Who Is This Who Even Forgives Sins?

You know that Onesimus was a slave when Paul wrote to Philemon saying he wasn't a slave, right? For some people, the fact that Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon without unequivocally and certainly overturning the institution of slavery, similar to certain of Paul's comments about the nature of gender and sexuality, makes the Bible an ideological text meant only to justify entrenched power and injustice. To be brief, it is that for those who wish it to be. There's plenty in the Bible that can give a veneer of legitimacy to anyone that seeks to dominate and destroy.

But to see it that way ignores the fact that what we have here is just a snapshot of a guy in a certain place and time trying to live according to this strange power that is unlike anything in the world. A snapshot wherein we see he says, "You're slave is not a slave." The powers, the very real institutional powers that determine the way we live and know the world say there is such thing as a slave and here is how you navigate your existence around and with that reality. That's just the way it is, so here is what you do and how you live given those circumstances. Except, Paul says, "No it isn't."

That's the power of God versus the power of the world- the power of the world has Paul writing letters from prison, whereas the power of God has Paul writing letters from prison. I know, right?

This past Sunday, a visiting preacher, shared from Philemon, and it was perhaps good timing. He talked about the safety and security of our American congregations and wondered if we really trusted in the power of God to work miracles. And although he was offering a more allegorical reading of Onesimus as a slave of sin freed by the power of God*, given our circumstances it could be just what we need- an outsider's eyes to point out what's right before our own.

Considering the preacher's own experiences, the possibility of imprisonment or death for being a Christian, Paul's imprisonment resonated with him. Paul preached and was imprisoned and so the idea of being a Christian meaning being bold enough to preach the Gospel in the face of prison or death as a demonstration of the power of God makes sense. But here you're not likely going to go to prison or be killed for being a Christian- even when Obama is president- not if being a Christian means what we generally understand it to mean. This doesn't mean preaching harder to raise the ire of people who already find Christians obnoxious. Preaching the Gospel in our context generally has little to do with preaching anyway. But his point should still be taken. His sermon could be taken to ask whom or what we trust for our security and what security means to us. It should be taken that way- especially considering that tomorrow a lot of us will be demonstrating to what degree we trust God- or rather how we trust God.

But even if tomorrow were just an other Tuesday instead of our religion's high holy day, we could ask where we find our security, in what do we trust, and on what power we rely and for what.

When as THE CHURCH our priority is not alienating visitors or losing our tax exempt status, I think we can say where our security lies. When we believe in the power of something called international borders that allow us to treat people like animals, the power of "our way of life" that encourages us to kill and easily identify people as our enemies, or the power of some self-privileging artifice we call nature or tradition that allows us to deny the possibility of two people's love I think we can get a sense of what powers we trust.

Of course someone that was willing to live in opposition to those powers because of a higher power, someone that understood there was some Good News that freed them from the tyranny of those powers, in this present time and place would probably... Ah who am I kidding? Like we could even know.


* A reading I don't necessarily dispute when I see that Onesimus is a slave because of sinful power and it's only the power of God that has Paul see that such is not the case.