Hilton Head Island, SC – July 23, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Leviticus 25:39-46; Philemon 4:14
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. – Philemon 12 (RSV)
This is the second of a series of three sermons based on Paul’s letter to Philemon. Philemon was a leader of the church in Colossae in what now is Asian Turkey. He owned a slave named Onesimus. Onesimus ran away from his master, fleeing to Rome, where Onesimus located Paul, who was under house arrest. (There is more to this story than just that, but that’s all the time I have to repeat the background for those who were not here last Sunday to hear the first sermon.)
There is one more detail that must be repeated from last week, however. By Roman law and by a widespread social custom, it was both illegal and immoral to give sanctuary to runaway slaves. But that’s precisely what Paul wanted to do. As he wrote to his friend Philemon, “I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment” (v. 10).
This is a very serious issue. Onesimus had been a great help and comfort to Paul while he was under arrest, and Paul wanted Onesimus to stay with him. (In Greek, the name “Onesimus” means “useful” or “beneficial.” Paul reminds Philemon of this by telling him, “Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me” [v.11, my italics].) If Paul actually wrote this letter, and there is no reason to think that he didn’t, he is making a complicated situation even more complicated. He wants to wheedle concessions out of a good friend without directly asking for the concessions. In other words, Paul was like many of us when he was in a jam. He was running off in many directions all at once, hoping that somehow the almost impossible thing he wanted might somehow happen.
Despite clearly asking Philemon to allow Onesimus to stay with him, Paul accepts the fact that that is impossible. So he writes to Philemon, “I am sending (Onesimus) back to you, sending my very heart.” He wants Philemon to know it is very difficult for Paul to do what Paul knows is the right thing to do. In stating it as he does, is he trying to make Philemon feel guilty? Maybe. He wouldn’t be the first person ever to do that. Is he hoping Philemon will give in, and let Onesimus stay in Rome with Paul? Maybe. After writing some other things, Paul says, “I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but by your own free will.” In other words, Paul is reminding Philemon he can still change his mind and let the runaway slave remain in Rome with Paul.
This sounds very much like a certain contemporary person who has become exceedingly well known who likes to make deals. Paul is trying in this letter to be the consummate dealmaker. And he is trying to do it with an implied request which he knows is improper. In the first century, almost nobody dared to give sanctuary to a runaway slave, first because it was illegal under Roman law, and secondly because it was widely considered to be immoral. But the apostolic wheeler-dealer was not above trying to work something out anyway.
Social conundrums are among the most complicated of conundrums. It’s one thing to be in a jam which has no social ramifications, but it’s quite another matter to be in situation where society frowns on our doing something we want to do which we know we shouldn’t do.
For example, an executive order and federal and state laws have decreed that it is illegal for any individual or organization to give sanctuary to illegal aliens. Many American Christian, Jewish, and Muslim congregations have defied those laws by allowing undocumented refugees from war torn or dangerous nations to live in their buildings. In defiance of federal and state laws, some American city councils have passed ordinances declaring their cities officially to be sanctuary cities where illegal aliens are welcomed to come for refuge. Most local police, and even Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, are loath to enter religious structures or sanctuary cities to arrest anyone being given refuge there. What is the right thing to do --- for the undocumented people, the members of those congregations, or the local, state, or federal enforcement officials? It is a social conundrum.
The right of a woman to have an abortion was guaranteed by the US Supreme Court in the famous --- or infamous, depending on your point of view --- Roe vs. Wade decision. Abortion has been a source of major social, legal, and political controversy ever since. Is it morally acceptable, or isn’t it? And who should decide --- the courts, Congress, the states, or individual women? Abortion is, and in this unique country might always be, a social conundrum.
Last Sunday I mentioned that on my three-week, 4600-mile preaching and book-peddling odyssey I met scores of old friends and former church members. One of them was a high school classmate I have known for more than sixty years. At our class reunion he told me that he and his significant other recently celebrated their 43rd anniversary of what he referred to as “living in sin.” I don’t think he was trying to get a rise out of me, because I knew his situation when we both were living in Chicago forty years ago, and his relationship then was the same as it is now. Over forty years ago unmarried couples were rare, but now they are common. However, those who stay together for 43 years are very uncommon. Nevertheless, for many people, perhaps for all people, such an arrangement is still a social conundrum. But I can assure you this: my friend is not a morally loose or casual man. He is a deep thinker, and a conscientious person.
I talked to a Lutheran pastor I have known for almost sixty years. He married a high school classmate. During his thirty-year pastorate in a particular congregation, and under his socially and ecclesiastically very able and progressive leadership, that church grew to two thousand members. Within a few years of his retirement, which occurred several years ago, the church membership dropped from two thousand to eight hundred. It happened largely because he was followed by a very conservative pastor who stood against almost everything my friend stood for. That was particularly true of gay clergy ordination, which the Evangelical Lutheran denomination affirmed a number of years ago after many years of acrimonious debates. The ordination of gay clergy is still a major issue for millions of American Christians and Jews. It is one of many enduring social conundrums in our nation. And will it ever be universally, or even widely, accepted?
There is no federal law that either allows or forbids physician-assisted suicide. No Congress over the past two decades was ever likely to attempt to pass such a law in either direction. As a result of Congressional inaction, five states have passed laws allowing it, and twenty other state legislatures are considering the passage of such laws.
