Theological Truth: The Gospel reorders our relationships and reimagines our status quo.
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whose works are wonderful, and we know it well.
Shannon and I visited the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, NY this past summer. It was here in 1848 in the Wesleyan Chapel that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others organized the first women’s rights convention. The park ranger who explained the significance of the convention asked us, “What was the assembly’s most notable accomplishment?” “The right to vote,” we said. “Yes,” he said, “But did you know that voting almost wasn’t even included in their original platform? It was the one demand they couldn’t agree on.” All the other demands were unanimously accepted, but when it came to asking for the right to vote, most of these brave, visionary women (and a few men) couldn’t go along. They thought it too radical, considered it a bridge too far, assumed people wouldn’t take them seriously.
Fortunately, Frederick Douglass was also in attendance. Douglass, a formerly enslaved man who became a prominent activist, author, public speaker, and abolitionist leader, convinced the assembly that without the right to vote, none of their other demands would ever come to pass. What they saw as a bridge too far, he saw as a path they had to prioritize. He persuaded them to claim their dignity and worth, to see beyond the familiar limitations to which they had become accustomed and imagine a future based on re-ordered relationships. It took more than 70 years and only one of the original signers was alive to cast her vote, but eventually this new day did indeed come to pass.
It takes visionaries like Frederick Douglass to see beyond the familiar, because so often we see things as they are and assume that’s how they’ll always be, even when they’re clearly (at least in hindsight) inconsistent with our deepest beliefs – for instance, that all people are created equal. The same holds true in our life of faith. Even St. Paul, as we see in his letter to Philemon, struggled to envision how systems and structures of his world could be – had to be – different in light of the Gospel.
Today we get to hear almost the entirety of one of Paul’s letters. It’s a wonderful opportunity to hear it as Philemon and his household heard it, for the love letter that it is and all in one sitting. But even more importantly, we witness the scales continuing to fall from Paul’s eyes as he reimagines life in the light of the Gospel.
Just to recap: Paul is writing to Philemon. He and his family had been adopted into the household of God in Christ through Paul’s preaching. As was the unfortunate custom at the time (and for too long afterward), Philemon is a slaveholder. Onesimus is one of Philemon’s slaves. He escapes and ends up in Ephesus, about 100 miles away on the coast of modern-day Turkey. While there, Onesimus also hears Paul preach and becomes part of this family of God’s grace. Paul writes this letter to Philemon while in prison in Ephesus.
Remember, this is Paul…who reminds the church in Philippi that he was “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” (Philippians 3:5-6) This is Paul, a product of the religious order, who nevertheless gets blinded by the bright light of the Gospel and continues to re-vision what was, in order to see what can be.
This is Paul, who is not normally indecisive or reluctant to give orders. Yet he grapples with, searches for, and lurches toward asking Philemon to do something that prior to his conversion, would never have occurred to Paul: “To take back his runaway slave, Onesimus,” as the Rev. Dr. Amy Richter puts it, “not as a slave but as a brother; to receive him not as property over which he has legal rights, but as a human being and a living member of the family of which Philemon, too, is a part – the family of Jesus Christ.”
Paul knows that Onesimus can’t be Philemon’s brother in Christ AND his own personal property. And yet, his appeal reflects his struggle to see past the systems he knows to a future that God promises. He writes, “I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love…appealing to you for my child, Onesimus…. I am sending him back to you [I wonder how Onesimus felt about that!?]…. I preferred to do nothing without your consent…. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while…. Let me have this benefit….”
Perhaps Paul is just being diplomatic rather than coercive. But Paul doesn’t usually resist being direct. Rather, he seems here to be slowly but surely coming to the realization that this Kingdom of God – the loving, liberating, life-giving way of Christ where all are included and all are worthy – requires dismantling some systems and disbanding some limits, including things that seem unthinkably impossible to change.
Perhaps this also then helps make sense of Jesus’ seemingly harsh words that unless we hate our family, we can’t be his disciples. But as biblical writer Brian Stoffregen reminds us, “[hate] is a Semitic expression meaning ‘to turn away from, to detach oneself from,’ rather than our animosity-laden understanding.” To follow Jesus into this way of loving and living, we must detach ourselves and turn away from some things that seem so normal and have become so familiar and accept new developments – things as crazy as women having the right to vote! We will even have to give up our attachment to all that we possess – anything and everything that we place in higher priority than God’s kingdom, whether that be material possessions, ideological passions, or familiar structures. All must be re-examined in the light of the Gospel that says, “God so loves the world.”
The Episcopal Church has been doing that for a long time. My mentor, the Rev. Hill Riddle (from Danville, VA!) liked telling the story of his first diocesan convention. He was just out of seminary and as he entered the meeting there was someone banging on the podium, with veins bulging out of his head and spittle flying everywhere, screaming, “If this passes it will be the END of the Church!” Do you know what he was protesting? The right for women to serve on the vestry.
Now this doesn’t mean that everything that makes us uncomfortable and threatens conventionality is of God, obviously! But Jesus is definitely forewarning us that this way of love has its costs. He’s telling the crowd all this as he walks to Jerusalem where he knows there’s a cross waiting for him, not a throne; a tomb, not a castle; a crown, but one made of thorns. This Way of Love and Inclusion and Sacrifice challenges the hateful, exclusive, selfish ways of the world. We must be prepared to hate them – to turn away, separate, and detach from them. To imagine like Paul, new possibilities, and let the scales continue to fall from our eyes.
A dear friend of mine and her family did just that. She came to her parents with good news and bad news. The good news was that she was in love and had found the person that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. The bad news was that this person was also a woman. Her father responded with what he thought was a magnanimous statement, “It’s okay. We can hate the sin but love the sinner.” To which my friend said, “Oh no no no. I’m asking you to get to the place where you don’t see this as sinful at all.” Her father was shocked. It seemed like a bridge too far. The idea of marriage being between a man and a woman was too deeply ingrained, impossible to imagine otherwise. For him alone, it would have been impossible. But with God, all things are possible. And a year or so later, when they threw the wedding and reception – with the same extravagance as they had for their other daughters – couple after couple came up to them with tears in their eyes thanking them for validating their relationships.
May we have the vision to see beyond whatever structures and practices are preventing the liberation and inclusion of our brothers and sisters in Christ. May the scales continue to fall from our eyes as we pray and work for the coming of God’s Kingdom.
— Fr. AJ Heine, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C, September 4, 2022
Readings: Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 139:1-5 12-17, Philemon 1-21, Luke 14:25-33
