Philemon 1-22
Jeremy Richards
The 13th Amendment was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865 and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. According to the Library of Congress’ website, this Amendment formally abolished slavery.[1] Only it didn’t. In fact, it spends almost as much time, almost as many words, explaining the exception to the rule as it does actually “abolishing” slavery. It says:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
In other words, slavery is illegal, unless you’ve been convicted of a crime. In which case slavery is totally acceptable. Slavery continues to exist in our country through our prison system. Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow and the Netflix Documentary 13th have recently draw attention to the way prisons – places of institutionalized, legal slavery – are disproportionately filled with people of color, and so very much perpetuate America’s original sin of slavery. In the words of Michael Livingston in a sermon to the Riverside Church on September 4th, 2016, preaching on this very text, the book of Philemon, “Slavery isn’t over. It’s just changed.”[2]
In divinity school, I took a class at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. Once a week, I would meet my friends and fellow classmates Zach Bond and Adam Barnes outside their apartment in Durham, and we would make the 45 minute drive to the prison. On the way we would pass North Carolina State University – open green spaces, buildings full of widows, the air of possibility palpable as young people with their whole lives in front of them milled about, laughing with one another, listening to their headphones, waiting to cross the street.
A few minutes later we would pull up to the Central Prison – a huge block of beige concrete with almost no windows, the property surrounded by layers of fences topped with barbed wire. No one outside. No air of possibility.
Zach, Adam, and I would meet our other classmates and our New Testament professor in a small building outside, then we would walk into the prison – dark and sterile and cold – where we took off our shoes and belts and watches and walked through security like we were boarding a plane. Then we would be escorted to an elevator, taken up a few floors, then walked down a long hallway, through a common room where men in jumpsuit milled around, and into the chapel where we met around folding tables. Sometimes we got there first and the other half of the class joined us, escorted in under guard, other times they were already there waiting for us.
There were 11 of us seminary students, and 11 inmates, except when one of them was in solitary confinement. During that hour and half, we tried our best to be of one mind, one spirit, despite our extremely different circumstances. We all learned from the professor together, we did the course work and readings, we broke up into small groups and discussed our assignments, but we also shared our lives with one another. And I came to see the humanity of these men in a place designed to take their humanity away from them.
That’s what slavery does, it tries to rob the one who’s enslaved of their humanity.
Early in the class, our professor said he didn’t know that the 13th Amendment allowed slavery if the person was convicted until he was preparing to teach this class. A black inmate just to the left him snorted, “You didn’t know that?” then, almost in the same breath he said matter-of-factly, “We’re slaves in here.” For him, that exception in the 13th Amendment was more than common knowledge. It was the basis of his life. It was something he was reminded of constantly. For us – the divinity school professor and students – it was new information.
The society Philemon grew up in was a society where slavery wasn’t hidden behind concrete walls, but was present for everyone to see, like slavery in the antebellum South. But it was hidden in the sense that it was so common, no one really questioned it. It was just the way the world was. Of course there were slaves and of course there were slaveowners.
Philemon, a Christian who Paul converted at some point, was wealthy enough (blessed enough?) to own at least one slave – Onesimus. But Onesimus ran away, and by law, Philemon could punish him when he caught him. He could severely beat him and even crucify him. But one day, Onesimus unexpectedly shows up back at his doorstep, with a letter from the Apostle Paul, one of the most influential people in the Early Church, to which Philemon belonged. On a side note, it seems relevant to point out that Paul is a prisoner, like the men in Raleigh Central Prison, at this point.
Paul’s letter, instead of saying, “Hey Philemon, I found your slave. I caught him and am sending him back to you so you can put him back to work,” says that Onesimus is Paul’s very heart, and that Philemon should receive him back not as a slave but as a brother, and that Philemon shouldn’t punish him, but if he owes Philemon anything at all, Paul will pay it. Paul says that he could make Philemon do all these things, but he doesn’t want to command him, instead he wants Philemon to act “on the basis of love” and that he wants to give Philemon a chance to “voluntarily” do the right thing. Moreover, this letter isn’t written just to Philemon, but to the church who meets in his house.
Philemon must have been a bit flabbergasted. Paul is telling him and the church to function differently than the rest of society. Philemon gets a first-hand experience of the kingdom of heaven bumping up against the kingdoms of the world. Paul says explicitly in the book of Galatians that “there is no longer slave or free…for all of you are one in Christ.” In his letter to Philemon, Paul gives Philemon and those who worship in his house the opportunity to embody this teaching, to not just speak in poetic language about life in Christ, but to actually live the radically different way of life they professed, one where social relationships are reoriented, where all really are family in Christ – where slave and free are no longer slave and free, but all are free, all are brothers, sisters, and siblings in Christ. Where people aren’t reduced to slaves or inmates or criminals, but all people, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, are seen as fully human and are treated as fully human.
While Paul is certainly rhetorically clever in his letter to Philemon (we might say manipulative), I believe he’s actually being pretty genuine when he says, at the beginning of the letter,
When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ. I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.
I believe Paul really has seen fruit in Philemon’s life, but like all of us, Philemon’s still in process, he’s still working out his salvation, in the words of Philippians. He’s still caught up in ugly, sinful, dehumanizing systems and structures, like slavery. In other words, he’s a slave in his own way – he’s a slave to sin, to use Paul’s words in Romans. In denying the full humanity of another, Onesimus, he’s denying his own humanity. In the words of Audre Lorde, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different than my own.”[3] Slavery dehumanizes the slave and the slaveholder, and Paul wants to give Philemon the chance to, in the words of Hebrews, “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.”
In casting off Onesimus’ chains Philemon can cast off his own, in freeing Onesimus he can be freed, and in embracing Onesimus as a brother, he can be embraced. Paul sees all this, and opens the door for liberation – for both Onesimus and Philemon.
I believe this is why Paul says he could have commanded Philemon to do whatever he ordered him to do, but he wants Philemon’s good deed to be voluntary. Paul says he wants Philemon to act on the basis of love, not compulsion.
If this were just about Onesimus’ freedom, Paul would have just told Philemon he had to free Onesimus, but that wouldn’t have led Philemon to embrace Onesimus as a brother and not a slave, it wouldn’t have led Philemon to welcome Onesimus the same way he would welcome Paul. Onesimus would’ve been free, but Philemon would’ve remained a slave.
Our world is not so different than Philemon’s. We also have all kinds of reasons to legitimize dehumanizing conditions – either they’re criminals or immigrants or addicts or mentally disabled. Or maybe they’re citizens but their work isn’t valuable enough to society, they don’t contribute enough, so it’s okay that they aren’t paid enough to live on. Whatever the case, just as slavery was so common that Philemon and many of his contemporaries never thought to question it, so there are people constantly invisiblized and dehumanized by our own society, people we don’t even see, either because we’ve trained our eyes to ignore them, or because they’re hidden away behind concrete walls. But the Gospel tells us they are our brothers, our sisters, our siblings. They are our family. Each one is Onesimus at our door, offering us freedom, telling us our humanity is wrapped up in their own, giving us a chance, an opportunity, to act on the basis of love. Amen.
[1] https://guides.loc.gov/13th-amendment
[2] https://vimeo.com/181630335
[3] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/383017-i-am-not-free-while-any-woman-is-unfree-even