Philemon

I missed my chance again.

On Sunday morning, we read nearly the entirety of one of my favorite books of the Bible: Paul’s letter to Philemon. (Click here for Sunday’s reading.) Unfortunately, our lectionary—the cycle of readings appointed for Sunday mornings—makes it quite hard to preach on Philemon, because we only read it once every three years, and it allows falls on the Sunday when Jesus also tells us to hate our fathers, mothers, spouses, and children. Addressing the Gospel on that day always feels a bit more urgent than unpacking this delightful but enigmatic letter to Philemon.

So, you get some thoughts in News and Notes instead, this week. The Biblical scholar and Church of England Bishop NT Wright begins his 1658-page magnum opus Paul and the Faithfulness of God—the fruit of a lifetime of study, teaching, and ministry—with a discussion of this one little letter. He writes, “It is stretching the point only a little to suggest that, if we had no other first-century evidence for the movement that came to be called Christianity, this letter ought to make us think: Something is going on here. Something is different. People don’t say this sort of thing.”

So what is it that makes Philemon so distinct? What makes this one of my favorite books of the Bible?

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Of all Paul’s letters, the letter to Philemon is the closest to actually being a letter: i.e., a short-ish written communication from one person to another addressing some particular matter. Philemon is a person, not a place; the letter is a letter, not a theological treatise with an address at the top. The Biblical “book” of Philemon is a short letter with practical advice for a particular situation. And yet from beginning to end, it reflects the profound transformation in worldview that comes with the adoption of the Christian faith and membership in the Church.

The heart of the letter revolves around the relationships between three people: Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus. Philemon is a wealthy aristocrat, a leader of the early church in the city of Colossae, who began to follow Jesus after hearing the good news from Paul during his travels. Onesimus is an enslaved member of Philemon’s household. The exact circumstances of the letter are somewhat unclear, and its interpretation has always been disputed—suffice it to say that Philemon was used by both pro-slavery and abolitionist Christians in the American antebellum period—but the scholarly consensus goes something like this: At some point, Philemon had met Paul, probably while in the city of Ephesus on business, and been converted before returning home. Now, Paul is imprisoned; the location is unknown, but it’s likely Ephesus or another nearby city. Onesimus, one of Philemon’s slaves, leaves the city and seeks out Paul, perhaps because he already knows of him, or perhaps because he hopes he’ll intervene in some kind of conflict. It’s unclear from the text itself whether there is some prior conflict or wrongdoing, or whether the “wrongdoing” consists primarily of Onesimus running away, seeking his freedom by leaving Philemon behind. In any case, after finding Paul, Onesimus himself seems to have converted to the Christian faith. And now Paul sends him back, presumably carrying this letter back to Philemon from Paul.

Hence the interpretive disagreement. Pro-slavery American Christians in the 19th century would point to Onesimus in the context of arguments about, for example, the Fugitive Slave Act: Look! Onesimus runs away, and Paul sends him back! Their abolitionist opponents would point out that this almost entirely misses the point of the letter. Paul sends him back, yes—“no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” (Philemon 16) Paul “wanted to keep him with me” but “preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.” (14) It's not really voluntary: Paul is laying it on pretty thick. “Confident of your obedience,” he concludes Sunday’s reading, “I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.” (21) After all: “I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.” (19)

This is not the spirit of the “Fugitive Slave Act.” Paul is very clearly instructing Philemon what to do, in a polite and circuitous way: free Onesimus and let him come back to me, to help me out in my ministry.

The practical upshot of this is unusual for its day, but not completely unheard of; on the face of it, a powerful patron asking his slightly-less-powerful client to offer him a gift of his own slave would not be impossible. But this isn’t what Paul says. This isn’t a cynical transaction between two powerful men. The tone of it should stop us in our tracks: Paul writes, “I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.” (12)  

And this whole change comes directly from Paul’s theological understanding of the church: the body of Christian believers is the family of God. The letter begins by naming its authors as “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother.” (1) It addresses “Philemon our dear friend” and “Apphia our sister,” and addresses them: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1–3) Paul expresses the “joy and encouragement” he has received from Philemon’s “love,” because “the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.” (7) By virtue of their shared faith in Christ, Paul and Philemon (and Timothy and Apphia) have become siblings: they are equal in social status and owe one another a certain kind of love.

Anthropologists would call this “fictive kinship”: the use of the language of family to indicate the bonds between two people. So far, this is all par for the course for powerful people—the third cousins Wilhelm II of Germany and Nicholas II of Russia, after all, were able to write letters to one another as “Willy” and “Nicky” even while preparing to blow one another’s armies to bits in the Great War.

But then, Paul carries this family theology to its logical conclusion: now not only Paul, the Roman citizen, and Philemon, the wealthy aristocrat, have converted. Onesimus has converted too. He, too, is a sibling in the family of God. Paul eases Philemon into it—Onesimus is Paul’s “child,” because Paul became his (spiritual) “father” during imprisonment. (10) There’s still a sense of hierarchy here. But soon enough the full measure of equality is revealed, in that pivotal phrase: Paul asks that Philemon welcome him back “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” (16)

This is a world turned upside down: a world of rigorous hierarchy and structure in which slavery was a deeply entrenched social institution, and in which even freedmen (former slaves) constituted a social class distinct from freemen (people born free)—and in which now runaway slaves and indignant aristocrats alike are “brothers,” siblings who share one “Father.” Paul’s vision of equality in Christ challenged these rigid structures, flattening the hierarchy of the Roman Empire into something more horizontal: not an empire of masters and slaves, but a family of brothers and sisters.

We don’t know the rest of the story of Philemon and Onesimus. Is the Onesimus we hear about today the same Onesimus whom Ignatius of Antioch lists as Bishop of Ephesus a few decades later? Perhaps. There were certainly slaves who rose to became bishops in the early church.

We do know that Paul’s radical vision of equality took much longer to come to fruition. The very fact that I can talk about “pro-slavery Christians” in the 19th century suggests that it was not an easy or an obvious journey. But it is stunning to me, across two thousand years, to see Paul’s love for his new “son” and “brother” poured out on the page—and to see the radical way in which Christianity transforms the entire way we look at the people around us, as we all come to recognize ourselves as siblings of one another in the family of God.