XV Pentecost, Proper 18, C (RCL)

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Vista

Philemon 1-21

Luke 14: 25-33

Come Holy Spirit: Touch our minds and think with them, touch our lips and speak with them, and touch our hearts and set them on fire with love for thee.  AMEN.

Today, a little over a year after a sorrow-filled time, we gather again.   We do so in a very different situation.  You have called a new rector and later today we will formally institute that rectorship.  Michael, I am so glad that you are here.  And I want to give thanks for the leadership of this congregation during this transitional time.  You have done well.  I am grateful for your faithfulness and perseverance.  I believe that your best days are ahead of you as a community of faith.

Had I preached on the lessons that we have today when I was with you last August, I am not sure what I would have said.  This most arresting and challenging gospel would have probably hit us all hard.  The very word, “hate,” on the lips of Jesus would likely have made us all cringe.  While I trust it is more easily heard today, I must hasten to give the proper understanding of the Greek word that is translated into this unfortunate English word.    As the New Testament scholar Fred Craddock notes, “to hate is a Semitic expression meaning to turn away from or to detach oneself from.”  As we consider this string of teachings and the parables that Jesus presents, it is clear that he is telling us something about the radical nature of this discipleship.  It is one that is not to be taken lightly:  we must weigh the cost whether we are a builder or a king.  At its core, following Jesus require humility, self-offering, and absolute giving.  It is like carrying the cross of crucifixion.  This sense is echoed in the collect for the day, where we acknowledge the very character of God is to “resist the proud who confide in their own strength…never forsaking those who make their boast in [God’s] mercy.” 

Of course, even as Jesus resolutely moved towards, Jerusalem, those who followed failed to understand this central point.  The disciples jockeyed for position.  The mother of James and John asks that her sons be granted an exalted position.  And of course the icon of misguided following, Judas, ultimately betrays Jesus. 

We continue to miss the call towards the peaceable kingdom, following the One who beckons us to surrender completely so that we might love God and neighbor completely.  Strife and conflict is a relentless, global reality: Palestinian vs. Israeli, Conservative vs. Liberal, al Qaeda vs. the United States, Pro-life vs. Pro-Choice, Evolutionist vs. Creationist, Pacifist vs. Soldier.   And of course in our Episcopal Church, battles are waged.  In fact, division echoes across the Anglican Communion as strife seems to bleed into schism over our understanding of God, the Church, our beliefs, and, yes, the issue de jure homosexuality.

Yet, as our spirits seem to wane, we are given a breath of God’s spirit across the ages in the words of the Apostle Paul writes his most brief, but arguably most powerful epistle to Philemon.   The occasion for the letter is a most grievous situation.  Onesimus, a slave has fed his master, Philemon, and is now with Paul.  What division could be greater?  Yes, they are both Christians.  One is free and master.  The other is captive and slave.  And as N.T. Wright notes, to be a slave in the ancient world meant doing all the things that are now done by electricity, gas, and the internal combustion engine.  Philemon has the law and tradition behind him; Onesimus has nothing going for him but perhaps speedy feet and those will not last.

From a modern perspective, Paul’s decision seems crystal clear.  You protect and free the slave.  You use your authority to command Philemon to do the right thing.  I am not sure if it is Paul’s wisdom or his absolute faithfulness to Jesus’ call to love.  But, in writing this letter, he avoids either/or.  He does not simplify the moral situation.  He recognizes that for both Omesimus and Philemon to be in Christ erases the difference between free and slave.  But he also knows that only a free Philemon can make that decision.  A decision coerced by an authoritarian Paul may only create an embittered master who would then seek to continue a posture of retribution, an eye for an eye, tit for tat. 

And so Paul leans completely on Jesus’ call to utterly follow, to love.  And he grasps this teachable moment by demonstrating that love.   Rather than choosing sides, he chooses to love both the slave and the master.  He reminds Philemon and Onesimus of their relationship to Christ, particularly as that relationship is incarnated in their relationship through him, and through him to each other.  Here again the beauty and the power of Paul’s words:

I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

These are seeming strange times of deep and vexing conflict.  But really, it is simply the newest manifestation of our human tendency to fearfully strike out at those with whom we differ.   As we divide and lob our grenades at each other, “pagan,” “orthodox,” “liberal,” “peace-nik,” “homophob:” we enslave ourselves and those with whom we differ in a prison of alienation and misconception. 

In the love of God found in Jesus, there is a way around my way or your way.  It is born in absolute humility and complete openness to the other—the openness of the prodigal’s father or the Samaritan called good.  It is witnessed when each of us, regardless of our sins or ethnicity or wealth or wisdom takes the same cup and the same bread and is joined one to another. 

I don’t know why we are living through the conflicts of our time.  I don’t know why now the people of Abraham who worship Allah, follow Jesus, or read the Torah are killing each other.  I don’t know why our nation is so polarized over so-called wedge issues.  And I do not know why our church has been harmed by a division over the Bible, cloaked in sex.  What I do know is that Jesus wants us to be different.  On the cross, we say enough to retribution—God says “No” to death for death indeed says just the opposite, “life for death.”   And Paul stands between a slave and a master and says, “Here is a new way.”  To paraphrase Paul’s words, perhaps this is the reason we were separated from each other for a while, so that we might have return to each other, back for ever, no longer as a slaves but as more than slaves, beloved brothers and sisters.

My friends, this is why Jesus came among us, “to reconcile us to God and each other.”  Our human frailty will always be an obstacle this side of paradise, but it remains our deepest yearning and our greatest call. 

In the New Testament, we never hear the outcome of Paul’s intervention with Philemon and Onesimus.  There is some tradition that he and Philemon were reconciled and that he later became Bishop of Epheses and was later martyred.  While later Roman Catholic martyrology disputes the historicity of this claim, I think it matters little whether Onesimus was martyr or a bishop or both.   I doubt the Early Church would have preserved Paul’s letter if it had not hit its mark and had its desired effect on the master.  My bet is on love.  My money is on Onesimus and Philemon as brothers. 

Ironically, seventeen centuries later and a continent away, another great leader, Christian Cotton Mather, had a slave named Onesimus.   When a smallpox epidemic broke out in Boston in 1721, Onesimus informed his master about an inoculation procedure practiced in Africa. The centuries-old practice was practiced throughout Africa and involved the extraction of material from the pustule of an infected person and, using a thorn, scratching it into the skin of the unaffected person. Although inoculation was considered to be extremely dangerous, Cotton Mather was steadfast in accepting the reliability of the information provided by Onesimus, and convinced Dr.Zabdiel Boylston to experiment with the procedure. Beginning with his son and two slaves, he inoculated over 240 people.

The process of inoculation was politically, medically and religiously opposed in the United States and Europe. In religious circles, it was deemed unnatural and perceived as subverting God's will. Public reaction to the experiment was so adverse that both Mather and Boylston's lives were threatened. Records indicate that the inoculation process itself killed 2 percent of the patients who requested it, while 15 percent of the people who contracted the disease and were not inoculated died from the virus.

Again, slave and master transcend what divides them and what they do not understand and it is life-giving.  And as I peer out on the horizon, my imagination gets the best of me—and that is a good thing.  For my bet is on this wonderful church, All Saints’.   My money is on you.  I believe in the love of Christ among you.  I believe that in the end that will be enough.  Those who are slave and master will be brother and sister.   The peaceable kingdom will come; the lion will lie down with the lamb.  The death-bed vision of Julian of Norwich will be consummated, “All will be well. All manner of things will be well.”