Text: Philemon 1:1-17
On Monday night, our Administrative Council gathered to talk about how we are doing as a church and what we wanted to focus on next year.
One of the questions before us was: How has Covid-19 impacted your ministry?
Of course there were the obvious things… we’re worshipping online, we’ve adapted to challenges, we’ve built new caring connections lists to reach out in love.
But one of the things echoed something I’ve heard a lot about our church.
“Immanuel is like a family – and we miss getting together with our family.”
Our church is like a family.
And maybe not “like family” … we ARE a family.
Not only have we adopted one another as surrogate parents and grandchildren and the like… but we are all children of God.
We join together with Jesus and pray to “Our Father…”
We are brothers and sisters, siblings in Christ.
We are equal and beloved and valued within this family.
Doesn’t that language feel so natural to us today?
However, Carol Ferguson reminds us it was not always so.
Biological family was everything in the ancient world—Jewish and Roman alike. Wealth, occupation, legal status, citizenship—all these flowed directly along family lines. In our Hebrew scriptures, family language is almost always used in technical terms—a biological brother, an ancestral father.
What does this mean for our house/churches?
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that typically an entire household would convert and become Christian together.
In this time in Roman culture, the family, or familia included everyone in the household.
But not everyone in the family was related by blood.
Some were servants or clients.
Some were slaves.
In the household, the familia, not everyone was equal or beloved or valued.
We get a glimpse of what that meant in the letter from Paul to Philemon.
Philemon and Apphia and Archippus hosted a house/church in their community.
Paul pours upon them lavish praise for their love and faithfulness and partnership in the faith.
Like other households of the time, everyone under their roof would likely have converted as they came to the faith.
Including their slave, Onesimus.
Somehow, although it is not explained, Onesimus came to be with Paul.
Maybe Philemon sent him along, handing him off and discarding him like he might a workhorse.
Maybe Onesimus ran away.
Maybe Paul requested his services.
Whatever might have happened, Paul believes it is time for Onesimus to return to the household of Philemon.
The question is… what will his status be in the household, the family, when he arrives?
Will it be as a slave?
Or will it be as a brother?
You see, there is an important shift that happens in the language of Paul that gets embedded in who we have become as the church.
He starts talking about people of faith with biological family terms.
We heard it last week at the end of Romans – three people are referred to as kin: Junia, Andronicus, and Herodion.
And then you have the mother of Rufus… who is like a mother to Paul.
In this letter, he calls Timothy his brother.
Philemon is his dearly beloved.
He refers to Apphia as his sister.
And then he calls Onesimus his child.
As Carol Fergeson writes:
… when the apostle Paul began to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, he throws around family terms like its going out of style—everyone is his brother and sister, his mother, his children, he is like a father, we are all family in Christ. Across bloodlines, across geographies, across status, across faiths, across conflicts, Paul fashions all who believe in Jesus as the new chosen family of Christ…
None of these people share a bloodline. They do, however, share a Savior.
I’m reminded of those powerful words that Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians:
You are all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus… There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:26, 28)
In Christ, we are all heirs of the promise.
Children of God.
Brothers and Sisters and Siblings one and all.
Today is World Communion Sunday, a day in which we open our hearts and minds and attention beyond just this local church and pay attention to the entire family of Christ.
A family extends beyond political divides…
beyond borders…
beyond economic status…
beyond race…
All are welcome at the table.
I hear a lot of you today asking why can’t we all just be children in Christ?
Why can’t we erase the labels?
Why can’t we gather around the table without these defining characteristics?
I think Paul named them, because the distinctions matter.
Onesimus was a slave. Philemon was a free citizen.
Their lives were different.
These distinctions of our gender identity, our race, our ethnic background, our socio-economic status…
They inform our experiences.
They tell the story of where we have been and what we value.
They paint the beautiful, diverse tapestry of the great multitude from every tribe and language that will stand before the throne of God in Revelation.
The distinctions don’t keep us from that presence of God.
But Paul specifically names them, because they call to mind disparities that exist in the world, and in the body of Christ itself.
