Philemon        Genesis 4:8-17

 

I: — “The biblical story begins in a garden and culminates in a city,” the pamphlet advertising Knox Summer Fellowship tells us.  The pamphlet is correct. Human existence begins in a garden, ‘ Eden ,’ Hebrew for ‘delight.’ The ‘garden of delight’ informs us, symbolically, that everything we humans need to thrive is given us by the God whose goodness and generosity are boundless.

Then how did we get from the garden to the city? God, we know, created Eden , garden of delight. But where did the city come from? Cain built the first city, and after Cain cities proliferated.

Why did Cain build a city?  Cain has slain his brother. He thinks a city will function like a fort; that is, protect him – protect him from the God who is now pursuing him.  In the wake of Cain’s violation of his brother God asks him, “Where is your brother?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Cain replies; “Is he my responsibility?” Whereupon God puts a second question to Cain: “What have you done?”

Now Cain is squirming as God interrogates him. Cain doesn’t enjoy being pressured. He wants to insulate himself against such pressure.  And so he builds a city. Why a city?   Cain has been condemned by God to being a fugitive and a vagabond.  But Cain can’t endure being a vagabond without a home and a fugitive anxiously looking over his shoulder.  What’s more, murderous Cain has introduced insecurity into humankind, a taste for blood, and the pursuit of vengeance.  Muderous Cain can’t endure the anxiety of living amidst insecurity and vindictiveness. He thinks a city will provide him the preoccupation he needs to keep God’s questions out of his ears and God himself out of his face.         He thinks a city’s population and a city’s distractions will let him forget what he is, what he has done, and what he has brought to others. He thinks he can quiet himself and protect himself by building a city.  He thinks a city will provide the tranquillity of a home and the security of a fort. (The problem, of course, is that everyone else in the city is also a murderer looking for tranquillity and security.)

Cain wasn’t the first to disobey God.  His parents were. Adam and Eve had disobeyed God at the epicentre of their existence. They had made a U-turn that had left them oriented away from God, dis-oriented in every sense of the word. In the wake of their shocking disobedience God expelled them from the garden by God’s own judicial act, and then God had put to them the first question scripture records: “Where are you?”  They didn’t answer. They couldn’t. They didn’t know where they were; they merely knew where they weren’t: they weren’t at home amidst delight.

After God had expelled Cain’s parents from the garden God placed an angel with a flaming sword that turned every which way at the east end of the garden, the end from which they had been expelled, the end through which they would attempt to re-enter.  The flaming sword ensured that humankind could never regain Eden . No human effort at undoing the Fall; no human effort at righting itself before God will ever succeed. No utopia will ever achieve what it promises. The angel with the flaming sword ensures that all attempts at utopias issue in dystopias. The 20^th Century saw two attempts at utopias, one from the political right (Nazism) and one from the political left (communism.)         Both proved murderous dystopias.

At this point the Bible unfolds the Genesis-to-Revelation story of the city.  There are scores of cities mentioned in Scripture.  All of them have one thing in common: they are monuments to humankind’s defiance of God, and they are barricades behind which we think we can hide from God.   “We don’t need you,” we cry to God, “because we have our magnificent city, and it both comforts us and secures us. What’s more, we have no time for you because our city fills the horizon of our lives, waking and sleeping.”

Think of Babel . (Genesis 11) “Let us make a name for ourselves. Let us build ourselves a city, a tower with its top in the heavens.”  We aren’t happy with the name God has given us.  In Scripture ‘name’ means ‘nature’ or ‘essence.’         We aren’t happy with the nature God has given us.  Our nature: God’s faithful, obedient covenant-partners?  We don’t want that: we want to create our own nature, fashion our own essence. We want to be self-made people from start to finish.  If we fashion ourselves and programme ourselves then we won’t be accountable to anyone or indebted to anyone.

Another city is built, and others after that. Babylon looms. Babylon is a terrible city. It carries off God’s people into exile and torments them.  Babylon , of course, is that wicked city which shouldn’t have surprised God’s people since they already knew, regrettably, what cities are about.

But Babylon doesn’t last forever. Eventually there’s a return to Jerusalem , ‘Hier Shalem,’ city of shalom, city of salvation.  Jerusalem is surely the God-given antidote to toxic Babylon and all cities like it.

Hier Shalem, city of salvation?  Jerusalem is the city that slays God’s prophets and crucifies God’s messiah. It isn’t the antidote to anything.

For this reason Jerusalem must give way to the New Jerusalem.  The New Jerusalem is new not in the quantitative sense of ‘most recent,’ the chronologically most recent version of ‘same old, same old.’ The New Jerusalem is new in the qualitative sense of ‘entirely different.’  The New Jerusalem is unlike any previous city in that it is the first city whose sole builder is God.  It is the only city God’s Messiah adorns.

This city, be it noted, includes a garden.  The New Jerusalem recovers and restores the old, old garden, Revelation 22 tells us. Only now the garden’s tree of life is the occasion not of humankind’s incomprehensible sin but of the healing of the nations.

