Bible Study (Philemon)

When I looked over the list of lectionary readings for today, I saw listed a reading from the third chapter of Philemon. So I grabbed my Bible and began flipping to Philemon, but as I did so, I knew already in the back of my head that something wasn’t right.


Do you know what it is?

Philemon doesn’t have three chapters. I turned to Philemon anyway, then went back to double check the listing. Sure enough, it said: “Philemon 3:17-4:1,” although Philemon was abbreviated “P-H-I-L.”

Then it dawned on me: not Philemon. Philippians!

Well, as I thought about it, I realized that Philemon would work just fine for a sermon on studying the Bible, and because Monica was encouraging me to pick a scripture so she could list it in last week’s bulletin, I decided to go ahead and use Philemon.

Philemon would make an interesting passage for a Bible study. It is a very brief letter, written by the apostle Paul, regarding Onesimus, a runaway slave. In the first century, slavery was common. Today, if you can’t make the payments on your house, you go into foreclosure. In the first century, if you couldn’t make payments to someone you owed, you would go into slavery to pay off the debt.

But Onesimus ran away, and joined Paul. This must have presented quite a dilemma for Paul. According to the thinking in those times, Paul had a moral obligation to send Onesimus back to his master.

So he sends a letter to Philemon. He begins by buttering Philemon up a bit, reminding him of what good friends they are:

“I, Paul, am a prisoner for the sake of Christ. I write this letter to you, Philemon, my good friend. Every time your name comes up in my prayers, I say, ‘Oh, thank you, God!’ Friend, you have no idea how good your love makes me feel.

I have a favor to ask of you. As a prisoner for Christ’s sake, I could command you, but I’d rather make it a personal request.

While here in prison – did I mention that I’m currently a prisoner for Christ’s sake? – I’ve become a father (so to speak) of dear Onesimus. I’m sending him back to you, even though it feels like I’m cutting off my right arm in doing so. He has been so good to me, filling in as your stand-in to help out while I’m in prison for the sake of Christ.”

Do you notice how Paul implies that Philemon himself should have been present, helping Paul? Thank God for Onesimus, who was able to be there as Philemon’s stand-in!

Anyway, it’s clear that Paul expects Philemon to welcome back Onesimus, to not punish him, and to treat him no longer as a slave but as a brother.

What makes this interesting from a Bible study perspective is that, in Ephesians, Paul says: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.” Does that sound to you like the same Paul that pleaded with Philemon on Onesimus’ behalf?

In fact, scholars believe that it’s not the same Paul. There are shifts in thought and language in the writings that are attributed to Paul, shifts so significant that scholars are convinced that they were written by a number of different people. The letter to Philemon, it is believed, was written by Paul himself, or at least dictated by Paul directly to a scribe. Books like Ephesians, on the other hand, are generally believed to have been written by others who wrote later, in Paul’s name.

What are we to make of this? What are we to make of other seemingly contradictory advice and instructions that appear in the writings attributed to Paul? Here Paul says that women should keep their heads covered when they teach and preach; there, he says women shouldn’t speak at all. Here, he tells husbands and wives to work together in marriage; in another spot, he orders wives to be subject to their husbands.

A number of years ago, a resolution was brought before the General Assembly that sought to declare that, for Disciples, scripture is our highest authority. The General Assembly voted against the resolution. Well, this led to some eye-catching headlines in the press: “Disciples vote against the Bible!” But as former General Minister and President Dick Hamm has said, we were not really voting against the Bible. “It was right and important,” he said, “for the Assembly to defeat this resolution, because scripture by itself is not our highest authority.” Using scripture by itself, one can justify all sorts of horrible things; things like slavery, genocide, environmental destruction. Therefore, our highest authority cannot be scripture by itself, but “scripture together with reason, experience, and tradition, all under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. All must be kept together with each other.”

Now, someone might argue that everyone reasons differently, has different experiences, and comes from different traditions, and how can you base authority on that? But the fact that we are so different, with different experiences in particular, is what makes Bible study in a group setting so meaningful and important.

