February 19, 2010

Philemon

Yes, the entire book. It's tiny.

It's about slavery. It's about equality. It's about reversing the social hierarchy - or rather doing away with it completely. It's about our duty to each other. It's about letting go of old assumptions and old ways of doing things.

It's only 25 verses. And most of them are a pointed - almost passive agressive - guilt trip about the fact that Christians still have slaves.

Onesimus was a slave, and a rebellious one. He must have been so full of anger. Slaves were mostly prisoners of war in those days. In the Roman Empire you weren't usually born into slavery - America instituted inherited slavery. He had a life, and it was taken. Perhaps because of something he did, perhaps because he stood to fight for those he loved, perhaps because he never knew another way. And he was uncooperative to his newly converted Christian master, until he was asked to tend to Paul in a prison.

And I wonder if it was like Ben Jonson, who converted to Catholicism because he was so impressed with one priest who had the guts (not the chosen part of the anatomy in his description) to walk into the jail when the punishment for being a priest was considerably harsher than that any of the inmates could look forward to. This man who loved something too much to bend.

If he fought and lost because he knew no other way, perhaps Paul simply showed him the power of a peaceful fight. If he felt justified in his wars and victimized, perhaps he saw in Paul a way to accept it with dignity. Regardless, he found a consolation in someone else's faith - it became a bridge to his own.

We tend to envy, I think, those who saw Jesus appear miraculously on the way to Damascus, but to me, this is more beautiful. When God reaches down through other people, and we get to help show someone the light of Christ. Perhaps it's less brilliant, and it's certainly less dazzling, but when a small light unfolds into your hand, how gorgeous it must be for both.

But the other half of this story is the fact that Christians had slaves. It was just the way of the world, but a Christian's job is to overturn the way the world thinks. Because we still think the wrong way - human ways, not God's ways. Paul pawns anything that Onesimus has done, takes it onto his own reputation and honor and conscience. How many of us would do that for our brother? That seems an easier answer, sometimes, than this one: how many of us have?

Because we have far more opportunities to do so than we could pretend.

God knows I don't speak up. God knows I don't see past our society all the time. God knows I should.