There’s only one problem concerning the New Jerusalem: no one has seen it. It’s been promised, but the promise hasn’t been fulfilled.  The promised city isn’t here.

Or is it?  The city of God is the kingdom of God . Jesus insists that wherever he, the king, is present, the kingdom is operative.  (After all, everyone knows there can’t be a king without a kingdom or a kingdom without a king.)  Jesus Christ the King, risen triumphant over sin, evil and death, now ruling and ceaselessly pouring forth the Spirit; Christ the King is in our midst. Therefore his kingdom is present and operative.

Then why is Christ’s kingdom still disputed? It’s disputed because the world lacks the spiritual qualification to see it.         The kingdom can be seen only by those who are kingdom-sighted, just as colour can be perceived only by those who are colour-sighted.  Colour-blind people don’t see colour and aren’t expected to.  But let us be sure of one thing: those whom the king has rendered kingdom-sighted; they most certainly recognize the presence of the kingdom and rejoice in it.

Actually, the kingdom-sighted see both the kingdom of God and what the apostle Paul calls “this present evil age.”         They see both, and see both simultaneously.  (In other words they aren’t naïve.)  But even as they see both simultaneously, they don’t see both with equal vividness and clarity. Their perception of the kingdom predominates.

When I hold a book in front of me in reading range and look at it I see the printed page clearly, in focus, and everything else on the periphery less clearly, less focused, less vivid.  Or I can hold a book in front of me and look not at it but rather what’s behind it or beside it. Now everything else is clear, focused, vivid, while the book (I can see it and therefore know it’s there) I can’t read because it’s unfocused.

Tell me: which is more focused, clear, vivid for you: the kingdom of God or this present evil age? Both are here (for now); both are occurring simultaneously.  But both can’t be our primary focus simultaneously.

On the day that God has appointed, the city of God , whose only builder is God, will shine forth beyond dispute.         Until that day the city of God , the kingdom of God , remains superimposed on this present evil age.  Only the kingdom-sighted can see the present kingdom; but they do see it, and see it as the city of God, which city of God they know will one day stand forth alone, unobscured, no longer disputed because indisputable.

What are Christians to do in the meantime?  Our task is never to build the kingdom, build the city of God . (Remember, anything we build we pervert.)   Our task is to discern the kingdom; discern it, exalt it, point to it, and point others to it.

In the meantime Christians live in the overlap of kingdom and present evil age; we live in the superimposition of the city of God upon the cities of humankind. We aren’t naïve; we recognize the startling contradiction between the city whose builder is Cain and the city whose builder is God.  Yet we aren’t paralyzed by the contradiction.  We know what we are to discern and to do.

 

II: — Cain violated his brother Abel.  We humans violate each other – violate each other lethally – in many different ways. One such violation, deadly to be sure, is slavery.  We violate our sisters and brothers who are made like us in the image and likeness of God. Every time someone is enslaved, anywhere in the world, Cain slays Abel afresh.           Slavery is a blatant contradiction of the city of God , a blatant contradiction of the kingdom.

Slavery is rampant in the world today.  At the end of 2009 there were approximately 29.2 million humans enslaved throughout the world. The average value of a slave (right now) is $340 ( U.S. ); the lowest market value is for debt-bondage slaves ($40-$50), while the highest market value is for sex slaves ($1895.)  In India there are currently 40 million ‘bonded labour’ slaves, people of the ‘untouchable class’ in the caste system who labour to pay off debts incurred generations ago. Nigeria boasts 800,000 slaves (or 8% of the nation’s population.)  As of 2002 there were 109,000 child-slaves working as forced labourers on cocoa farms in the Cote d’Ivoire . Millions of people toiled as slaves in the former Soviet Gulag system of penal labour.  Slave-trafficking remains big business, with approximately 800,000 people trafficked every year across national borders.

 

III: — Slavery is as old as humankind. Slavery thrived everywhere throughout the Roman Empire . When the apostle Paul penned his letter to slave-holder Philemon, there were 60 million slaves throughout the empire. We mustn’t deceive ourselves.  ‘Slave’ was not then and is not now and another word for ‘employee.’ A slave was deemed subhuman. Aristotle spoke of slaves as animated tools.  In the Roman era slaves had no rights before the law; slaves had no means of appeal against their masters.  The Latin expression concerning slaves was non habens personam; that is, ‘not having a face.’

 

Paul wrote to Philemon in the year 62 (approximately.)  Tacitus, a first century Roman historian and senator, relates the story of the murder of Pedanius Secundus in 61.  Pedanius Secundus happened to be murdered by one his own slaves.  Whenever a slave slew a householder the custom was that all the slaves of that household were to be put to death – an obvious attempt at telling slaves that if any one of them misbehaved then all of them would be executed.  All the slaves of Pedanius Secundus’ household were executed; that is, all 400 of them, including women and children.

