Readings:
1 Chronicles 16-18
Sirach 4
Philemon 1

Philemon 1

This extremely short letter, the shortest of all the Pauline letters, is very personal in tone and at first glance it seems out of place being included in the Bible. Paul is writing to a “fellow worker” in Christ, called Philemon, meaning he is probably a fellow Christian involved in ministry like Paul.

It’s easy to wonder why this letter was placed in the canon of the New Testament at all because it seems so personal and doesn’t have any explicitly stated doctrine or teachings in it, but if you understand the background here, both personal and historical, the letter can really teach all of us some lessons.

First off, slavery was legal and accepted as part of every day life in the ancient world and especially in the Roman Empire. Slavery for the Romans became so popular, and slaves so plentiful, that in many provinces there were more slaves than citizens. As Haitians learned in the 17-18th centuries, when the slave population outnumbers the slaveholders the punishments for infringements and runaways become very severe because of the slaveholder’s fears of revolts. In the previous centuries Rome had fought several wars against slave armies (where we get Spartacus from) and so the punishment for runaway slaves was an automatic and swift death sentence.

Paul writes a letter on behalf of Onesimus, who is a runaway slave and newly baptized Christian that has been helping Paul in his ministry. The recipient is the aforementioned Philemon, to whom Paul appeals to show mercy on Onesimus. Apparently this man had not only run away, but had also been stealing from Philemon, and so paul is making an appeal for mercy.

What’s interesting is that Paul doesn’t order that Philemon release any claim on Onesimus, or command that he forgive his theft and running away. Instead Paul appeals to their common baptism, reminding him that they are brothers in Christ now, and that just as we’ve all been forgiven great debts, that we too must forgive. Paul goes as far as to be a guarantor of the debts that Onesimus may owe to his former master. He does all this to urge Philemon to do the right thing, and since he had a close relationship with Paul he’d be familiar with Paul’s teachings that there were no slave or free, Jew or Greek in Christ, all were baptized into the same body.

Paul is telling him to do the right thing, and even asks that a room be prepared for him in hopes of his eventual release from prison. It’s unknown if he ever made the desired trip to meet Philemon again, but some scholars say it’s likely he did and that relationship between them remained good, and this is why we have this letter preserved and handed down to us.

I can’t say either way, but considering Onesimus willingly went back to face the music for his actions (more for theft than running away in my opinion because nobody can fault someone from wanting to escape slavery) I hope that Philemon forgave him and they lived together in friendship and as a witness to Christian love and unity.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
1 Chronicles 19
Sirach 5
Galatians 1