Philemon 1:1-21
I was, as previously reported, raised in the South, with both grandmothers from old southern families. That meant being initiated into the cult of the Lost Cause, the narrative in which slavery was mostly benign, Confederates mostly noble, and the war anything but civil.
Of course, I know the truth now. I am also, I like to think, capable of handling a bit of nuance. I can acknowledge George Washington, a distant cousin actually, as an enslaver, as less than ethical in some of his real estate transactions, and at the same time, as someone most white men experienced as a honest and heroic leader, even before his story was embellished and he was canonized as the holiest of the Founding Fathers.
Re-thinking another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, requires the same sort of nuance, especially when it comes to Sally Hemings. The great political and religious thinker likely fathered several children with Sally, a person he enslaved, who was his property under the evil laws of that age.
Apologists for Jefferson want to claim that despite the DNA evidence and the rumors going all the way back to Jefferson’s own lifetime, it was another male in the Jefferson line, and any male relative will do, but certainly not Tom himself, who fathered the children.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who look at the power dynamic between the two and declare that Jefferson was just one more brutal rapist, for so many enslavers and white overseers in an economy based on human trafficking were exactly that, rapists.
There is no denying the power imbalance, but in truth, we know nothing about the domestic relationship between the two. We do know that Jefferson never really recovered from the death of his wife and four of his six children, that he had promised Martha on her deathbed that he would never remarry. We know that Sally had only one enslaved grandparent, and that she and her children by Jefferson were set apart from others enslaved at Monticello. While we do not have a record of manumission for Sally, her children were all freed, and she was allowed to live as a free woman in Charlottesville after Jefferson’s death.
The institution of slavery was absolutely evil. No question. Jefferson was an active participant in a system of evil. I need neither wholly innocent Tom nor wholly evil Tom. I’m okay with imperfect Tom, and I am okay with knowing that we will never know whether Sally was a victim of sexual violence or a beloved life partner in that wretched system.
Those who insist that they do know tell you more about themselves than they do about day-to-day events and domestic relationships long erased by time.
Today’s reading from the Christian Testament deals with slavery in the Biblical Age. It is one of the authentic letters of Paul preserved in scripture. Of those authentic letters, one is a theological treatise to a community he has never visited, one is this personal letter to Philemon, and the rest are pastoral interventions in congregations he helped establish.
Paul is imprisoned when he writes to Philemon, a member of the Colossian church. He is writing about a slave, Onesimus, who is carrying the letter back to his owner.
Slavery in the Biblical Age was different. First, and most important, it was not racial. Race did not even exist, would not be invented until it was needed by Europeans in the 16th century to justify their colonialist depravity. There were tribes, but tribes were about belonging, not being.
Jewish custom allowed for debt slavery, an ancient version of the Victorian workhouse and Debtors Prison. The Torah provided regulations on how this system should operate, including recurring jubilee years when debt slaves were set free. Slaves were also taken in war, including non-combatants. It is a Jewish slave in the household of the diseased Aramean General Naaman that tells him about the powerful prophet Elisha in the 2nd Book of Kings.
The entire region, the entire Mediterranean basin, was under Roman imperial rule by the time Paul was writing to Philemon. Like slavery in ancient Jewish culture, there were rules. Roman citizens could not be enslaved, even for debt. Slaves were considered part of the household, and had no rights of their own. Crucifixion, the public torture and gruesome death associated with Jesus, was primarily reserved for escaped and criminal slaves, and those guilty of rebellion against the empire. But slaves could also be freed under certain conditions, and when freed, were granted the full rights of a Roman citizen.
Scholars have done a deep dive into Paul’s letter, attempting to place it in the framework of what we know about Roman slave laws. For example, a person who harbored a runaway slave was required to pay the owner funds equivalent to lost labor. Is that what Paul means when he says “charge it to me”? But there were also rules about a sort of sanctuary when a slave fled to a friend of the household. Is that why Onesimus was with Paul?
But rather than get into the minutia, better suited for an academic paper and lecture, I want to look at the lens we use to read the text.
For centuries, this letter has been read as an acceptance if not an outright scriptural endorsement of slavery. It is, at least, less nutty than the reading of drunk Noah and his son Ham, a train wreck for another day.
Does that interpretation make sense in light of other authentic Pauline texts?
An argument in favor of the pro-slavery interpretation is that Paul advises people to maintain their current status. For example, if you are single, stay single. But there is a reason. While Jesus predicts a Day of the Lord, he also calls his followers to social action. Paul, expecting an immediate second-coming of Christ, is positioning the faith of his far-flung flock as the opposite of the busyness of the Second Temple. This becomes the classic faith versus works conflict, as if the two could ever be separated. And of course, we are followers of practical and embodied Christianity, so waiting for God to fix things isn’t really our style.
An argument against the pro-slavery interpretation is Paul’s famously egalitarian slogan, “neither Gentile nor Jew, male nor female, slave or free, but all are one in Christ.” Paul leads a movement in which women are primary patrons and often leaders, like Junia who he identifies as an apostle in his letter to the Romans. If Paul rejects patriarchy, why not slavery?
For me, the line that matters is that he sends Onesimus back as “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother – especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.”
No longer a slave but a beloved brother” seems pretty clear to me.
I think Paul gets some things wrong, including that whole Day of the Lord thing. I think he gets some things right, including his egalitarianism.
The Hebrew Scripture tells us to do justice, welcome the immigrant, pay a just wage. It also authorizes crimes against humanity and misogyny.
There is no correct answer in a text written over many centuries in ancient languages in a pre-scientific age. The Bible is more mirror than window, more story than instruction manual. This is book club, and like any good book club, we’re not always going to read it the same way, but don’t worry, there will definitely be wine.
Read the book. Of course! But come to the table, break bread, and laugh. Serve and feed and visit. Thank God for the beauty of this creation, for every creature is an entire book about God, as the mystic Meister Eckhart declared in the 13th century. Scripture is written in creation, in us, in you. The Way of Jesus is in the world and in relationship, with the holy and the whole, the broken and the imperfect, beautiful messy you and beautiful messy me, this day and always. Amen.