  Slavery is iniquitous. Slavery of any sort means that a human being is regarded as and deployed as – as an animal? On the contrary animals customarily receive much better treatment than slaves.  Slavery means that a human being is regarded as less than an animal, is regarded as a tool, stick, a stone, an implement, an object than can be replaced by any similar object as surely as any one hammer or screwdriver can be replaced by any other hammer or screwdriver.

The apostle Paul knew slavery to be iniquitous. Then why didn’t he rail against it? The reason is simple: he knew that railing would be pointless and would do nothing to assist the people who needed help most, the slaves themselves. Railing would only strengthen the resolve of slave-owners to maintain the social arrangement that looked upon slavery as economically necessary and socially desirable; a social arrangement, in other words, that was impregnable.

Paul chose another approach.  Instead of attacking the institution of slavery frontally he attacked it tangentially; he sought to undermine it covertly; he sought to erode it, erode it little by little.  Having declared unambiguously to the Christians in Galatia, “All are one in Christ Jesus, and therefore in Christ, before Christ, there is neither slave nor free,” he was confident that the gospel of the new creation in Christ wherein social class-divisions are transcended; this new creation would emerge in the midst of a people in whom the gospel worked as surely as yeast leavens the dough in which it lurks.

Paul’s letter to Philemon embodies the logic of his tangential assault on slavery; the letter also embodies the mood of Paul’s approach (namely the appeal of love rather than loud denunciation); and the letter embodies Paul’s confidence that the gospel which transforms the heart is effectual and therefore accomplishes what it declares.

While Paul customarily wrote to congregations, in Rome or Philippi or Thessalonica, for instance, his letter to Philemon is written to an individual, one man. (The letter to Philemon is the only letter we have that Paul wrote to an individual.)

Paul’s letter didn’t end the institution of slavery overnight. At the same time there’s widespread agreement that what this letter embodied, working quietly like yeast for years, caused the ferment that helped much of the world renounce and denounce slavery.

 

And now to the story the letter reflects.  Onesimus was a runaway slave.  He fled to Rome where he lost himself in the crowded city.  While in Rome he met Paul. Through Paul’s ministry Onesimus came to throbbing faith in Jesus Christ.         Paul loved Onesimus. He spoke of Onesimus as “my child,” meaning, “someone dear to me whom I fathered into faith.” So dear was Onesimus to Paul that when Paul sent him back to Philemon he wrote, “I am sending Onesimus back to you; I am sending back my very heart.”

Since it was such a wrench for Paul to send Onesimus back, why didn’t he keep Onesimus with him in Rome ? Because he wanted to preserve Onesimus’ life. Paul knew that while Onesimus had managed to keep secret so far his status as runaway slave, the secret couldn’t be kept forever.  Onesimus was from Colosse. People from Colosse visited Rome all the time. In no time a visitor from Colosse would come upon Onesimus, recognize him, and turn him in. Once discovered, Onesimus wouldn’t be sent back to Philemon; once discovered Onesimus would be tortured by the Roman government and then executed.

As I’ve mentioned already, there were 60 million slaves throughout the Roman Empire at this time. In order to discourage slaves from escaping, any runaway slave, once caught, was executed. Anyone who helped a slave to escape or harboured a runaway slave was also executed.  When a runaway slave was caught, a white-hot branding iron seared the letter “F” in his forehead; “F” for Fugitivus, “runaway.” The branding itself was torture, and it was followed by greater torture: crucifixion.  Paul loved Onesimus and wanted him to keep him alive  Little wonder he sent Onesimus back.

But back as what?  If Philemon received Onesimus and said nothing about the slave’s having departed months earlier, Onesimus would be back alive, all right, but back as a slave once again.  In other words, from the perspective of Roman officialdom, Onesimus would be the slave he had always been.

But Paul wasn’t operating from the perspective of Roman officialdom; Paul operated from the perspective of the gospel.  And according to the gospel – in Christ we are new creatures who live in a new world where old distinctions and divisions mean nothing – according to the gospel Paul was sending Onesimus back as a free man.  When Paul sent Onesimus back he asked Philemon to receive him as a “beloved brother in the Lord.”

To make this latter point crystal clear, Paul added, “Receive him as a beloved brother in the flesh.” To receive anyone as a brother in the Lord ought to be enough to overcome within the church all the social differences and distinctions that riddle a society. Ought to be enough; but, sadly, a congregation can think itself sincere in claiming to receive everyone as brother or sister in the Lord while maintaining (perhaps unknowingly) the social standoffs that curse a society. For this reason Paul added, “Receive Onesimus as a brother in the flesh.” In other words, Onesimus the slave and Philemon the master were henceforth to be looked upon, and to look upon themselves, as blood-brothers without distinction. Not only was Onesimus not Philemon’s spiritual inferior; henceforth Onesimus was to be Philemon’s social equal.  Right here Paul undermined the institution of slavery.  To be sure, it would take decades before slavery was abolished in the empire; still, it was undermined here.

