Christ’s hands and feet, Christ’s very heart, are, indeed, the hands, feet, and heart of His servants, His slaves, those He has made free by dying as slave for them.
In my life, I have heard as many as one sermon, I think, on the letter to Philemon. It was by a colleague who had written a commentary on the letter and was delivering an occasional message in a seminary chapel. As the third-shortest book of the Bible, and a reading that only shows up in the lectionary this one day out of the three years, it is likely to be passed over for preaching in the regular cycle unless the preacher has a plan to treat all of the readings over the course of a decade.
Do not skip it though! Philemon deserves careful study and meditation. It rewards the exegete with a nuanced picture of Christ all hearers ought to receive. That picture turns on the circumstance between Onesimus and Philemon, the institution of slavery in the Roman world of Paul’s day, and the opportunity it affords for the apostle to distinguish between the human-wrought social structure of servitude and the divinely endowed familial bond wrought in Christ.
Do not make too much of the English translations and footnotes that bandy about with “bondservant” as distinct from “servant” and “slave.” Slavery is slavery, straight up. Yes, first century AD slavery was different in some ways than antebellum human chattel slavery in the American South. But it was the same in some ways too, at the very bottom of which is blissful thoughtlessness regarding the justice of the arrangement, human exploitation, and violence. The Preface to Philemon in the English Standard Version (ESV) justifies its editors’ distinct vocabulary for rendering the Greek words “doulos” and “‘ebed,” but what their nuances boil down to is pulling a punch and tempting a contemporary reader to imagine ancient slavery was a form of servitude somehow nicer than the stuff we learned in United States History class. Not so.
As a runaway, Onesimus’s life is forfeit. This is a fact whether he was a personal valet or a mineworker, a domestic or a city contract worker. Philemon has rights as an owner, and likely as a citizen, that Onesimus does not. The occasion of the letter matches the rhetoric Paul employs, which lays a thick layer of pathos on top of his recognition of Philemon’s finer qualities. Philemon gives rest to restless hearts (ESV, “refreshes the hearts”) of the saints. Paul calls Onesimus his very heart. Philemon is asked to refresh it; simultaneously Paul’s feelings and the returning slave Onesimus. That is clever wordplay, matched by the play on “useful,” “profitable,” that echoes Onesimus’s name. It is a fun letter, a playful and personal letter, a tender letter. And no less remarkable is its teaching for the Church that for 2000 years has been reading someone else’s mail (at the apostle’s invitation in verse 2).
What is this heart business? It is how we render the Greek word “splangkhna,” the guts, the seat of emotion, that bit that vividly describes Jesus’ visceral reaction when He feels pity and compassion (refer to Mark 6:34, Matthew 15:32, and others). It is the affectionate open-heartedness (instead of hard-heartedness) of Christian love (refer to Philippians 1:8, 2:1 and 1 John 3:16-18). Organ talk is material, physical, body talk, concretizing and making real and tangible what our contemporary society might idealize in the invisible as feelings, emotions, mental activity, or the spiritual rather than the bodily. There is nothing like the institution of ancient slavery to remind us that we are dealing with real bodies, though, violence and all, and a vocabulary for feelings that confesses embodiedness is icing on the cake.
To be in Christ is to be not in oneself, not in the old Adam, not in the world. To be in Christ is to be in the One who died and rose.
Where is Jesus in this epistle? Overtly, He is Paul’s prison warden (or, probably better, the one for the sake of whom Paul is imprisoned – though I like the idea of Paul being Christ’s prisoner and Christ’s slave – these things are technically true!) and that of others in chains for the gospel (verses 1, 9, and 23). Christ is the one whose grace greets the letter’s recipients (verses 3 and 25). He is the object and goal of Paul’s and Philemon’s ministry work (5-6). And I think most significantly, Jesus is the location of their, and all Christian’s, identity before God and the world (“coram deo” and “coram hominibus”).[1] “In Christ” is the most important prepositional phrase of the entire scriptures (verses 8, 16, and 20). To be in Christ is to be not in oneself, not in the old Adam, not in the world. To be in Christ is to be in the One who died and rose. To be in Christ is to be in His body (there is that body talk again). And the death Christ’s body died was (let this not be lost on you!) a slave’s death. First century practice of crucifixion was reserved for criminals of slave status. Citizens could not suffer the “poena ultima.”[2] There were other ways of dealing with corporal punishment and execution depending on status in the Roman world. The dramatic irony of Good Friday, however, is that the free son stands in place of slaves (to sin, the world, and the devil) and dies as a slave in exchange for their freedom. Dressed as an enslaved criminal (in other words, stark naked), crucified among them, the Lord embodies the marginalized, the outcast, the poor, the sentenced, the death row doomed, the bottom of the social pyramid, the slave. The New Testament treatments of the slave/free dichotomy from the gospels and epistles are important intertexts for illustrating this point (see John 8, Romans 6-8, Galatians 3-4, and others).
What, then, is a contemporary hearer to receive from the proclamation of Christ via Philemon? There is likely not a practical urgency (Lord have mercy, I hope not!) to condemn the practice of slavery from the pulpit. I would advise the preacher against drawing some kind of analogy between ancient slaves/masters and contemporary workers/employers. They are too different and distinct, especially for this text. No, the Philemon sermon that preaches Christ should focus on one of the two profound messages the letter teaches: 1. Freedom from slavery (the great exchange) is a metaphor for Christ’s work, and 2. We are brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus, a lateral and egalitarian instead of hierarchical identity, one that leads us to submit to one another out of submission to Christ’s person and work, not power-brokering social constructs.
Both directions noted above hinge on carefully considering the embodiment of Christ’s person and work in the human social relations related at verses 15-20, between Philemon and Onesimus and Paul and the rest of this little house church served by Philemon and company. This is about being in the Lord and being in the flesh (verse 16). This is not about the gain or loss of some kind of service or commodity that can be counted in exchange value. It is about human life, the big guns of life and death, not behavior or money or the small stuff, but the real potatoes, life and death (verses 18-19).
I encourage the preacher to move forward considering body talk in this pericope, towards a sermon that invites a profound respect for the body of Christ. Consider how He uses your hearers’ bodies to serve the Body of Christ, how Christ Himself served up His own body in the slave/free exchange to free your hearer for labor in Christ’s service and to serve the other members of His body. Christ serves His own body (the Eucharist) to His body (the Church) in order to refresh hearts and to settle the restless heart that knows its sin, which confesses its fascination with structures of power and the grab for identity in places other than in Christ. Christ’s hands and feet, Christ’s very heart, are, indeed, the hands, feet, and heart of His servants, His slaves, those He has made free by dying as slave for them.
The Lord bless you as you prepare and serve as His hands and feet, His heart, and His mouth this week!
--------
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Philemon 1-21.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Philemon 1-21.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
---
[1] Latin phrases: “coram deo” means “in the presence of God,” and “coram hominibus” means “in the presence of people/humans.”
[2] Latin phrase: “poena ultima” means the “ultimate/final penalty.”
