Useless Onesimus

The epistles of Paul do not really lend themselves to narrative.  Paul doesn’t tend to do stories.  Oh, he might include a personal anecdote here and there, and he’s never reluctant to tell the tale of his own conversion, but for the most part his letters are exhortations, advice and discourses on theology.  Yet the stories are there, hidden under the surface.

Many of his letters were written in response to situations in the communities to which he wrote; and if we squint, we can see the bare outline of what might have happened to prompt his letter.  Usually, though, all we get is hints.

Then there’s the Letter to Philemon.

Philemon was a friend of Paul’s living in the city of Colossae in the Roman province of Asia in present-day Turkey.  The Christian community in Colossae was a satellite church that grew out of the church Paul had planted in nearby Ephesus.

Philemon seems to have been fairly affluent and the Colossian believers met in his home.  He owned a slave named Onesimus, a Greek name meaning “useful”, which is a good name for a competent and reliable servant, if that’s what he was.  Only he wasn’t.

We don’t know the circumstances under which Onesimus left his master.  Perhaps he ran away because his master was cruel to him. Perhaps he had been stealing from his master and ran away when the theft was discovered.  Or perhaps he had heard about Paul and his message and wanted to meet him.  Some critics have suggested that he himself had been stolen.

Whether he sought Paul out, or happened to run into him by chance, Onesimus wound up on Paul’s doorstep.  In his letter to Philemon, Paul describes himself as a prisoner, and biblical scholars in general believe it was written during his imprisonment in Rome, when he was awaiting trial before the Emperor. 

Some scholars have suggested that the letter was written during Paul’s two years of imprisonment in the Palestinian coastal city of Caesarea, prior to his trip to Rome; or possibly an earlier incarceration in Ephesus, when he was jailed for threatening the Tourist Trade.  Rome, however, seems more likely; and crowded, bustling Rome would have been a perfect place for a runaway slave like Onesimus to lose himself.

For much of his time in Rome, Paul was under house arrest, able to receive visitors, but not permitted to leave.  Under such circumstances, having a servant to act as a “gofer” would have been very helpful to Paul.

Nevertheless, as helpful as Onesimus might be, he still posed a problem for Paul.  Under Roman law, Onesimus was another man’s property and Paul could face legal sanctions for harboring a runaway slave.  (Well, additional legal sanctions on top of imprisonment).  Much of Paul’s legal defense consisted of trying to convince the Emperor that Christians were peaceful and law-abiding.  Perhaps more importantly, his friend Philemon would regard it as a betrayal if he ever found out Paul had his slave – and he would inevitably find out.  The situation could conceivably cause a schism in the Colossian community with some people taking Philemon’s side and some people taking Paul’s.

We would like Paul to have denounced the slavery; to perhaps have helped smuggle Onesimus out of the reach of Roman law and to have issued an edict that Christians were henceforth prohibited from owning slaves.  At very least, he should have insisted on following the Mosaic laws of freeing all slaves every seven years.

No, he didn’t do this; he did something more subtle.

Paul received word that the church in Colossae was having questions about some heretical doctrines which had arisen.  The nature of the heresy is irrelevant to this story, but it occasioned Paul to write a letter to the Colossians about the matter.  He had a guy named Tychicus carry the letter back – very likely the guy who brought Paul the news from Colossae in the first place – but also had Onesimus accompany the bearer.  I don’t know how he managed to talk Onesimus into returning to his master, but Paul could be dang persuasive.  Along with the Letter to the Colossians, Paul also gave Onesimus a personal note for Philemon.

The letter starts out with greetings to Philemon and to Apphia and Archippus, members of his household, very likely Philemon’s wife and his son.  Paul praises Philemon for his faith and the love he has shown to his fellows.  He’s setting Philemon up for the hook.

What comes next is nothing less than a guilt trip, and an exquisitely-constructed one at that. 

He makes a plea for Onesimus, whom he calls a son, because he  “became my son while I was in chains.”  (Philemon 10) He notes that could command this, but would prefer that Philemon follow his request voluntarily, out of love.  Not that Paul isn’t above playing the sympathy card, reminding Philemon repeatedly in the letter that he is currently a prisoner and in chains himself.  “Formerly he was useless to you…” Paul says, punning on Onesimus’ name, “… but now he has become useful both for you and for me.” (v. 11)

I am sending him — who is my very heart — back to you.  I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel. But I did not want to do anything without your consent ….  Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever — no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. (vv. 12-16)

That is the crux of Paul’s argument.  Isn’t it better, he asks, to have a brother in Christ and a friend than to have a useless slave?

