“Giving up the Onesimus in Your House”
A Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
September 9, 2007
Rev. Larry Lange
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Congregation
Green Bay, Wisconsin
In the Gospel lesson Jesus challenges those of you who think you want to be his disciples with the condition that you must give up all your possessions.
In the second lesson, on the other hand, the Apostle Paul asks Philemon to give up only one of his possessions—that being his slave Onesimus.
So, okay: all those in favor of Jesus’ idea of discipleship—that you have to give up all your possessions—raise your hands. And all those in favor of the Apostle Paul’s idea of discipleship—that giving up one possession is quite enough—raise your hands.
For our radio audience: the official results are in: Paul wins by a landslide.
Not one vote for Jesus. You’d think this was the city council.
The bad news is that the Apostle Paul is really quite a bit closer to Jesus challenge than it appears on the surface. Which is a good message for you young bible readers today, but also a good message for everyone else: you can’t just read something in the bible and say, “Well, that settles that.” It’s hard sometimes to understand the bible.
In the Old Testament lesson today, it says if you choose God and obey God you will enjoy prosperity and a long life.
Now, who was better at obedience to God than Jesus? But did Jesus live a long, happy life in a big, swanky house? Course not. Does that mean Deuteronomy is not true? No, it means that Deuteronomy is part of the truth, not the whole truth. It means the scriptures include the beliefs of many different people who, over the course of a thousand years, were inspired to seek and explain the truth about God as they experienced it.
Still, if you want a simple, black and white religion it is Christianity. Christianity is simple: God loves you. Forever. Your grateful response to God for his love for you? Believe and hope and trust in God’s love, love God in return and love your neighbor as yourself.
That’s pretty much it.
Now you’re probably thinking wouldn’t be great if he were the kind of pastor who just said that and sat down? but unfortunately for you Pastor Julie won’t be preaching until next week.
Today, I think it’s important to think a little bit about how to love your neighbor, which brings us right back to that bad news about the Apostle Paul. Yes, the Apostle Paul only wants Philemon to give up one slave.
Now if Philemon had a hundred slaves, maybe that wouldn’t have been a big deal; maybe things haven’t changed in 2000 years; maybe when you got rid of employees 2000 years ago, you just gave the remaining employees all the extra work, so maybe one slave to Philemon was no big deal.
But even if Philemon did have a hundred slaves (which is pretty unlikely) giving away one of them would’ve still been giving away a substantial asset: a slave was worth at least two years of wages of an average laborer—like thirty or forty thousand dollars—plus the cost of lost productivity plus the potential cost of having to replace the slave. So even if Philemon did have a hundred slaves, one of them would have been a pretty substantial gift.
But what if Philemon had only a few slaves (which is more likely)? What if Philemon had only three or four slaves? Then Paul is really asking for a huge gift for the mission of the church, a huge percentage of assets and productivity, far more than the biblical standard of ten percent that Pastor Julie and I give for the mission of the church.
Still, the Apostle Paul does not ask for all of Philemon’s possessions like Jesus does. Instead, Paul asks for something even more radical. Paul asks Philemon to send Onesimus to him not as a slave for Paul to use, but as a beloved brother.
Paul’s request raises a question for Philemon: if Onesimus is now my beloved brother, my equal, how can I justify the inequality between slave and free any longer? Agreeing to Paul’s request pushes Philemon to consider a new world view, a world view of worth and equality of persons based on God’s love. Paul doesn’t think a person’s worth and equality is based on a person’s marketability as an economic asset. Paul doesn’t think a person’s worth and equality is based on the color of a person’s skin. Paul doesn’t think a person’s worth and equality is based on a complete agreement on all moral issues. Paul doesn’t think a person’s worth and equality is based on whether or not the person has a sound mind and body. For Paul, the people served by COTS homeless shelter who worshiped at Jesus’ table with us this past winter are our beloved brothers and sisters.
In pushing Philemon toward a new world view, Paul is also pushing Philemon to wonder if all the benefits he received from the institution of slavery were really moral for him to enjoy. How could Philemon continue to expect free labor that benefited only him from somebody who was really his beloved brother?