As my classmate and pastor Mika Edmondson writes, “…the problem is not our distinctions; it’s our use of those distinctions to establish sinful disparities.” (https://corechristianity.com/resource-library/articles/why-the-bible-doesnt-teach-us-to-be-colorblind/)
Imagine with me, if you will, what it might have meant to be a part of a house/church, a household, that centered their lives on Christ.
Imagine that you were a slave in this context.
Imagine that you didn’t have a choice about converting.
Imagine that you prayed with this community to a crucified Savior while you yourself had the scars of the whip on your back.
Imagine you were forced to dry the floors after the community had poured the grace-filled waters of baptism upon one another.
Imagine that you stood in the distance and served others, while people read Jesus’ words to the poor and the hungry.
Paul sends Onesimus back to his master’s household.
Under one roof, in Christ, the slave and the free would live once again.
And while I wish Paul had commanded Philemon to release the man from slavery, he doesn’t.
I have to be honest, freeing Onesimus would not have changed his status within the culture at large.
He could never be a citizen… he could only ever be a freed slave.
Slavery would always be attached to his identity.
His social and economic status would not change.
But Paul begs Philemon to welcome Onesimus as more than a slave… as a brother.
To accept him into his home as he might accept Paul himself… as a cherished guest and partner in ministry.
What Paul is telling us in both of these places is that while the distinctions may continue to exist, the sinful disparities within the body of Christ, the family of God, are no longer acceptable.
Paul asks Philemon to accept Onesimus as a brother.
He begs him to consider him as a precious family member, a fellow human being.
As equal, and valued, and beloved.
To consider him as someone who truly matters.
We talk a good talk when it comes to World Communion Sunday.
It feels good to lift up and think about how we are all connected and part of the body of Christ.
But like Philemon and Apphia, the challenge before us is to actually live it out.
You see, there are great disparities that exist in this family.
Not everyone is equal or beloved or valued.
Not every life matters.
This week, I learned that our African-American neighbors are twice as likely to die of the coronavirus that our white neighbors.
When you examine the deaths of children from this virus, 78% of the children who have died are children of color.
78%!
And what you see behind those disparities are a whole host other disparities: unequal access to education and medical care, red-lining in housing, lack of generational wealth and representation in decision making.
And I haven’t even covered global disparities related to access to education and health and the climate crisis and economic opportunity.
It is easy to ignore these disparities when they don’t impact us.
But if this was the reality facing your brother…
If this was the disparity that existed for your mother or your child…
What would you do?
I think about the death of George Floyd and how he cried out to his momma… Paul would remind us… we are all his momma.
I think about the children in ICE detention, seeking a better life… Paul would claim them as his children… our children in Christ.
I think about the men who have been put to death this year by our federal government… five executions in two months after a seventeen year moratorium… Paul would beg us to think of these men as more than criminals, but as our brothers.
You know there is this incredible line in Paul’s letter to Philemon.
Paul writes that if Onesimus harmed you in any way or owes you money, charge it to Paul.
If there were any mistakes in the past.
If there were any laws broken.
If there were any faults in their character.
If you are tempted to turn these people away because you are angry with them.
If you want to discount them because of their sin.
If you don’t think they matter because of something they did that was wrong…
Put it all on me.
They matter.
They are important.
See their humanity.
They are your family.
They are part of this body.
Fight for them.
Love them.
Love them as Christ loved them.
Friends, today as we gather to celebrate World Communion Sunday, it feels kind of like we are going through the motions.
Because we are so broken.
We are so divided.
We do not see the humanity in one another.
Republican or Democrat…
Rich or Poor…
… we throw around those labels like insults.
The labels are not the problem.
How we treat one another is.
Where is the love?
Where is the grace?
Where is the mercy?
Where are all of those things that we have learned right here at this communion table?
Today, Paul is writing to us.
In our homes.
In our relationships.
If you really consider me to be your partner in ministry…
If you really follow Christ…
If you really abide in his love…
Then look at those that you would diminish…
Those you might discount…
Those you think are stupid because of something they posted on social media…
Even those who have harmed you…
See them.
Listen to their story.
Hear what they have to offer.
Consider them to be your brother… your sister… your sibling in Christ.
Pull up a chair at your table and let them know that they matter.
That they matter to you.
