"Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To our beloved coworker Philemon, to our sister Apphia, to our fellow soldier Archippus, and to the church in your house: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always when I mention you in my prayers, because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. I pray that the partnership of your faith may become effective as you comprehend all the good that we share in Christ. I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother. For this reason, though I am more than bold enough in Christ to command you to do the right thing, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment." (Philemon v.1-10)
It is one thing to talk in the abstract about "standing with people on the margins;" it is quite another to actually do it with your actions. It's one thing to preach about having "empathy" for those who are being stepped on or treated as less-than; it is something else entirely to put your body, your reputation, or your life on the line because you have chosen to stand with them. And even though church folk have a mixed record when it comes to actually living out our good intentions, there are indeed times when the followers of Jesus step up and actually live what they talk about and practice what they preach. Those moments--even if they seem like rare birds--are a big part of what keeps me a Christian and keeps me from giving up on the church; it seems Jesus hasn't given up on working through us, even for all the times we have blown it. Sometimes, the followers of Jesus really do embody his own way of standing with the folks on the margins.
This is one of those stories.
The short book we call "Philemon" is one of those lesser-known, contextually-complicated letters of the New Testament, and it only comes around in our Revised Common Lectionary once every three years. So if you heard it read this past Sunday in worship as many of us did, it was likely the first time you had heard it in quite a while (and rarely does it get preached on, largely because of how much backstory goes into explaining the situation).
So here's the short version: near the end of Paul the Apostle's life, he found himself in prison (again) and likely awaiting a death sentence at the hands of the Empire (the Romans did not like folks who made subversive suggestions that anybody other than Caesar was Lord, and Christians would not compromise on that point, instead confessing that Jesus alone was Lord). While he was in prison, he met a runaway slave by the name of Onesimus (we don't know whether Onesimus sought Paul out, or just happened to cross paths with him, or came to faith in Jesus and then got connected with Paul, but somehow they found each other). Onesimus, it turns out, had been enslaved by Philemon, the recipient of this letter (which is why the book bears his name), and Philemon was a Christian who had first come to faith through the ministry of--you guessed it--Paul the Apostle. (Now, I know, that last sentence is likely to make us squirm, because it means recognizing that there were early Christians who still practiced slavery, which was very prevalent throughout the Roman Empire, and that the early church really did have to work through the question of how to address the wrongs of slavery. That question probably requires a deeper dive in a conversation for another day).
Anyway, so now we've got Paul writing to Philemon and basically pleading on behalf of Onesimus to free him. Later in the letter, Paul will say he is sending Onesimus back to Philemon's household, with the understanding that he expects Philemon to receive him not as a slave, but as a brother now--especially since Onesimus has now come to share a common faith in Christ Jesus. Before the letter is done, Paul will lay on the guilt trips pretty thick and do just about everything short of arm-twisting to make his case, but the goal is clear: he wants Onesimus to be both freed from slavery and received with love as a member of the family.
And this is where Paul's letter just gets me every time: he doesn't just preach or pontificate about "doing the right thing" or "the evils of slavery in the abstract," and he most certainly doesn't leave Onesimus to fend for himself by saying, "This isn't my problem--haven't you noticed I'm already on death row here?" Instead, Paul sticks his neck out for Onesimus' sake, throwing his lot in with the enslaved man as he writes back to Philemon. He says, "I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment." Those are pretty intimate, close terms! He basically says, "How you treat this enslaved person is how I will take it that you are treating me!" Maybe even more forcefully, the sense is, "I will defend Onesimus like a mother bear, so don't you dare continuing to treat my child like he is property." Paul metaphorically puts his own body between Philemon and the one whom he had enslaved. Paul uses the only leverage that he has--his own life, his own reputation, and whatever authority he had in Philemon's eyes--in order to make a difference for one enslaved person.
Now, we could certainly lament that this one letter didn't immediately sweep across the Empire and bring about the end of the institution of slavery (the same as we can lament that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't bring an end to chattel slavery in the United States by itself, either). But we can at least see the thrust of what Paul does here: he risks all of his influence, persuasive power, and clout, for the sake of the person who is most endangered. You might argue that President Lincoln did the same when he took actions that pinned his presidency (and the course of the Civil War) on the question of slavery beyond just the question of preserving the Union. But for Paul certainly, the stakes were high, and he was willing to spend his "chips" so to speak on standing with Onesimus, even though it surely came with risk. If Philemon had been offended or upset by this letter, he might have cut off whatever support he was offering Paul in prison, or he might have turned the house church that met in his home against Paul. He might have even turned in more evidence again Paul to seal his fate, or added new charges for the Empire to prosecute by suggesting that Paul was trying to overturn the whole Empire by pushing for the end of slavery everywhere! Paul risked quite a bit by standing in solidarity with Onesimus, even when this formerly enslaved person could do nothing in return for Paul or pay him back.
So, why would Paul do something like this, especially if he had his own problems to deal with? Why would Paul risk his own already-precarious situation by taking his stand with this relative stranger that he had only recently met, whom everyone else in Roman society regarded as a nobody because he was enslaved? Well, it seems this is one of those times where Paul took Jesus seriously--this is one way to follow Jesus to the folks on the margins, not just for a quick photo-op or a moment of pity, but to actually get to know the people who might have otherwise been overlooked or ignored. It's true that Paul had never met the earthly Jesus--he only encountered the risen Christ years after the resurrection, so he never followed Jesus as his rabbi over the dusty roads of Galilee. And Jesus never had to deal with the specific situation of meeting someone who had escaped from slavery, either. But Paul understood the trajectory of what Jesus' mission was all about. Paul knew that the same love of Jesus that had healed lepers with a touch of his hand, welcomed outcast tax collectors to share his table, and spoke to those "the rules" forbade speaking to would take a different form in Paul's own life. But the motion was the same: moving toward the folks on the margins to see faces, get to know stories, and to listen to the stories of the people who have been treated as "less-than." Paul knows, as Jesus surely did, the truth of that famous line of the late Gustavo Gutierrez, "So you say you love the poor? Name them." Jesus would not settle for abstractly talking ABOUT the poor, or the sick, or the enslaved, but actually got to know faces, stories, and names. So Paul does the same: he puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak--or puts his reputation where his rhetoric was, by staking everything on standing with Onesimus. And for Paul, this wasn't a matter of doing enough good works to earn a gold star from Jesus or get into heaven--it was simply a matter of following Jesus where Jesus was already headed: to the people who were suffering right in front of him.
Paul's example gives us a glimpse of what we might be called to do in this day. I presume we will not run into anyone in exactly Onesimus' predicament, but we may well be asked to put our well-being, our comfort, and our livelihoods on the line for the sake of someone God sends across our path. We may well be challenged to speak up on the behalf of those who are being treated as less-than or as though they are invisible, and speaking up may lose us friends, cost us clout, or affect our bottom line. We may well be called to look for the faces like Onesimus' in Paul's situation, to get to know stories and needs, and to take our stand with them, not because of what they can do for us in return, but because that is where Jesus is leading us. They may be the victims of wars and bombings halfway around the world, or the people whose access to food has been cut off in the name of saving money, or people who have sought refuge here and now find fewer and fewer safe places and people for support. They may be strangers you have walked past a dozen times without realizing it. They might be closer than any of us realize. But when we do take that next step, alongside Paul, to go with Jesus to the margins, the watching world will know that we are more than just talk.
Lord Jesus, lead us today to stand with others, not merely in words or ideas, but with our presence.
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