Then Paul added something more.  “You and I are partners, Philemon; receive Onesimus as you would receive me.” Philemon was to receive Onesimus as he would receive Paul, his partner in the gospel. Paul, we must remember, was a Roman citizen. A Roman citizen could never be made a slave.  Then while the Roman government would continue to look upon Onesimus as a slave, Philemon was never to treat Onesimus as a slave.  The slave who was not only a brother in the Lord was also virtually a brother in the flesh and also virtually a Roman citizen.  Philemon was never to look upon Onesimus as a slave again.

Paul knew himself to be an apostle and knew himself recognized as an apostle. He spoke with apostolic authority. Yet when he writes to Philemon he sets his authority aside.  Gently he writes, “Although I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you.” As an apostle he could tell Philemon, a Christian, what Christian truth required Philemon to do. But Paul feared that if he did this Philemon might obey him, to be sure, but obey him grudgingly. And so Paul writes, “For love’s sake, your love’s sake….” Elsewhere in the letter Paul says he knows Philemon well; he knows that Philemon has a heart as big as a house, a heart that overflows with love for God’s people. In the past, Paul reminds Philemon, Philemon’s love has been an immense comfort and joy to Paul himself. Appealing now to Philemon’s love Paul pleads, “For love’s sake take Onesimus back; and take him back not as a slave but more than a slave.  Take him back as beloved brother; but not merely as a brother in the Lord but as a brother in the flesh. Receive him as you would receive me, a free man and a Roman citizen who can’t be enslaved.”

Then towards the end of the letter Paul adds “I write you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.”         What’s the “more?” The “more” is that Philemon will go one step farther than taking back Onesimus without punishing him; Philemon will take the ultimate step of releasing Onesimus from slavery altogether.  In the Roman Empire a slave-owner could grant a slave his release at any time.  Paul has piled up reason upon reason, Christian ground upon Christian ground not merely for humane treatment of a slave but for the outright release of a slave. The gospel requires that slaves be freed.

In one of the glorious paradoxes in which the gospel abounds, Paul, a prisoner himself in Rome and awaiting trial, did more than the world will ever know to free enslaved people everywhere.

 

IV: — Yet because Cain is always among us (because Cain is always within us, slaves have to be freed in every era, in every corner of the world.  Slaves had to be freed in Canada .

The first black slave to be transported directly from Africa to Canada was Olivier Le Jeune, assigned a French name while crossing the Atlantic . The first, he was by no means the last; slaves were regularly imported from the West Indies and from New England; by 1759 there were 1132 slaves in New France.  When the British defeated the French in 1760, the British brought even more slaves to Canada .

The American Revolutionary War found United Empire Loyalists flocking to Canada and bringing black slaves with them.  In addition many slaves appeared in Canada who weren’t attached to Loyalists but who were simple fugitives, hoping that the bondage they were fleeing in the United States they wouldn’t find in Canada . There appeared in Canada as well 3,500 free black loyalists; they had been American-owned slaves and had been granted their freedom by the British when they sided with the British during the Revolutionary War. In fact they had been promised the same privileges and rights as the white Loyalists. These free black loyalists settled in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia . They had been promised land. Soon they realized most of them would be granted no land at all.  The few who did get land were assigned land that was useless. All they could do was deliver themselves into the hands of white people eager to exploit them. At the same time the black victims of broken promises were now segregated in churches and schools or even excluded from churches and schools.

Fifty years after the American Revolutionary War the War of 1812 broke out. Thousands of black American slaves fled to the British for protection.  Once again they were promised land and freedom in Canada . Formally known as “Black Refugees,” the first of them arrived in Halifax in 1813. They were welcomed enthusiastically as a large supply of cheap labour.  Immediately following the War of 1812, however, a severe economic recession, along with a sudden influx of white immigrants from Britain , pushed the black people even farther down the social order and removed the little economic opportunity they had had.

While Britain had abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1833 ( France in 1848) slavery continued to thrive in the United States . In 1850 the USA passed the Fugitive Slave Act, promising even harsher treatment for runaway blacks and anyone who assisted them.  Not surprisingly, many more slaves fled to Ontario , whose black population now numbered 40,000.  In the same year (1850) Ontario reacted by passing the Common School Act.  This act permitted separate schools for blacks.  If no separate school existed, then black children could be made to attend class at separate times from white children, or be made to sit on segregated benches. We must note that while black/white segregation was legal in Ontario only in the school system, de facto segregation occurred everywhere else (e.g., black people in Ontario could neither vote nor sit on juries; interracial marrying was enough to provoke a riot).

Between 1910 and 1912 1,300 black persons immigrated to Canada . They settled in Alberta and Saskatchewan . Immediately white people on the prairies demanded legislation to preserve the Canadian West for Caucasians. The Canadian government prepared the legislation but never enacted it out of fear of damaging relations with the USA . Less formal means were deployed to prohibit black people from entering Canada ; for instance, the physical and financial qualifications for black immigrants were made insuperably difficult, while Canadian immigration officials who disqualified blacks were surreptitiously rewarded.  The result was predictable: by 1912 all black immigration to Canada had been halted without Canada ’s ever having declared a racist policy formally.