Paul urges Philemon to welcome Onesimus into his home as he would Paul himself; and says that if he owes Philemon anything – this is where we get the suggestion that Onesimus might have stolen from his master – Paul will repay it personally.  “I, Paul am writing this with my own hand.” (v. 19)  Paul won’t even mention that, really, Philemon owes his very salvation to Paul’s preaching – except, of course, that he just did; (Paul, you dog, you!)

Paul puts the icing on the cake by telling Philemon to prepare a guest room for him for when he’s released.  He doesn’t explicitly say so, but the implication is clear that he will be checking up to see if Philemon does as he asked.

So, did Philemon free his disobedient slave?  Did he at least forgive him for running away?  The fact that we even have this letter, I think, is evidence that he did.  If I had received a letter like that from Paul, the last thing I would want is for anybody else to know I blew him off.

Historically, Paul’s letter to Philemon has been used to justify the practice of slavery, using the reasoning that since Paul didn’t condemn it, it must be permissible, right?  There are a number of other places where Paul speaks of the duties of slaves and of the ethical treatment of them.  These also have been used to justify slavery, (usually while ignoring the “ethical treatment” part).

But Paul wasn’t interested in reforming society as a whole as much as he was living justly within the existing society.  Slavery was an accepted fact of life in Paul’s era and Paul here did not challenge that.  Except to leave Philemon with this subversive thought:

Would you rather have a useless slave, or a brother and a friend?

Foreskin Wars

You’ve probably heard the question – or perhaps you’ve asked it yourself – why Christians get hung up over certain passages in the Book of Leviticus, but ignore others.  The Levitical prohibitions against eating shellfish or wearing polyester/cotton blends are usually the ones mentioned.  The official answer involves drawing a distinction between Ceremonial Law and the Moral Law, and seems a bit hair-splitting.  And maybe it is.

But the question has been around for a while.  Some Jewish scholars have held that certain parts of the Law of Moses will be superseded in the Post-Messianic Era; although they disagree which parts those might be. There are instances where the Learned Rabbis, unable to come to a consensus on the interpretation of some point of the Law, have deferred a definitive ruling until the Messiah comes.

The early Christians, believing that the Messiah already had come, didn’t have that out; and so they needed to determine how much of the Law of Moses Christians need to follow.  This formed the core of the Church’s first major controversy.  For the sake of a snappy title, I’m going to call it the Foreskin Wars.

As the Early Church spread out from Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria and to the Ends of the Earth, as the fellow said, more and more Gentiles became attracted to the Message of Christ.  This posed a problem for the Church leaders.  How should they deal with these new Gentile converts?

For one faction in the Church, the answer was obvious:  to join the community, one would first have to become a Jew.  For that reason, the Church has come to call this group the “Judaizers”. I’m not sure if I like that name; it sounds like a Hebrew Arnold Schwartzenegger.  Elsewhere, Paul refers to them as “the circumcision party” because in order to become a Jew, one must first be circumcised.

Circumcision, the cutting off of the male foreskin, was established as part of God’s covenant with Abraham way back in Genesis chapter 19.  It was required not only of Abraham and his male children, but also of all the males in his household, even his slaves and servants.  It was a physical sign of belonging to the Tribe of Abraham.

The Gentile response to this, of course, was “You want me to cut off my WHAT???”

Some  members of the circumcision party came to Antioch, the city in Syria which Paul used as his home base.  Paul and his partner Barnabas disputed the claim that converts needed to be circumcised in order to receive salvation.  The local church decided to send a delegation including Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem to get a ruling from the apostles and the elders of the Church as to who was right.

Here the text makes a remarkable statement, one that I don’t remember noticing in previous readings of the passage.  Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.” (Acts 15:5)

If you’re like me, you’re probably used to thinking of the Pharisees as the Bad Guys in the Gospels; and yes, the Gospels describe several clashes between Jesus and Pharisees over interpretation of the Laws of Moses.  But he had more in common with the Pharisees than he did with the Sadducees, the faction among the Jewish leaders most prominent in the Temple organization.

A lot of Jesus’ moral and ethical teachings are similar to those reflected by the Rabbis of the Pharisaic school.  His rhetorical question “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?” (Matthew 12:11) is an example found in rabbinical discussions on the Sabbath; and perhaps Jesus’ most famous teaching, “do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets,” (Matthew 7:12) is a restating of the Rabbi Hillel’s famous summary of the Law a generation earlier:  "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn"

It is not completely surprising that there were some adherents of the Pharisaic traditions among Jesus’ followers.  But it is even less surprising that of his followers, these would be the most concerned with maintaining the Law of Moses.

Which brings us back to the Council.

