During the past few weeks, our first readings
have been from the letters of Paul rather than readings from the Old
Testament. Today
our reading is from his letter to Philemon. Many
Christians probably could not even name this book as a part of the New
Testament. It is
by far the shortest of Paul’s letters, not even being organized in chapters,
and containing only 355 words in the original Greek. That’s very short, isn’t it? What
strikes me about this letter is that Paul wrote it while he was in prison
himself, probably in Rome. But
Paul is not interested in his own safety and well-being, but rather in the
welfare of the runaway slave Onesimus, who was returning to his owner,
Philemon. Paul’s journey is so interesting, as he started out being a prosecutor of
Christian, wanting them to be arrested or to be killed. And
now he is willing to do anything to spread the Gospel to the world, even to go
to prison for the sake of the Gospel. When
I was in Rome a few years ago at the Basilica of St Paul just outside the walls
of the ancient city of Rome, I even got to see a piece of the chains that
enslaved Paul when he was in prison. Paul
wrote to so many different Christian communities as their spiritual father, one
who spent so much time nurturing them in the faith. He even calls Onesimus his spiritual son in
the faith, his own very heart.
For
Paul, God was not some ambiguous concept or some far away being in the
heavens. Jesus
was his Lord and his Savior. Jesus
led Paul to the faith and to salvation. Do we
see ourselves nurturing others like Paul did, reaching out to others in the
faith?
