Sermon by the Rev. Dr A. K. M. Adam

I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.

In the Name of Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If I were writing a letter of protest concerning slavery — perhaps the slavery that sustains many chocolate production, or agricultural or fishing slavery, or domestic or sexual slavery —if I were writing a letter of protest concerning slavery, I would probably put particular emphasis on freedom and human rights. I might assert that the institution of slavery denies the inalienable human right to self-determination, or that slavery is intrinsically incompatible with freedom and democracy. This sort of point seems so obvious to most people that one hardly even needs to specify what’s wrong about slavery; the word “slavery” itself seems wrong, evil, through and through.

So I’m intrigued that when St Paul writes a short personal note to Philemon, the slave owner, on behalf of Onesimus, one of Philemon’s slaves who had run away, Paul doesn’t say a word about rights or freedom or even matters of what’s good or bad. None of that means that we’re wrong about slavery or human rights, nor that Paul forgot what he really ought to have said; but the way Paul went about trying to work things out with Philemon — the way Paul framed the situation, rather than the way we might have framed it — sheds light on the way Paul thought about the discipleship and church life in a way that talk about freedom and human rights doesn’t quite get at.

To be sure, Paul was writing to a slaveowner at a time, in a world when slave-holding was a normal practice (at least, if you had enough money). If Paul had just told Philemon to forget about slavery altogether, Philemon might have had a difficult time understanding what Paul could possibly mean. Slavery played an important role in the economy, in the households of the privileged, even for desperate workers who might be better off as a slave in a wealthy family than as free workers in debt or poverty. Some sorts of people seemed naturally to be slaves to people in antiquity; slaves were servile in nature, and citizens were free in nature. Abolish slavery, and who knows what radical idea Paul might come up with next! Maybe he would accord women the right to vote!

But although slavery seemed like a natural enough part of human civilisation to Philemon and his wealthy neighbours, it still seems odd that Paul wouldn’t say so directly. Paul didn’t hesitate to denounce a whole lorry-load of social practices that seemed normal to other people: boasting, lawsuits, eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. If Paul felt free to forbid other activities that seemed normal to Philemon and his social circle, why not just tell Philemon, or remind him, that slavery was right out and that Philemon should not only welcome Onesimus back as a former slave, but he should free any other slaves he might have, and begin lobbying the Roman Empire to make slavery illegal all over, and maybe open a Fair Trade stall to help support decent wages for struggling labourers? Why should Paul not say “Heaven forbid!” the way he so often did in other letters? Why not say, “For freedom Christ has set you free, so do not submit again to a yoke of slavery,” the way Paul wrote in the Letter to the Galatians?

I cannot read Paul’s mind, but we may find some clues in the ways that Paul does talk about freedom and human rights in his letters. The kind of freedom that Paul thinks of as most important involves the freedom to draw closer to God, to realise more fully the image of God that defines us as free citizens of heaven. Thus, for Paul, although freedom from earthly servitude was important, that freedom was empty if was not oriented toward the freedom by which we are transformed from slaves of mortality to free heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. He would not suggest that slavery was no big deal, but he would remind us that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us,” and “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish.” Nothing matters more to Paul than sharing in Christ’s glory, in his freedom, in his righteousness, and above all in his unconquerable life. So far as we can tell, Paul thought slavery was a bad thing, but it was bad inasmuch as it distorted who we are and how we are to be with one another. Children of God, co-heirs of Christ who will inherit the Kingdom, have nothing to do with enslaving or with serving earthly masters according to Paul’s way of thinking.

And this brings us to another dimension of Paul’s reasons for expecting Philemon to treat Onesimus kindly. We who together are children of God, who are united in the Body of Christ, deny our unity and fellowship if we imagine that any of us could own be master of another. In Christ, as Paul says, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Who we are by nature is transformed in Christ, so that our unity and our harmony in Christ take precedence over our earthly condition. Our truest, realest, eternal identity is already wrapped up in our destiny to share in Christ’s glory as sisters and brothers — and that truest identity can’t be compatible with one serving another as a slave, since we all belong to Christ.

So Paul urges Philemon the master to receive (and presumably, to release) Onesimus the slave not because Onesimus has the inalienable human right to be free, but because Philemon and Onesimus are brothers, equal sharers in the promises of Christ. And Paul expressed this exhortation in an intense rhetorical performance, full of gently forceful reminders of how much Philemon owes to Paul. Paul could simply have commanded Philemon to drop the whole matter, release Onesimus, and that’s all sorted; Paul was, after all, an apostle and the preacher who brought the good news of grace to Philemon in the first place, such that Paul was instrumental in bringing Philemon to eternal life. Instead, Paul reminds him of how all three — Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus — are bound together in the VBody of Christ. In that one Body there can be no slaves or masters, for we all belong to God.

At this point you may be thinking — and not without reason — that you wish Paul had concentrated a bit more on the actual, legal, material aspects of slavery. At many points Paul seems to regard slavery as though it were a matter of being really, really underpaid, or as though the earthly bondage of slavery wasn’t worth thinking much about, compared to the spiritual problem of bondage to sin and death. And it’s certainly true that Paul’s attention turns primarily to the theological dimensions of political problems.

But it would be a mistake to allow these two dimensions of our lives (and Onesimus’s life) to be pulled apart. The political problem of slavery is a theological problem — and our very human bondage to sin is a political problem (and at this point there is no need to name the names of self-justifying, vain, calculating politicals, rulers who do evil in God’s sight, not listening to the voice of the Lord).

We may exercise more active concern for enslaved cocoa growers,for young women forced into prostitution or trapped into lives as domestic servants — and we have the benefit of a global culture and an international legal system by which to resist industrial slavery. But as we campaign for Fair Trade, or against the sex trade, we re joining our voices with Paul’s and Onesimus’s, reminding Philemon that a Body that tolerates earthly slavery cannot reflect the glory of God. And as Paul reminds Philemon that we are all members of obe Body, free sisters and brothers of one family, all of us cooperating to sustain each other, that spiritual Body admits of no slavery to earthly masters.

Confident of our obedience to the gospel of freedom, Paul entrusts his very heart, that is Onesimus and all in chains of servitude, to us — knowing that we who take up the cross of Christ will do even more than he asks, to show the world a community united in freedom, in one Body, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.