Meditation Line: 11/2008(2) - Philemon 1:7-20
Beloved: I have experienced much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the holy ones have been refreshed by you, brother. Therefore, although I have the full right in Christ to order you to do what is proper, I rather urge you out of love, being as I am, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus. I urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment, who was once useless to you but is now useful to both you and me. I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I should have liked to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf in my imprisonment for the Gospel, but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary. Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord. So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me. And if he has done you any injustice or owes you anything, charge it to me. I, Paul, write this in my own hand: I will pay. May I not tell you that you owe me your very self. Yes, brother, may I profit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.
Paul's letter to Philemon may seem rather strange, since it seems that Paul apparently accepted the use of this slave and he allowed that his Christians should own slaves. He seems to have written this letter about 5 years after he wrote his letter to the Galatians, and it is in that earlier letter that we read "All of you who have been baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with him. There does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female." I sense a rather significant conflict between the two positions; is there something that I am missing about what Paul means?
But more important than how I understand that situation is the question of how I myself approach each person that I deal with in my daily comings and goings. Do I enslave other people? Maybe not in any obvious way, but I do treat people as objects, my servants to whom I pay no attention or offer no respect and to whom I allow no personhood. Does my interaction with them diminish them, relegate them to the status of mere physical functions, or is what I say and the way that I treat them respectful, truly present and calling to life?
Do I evaluate them only in terms of what they can do for me, or do I treat them as brothers and sisters that I am open to love and am eager to meet and welcome, even if only for a brief moment? Do I get to know the names of those I meet daily, do I discover their joys and sorrows, their successes and concerns, let them matter to me?
Jesus acted in that way, seeing and loving each of them, and He made Himself known to them, showed them His thoughts and His love, His very self. Can I try to imitate Jesus in this, aware that while I imitate as best I can I will never be his equal?
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