In early 20^th Century Canada black people found they could get only the most menial jobs.  Sleeping-car porters were almost exclusively black, for instance, while dining-car waiters were exclusively white.  Even the federal government permitted racial restrictions in hiring and promotion practices within the civil service.  Housing discrimination abounded.  In fact when I was a teenager in the late 1950s I knew that black players on Toronto ’s professional minor league baseball team regularly responded to advertisements for rental accommodation only to be turned away when they appeared in person.

There’s a point about all of this that we must note carefully. Canada (after 1867) has never enacted race-legislation; nevertheless, race-discrimination has been upheld by Canadian courts as legally acceptable.  In 1919 a Quebec appellate court deemed it legal for a theatre to restrict black people to inferior seating. In 1924 Ontario courts upheld a restaurant which refused to serve black people.  In 1941 the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Montreal Forum Tavern in its refusal to serve black people.  The courts consistently upheld racial discrimination as legal in a country that boasted of having no racial legislation.

Canadian courts have decreed that racial discrimination is illegal. The Canadian Bill of Rights and the Human Rights Commission have strengthened the courts in this regard.  Passing legislation, however, does nothing to alter attitudes in individuals. Black people, faced with persistent discrimination, have formed the Black United Front in Nova Scotia and the National Black Coalition of Canada.  Studies undertaken by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have revealed that most employment agencies will agree, if asked by prospective employers, to screen out non-white job applicants.  Once hired, black people as a group appear at the lowest end of the wage scale without regard for training or experience.  An Ontario Human Rights Commission study has disclosed that black people who hold a Master of Business Administration degree earn 25% less than white people with the same degree and the same professional experience.

 

Two hundred years ago, on the 10th of February, 1806 , a Toronto newspaper carried the following advertisement:  “For sale. Two slaves. Peggy, aged 40, adequate cook, $150. Her son, Jupiter, aged 15, $200.” Two hundred dollars for a fifteen year old black boy was a great deal of money in 1806. Whoever purchased these slaves was clearly expecting enormous work from them, since a horse would have cost far less.

“Why keep talking about something that happened 200 years ago?” someone objects; “All of that is long gone; let’s move ahead.” We can “move ahead” only if we remember that the last racially segregated school in Ontario was shut down as recently as 1965.

 

V: — Murderous Cain built the first city. He named the city ‘Enoch,’ named it after his son Enoch.  Ever since Cain’s ‘Enoch’ the city has been humankind’s monument to its God-defiance. We think that the city we build provides us a safety from the long arm of God and security from our fellow-citizens – who, of course, are murderous, just like us – or why else would they look to the city as a shield against insecurity and vindictiveness?

Cain named the first city after his son.  After whose Son is the last city named?  The last city, the final city, is the New Jerusalem.  It is the kingdom of Christ the King, Son of the living God.  It is the holy city.

We who are the people of the great king can see the holy city just because we are kingdom-sighted.  Seeing the holy city we want only to witness to it, since it is now superimposed it on whatever earthly city we inhabit.  We want only to point to and point others to the kingdom, a city that cannot be shaken.

We aren’t naïve.  We know the history of all earthly cities.  We know the history of Canada and the history of black people in Canada . We know the history of Rome and Colosse and the history of slaves in Rome and Colosse. But like the apostle Paul, we have been apprehended by the king and appointed to his kingdom. Then the truth of God that Paul urged upon Philemon is the same truth that we must do whenever we have opportunity to do it.

“I am sending Onesmimus back to you, Philemon; I am sending you my very heart.  Receive him as you would receive me.”   And as Philemon does just this, the city of Enoch , sought-after refuge of murderous Cain but no refuge at all; the city of Enoch is eclipsed by the city of God , named after God’s Son, in which city, John tells us, the nations of the world are healed.

You and I have been appointed to render the city of God visible as we identify and resist the violation of any human being, anywhere.  For by God’s grace, the author of Hebrews reminds us, we have been granted citizenship in a kingdom, the city of God , that cannot be shaken (Heb. 12:28).

 

Victor Shepherd

11 August 2010

 

Philemon 12, 16 

     Colossians 2:9        Philippians 3:8       Ephesians 4:10

 

“The most difficult thing to do in life is to have to do nothing”, said Dr. James Wilkes, psychiatrist and my former teacher; “The worst stress that anyone can undergo is the stress of powerlessness.”  In reflecting upon myself and upon those for whom I am pastor I’ve pondered Wilkes’ statement many times.  I think Wilkes is correct: the stress of powerlessness, helplessness, is unequalled. Frustration is a terrible burden. Like so much of life, frustration is easy to understand but difficult to cope with.

All of us have seen the 2-or 3-year old child who becomes frustrated and has a tantrum. We consider the child to be maturing when he can withstand frustration without exploding. When we adults (possessed now of even greater maturity) control ourselves in moments of speechless frustration, we are still controlling our temper. The rage is still there, but of course we’ve learned to disguise it or deny it until it’s safe for us to “let fly.”

