Calling out the called. Have you ever been in a space
where the call out was so abrupt that it stopped an entire room?
When my one of my sons was a toddler, he we went to the
Vancouver Art Gallery downtown because there was this huge
Rodan exhibit that was travelling and we wanted the
kids to learn a little bit. This is the dude that did the
famous Thinker. That's what everybody knows.
And then there's the kiss thing. Not that one's I can't really
show at church. And there are all these other
things that are happening. The preschooler, as preschoolers
do, had to go to the washroom. And so I'm on washroom duty,
Craig's with the other kids, and he comes running into this
gallery and goes, look, yeah, we were in an art gallery.
Everybody was looking at something.
The whole room stopped and looked at us.
It was very awkward. And this is what captured the
almost 3 year old's attention. He was fascinated.
I was embarrassed. And everyone looked differently
at that sculpture that frankly no one was standing in front of
and looking at a minute before. Y'all.
It was just a practice piece of art for a bigger thing called
the Gates of Hell. But it captured him.
And today we are going to read the book of Philemon and we are
going to have several look moments where we know what God
thinks about this already. And so we might miss the call to
our very own lives. So as we go, I want you to
think, what is it that's happening?
But I want us to remember this is a real letter.
Do you see the yellow circle around Colossi?
Philemon was sent to a church leader in this city.
It no longer exists. They kept having earthquakes.
They finally quit rebuilding. But that's where it is.
And I just want us always to remember we're reading this 2000
years later. But it is real people, real
places and real human lives which are about to matter.
As we read these this passage, I want you to ask yourself what is
Paul calling Philemon 2? Now it'll be clear probably
right away the action because Paul's very persuasive and has a
lot to say. But Paul is also calling him to
much more. So let's read Paul, a prisoner
of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our dear
friend and fellow worker. Also to Afiya our sister and
Archibus our fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your
home. Grace and peace to you from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers
because I hear about your love for all His holy people and your
faith in the Lord Jesus. I pray that your partnership
with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your
understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of
Christ. Your love has given me great joy
and encouragement because you, brother, have refreshed the
heart of the Lord's people. Therefore, although in Christ I
could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I
prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.
It is as none other than Paul, an old man and now also a
prisoner of Christ Jesus, that I appeal to you for my son
Onessimus, who became my son while I was in chains.
Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful
both to you and to me. I am sending him who is my very
heart back to you. I would have liked to keep him
with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I
am in chains for the gospel. But I did not want to do
anything without your consent, so that any favour would do
would not seem forced, but be voluntary.
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little
while was that you might have him back forever, no longer as a
slave, but better than a slave as a dear brother.
He is very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a fellow
man and as a brother in the Lord.
So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome
me. If he has done you any wrong or
owes you anything, charge it to me.
I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand.
I will pay it back. Not to mention that you owe me
your very self. I do wish, brother, that I may
have some benefit from you and the Lord.
Refresh my heart in Christ, Confident of your, confident of
your obedience. I write to you knowing that you
will do even more than I ask. And one thing more, prepare a
guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in
answer to your prayers. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in
Christ Jesus, sends you greetings, and so do Mark,
Aristarchus, Dimas, and Luke, my fellow workers, the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, be with your spirit.
Now. Paul answered a lot of letters,
and he often called for grace, sometimes grace and peace.
But this one needed special grace because Oneessimus's very
life hung in the balance. So what, pragmatically, had Paul
called Philemon 2? Freedom to free his slave
Oneessimus. Now, I'm just going to go ahead
and nod to the fact that with two 21st century mindsets, we
want Paul to slam the judge's hammer down on slavery.
And we want him just to say, well, I was about to say a bad
word, just don't do it. But what Paul does in living in
his context is he is confronting the slavery of his time.
That is perfectly legal and still calling Philemon 2 Kingdom
values. 1/3 of the people in the Roman world were enslaved.
It is not race based slavery. It was an economic based
slavery. Many of the people chose it.
They would self sell for a certain amount of time so they
could get out of debt. Or if they were hungry or if
they had more children than they could feed, they would enslave
their children to make sure there was nourishment.
So this is a different system than our mindset.
It isn't still not a good system and Paul is calling it into
Kingdom values, but Paul is doing it within the his culture.
And we're going to talk about how revolutionary this is.
But I am aware that with 21st century eyes, it doesn't feel
that way. So the first thing that Philemon
does, I mean Paul does is calls out Philemon's love.
Did you see and verse 4 I hear about your love for all his holy
people and your faith in Jesus. So there is no division between
Philemon's works and actions. His faith is borne out in loving
actions. He's already known for being
someone who is loving, and in calling out this love, Paul goes
through several different relationships.
