Philemon 8-19
Caught Up in the Conspiracy
James Sledge July
12, 2015
The
practice of referring to “books” of the Bible probably is a bit misleading,
never more so than with the “book” of Philemon. I once had my answer on a seminary
quiz marked incorrect because I wrote that a particular quote from Paul was
found in Philemon chapter 1, verse so and so. I guess Professor Achtemeier
would have marked down Brian McLaren as well. His chapter for today says our
Scripture reading is Philemon 1:8-19, but in truth, Philemon has no chapters.
It’s a one page letter, less than 500 words.
Like
most letters in the New Testament, it is occasional and particular in its
content, but this one is also personal, speaking primarily to one individual,
Philemon. The exact circumstances aren’t known because Paul has no need to
explain it to Philemon. But it seems that Paul is writing on behalf of a slave,
Onesimus, who apparently belongs to Philemon.
The
first seven verses of the letter are introductory, warm hellos and
recollections of service together in the church. It seems Paul is charming
Philemon a bit before he gets to the point of the letter which goes something
like this. “I could command you, but I won’t. I’m giving you a chance to do the
right thing on your own. Receive Onesimus, not as a slave but as a beloved
brother, and free him so that he may return and work with me.”
As
I was reading this letter, I imagined Paul living and writing it in our day.
What if Philemon was an active leader in his church but also a CEO. Might Paul
write, “I could command you but I won’t. I’m giving you a chance to do the
right thing on your own. Treat Onesimus, not as an employee, a human resource,
but as a beloved brother. Pay him a living wage so he may can stop working
three jobs and help me.
But
what makes Paul think he can make this sort of request? Or that he could have
made it a command in Christ? Just who does he think he is?
It’s
important to realize what a life altering thing it is for Paul to be “in
Christ.” For Paul, this is not about getting to go to heaven. Paul has become a
“new creation” in Christ. He has been transformed in ways that completely change
how he lives in the here and now. Those who are in Christ live now as citizens
of God’s new day, no longer recognizing the world’s division of Jew and
Gentile, male and female, slave and free, CEO and employee.
The
Brian McLaren chapter that uses today’s verses from Philemon is called, “The
Spirit Conspiracy,” and I love that title. As Paul well knew, the gift of the
Spirit that is given to the Church does join us to a conspiracy, a movement to
radically alter the world, to begin conforming it to what Jesus called the
kingdom of God.
Back
in Jesus’ day, there were many who hoped that he would be a conquering Messiah,
that he would cast out the Romans and institute the wondrous day of peace and
harmony foretold by prophets. No doubt they were crushed and confused when
those Romans instead executed him, and for many, hope that he was the Messiah
disappeared.
In
our day we understand that Jesus is not a military Messiah, but far too often
this has led Christians to conclude that Jesus is apolitical, concerned only
with forgiving sin and getting people right with God before they die. But
declaring Jesus a non-political Messiah requires ignoring the very core of his
message.
When
Jesus began his ministry, his first words were, “Repent” – that is change, go
in a different direction – “for the kingdom of God has come near.” For us, “kingdom
of God” may sound like a purely religious thing, but not so in Jesus’ day. First
century Jews and Gentiles already had a kingdom called the Roman Empire and a
king named Augustus Caesar. Anyone claiming otherwise was not only engaged in a
conspiracy, he was a traitor who would be executed for those crimes, which is
exactly what happened to Jesus.
Jesus
chose to define his ministry in political terms, a kingdom, a commonwealth. And
this commonwealth operated on entirely different rules from that of Rome, or
that of America. This kingdom would raise up the poor, the outcast, the
prisoner, and all who lived on the margins of society. It would break down old
barriers of insider and outsider, important and unimportant, lord and slave, CEO
and employee. It would require love for enemies, forgiveness of those who
wronged you, and would render judgment based on how people treated “the least
of these.” It called the poor blessed and spoke of wealth as a curse.
The
work of the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed is chock full of the political, and
so it’s little wonder that when Christianity became the religion of the empire,
people at the top worked very hard to domesticate Jesus’ message, to soften,
obscure, or remove its threat to the status quo and entrenched power. It’s
little wonder that so many people came to view Jesus as a meek and mild
spiritual savior rather than the religious revolutionary that he was.
But the Apostle Paul lived long before
this domestication happened. Slavery and Roman power may have been so
ubiquitous that Paul couldn’t envision their end until Jesus returned. But he
could envision their no longer governing how the faithful lived. So he writes to
a fellow brother in Christ and asks him to live out his faith, to live by the
ways of God’s coming rule regardless of whether Roman society recognized this
alternative kingdom.
____________________________________________________________________________
If
Paul were alive today and wrote his letter not to a CEO but to me, I wonder
what he might say in the manner he spoke to Philemon. “I could command this of
you in Christ, but I’m going to give you the chance to do the right thing on
your own. Live out the ways of God’s commonwealth now.” Where would Paul invite
me to transform my dealings with others to reflect the new life I have in
Christ?
And what if Paul wrote to you? What
would he ask you to do? Whose life would he ask you to better? What relationships
would he expect you to transform?
____________________________________________________________________________
I’ve
been reading Rachel Held Evans’ wonderful new book, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. In one
chapter she talks about the winds of the Spirit that blow in unforeseen and
surprising ways, working both in and outside the Church. She doesn’t use
McLaren’s language of “conspiracy,” but she does speak of how the movement of
the Spirit changes everything. Borrowing Paul’s fruits of the Spirit from
Galatians 5:22-23, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” she says we can use these to spot the
Spirit – the conspiracy – at work in people’s lives.
I
witnessed peace when a Palestinian
man and an Israeli woman, both of whom lost children to the conflict in their
region, urged a room full of Christians to let their friendship be an example
of looking for the humanity in one another. It was patience that brought the female minister to the bedside of the
parishioner who vocally opposed her ordination but had no one else to visit him
when he got sick.
I
saw kindness in the man who, for many
years, helped a special needs student at his school use the bathroom twice a
day, but whose actions went uncelebrated until his funeral when the student
himself gave testimony… I have admired, deeply, the self-control of my friends Justin, Matthew, Rachel, and Jeff who
advocate for the acceptance of LGBT people in Christianity, often to harsh and
cruel criticism, and yet continue to love and serve the very people who turned
them out of the church, refusing to meet anger with anger or hate with hate.[1]
In
Christ Jesus, God has unleashed a conspiracy to change the world. The world
keeps trying to coopt the movement, to domesticate the Church and the message
of the gospel, but blown by the winds of the Spirit, the conspiracy keeps
breaking loose, and showing the hope of God’s
new day.
And
we are invited to be a part of it, to be empowered by the Spirit to become
disciples, instruments of God’s conspiracy. Or as Brian McLaren puts it, “You
can be part of the Spirit conspiracy that is spreading quietly across our
world. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be a secret agent of
God’s commonwealth, conspiring with others behind the scenes to plot goodness
and foment kindness wherever you may be.”[2]
[1] Evans,
Rachel Held (2015-04-14). Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding
the Church (p. 217). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
[2] McLaren,
Brian D. (2014-06-10). We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for
Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (pp. 238-239). FaithWords.
Kindle Edition.
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