For a long time now I have observed someone who strikes me as genuinely “mature in Christ”, as he himself put it, rather than merely “keeping the lid on.” His powerlessness, his frustration, has been of a sort that everyone would acknowledge as most frustrating: imprisonment.  For a long time now I have marvelled at its aftermath, under God, and what blessing the aftermath born of frustration has brought to the world.

 

The apostle Paul was a “doer”, a “goer”, always on the move, travelling ceaselessly on behalf of the gospel, cheerfully sustaining shipwreck, assault, hunger, fatigue and slander.  The Lord who is the light of the world burned so brightly in Paul himself that Paul had undertaken three lengthy journeys, establishing new congregations or ministering to established congregations.  He had always wanted to go Rome , the capital of the empire; after Rome he wanted to move into Spain and declare the gospel where it had never been announced before.  He got as far as Rome . He didn’t get there in the manner hoped, for when he arrived in Rome he was in chains. A few months earlier Paul’s preaching had precipitated a riot.  He was charged with disturbing the peace.  Roman officials were obsessed with keeping the peace, and anyone who provoked a riot was in huge legal difficulties.  Paul knew he was never going to get a fair trial in Jerusalem ; he thought he might get one in Rome . Since he was a Roman citizen, he had the right to be tried in Rome . Awaiting trial in Rome now, he couldn’t travel. Frustrated?  We can’t imagine how frustrated.  Not only was he in chains, he was fastened to the guard whom he couldn’t be rid of for a minute. He was allowed pen and paper, however, and managed to jot down four brief letters. These four letters are known as his “prison epistles”: Philemon, Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians.

We must notice that the aftermath of Paul’s frustration wasn’t violence or tantrums or lament; it wasn’t even depression.         The aftermath was four small letters that the church of Jesus Christ will never be without.

Today we are going to look at one feature only from each of the four. We are going to do so trusting God to bless to our edification the frustration of the man who had surrendered his frustration to God.

 

I: — PHILEMON      Paul’s letter to Philemon is written not to a congregation but to an individual. This little letter didn’t end the institution of slavery overnight; at the same time there’s widespread agreement that what this letter embodied, working quietly like yeast for years, caused the ferment that helped the world renounce and denounce slavery.

And now to the story itself.   Onesimus was a runaway slave.  Having escaped, Onesimus fled to Rome where he lost himself in the crowded city.  While in Rome Onesimus met Paul.  Through Paul’s witness Onesimus came to lively faith in Jesus Christ. Paul loved Onesimus.  He spoke of Onesimus as “my child”, meaning, “someone dear to me whom I fathered into faith.”  So dear was Onesimus to Paul that when Paul sent him back to Philemon he wrote, “I am sending back my very heart.” Since it was such a wrench for Paul to send Onesimus back, why didn’t the apostle keep Onesimus with him in Rome ?

There were 60 million slaves throughout the Roman Empire at this time. If they ever revolted, the revolt would be massive and the bloodshed colossal.  Therefore Roman officialdom sought to ensure that no slave escaped. Anyone who counselled a slave to escape was executed.  Anyone who harboured a runaway slave was executed.  When a runaway slave was caught, a white-hot branding iron seared the letter “F” in his forehead; “F” for Fugitivus, “runaway.” The branding itself was torture, and it was followed by greater torture: crucifixion.  Paul loved Onesimus and wanted him alive.  Little wonder he sent Onesimus back.

But back as what? From the perspective of Roman officialdom, as a slave.  But from the perspective of the gospel, as a free man.  When Paul sent Onesimus back he asked Philemon to receive him as a “beloved brother in the Lord.”         Fine. To make his point crystal clear, Paul added, “Receive him as a beloved brother in the flesh.” To receive anyone as a brother in the Lord ought to be enough to overcome within the church all the social differences and distinctions that riddle a society. Ought to be enough; but, sadly, a congregation can think itself sincere in claiming to receive everyone as brother/sister in the Lord while all the while (perhaps unknowingly) maintaining the social standoffs that curse a society. For this reason Paul added, “Receive Onesimus as a brother in the flesh.” In other words, Onesimus the slave and Philemon the master were henceforth to be looked upon, and to look upon themselves, as blood-brothers without distinction. Right here Paul undercut the practice of slavery.  To be sure, it would take decades before slavery was abolished in the empire; still, it was undercut here.

Then Paul added something more.  “You and I are partners, Philemon; receive Onesimus as you would receive me.” Philemon was to receive Onesimus as he would receive Paul, his partner in the gospel – yet more than this. Paul was a Roman citizen. Yes, he was in prison awaiting trial; still, a Roman citizen could never be made a slave. Then while the Roman government would continue to look upon Onesimus as a slave, Philemon was never to treat Onesimus as a slave.  The slave who was not only a brother in the Lord was also virtually a brother in the flesh and also virtually a Roman citizen.  Philemon would never look upon Onesimus as a slave again.

