did in response to Paul's letter. The suspense is heightened by Paul's request that a room be prepared for him because this apostle who has the power to command Onesimus be received into the church as a brother also has the power to remove Philemon from the community for refusing to love and accept the slave as a brother. Again Petersen notes, "Philemon's failure to receive his brother as a brother would threaten the very essence of what it means to be a brother [or sister], which every believer is by virtue of having become a child.of God at baptism."

"'One the Christ of the other'-this is the Christian life, life in and of the koinonia!" writes Christian ethicist Paul Lehmann. "The incarnate, resurrected, and ascended Christ has no real presence in the world apart from this fellowship-creating relationship.in which all the parts properly function in so far as all the parts, in one way or another, minister Christ to all the other parts."

What in the world might it matter for this community to be the community that sees every 'other' through eyes redeemed by the love of Christ, the community that refuses the categorical become Christ meets us only and always in the other? "To be able to look upon the heart of another and see, beyond established categories, a brother or sister in Christ, is a gift of incomparable value," writes colleague Robert Dunham. It is the gift we have been given by the God who has chosen to see even us through the eyes of Christ's redeeming love. Thanks be to God.

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