He calls him his friend. He calls him his brother.
He says we are in partnership. He acknowledges that Philemon's
a person who refreshes other people's hearts.
Y'all, I think we would like Philemon if we met him.
He is calling him into reconciliation.
He calls Onessimus. Paul does his own heart and he
also acknowledges that he can assume upon Philemon's
hospitality. So he knows this man's
character. Now, when he calls him out in
love, he is not calling out something that Philemon doesn't
already exhibit, but he is calling it at a new level and at
a level that would confront his society.
Because you see, when Oneessimus brought this letter, Oneessimus
doesn't know what Philemon's going to do.
And within the bounds of the law, anything could have
happened. Oneessimus could have even been
killed as a way to, say, deter other slaves from running away.
But what Paul does is calls out his love and he says in verse 9,
I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.
Now I want you to think about things that are wrong in our
world today. And when you hear news posts,
comments are the appeals to peace on the basis of love, you
are right. Wisdom they are not.
They are not by and large. And yet we are the ones that
know the one who loves the most. And how do we make appeals?
I'm not saying don't ever speak prophetically, but it Paul is
speaking prophetically and calling out the love in the
midst of what's really a rough situation.
And then Paul calls to the relationship.
And so he says in verse 6. I pray that your partnership
with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your
understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of
Christ. All right, Philemon's a church
leader. He's got some understanding.
And Paul's saying, and now it's time to go deeper.
And so when we get called out in love by others, we have the
opportunity to grow and deepen in our understanding of God, of
the way the Kingdom works, and of how our relationships can
work. Now I want to talk about this
word partnership, and I want to talk about the Greek word
Koinonia with it. So partnership, we think
partnership is like a business. And if I don't want to work with
you, we just change our contracts.
Somebody buys the other person out.
We use partner now in our spousal language.
I remember the first time somebody called Craig, my
partner, I looked her and said we have 4.
She well, she got embarrassed and I was trying to make it OK
for her. I probably wouldn't have said
this, but she she said your husband, oh, I mean your partner
because she was trying to correctify her language.
And I looked and I said we have four children.
He is my husband. He is stuck with me.
I am not getting stuck with these children alone.
Partnership language you can dissolve, but husband, he is
stuck. And So what I want to say is our
Koinonia is fellowship. Now we have trouble too, because
we churchified fellowship and when I was growing up with the
fellowship hall is where you got ice cream and you'd had
Christmas parties, my wedding reception and it was fun, but
there wasn't necessarily a thought of commitment.
And so I'm just going to read to you very quickly from first John
chapter 1 because I want you to think about what fellowship is.
John was writing and he says, we proclaim to you what we have
seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us, and
our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus
Christ. We write this to make our joy
complete. So when we are called into
fellowship and partnership, we are being called into the
relationship with the Heavenly Father, with the Spirit of
Jesus, and with Jesus. And So what Paul was calling
Philemon to was to know community with the Father, Son
and Spirit and to know more deeply to know Jesus.
He also deals in this Koinonia. And back in Philemon he says in
verse 17, if you consider me a partner, welcome him being
oneessimus as you would welcome me.
OK y'all, Paul has been walking with Jesus long enough that he's
starting to talk like Jesus in the very next verses 18.
If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to
me, OK? He did.
He owed based on their legal system.
He owed Philemon money for his liberty.
Paul is taking the charges now. Y'all, he's in jail and we're
like, how's he? He's not tent making right now.
How's he going to pay it? But I believe Paul was
resourceful. These are not empty words.
Because in the next 1 he says, I Paul, I'm writing this with my
own hand, riding it with his own hand obligated him contractually
to pay for this man's liberty. So Paul is not calling Philemon
to something without being able to sacrifice for himself.
He's saying I'll pay. But you know, Paul is courageous
and is demanding courage from Oneessimus because when this
letter gets delivered, what if Paul had just sent the money?
But he wants the reconciliation of the relationship.
And that's what Koinonia Fellowship Partnership does is
I'm not just going to make amends, I am going to be
reconciled. When Paul refers to himself in
verse 9 as an old man and he's in jail.
This old man term is also the term for an ambassador.
What does an ambassador do? Well in our best moments,
ambassadors bring 2 warring sides and wakes a new way
towards peace. And that is what Paul is calling
for is he is saying I will take the charges.
