Sermon transcript:
One of the defining characteristics of being in a relationship is the way we feel entitled to make claims on each other. The more intimate the relationship, the stronger the claims. Acquaintances expect to be acknowledged if they see each other on the street. Friends expect to get together regularly, and to share aspects of their lives with one another. Married couples, for the most part, expect that their partners will forsake all others to be faithful to them alone.
But what happens when people fail to fulfill the claims we make on them? What do you do with that? Depending on the depth of the relationship, we might feel annoyed, taken for granted, resentful, or betrayed. If we hold on to the unfulfilled claims we have on others and the accompanying feelings long enough, we can become slaves to those claims. We can develop a sense of entitlement to what that person owes us. And if the relationship is significant enough, our lives become dominated by a sense of injustice and it becomes very small, focused on ourselves.
In Paul’s time, slavery wasn’t just a metaphor but a very real and accepted fact of everyday life. His letter to Philemon deals with a conflict over the claims a Christian slave owner can make on a Christian slave. From the letter it is apparent that Paul and Philemon, the slave owner, have a close relationship, likely forged by Philemon’s conversion to Christianity or the Way, as it was then known. It is also apparent that Paul and Onesimus have a close relationship, similarly, forged by Paul’s spiritual mentoring. Further, it seems that Onesimus, a slave to Philemon, ran away, and that Paul promises to settle accounts with Philemon on Onesimus’ behalf.
Paul is well aware that according to the culture and laws of the time, Philemon, as a slave owner and the head of a household, had certain claims he was entitled to make of Onesimus. In fact, according to Roman law, Philemon has the right to put Onesimus to death for running away; legally, he can claim Onesimus’ life. So it may have come as a shock for Philemon to read Paul say, receive Onesimus back not as a slave but as a brother. Life in Christ transforms your relationships. According to Paul, Philemon and Onesimus are no longer master and slave: in Christ, they are siblings, equally loved and cherished. Paul challenges Philemon to shift from insisting on the claims he is legally entitled to make on Onesimus to asking what claims God makes on him in this relationship.
This changes everything. Life in Christ calls us to see others not in terms of the claims we can make on them but rather in terms of the claims that a faithful relationship with God makes on us. Invariably, the central claim God makes on us, is to be in right relationship with others—relationships of respect, mutuality and reciprocity. To do the hard work of loving one another. It’s hard work because there are no set, pat answers. What claims does God make on me in this relationship? As people of faith, we are called to look at our relationships through this lens, whether as the person wronged, the wrong doer or even if we don’t know our role. We let this question drive our discernment.
That’s one part of this scripture, the individual dynamics between Philemon and Onesimus and what it means for us in our personal dealings. But what about the power dynamics at play, the environment in which the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus takes place. Onesimus is a slave after all; Philemon holds tremendous social, economic and state sanctioned legal power over him. You see, beyond the strictly inter-personal aspects of Philemon and Onesimus’ relationship, Paul is asking Philemon, for the sake of love, for the sake of the claim made on him by God, to surrender the power and privilege afforded him by the state, by virtue of his class, his position, his wealth, and perhaps his ethnicity.
This scripture holds some challenges for people of power and privilege, whether that power and privilege is rooted in wealth, position, societal status, skin colour, religion, gender, sexuality, gender identity, and more. This scripture asks us to confront the question of how, in our individual relationships and our collective relationships with others, we benefit from state- and societally-sanctioned power and privilege to the extent that power and privilege separates us from others—to the extent power and privilege allows us to live in the illusion that some of us are better than others and the lie that we’re not all children of God. Friends, what would it look like if, to honour the claims God makes on us, the institutions in our society surrendered power and privilege for the sake of right relationship—relationships defined by love? For example, church properties have tax free status. How could we surrender that state sanctioned privilege for the sake of healing? Consider especially that Parkminster sits on the Haldimand Tract, land legally promised to the Six Nations, yet a promise broken. What are the possibilities there to act faithfully, to live into the claims God makes on us?
Here is the grace in all this: it is a paradox; God’s claims on us actually free us. When we stop focusing on the claims we make on others and focus instead on the claims God makes on us, we are freed from the slavery of destructive relationships, relationships of judgements, condemnation, domination, hierarchy and violence. We are freed from the small god of self into the expansive God of Love.
As we return to the rhythms of church life on this Welcome Back Sunday, it’s not simply about programs starting up or our pews filling more regularly. It is about remembering that God continues to make claims on us as individuals and as a community of faith. We return not out of duty but out of joy. Our gathering this September day is a witness to God’s ongoing call: to be present for one another, to offer our gifts, to deepen our faith, and to remember that we do not belong only to ourselves. In this season of new beginnings, God graciously reclaims us, saying “You belong to me, and through me you belong to each other.” Far from being a burden, this claim is life-giving and freeing. It roots us, reminds us that our lives matter to God, and assures us that by giving ourselves to the life of this community, we are set free for love.
May it be so.