Proper 18, Year C | Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
September 7, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“I am appealing to you for my child…” – Philemon 10[1]
Although Philemon is one of the few New Testament Epistles addressed to an individual, it’s completely unique in that this letter offers no instruction but is, in its entirety, what we would understand as a private and personal request.
For some context, Philemon appears to have been a wealthy Christian convert who tradition says lived in the city of Colossae in what’s now southwestern Turkey. Two indicators point to his financial status. First, we know from this letter that his house was large enough for the local church to gather. Secondly, we also know that he employed at least one slave.
Estimates vary, but as many as 90% of the people living within the 1st Century Roman Empire may have been considered “slaves.” However, we need to be cautious about conflating Roman slavery and our own nation’s still relatively recent practice of chattel slavery. Most Roman slaves functioned more along the lines of indentured servants or contract workers than wholesale property. Some people were indeed enslaved for a lifetime—generally prisoners, whether or war or the era’s justice system. However, most Roman slaves entered that status through legal agreement.
Someone in financial straights or maybe hoping to gain skills in a particular area would sign on as a “slave” to a wealthy family for a certain amount of time. During that period, the family was responsible for the entirety of that slave’s care—room, board, clothing, healthcare, and any education appropriate to their work. At the end of the contract, the slave would often receive a lump sum of money as payment for their time and labor. If the individual liked working for the family or maybe had other debts to take care of, they might sign back on. But they weren’t property in the sense that people of African descent were in the United States, nor were they manipulated through structures devised to permanently burden workers with debt, like the sharecropper or mill town systems that followed Emancipation.
Although Roman slaves could be subject to various physical punishments for failure, they had legal protections from overt abuse and mistreatment. A severe or unjustified beating would violate the family’s end of the contract, allowing the slave to leave early, lump sum in hand. Nor was a slave’s child enslaved in perpetuity. A slave could be sentenced to death if they ran away and were arrested, but that was more about breach of contract than an owner choosing to destroy certain human property as means of terrorizing their other property.
If we look across Paul’s letters, it’s obvious that the Roman version of slavery isn’t something he either actively endorses or opposes. It’s simply a reality that he, along with everyone to whom he was writing, encountered each day. Chances are he couldn’t have imagined what a world without it might even look like. But beyond simple statements along the lines of “do the job you’re hired to do” and “be kind to your workers,” he does make some revolutionary declarations in which he does begin to express new ideas regarding Christians and slavery: “…whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave belonging to Christ.”[2] “…in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”[3] “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[4]
If we pay attention to Philemon as a whole, rather than drawing snippets and phrases at random, we can’t help but see Paul’s emphasis on radical equality. In fact, Paul’s entire purpose in writing the letter was to plead on behalf of this runaway slave.
We don’t know any of the how or why, but at some point Onesimus fled Philemon’s household. Tradition says he ran off after stealing something. Some time later, he and Paul somehow encounter each other, likely while Paul was under house arrest in Rome. Under Paul’s tutelage, Onesimus appears to have become a Christian. As part of his newfound faithfulness to Jesus, Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon, likely so he can restore the stolen property as evidence of repentance. Recognizing that Onesimus could be subject to severe punishment, however, Paul writes a letter to this mutual acquaintance, asking that Philemon forgive Onesimus. While the note isn’t explicit, Paul’s language about receiving Onesimus as a brother strongly intimates that he hoped Philemon would not only forgive but free this slave, if for no other reason than the possibility that Onesimus might voluntarily return to support Paul during his trials. Unfortunately for us, the letter ends without resolution, and our Scriptures contain no further mention of what happened.
Tradition, however, does continue the tale, and there’s evidence that what it says about the outcome of this story may in fact be true. It appears that Philemon did allow Onesimus to return to Paul, and a letter from a respected Early Church leader[5] indicates that Onesimus eventually became a Bishop in Ephesus, a role he probably wouldn’t have been able to assume were he still a slave.
That makes for a pretty good story, but when we hold Philemon up beside our Gospel reading, we might see a little more light shining through.
As an aside regarding the Gospel, I need to emphasize that Jesus is not talking about “hating” your family in the sense that we would use that word. Jesus never tells us to hate or despise another person, instructing us to serve our enemies with kindness and humility. The culture he grew up in liked to use extremes, so his words are probably easiest to understand through physical example. If I’m facing the congregation, like right now, my back is toward the cross at the front of the church. Seeing that, someone looking from outside might describe the situation saying, “he must have turned his back on the cross.” If I then face the cross, they could say, “he turned his back on”—in other words, “hated”—“the people.” The “hatred” Jesus demands is based on the direction your life is facing, not any sort of emotional state toward someone or something. You can still deeply love your family, but if you pivot your focus from them to follow Jesus (even if they’re also following Jesus!), people might accuse you of turning your back on or turning against them.
But it’s the last line from our Gospel that adds illumination to Philemon. Our text says, “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”[6] That, however, isn’t exactly what Luke records Jesus saying. A literal translation doesn’t work particularly well in English but would be, in part, “each of you all who doesn’t say goodbye to all things of himself possessing.” The important detail here is that while the “things” are connected to the person, the person isn’t the one doing the “possessing;” the things are.
There are a couple ways we could interpret this. One is that Jesus is laying out a warning about possessions turning from objects we might own and use into items that own and use us—a more than valid concern for us in the United States. The other is that the things aren’t “possessing” the person so much as they’re “providing resources” or “advantages”[7] to the person. In that case, Jesus isn’t necessarily talking about getting rid of stuff so much as turning from the stabilities and imagined certainties that we continually rely upon—including people he mentioned earlier in our passage: parents or siblings or life partners or offspring.
Looking back at our Epistle through that lens, we see in Paul’s letter a call for Philemon to set aside his own certainties, ingrained societal expectations, and even legal rights. Paul is asking for Philemon to see Onesimus in a new way, not simply as something “useful,”[8] like a tool—just an object Philemon pays for to achieve his own ends—but as an Image of God and a genuine brother within the New Creation. And the remarkable thing is that Philemon does so—not due to any subtle manipulation on Paul’s part but because he chooses to actively embrace the reality of this new way of living as a citizen of God’s Kingdom.
As can we.
The letter to Philemon demonstrates how we, too, might move past the generations of selfishness and cruelty that make a mockery of Christianity in our country. We can stop insisting that others conform to our own beliefs, interests, and concepts of morality and instead reach beyond our proprieties and pieties to serve them with dignity wherever and whoever they may be. We can step outside our fear-rooted need for control, trusting God to be generous and loving in our own times of difficulty. We, like Jesus himself, can choose to share our power, rights, and authority, no longer allowing them to possess us, but rather wielding them as tools they are, items we have inherited to raise up and restore God’s Image by offering others the same liberties and privileges we enjoy.
“I am appealing to you for [God’s children]…”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] I Corinthians 7:22
[3] I Corinthians 12:13
[4] Galatians 3:28
[5] St. Ignatius
[6] Luke 14:33
[7] Lit. “resourcing”
[8] Paul’s “useless” and “useful” comments in Philippians 11 are a play on the meaning of Onesimus’ name.