But I want you to have in verse 17 that partnership welcoming
Koinonia fellowship with Oneessimus, who is now your
brother, who is my son. Reconciliation cost Jesus his
life on the cross. Reconciliation here is about to
cost Paul Simula. What has reconciliation cost
you? Or do you do the Canadian way of
moving on? That is uncomfortable, so I'm
just going to go somewhere else. I'm going to say I forgive, but
I'm moving on. That is not Koinonia,
fellowship, restoration, reconciliation.
And so I call us to be courageous as Paul and call out
reconciliation. And I call us to be Paul as
ambassadors and I call us to be Philemon who have to learn a new
way. We are called into fellowship.
And So what else is happening? Well, the rest.
Did you notice all the names in this church?
See, this is OK. This is a house from Ephesus.
It's still standing for you to go be a tourist at because
Ephesus is about 100 miles towards the coast and it's going
to become important later. But it's something like it's
from the same time period as Philemon's house.
Philemon was influential. Paul is not calling Philemon to
this in a vacuum. He had wealthy professional
neighbors who did not want this slave forgiven.
Why? Because then their slaves would
think they could run away too. So Philemon is in the context of
other people who felt all this was all right, and he is being
called to act and the ways of Jesus into the Kingdom in a way
that was countercultural. How are you at times
countercultural? We've got the book.
And as Gordon Fee says, well, we probably wouldn't have the book
of Philemon unless he had freed Onesimus, because who'd want to
get this letter and have it saved for 2000 years if you
hadn't freed the man? But I want us if you were
filming this. There's a lot of anxiety on the
trip, travelling from being with Paul in prison all the way home
to Colossi. Imagine giving the letter you
didn't get to see Philemon probably first, but to the head
servant and thinking, oh, I'm going to get beaten before the
letter gets read. And then he gets the letter and
Philemon's got Oneessimus. He's got the head servant, he's
got his house that's greeted in it.
And he knows because Paul listed all these people.
All these people are waiting and watching.
Y'all? When you are making ethical
choices, there are people watching that you don't even
know. There are people impacted that
you don't even know. Through work, I've been in
conversations where a poor decision was being made and they
said, well, nobody will know. And I'm thinking everybody will
know. They may not know who called it,
but everybody knows the results. And Philemon has this.
Now I highlighted Mark because I want you to notice that Paul is
not calling Philemon to something that he hasn't in his
own way, had to do. As far as we know, Paul had not
had any slaves, but he had been done with Mark.
If you remember in Acts, Barnabas and Paul separated ways
because John Mark got homesick and Paul is like I got Kingdom
work to do. I cannot be putting up with his
silliness. OK, that's Ellen's paraphrase.
It doesn't sound quite that way in Acts, but he did.
They literally broke a ministry partnership over Mark.
And now who is with Paul while he is in jail.
Paul had learned how to be gracious.
He had learned how to receive back someone who had
disappointed him, someone who had not lived up to their
responsibilities in God's work. And so another example of where,
yeah, Paul is calling out to Philemon, but not something he
had not done. And here is oneessimus waiting
to find out his future. Sometimes when the Spirit of
Jesus is calling out in love and is calling for reconciliation,
in the Koinonia, in the fellowship, in the
relationships, in the partnerships, in a Christian
community, there's a lot of people waiting and watching and
praying. Because just as Paul appealed on
the basis of love, our heavenly a Father appeals to you on the
basis of love to do what is right, to do what is right.
When someone in your class somehow got a copy of the exam
and you know it's going to be skewed in everybody's favor.
And if you don't get it, you're going to not just be skewed, but
you're going to be messed up watching and waiting and praying
to see if someone else will have the courage to trust Jesus more
than to live within. What is their right?
Watching and waiting to see. So what is Paul calling for?
Lehmann too. He is calling him to emancipate
an SMS. But that's not the biggest call.
He is calling for him to be a brother to his slave.
He is calling for a redefining of human relationships.
Do you know the person that cleans your Community Center?
If you're in residence, do you know the name of the person who
is cleaning the washrooms in residence?
Might be you, might be your roommate.
Do you know the person who cleans the building where your
faculty lies? If we're going to redefine
relationships, it means that we acknowledge the dignity and
worth of every human, and it changes the transactional
relationships into something of a partnership.
And so the call out of look, as you look in your relationships,
is there a space where the Spirit of Jesus is calling you
to appeal for someone else, to act with grace and to reconcile,
to do what is just and right, but may not be what the society
thinks they have to do? Because the Spirit of Jesus and
what the Bible teaches us about conflict is very different than
what is the prevailing notion. And frankly, I have been in
Sunday school classes where my teacher said, well, Jesus
wouldn't want you to be in danger. 15 year old Ellen raised
her hand, said, well, he did die on the cross.