In one of those glorious paradoxes that abound in the gospel, the man who was in chains himself – Paul – did more to unchain slaves than anyone else in the ancient world.

 

II: — PHILIPPIANS    The congregation in Philippi was especially dear to Paul. The congregation was beset with no major problems.  Oh yes, two women, Euodia and Syntyche, were having a “tiff”, and Paul told them they should sort it out.  The tiff was a trifle. Unlike the congregations in Corinth and Galatia , the congregation in Philippi was problem-free. Moreover, the Philippian congregation was the only one that Paul had allowed to help him financially.

Paul’s intimacy with the people there and his affection for them can be read on every page of the letter. “I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus”, he writes; “and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more….” His intimacy with the people was rooted in his intimacy with his Lord.  Never indifferent to the truth of the gospel, never indifferent therefore to the truths of the gospel (doctrine), Paul yet knew that the truths of the gospel serve one luminous reality: an intimacy with the living person of Jesus Christ, an intimacy so profound as finally to be inexpressible.

At the end of the day everything we are about in Schomberg Presbyterian Church serves one glorious end: helping each other to an ever more intimate acquaintance with Jesus Christ.  Everything that we struggle for in our congregational life; everything that we struggle against everywhere else: the “bottom line” of it all is what the apostle himself glories in when he sums it all up in six simple words of one syllable each: “For me to live is Christ.”

A few lines later in the Philippian letter Paul adds, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. To know, in Hebrew, is to be so intimately acquainted with something as to be altered by that thing. To know pain is to have had such personal experience of pain as to be changed by the experience.         To know hunger is to have been so hungry oneself as to never to be the same again. To know a person, in Hebrew, is to be so intimately acquainted with that person as to be forever altered by the encounter, the relationship.  What Paul knows of Jesus Christ is simply the difference his ongoing engagement with the master makes to Paul himself.         Everything else in his life pales compared to this.

And then the apostle continues with something we must never overlook: all he wants from life is to know Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection.  Does this mean that Paul regards his relationship with his Lord as protracted, privatized ecstasy? that all he wants in life is the most intense ecstasy in his innermost self while a suffering world’s suffering goes unnoticed or at least uncared about?  Not for a minute. He insists that to know Jesus Christ is both to know the power of Christ’s resurrection and to share Christ’s sufferings, even to be conformed to Christ in his death. There’s a sense, of course, in which we can’t share another’s suffering.  If your leg is broken it’s your leg that’s broken, not mine. Nevertheless, when your leg breaks, your suffering has a claim on me, a claim that I must honour if in fact I do know Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection.

Everyone knows that the parent whose child suffers extraordinarily – cerebral palsy or spina bifida or cystic fibrosis; everyone knows that such a needy child changes the parent’s life profoundly. Not to the same extent, most likely, but in the same way none the less, a world whose suffering rages relentlessly is a world that claims us indisputably and therefore ought to change us irrevocably.

Intimacy with Jesus Christ certainly includes the ecstatic, just as married life includes the ecstatic.  Yet as surely as Luther was right when he said, “It’s when the spouse is sick that one learns the meaning of marriage”, so it’s when the world suffers that we learn the meaning of intimacy with our Lord.

And to be conformed to our Lord in his death?  His death presupposed self-forgetfulness.  Enough said.

 

III: —   COLOSSIANS   Jesus Christ is sufficient; our Lord needs no supplementation.  He doesn’t need an additive or a booster or a corrective.  He is sufficient. Listen to Paul’s ringing reminder to the Christians in Colosse: “In him [i.e., Jesus Christ] the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. (Col. 1:19) And a minute later, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” (Col. 2:9)  And again in the same letter, “He is the image of the invisible God.” (Col. 1:15) “Image”: eikon.  In Greek, however, eikon means not only image (as in perfect mirror-reflection) but also manifestation. Jesus Christ is the manifestation of God.  As manifestation of God he not only need not be supplemented, he cannot be supplemented. What, after, all could God lack, and what could ever be added to him?

And yet the Christians in Colosse had to be reminded of this truth; had to be reminded inasmuch as they were hounded night and day by religious devotees, “inventors”, who insisted that Jesus Christ needed religious additions, supplementation, of one kind or another.  Then what did they think was needed?  Wherein did they regard our Lord as deficient?

These people belonged to a group called “gnostics.”  The gnostics believed the human body to be inherently evil.         Since the body is inherently evil, God would never have incarnated himself in Jesus of Nazareth.  Since a holy God would never, could never, identify himself with human flesh, the incarnation had never occurred.

The consequences of this notion were far-reaching.  If the incarnation hasn’t occurred, then Calvary ’s cross wasn’t an act of God, and God hasn’t dealt with our sin definitively and invited us home unconditionally.  The gnostics believed, therefore, that people had to expiate or work off their own sin.

In the second place, if the human body is inherently evil, then such evil has to be lashed out of the body.         Whereupon the gnostics developed the most extreme ascetic practices as they tried to beat their bodies into something that would eventually be acceptable to God. Other gnostics argued that just because the human body is inherently evil, the body is incorrigible. Therefore there’s no point in beating it; might as well indulge it.  These gnostics indulged themselves shamelessly, immersing themselves in whatever luridness they fancied.