The apostles and elders met to consider this question.  After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them:  “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe.”  (Acts 15:6-7)

Peter was alluding here to an incident recorded in Acts chapter 10, where he received a vision from the Lord with which prompted him to accept an invitation by Cornelius, a Roman official who was curious to hear Peter’s message.  This led Peter to an important understanding:  “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.” (Acts 10:34-35)

At the Council, Peter went on to say,

“God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.  He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.  Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?”  (Acts 15:8-10)

Peter’s mention of the Holy Spirit was a potent argument.  The church in which I grew up tends to downplay the Holy Spirit except when unavoidable like on Trinity Sunday or the Feast of Pentecost because we Lutherans tend to be suspicious of extreme outbursts of enthusiasm, but the Book of Acts mentions frequent occasions where believers and new converts had ecstatic experiences which they attributed to the presence of God.  That these Gentile converts also experienced this same thing seemed to Peter and the other Apostles irrefutable evidence that God approved of them.

James the Brother of Jesus, who later tradition named James the Just to differentiate him from other Jameses and who had become an important leader among the elders of the Church by this time, stepped in with a compromise.  I get the feeling that he sympathized with the circumcision party; his epistle certainly emphasizes that Christians have an obligation to do Good Works just as Moses had commanded.  But James could not deny the evidence of Peter and Paul either.

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God,” he said. (Acts 15:19)  He recommended that the new converts not be required to be circumcised, but to have them abstain from a few practices common among the Gentiles which are prohibited by Mosaic Law:

(1) food polluted by idols

(2) sexual immorality

(3) the meat of strangled animals

(4) eating blood

Of these prohibitions, the first is largely obsolete; idolatry takes on more subtle forms these days and doesn’t usually involve sacrificing food.  The last two are based on the Levitical view cited by Doctor Van Helsing that “The Life is In the Blood” and that it is therefore uncool to consume it.  Animals killed for food were to be drained of blood as much a practical before being cooked.  These prohibitions have been largely ignored in cultures that enjoy blood sausage.

The second one, so broad and vaguely-worded, is the one that the Church has obsessed over for the past two millennia.

I suspect that Paul found even these bare-bones prohibitions more restrictive than he liked.  In his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 8:1-13) we find him finessing the rule about food sacrificed to idols, and he devotes much of his Epistle to the Galatians to insisting that Salvation is not predicated on following certain rules.  One of the sad ironies of Paul is that although he argued forcibly against legalism in Galatians and many of his other letters, his writings have also been used to justify most of the legalistic practices that have burdened the Church ever since.

James’ compromise was a big turning point in the development of the Church.  It averted the Church’s first major schism, and made the message of Jesus more accessible to the wider Gentile audience, but at a price.

Up to this point, the followers of Jesus could consider themselves a Jewish sect.  Heck, they were Jewish.  But with the Council of Jerusalem, that changed.  You can argue that this was the true source of the enmity between Judaism and Christendom:  not the blame for the Crucifixion, nor the blasphemous claim of Christ’s Divinity, but rather this decision by James and the other Apostles that the Jewish Identity as defined by the Laws of Moses no longer mattered.

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus … There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.  (Galatians 3:26, 28)

That was Paul’s ideal of Christian equality; but in practical terms, the Church could either be a Jewish one, or a Gentile one; and when it made circumcision and the Law of Moses optional, the Church ceased to be Jewish.

Oh, the Leaders of the Church tried to have it both ways.  Even Paul urged his student Timothy, a young man with a Jewish mother but a Greek father, to become circumcised in order to demonstrate that he was not advocating Jews to reject the Law.  He did not make that request of his student Titus, a Greek.

When Paul visited Jerusalem for his last time, James and the elders of the Church warned him that rumors had spread that Paul was teaching Jews to turn away from Moses and to stop circumcising their children.  They suggested he accompany some men who going to perform a purification ritual at the Temple, to show everyone that he was fine with following the Mosaic traditions.

A good plan, but it didn’t work.  Some troublemakers stirred up the crowd at the Temple, claiming that Paul had brought a Gentile into the sacred Temple grounds.  The text calls them “some Jews from the province of Asia”.  These might have been the Jewish Christians of the circumcision party whose teachings prompted Paul to write his letter to the Galatians, or they might have been some of the members of the local Jewish community who opposed Paul when he traveled through Asia Minor.  The text doesn’t specify.

Either way, they started a riot which brought in the Roman authorities to quell the disturbance.  Paul was arrested, in part for his own protection, and remained a prisoner for two years while the Roman judicial system tried to figure out what to do with him.

In the end, Paul requested to have his case heard by Caesar; which was his right as a Roman citizen, but which further emphasized the rift.  Henceforth, the fate of Christendom would be linked to Rome, not to Jerusalem; and the Church would be a Gentile religion, not a Jewish one.