That doesn't seem very safe. And yet have you been told, oh,
don't talk to that person, they might be mentally ill.
Oh, don't go to that part of town.
Oh, don't go to that country. And yet Jesus calls us where it
is dangerous and it is countercultural.
And so you may be like Paul and you're in the awkward space of
feeling called to call someone else out.
Or look, you might be Philemon and someone else has called you
into more love, into more grace, into more of the power of Jesus
to call you into true partnership.
And you've got it aside because no one in the broader society
will think less of you if you don't.
In fact, in the broader society, they might be offended if you
forgive something so horrible. Or are you an SMS and in trying
to be healthy and free, you have hurt someone else and you owe in
some way, physical or metaphorical, some kind of debt
to someone that needs to be made right.
And so for you to grow in your walk with Jesus, you're going to
have to make right the broken relationship.
And you don't know how they're going to respond.
So you and I are all called to radical living.
We are called to love. We are called to a different
kind of economic policy. We are called to a different way
of conversing. And so on the basis of love or
Koinonia, or in the season of waiting and watching, are you
doing this with your heavenly Father?
Jesus said that a new command I give you love one another is I
love loved you, so you must love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love
one another. Now most of you don't know my
father, but if you knew him, you would know I'm his daughter.
Now I look more like my mum, but I dance like my father.
I play football. Oh, and just so you know, I'm
not meaning soccer for those of you that use it.
I'm meaning like actual tackle football, like my father because
that's what he loved. And it was in high school.
My mom had to call me in and said, Helen, the church ladies
are getting nervous. You've got to stop playing.
And I was like, well, can I at least throw?
But I was I was a running back in my neighborhood.
And so it was very traumatic. So but I'd have this love the
way I scream at the screen and call the plays and say, would
you log? That's not what that's my
father, but also the way I will show up when you have a problem.
Anytime I've done that, that is my daddy and the way that I keep
in touch with friends from high school, that's my daddy.
And if you knew my father, you would know I am his child
because of how I behave and as our Heavenly Father's children
not I can't be a good daughter to Jesus if I don't know how to
be a good sister to you all. I am a baby until I learn how to
sister well and until we continue to grow.
Philemon was already a church leader and there was more to
know in how to love and how to forgive and how to pursue
justice and how not to worry about what the surrounding world
thought. I want to tell you away.
A few originals have done this. They've graduated.
UBC could have had a very posh job and chose to go live in
community with displaced people. Or another original got the
great job with one of the big four and then left it to go with
the Tony Blair's association. I don't know the last title to
go work in the Ukraine where his block was getting bombed because
he was trying to build peace. Other originals have gone and
they're working at hard jobs and they pursue and are choosing to
treat everyone with respect in the environment.
There are many ways to live out this command, but through
walking with Jesus you will be keep on being called in to
deeper and deeper, as Paul said, your understanding of every good
thing we share for the sake of Christ.
So this isn't an arrived kind of thing, but the grace and the
love of Jesus will keep calling you into more.
And so I would like to ask, what is the Lord calling you to?
Let's pray. Jesus, I thank you that you have
loved us sacrificially, that your agape unconditional love is
the standard. I thank you for the
encouragement that someone like Philemon could already know you
and be serving you, and yet you called for more.
And Lord, what I ask for our congregation is courage.
Courage when we are called to speak the truth in love, courage
when we are called out to live differently in your name, and
courage when we need reconciliation.
Make us a people that are a beautiful example of your love
and Lord, we cannot do that without learning how to be your
ambassadors and your reconcilers.
And so we ask help Lord in Jesus name, Amen.
I want to tell you a we quote Ignatius was martyred, but on
his way to Rome to be martyred. And also we have to define terms
because they're getting redefined.
A martyr is a witness and in the case of Christian martyrs, they
are people who have died because they are telling that Jesus is
the way the truth of life that he loves and causes to radical
living as he went. He wrote a letter to the church
in Ephesus, it's about 60 years after this, and he commended the
love that their Bishop Onessimus had.
We're not 100% sure, but they're pretty sure that this is the
Onessimus that got freed and he is loving a church as an old man
60 years later and Philemon would have been gone by then.
And Philemon did not know all the fruits of his love.
And when you choose to forgive and when you forgive
sacrificially, you also will not know all of the fruits.
But I pray that the fruits of your courage to forgive, to live
out your faith in Koinonia, and to love deeply and sacrificially
will also bear fruits of those that are loving others into the
Kingdom. In 60 years, that's where she'll
be taken there if you're helping him out.