In the third place, all gnostics insisted that genealogies and horoscopes provided spiritual sustenance, making up in the spiritual life what Jesus Christ couldn’t supply.

It all sounds like the contemporary church, doesn’t it.  The incarnation is denied (for whatever reason).  The cross of Jesus is no more than another instance of martyrdom.  The body has to be drilled into champion athletic form (even though the only person who looks like a 20-year old in a swimsuit is a 20-year old), or else the body is to be indulged with nary a conscience-twinge. Genealogies and horoscopes are invested with religious significance in view of the deficiencies of the Christian faith.

From his prison “digs” in Rome Paul underlined his letter to the Christians in Colosse: “You don’t need anything that gnosticism offers: Jesus Christ is sufficient. Since the fullness of God, the whole God, dwells in him, since he is God’s perfect manifestation, ‘what more can he say than to you he hath said’? Since the fullness of God dwells in him bodily, the human body can’t be inherently evil. Then the body is neither to be beaten nor to be indulged, but is rather the vehicle of our service to God and neighbour.  And since Jesus Christ is the event of God’s speaking to us and acting for us, there’s no need for genealogies and horoscopes, and no religious significance to them in any case. Jesus Christ is sufficient.”

 

IV: — EPHESIANS           Ephesians is one of the richest documents in the newer testament.  One 20^th century minister, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, preached through the book of Ephesians Sunday-by-Sunday for eight and one-half years. I have five minutes. What shall I say?  I want to draw your attention to something that Paul says both near the beginning and near the conclusion of his letter.  “Jesus Christ fills all things.” (Eph. 1:23 & 4:10 ) In other words, there is no nook or cranny in the universe where our Lord isn’t.  Even though I had read these two verses over scores of times I was startled as never before when I read them once more in a whorehouse in downtown Toronto . In 1986 The United Church Observer commissioned me to write an article on the housing situation of the chronically mentally ill. Maureen drove me to the Parkdale area of Toronto – where the chronically mentally ill live in large numbers, expelled, as they have been, from scaled-down provincial hospitals in west Toronto . Since it was raining I went to a doughnut shop and sat down with a 25-year old woman who trundled everything she owned in a household shopping cart.  Before the day was out I’d visited several more doughnut shops and asked my newfound “friends” there where I might get a hotel room. I went to one of the places mentioned and booked the room.  It cost $117 per week or $35 per hour.  I rented it for a week. As I lay in bed that night trying to shut out the sound of the footsteps up and down the stairs and the constant flushing of the communal toilet at the end of the corridor I re-read Ephesians.         Then it leapt out at me: Jesus Christ fills all things. All things? The Parkdale boarding houses that “shelve” the wretched and rejected of the city?  The hotel where I was staying?   The rooms adjacent to mine whose occupants weren’t reading the bible? If Jesus Christ does fill all things, what does it mean that he does?  What’s its force? What are its implications? I’ve pondered all of this thousands of times in countless different contexts.  To say the least, because he fills all things we never have to take our Lord anywhere. We don’t take him anywhere; he’s always on the scene ahead of us.  We can only identify him and his work and identify ourselves with it all. The implications of this for my life are so vast that I’ll not live long enough to pursue them all.

Margaret Avison, a zealous Christian and member of Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto , has twice been awarded the Governor General’s Award for poetry in Canada ; two years ago she received the most prestigious prize in the English-speaking world for poetry. Margaret tells me she doesn’t want to write “Christian” poetry, religious poetry. (Religious poetry, she says, is usually inferior and “corny” as often.)  She wants to write poetry so well, so superbly, that her unbelieving poet-friends will have to notice it and query her about it, and therein listen to her. It’s the implication for her and her gift of the fact that Jesus Christ fills all things.  Margaret told me that this was one kind of evangelism she could do. She can do it, however, only because Jesus Christ fills the world of poetry, even though most poets don’t know it and disdain him in any case.

What about you and me? Since our Lord fills all things, what are the implications for us?  What must we be about? What misunderstandings must we henceforth drop?  And what urgency fires us as never before?

 

Frustration.  The man who had always been busier than a water-spider one day found himself chained to a guard who was never out of sight.  It wasn’t the apostle’s first taste of powerlessness, but it would prove to be next to his last.         All he could do was scratch out a few lines to three congregations and an individual. It was all he could do. Still, he was determined to do all he could.

Perhaps you want to say that Paul wasn’t completely powerless, utterly helpless. You are correct. He wasn’t.         He could still write. Myself, I have long noted that when people claim they are helpless they rarely are: there’s something they can do, if only a little. Then what about the situation of honest-to-goodness utter helplessness, complete powerlessness? We must surely be speaking here of our powerlessness in the face of death.  We should all know by now that it’s precisely in the midst of death that God has always done his most effective work.

                                  Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           January 2006