Now, of course, this has nothing to do with us, because we don’t own any slaves, because we belong to a far more advanced civilization than the Roman Empire.
Or not.
We also benefit from an economic system that treats millions of our brothers and sisters little better than slaves. We benefit from this system when we engage in endless consumption of an endless supply of cheap consumer goods without regard to the abuse suffered by our brothers and sisters around the world and in our own country who produce them. We are no better than Philemon, an owner of slaves.
Paul is not only asking Philemon to give up Onesimus and to take on a new world view.
Paul is asking the same thing of us.
Paul wants Christians like us to examine our consumption patterns and ask ourselves: are the things we buy from sweat shops in India or Los Angeles? are the things we buy from countries and companies that desecrate the environment? Is the coffee we buy putting our beloved brothers and sisters at risk of unregulated pesticides in their work environment and ground water?
I know some of it is.
I’ve seen pictures of men on coffee plantations spraying clouds of pesticides with no protection for themselves.
Is the cheap coffee or cheap food of any kind we buy bought from our beloved brothers and sisters at prices that do not cover their costs? Is the coal that provides our electricity mined under safe and environmentally responsible circumstances? Would you like to work in the two coal mines that suffered disastrous cave-ins this past two years? Why is it acceptable that your beloved brothers and sisters to do so?
On a PBS documentary, I saw our coal miners worshiping in churches just like ours; I saw members of those churches delivering jugs of water to people, because their only source of water was destroyed by the coal mines. Think of them when you leave the lights on all over the house or take twenty minute showers.
Now, of course, less demand would mean they might lose their jobs. Or better regulation might mean higher costs and destructive inflation and bungling bureaucracy. But there are always difficulties and risks in changing the way things get done to make things more humane for people. The greater difficulty and risk is allowing our beloved brothers and sisters to continue to suffer because of our careless lifestyles.
This kind of critical analysis of the world economic system is what Paul was urging Philemon to do when Paul asked Philemon to regard Onesimus as a beloved brother, and Paul is asking us to do the exact same thing. Instead of uncritically enjoying an endless supply of cheap consumer goods, we are called to think about our beloved brothers and sisters who provide them. Though it’s not the same as giving up all our possessions as Jesus demands, it’s pretty close.
But we can look at this in a positive manner as well: wouldn’t it be cool if we’d give up some of our possessions so we could afford to buy solar panels for our church building so we could stop contributing to the need to mine coal so we could stop contributing to the recent increases in the levels of mercury in the atmosphere? (Yes, I know the amount of mercury generated by the United States is only 1% of the worldwide total, but that 1% is a lot of tons of mercury and it stays right here, and it’s increasing, and a little mercury probably isn’t something you want to be putting on your Cheerios in the morning.)
And yes, there is no way we can live a perfectly sustainable life short of all becoming Amish. Yet until we give up the Onesimus in our houses, we will continue to participate in an economic order that harms and exploits our beloved brothers and sisters right here in our own country and all around the world. Until we give up the Onesimus in our houses, we are all living in sin, we are all in need in need of God’s grace, God’s forgiveness, God’s patience, God’s love.
Now, Paul says he could have demanded that Philemon give up the Onesimus in his house. But Paul went on to appeal to Philemon based on love: Paul reminded Philemon how Paul had in some way given Philemon “his own self.” And Paul reminded Philemon that he was now an old man, living in some form of Roman prison, awaiting his appeal of a death sentence, and desperately longing for the companionship Onesimus had been. Still, Paul gives his Onesimus away, gives away his heart, someone who was like his own son, sends him back to Philemon hoping Philemon would send Onesimus back voluntarily, hoping the love in Philemon’s heart would change the way he saw the world. Paul appealed to Philemon’s gratitude for all the gifts Paul had given him.
How much more of a gift for us is God’s love?
We don’t know how Philemon responded to Paul’s request.
How will you respond to respond to give up the Onesimus in your house?