The city council of the District of Columbia has passed an ordinance allowing physician-assisted suicide within the bounds of Washington, DC. Because of the District’s unique geographical and political status in our nation, Congress has made overtures to overturn that decision. As a result, DC is again seriously contemplating applying to become a state in order to avoid being undercut again by Congress in its attempts at self-governance. It is a social and political and peculiarly American conundrum.
In most instances the consumption of alcohol is not an antisocial activity. Alcoholism, on the other hand, can become very antisocial, in an individual, familial, and societal sense. On my very long trip down Memory Lane I talked to two men who are recovering alcoholics. The first I didn’t know was an alcoholic until he told me, and for years I have known the second man was once addicted to the Mother of All Addictions.
The man who told me many years ago of his problem reminded me on this journey that he attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at 7:30 AM almost every day of every week. The other man told me he gave up drinking two years after I first met him. (There was, I am quite certain, no connection between the one event and the other.) He has chosen to attend AA meetings only a couple of times a week.
Alcoholics Anonymous, also known as the Friends of Bill W., is no doubt the largest and most successful support group in the history of the human race. When Bill Wilson started the first AA group many decades ago, he set in motion the most effective means that has ever been instituted for millions of people to overcome a particular form of addiction. There are several other forms of valid therapy for alcoholism or other kinds of addiction, but the remarkable success of AA is simply astonishing.
People who join AA and attend for years do so to insure their own sobriety. But after a while I am convinced most of them attend as much or more for newer members of the group than for themselves. When someone is first attempting to stop drinking cold turkey, it is inexpressibly difficult, especially for those who are addicted to alcohol. Wild Turkey makes cold turkey a torture. But for most alcoholics, the addiction can be broken only by giving up all forms of alcohol, as Shakespeare would say, in one fell swoop.
Alcoholism is a social conundrum. And AA is statistically the best way, but not the only way, to overcome the addiction. God bless everyone who is trying to break the habit, who has broken the habit, and who daily or frequently seeks to assist others in breaking the habit.
Slavery has always been a social conundrum. Even when it was widely practiced, people of good will had to know that it was a very morally-compromised institution. The Bible is usually very traditional about slavery. But it is amazingly liberal in some places, especially in the Hebrew Bible, considering how long ago the Old Testament was written. I have always been skeptical of the Book of Leviticus, but in preparation for this sermon when I came across the passage I read earlier in the service today, my opinion of the third book of the Torah rose greatly.
By way of linguistic background, it is interesting that in both Hebrew and Greek, there is only one interchangeable word for the two separate notions of “servant” and “slave.” In English and many other languages, there are two words, but in those two ancient languages, there was only one word. The Hebrew word was ebed and the Greek word was doulos. Only in the context of what was being written could the reader discern whether it was a servant or a slave that was being written about, and often even the context did not and could not make it clear.
Why would two such versatile languages refuse to separate the two statuses by using two separate words? My supposition is because in the ancient world, servants were constantly slipping into slavery and slaves were constantly emerging into ordinary service from their enslavement. Let us see how Leviticus describes that process.
“If your brother becomes poor beside you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be to you as a hired servant and as a sojourner” Lev. 25:39-40). In the terminology of the past few centuries, what is referred to here is what we would call “indentured servants.” The biblical word “soujourner,” incidentally, means what we would call illegal or undocumented aliens, except that back then nobody had citizenship papers of any kind. Note: It is only Hebrews who are being written about here. Listen to two verses three verses further on. “As for your male and female slaves whom you have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property” (vs. 44-45).
Let us be clear what this is saying. It was not acceptable that Hebrews should be enslaved, but it was okay to buy and sell Canaanites and Ammonites and Amorites. It was also permitted to enslave aliens living among the Israelites.
That is what many employers are doing even as we speak in the USA in 2017. They pay undocumented immigrants far less than the minimum wage. By so doing, they maintain them in virtually slavery. In third-world countries, that’s what employers do to children. They pay them a pittance, and keep them in fiscal bondage for years. That’s what happens to millions of women all over the world; they become sex slaves to the men who rent them out every night to other rapacious and utterly insensitive men. All of it is a social curse.
Was Paul speaking out against slavery in his letter to Philemon? I don’t think so. He was simply making a feeble attempt to get a man he knew to free his slave so that the slave could minister to the needs of an aging apostle under Roman house arrest who was facing a death sentence, even if he didn’t know it. Some scholars say Paul was very liberal for his time. I understand why they say it, but I personally don’t buy it. Paul was constitutionally quite conservative in most matters, especially in social issues. “Slaves, be obedient to your earthly masters” (Eph. 6:5). That doesn’t sound like either Frederick Douglass or Abraham Lincoln to me. “Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven” (Col. 4:1). That certainly isn’t Simon Legree, but it could be Thomas Jefferson or John C. Calhoun.
“I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will” (Philemon 12-14) [my italics].
The more Paul says, the less compelling he becomes in what he says. By the laws, social mores, and morality of his day, he knows he is obligated to return Onesimus to Philemon. But Paul has realized that it’s so nice to have a man around the house, and he wishes he could keep Onesimus as his own personal servant --- not as a slave, mind you, but as a servant. Nonetheless he shall do what he knows he must do.
There have always been social conundrums as long as there have human societies. They are called conundrums because they are always very difficult to resolve.
To his credit, Paul does not imply that God will straighten out this sticky wicket. And we can all be grateful that he didn’t fall into that common trap.
We are not alone in our conundrums. God goes beside us in the midst of them. But don’t expect Him to solve them. Just look for Him to be there to provide moral support. And remember: it is far better to have God with you than not with you. Be glad for the company. You’ll need it.