Philemon: learning about our common unity in Jesus
How should God’s community on earth act? How are we to treat each other? How does our belief of everyone being equal before Jesus connect with our actions and relationships? These are some of the big questions we will look at when considering the letter of Philemon.
What can a church in Manchester learn from this? Well, the letter to Philemon is an interesting book in our Bible. It's very short and doesn't contain a lot of theological language. What Philemon offers is a peek into the lives of Christians living in real relationship with each other: where ideas meet action in community.
The foundation of this letter comes from our common unity in the church. All those who are in Christ are renewed individually, but are also brought into a new community. What does it mean to live out of our common unity, as a member of God's new community on earth? Not as a gospel formed individual on mission, but as a gospel formed family on mission.
Background
Paul is the author of this letter, and he’s writing to Philemon, a leader in the church at Colossae. Paul is writing about Onesimus, a runaway slave from Philemon’s household, who met Paul in Rome. When he met Paul, he became a Christian. And now Paul is sending Onesimus back, not as a fugitive slave but as a follower of Jesus. Paul in an polite way, encourages Philemon to not just accept Onesimus back, but to free him from slavery and call him as he ought to: his brother.
This letter and us
What a different situation to all of us! What can we learn from all this? Like Onesimus we value self-protection over vulnerability. Like Philemon, we don’t want to pay the cost of real community. And we should be like Paul, who lovingly and gently seeks the mercy of others even in difficult and awkward situations.
Without these characteristics alive in our church in Manchester, we will succumb to the status quo. The status quo community is where life comes to die. It doesn’t seek the mercy of others, it doesn’t give anything to others, and it doesn’t live in vulnerability and openness.
But a church that does reach toward these things, though imperfectly, is a place of life and vigour and health. Paul’s letter to Philemon teaches us that we are called to more as a people, to a community that Jesus has created, and a community that He enables to live in this other worldly way.
We are all like Onesimus
And actually, we’re a lot more like Onesimus than we think. We’re all fugitives, we’ve all ran away from our Master, and unlike any earthly master, we’ve had the best, most perfect Master. We ran away from Him, stealing as we went. We ran to another city that wasn’t our own and tried to fake ourselves into thinking we’re free. But our rebellion enslaves us.
We don’t want to go back because we think our Master is a slavedriver. But the truth is, He’s not! He’s good, and He accepts us, and even more: when He draws us back to His household, He gives us even more than we could ever hope to steal. We find that in God’s house we are His sons. We are His daughters. And now we’re called to live in this house with other sons and daughters of this good Master, of this good Lord. Sometimes that means going to them when we’ve offended or treated others wrongly. There is a new way of living: not one of self-protection, but of vulnerability.
We do this because we have a new identity. Through Jesus we have moved from fugitive to follower. We now get to be the radically accepted children of God. Because we live in this radical acceptance, we can be vulnerable with others. We have been given the Holy Spirit to give us words when they fail us, to give us boldness when we are weak, to give us the power to face what we ought to when we want to run away.
This is the beauty of living as a follower of Jesus, and this is just one aspect of the beautiful story we get to put on display: the gospel for Onesimus and Philemon and Paul is the same good gospel for us.