Do you believe in Jesus?
Wis 9:13-18b; Ps 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17; Phlm 9-10, 12-17; Lk 14:25-33
Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Presumably the answer is “yes” or else you probably wouldn’t be reading this. But what does “believe in Jesus” even mean? Does that mean you have an inner conviction about the truth of the Gospels? A personal relationship with Jesus? A good prayer life?
If we listen to St. Paul, the answer to that question is unmistakably certain: Belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus means believing that the entire universe has radically changed. In particular, the fabric of human society is transformed and our choices and actions must reflect that new reality. For Paul, these aren’t just vague abstractions, but concrete guardrails that pragmatically inform everyday decisions.
We see this powerfully in Paul’s brief letter to his friend Philemon, from which our second reading is taken. The backstory to this letter is critical to understanding its significance.
Philemon owned a baptized slave, Onesimus, who escaped from him and ran to Paul for protection. In his letter, Paul is writing to Philemon on Onesimus’ behalf.
He addresses Onesimus’ status, but not in a manner that one might expect. He never explicitly condemns slavery and seems comfortable accepting that this is Onesimus’ lot in life. In this regard, the letter to Philemon reminds us that Paul, like every biblical author, was a product of his era. This doesn’t mean that the inspired biblical texts are nothing more than reflections of the social conventions of their day, and we obviously don’t take Paul’s silence here as God’s approval of slavery! But it does show that sometimes the time frame for the full acceptance of the truth of the Gospels can be painfully slow.
And yet, even though Paul does not specifically address the institution of slavery, he nevertheless upends how one ought to view and treat a slave, in the light of Jesus Christ. Onesimus, like Philemon, is a baptized follower of Jesus. For Paul, that means that Philemon and Onesimus are, with himself, all of one body in Christ.
He refers to Onesimus in familial terms, calling him “my child” (Phlm 10). And he tells Philemon that he should receive Onesimus back as if he were receiving his [Paul’s] “own heart” (Phlm 12), and that Philemon should “welcome him as you would me” (Phlm 17). Furthermore, Paul tells his friend that he should view Onesimus as “no longer a slave but more than a slave, a brother … beloved to you, as a man and in the Lord” (Phlm 16).
That Paul, a Roman citizen, would refer to a slave in such intimate and respectful terms is quite remarkable. It indicates the degree to which he considered the transformative power of baptism in Jesus Christ to transcend the limitations of social norms and civic constraints. We see here an actual lived example of Paul’s general maxim that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).
He didn’t mean that baptized Christians no longer had a gender identity or national heritage, but rather that none of our traditional markers (e.g., heritage, free/slave status, gender) can supersede the spiritual familial bond shared within the church. Paul fully expects that, because of that bond, the behavior of the baptized must be altered accordingly. Thus, Philemon has the responsibility to treat Onesimus with compassion and respect, not simply because slavery is a heinous abomination (which it certainly is), but primarily because Onesimus and Philemon are equal brothers in Christ.
Can we point to similarly emphatic actions in our own lives that are based on the fact that a shared baptism in Jesus Christ ought to bring an entirely new level of trust, love, and responsibility to our relationships? Would I think about my greatest enemy any differently if I first saw her or him as a family member (not just because I imagined such a scenario, but because I embraced the nonnegotiable truth of the sacrament of baptism)?
Paul’s witness to Philemon is a bold encouragement to hold ourselves and others accountable to a standard that demands that our actions mirror the truth of our sacraments.