When I was in seminary, I took a class on Hispanic theology in the United States. Most of the theology that is presented and discussed in seminary is theology from a European male perspective, which meant that most biblical interpretation was done from the perspective of white European males.

But in the Hispanic theology class, I got to see the stories of scripture through the eyes of a population whose experiences have been very different.

The theologians we read in class wrote in their books of their experiences of coming to the United States, learning English as a second language, figuring out what cultures and traditions to leave behind, which ones to keep, and what new American traditions and values to adapt. One theologian, Roberto Goizueta, spoke of the experience of not being fully American, not being fully Latino, but being both, experiencing life “in between.”

Justo Gonzalez, whose two-volume The Story of Christianity was the basis for a year-long course on Christian history, wrote in his book Mañana that “we are no longer Latin Americans living in exile in the United States but Hispanic Americans, people who have no other land than this, but who nevertheless remain exiles.”

To put it another way, Hispanics in the U.S. are often told to “go back home” – even if they were born here – and if they do return to the land of their ancestors, they are often told that they don’t belong, that they are too “American.” Which means that there really isn’t a place where they are fully accepted.

Now let’s say you’re having a Bible study, and the passage being studied is Psalm 137, a lament for the Jews who were taken captive and forced to live in a faraway land: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps … How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

Or, let’s say that you’re studying the life of Jesus. He’s not welcome in his hometown, he’s not Roman enough for the Romans, and even though he’s a Jew, he doesn’t quite act Jewish enough for the Jewish elite in Jerusalem. He spends his ministry wandering from place to place, a part of several cultures, but somehow stuck in between them as well.

Don’t you think that a Bible study, a conversation, with immigrants might help us more fully understand the overall message? Who better to help us understand experiences like these than those who have experienced similar things themselves?

Or let’s say you’re reading Acts 8, about Philip’s encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch. The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, but was turned away because, as a castrated male, he was sexually different, and Deuteronomy specifically says no castrated males in the temple. On his way home, he was, I’m sure, disappointed at having the temple doors slammed shut in his face.

As he traveled, he was reading a passage of scripture that caught his attention, pondering its meaning. It was a passage about a lamb being led to its shearer (do you think the image of cutting here had special significance to this castrated man?) … a passage of one who was humiliated and denied justice (wasn’t he just denied justice at the temple?) … a passage that mentions generations (there would be no more generations for the eunuch).

When the apostle Philip meets the eunuch and explains the scripture to him, and explains the good news about Jesus, and then agrees to baptize the eunuch and welcome him into the family of God, who can help us better understand the joy this eunuch must have felt than those among us today who have likewise had the church doors slammed shut in their faces because they are sexually different? The experiences of our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered brothers and sisters can be a wonderful blessing to all of us when it comes to understanding and interpreting biblical passages of rejection, liberation, and reconciliation.

Each week, when I prepare my sermons, I do a lot of Bible study – study that involves not only reading the Bible, but also reading about how the Bible has been interpreted throughout history. I read about how others have experienced the Bible, and about experiences that have helped shape the way they interpret scripture.

I get really uncomfortable with preachers who preach with a Bible in one hand, its soft leather cover flopping around like the ears of a dead rabbit, as if to say that the Bible is all they need. Yes, the Bible is holy and inspired, but it is also a living text, a living word, that invites us into conversation both with the stories of scripture and with one another. The Word of God is alive and dwells among us, sharing both knowledge and mystery. For me, that is what makes studying the Bible so exciting, and so necessary to a deepening, growing faith.

And it’s OK if we don’t always agree about how the Bible is to be interpreted. After all, we do have different experiences, we come from different traditions, and God created us in such a way that sometimes we even think differently, reason differently, from one another.

But let’s not argue. Let’s not judge. Instead, let us have a conversation. Let us welcome the Spirit’s guidance as we talk. Let us study the Bible with open hearts and open minds. And let us allow God’s Spirit to lead us to a deeper understanding.