Why We Hate Paul: Slavery (Philemon)

 Today is the fifth sermon in a series called “Why We Hate Paul.” After today, there will be two more sermons in this series… then I’ll have a sermon for Thanksgiving… and then we enter the season of Advent. Yep - Advent starts just four weeks from today, which is probably the most shocking, surprising thing you’ll hear in this entire sermon.

Today’s sermon is about Paul’s views on slavery. Writings by Paul - and writings attributed to Paul - have been used to defend slavery at various points in history, and this is another reason why many hate Paul.

The scripture we just heard is from Paul’s letter to Philemon...

I love Paul’s letter to Philemon, because of how personal it is, and because, in it, Paul pushes the ideas of love and equality as far as anyone in the first century could have pushed those ideas. 

But I also hate Paul’s letter to Philemon, because, for us in our time, it seems that Paul doesn’t push these ideas nearly enough...

To start this sermon, I want to talk about Howard Thurman and his grandmother... Howard Thurman was an African-American author, theologian, and civil rights leader. One of my favorite hymns in our hymnbook - “I Am the Light of the World” - is based on one of his poems.

Howard Thurman wrote about his grandmother, a former slave named Nancy Ambrose. When he was a child, Thurman’s grandmother often asked him to read to her from the Bible. His grandmother never learned to read herself, so it was one of Thurman’s “chores” to read the Bible to her.

Thurman wrote that his grandmother “was most particular about the choice of Scripture.” She liked to hear Isaiah, the Psalms, and the gospels; but never did she want to hear anything by the apostle Paul - except, once in awhile, 1 Corinthians 13… the “love” chapter that I’ve already mentioned several times in this sermon series.

In his book Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman wrote that, one day, he asked his grandmother why she never wanted to hear from Paul. This is what she replied:

During the days of slavery, the master’s minister would occasionally hold services for the slaves. Old man McGhee was so mean that he would not let a Negro minister preach to his slaves. Always the white minister used as his text something from Paul. At least three or four times a year he used as his text: “Slaves, be obedient to them that are your masters…, as unto Christ.” Then he would go on to show how it was God’s will that we were slaves and how, if we were good and happy slaves, God would bless us. I promised my Maker that if I ever learned to read and if freedom ever came, I would not read that part of the Bible.

In the Bible, in both the books that were written by Paul, and in those which claim to be written by Paul but which were actually written by someone else, this sentiment appears. “Slaves, be obedient.” Nowhere does Paul call for an end to slavery. 

Paul does write that there is neither slave nor free, that all are one in Christ. So if there is no slave or free in God’s kingdom, then why doesn’t Paul demand an end to slavery in his time? Why wasn’t Paul an abolitionist? Why does Paul include in his letters that offensive command: “Slaves, be obedient…” ? Why does Paul send the slave Onesimus back to his owner, Philemon, instead of helping Onesimus escape to freedom?

The most offensive statements about slavery in the Bible - the ones Nancy Ambrose probably heard most often, telling slaves to be obedient - come from Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Timothy & Titus… and most serious Bible scholars agree that these were probably not written by Paul. The fact that some early Christian writer did write these is troubling, but this sermon series is about Paul & what Paul wrote…

Nancy Ambrose had no way of knowing that these verses weren’t actually written by Paul, but she still recognized that these sentiments contradicted the gospel's emphasis on freedom and liberation, and she determined that they were not to be used for instruction. 

And she was right to do so. 

There are some Bible passages that we just need to say: this goes against Jesus's message of love, and since love is the first and most important command, we must follow the way of love and not the way of any verse that goes against the way of love. Love is the most important command, Jesus said. Love is the greatest, Paul said, even greater than faith.

“Love is the greatest,” Paul said. “There is no slave or free, for all are one,” Paul said. Yet, Paul himself does tell slaves in 1 Corinthians 7 to be content in their current condition…

 I think it’s important to remember what I talked about last week: Paul believed that this entire world - the world as we know it - was about to be radically transformed into something new - an entirely new world in which slavery wouldn't exist anyway. And since this was about to happen, why bother working for freedom or abolition now?

If Paul knew that the world would go on for another 2000 years, perhaps he would have worked a little harder to set slaves free. I’d like to think so.

In Paul’s letter to Philemon, Paul is writing to Philemon concerning Philemon’s slave, Onesimus, who - for some reason - is with Paul. Paul doesn’t really explain everything that’s going on, because he wasn’t writing for us, he was writing to Philemon, and Philemon already knew the situation.

And because Paul was sending Onesimus back to Philemon, this letter has been used by defenders of slavery and - in the 1850s -  defenders of the Fugitive Slave Act.

And that’s enough to make anyone hate Paul.

However, it does sound like Paul is using his authority and influence to convince Philemon to no longer treat Onesimus as a slave, but as a brother; to treat him with love. Given the environment in which Paul lived, this may have been as much as anyone could imagine doing on behalf of a slave.

That’s something that the defenders of slavery and the defenders of the Fugitive Slave Act never mentioned.

When it comes to Paul and slavery and Paul’s letter to Philemon, there’s a lot we don’t know. Paul didn’t feel the need to fill in all the background details or provide all the contextual information, because the people to whom Paul was writing already knew all that. Unfortunately, we don’t. 

What we can say is that Paul spoke often about love and unity and equality, even on behalf of slaves. It may be that abolishing slavery was as unimaginable to Paul as turning the ocean pink - slavery was just a part of the world in which he lived. Getting rid of slavery may have seemed as impossible to Paul and people in the first century as getting rid of governments. It’s just not going to happen.

But Paul does appeal for kindness and love to be shown to Onesimus, and implores Philemon to treat him not as a slave, but as a brother. 

LIke much of scripture, I think one could take parts of Philemon out of context and use them to support almost any position on slavery. But with a deeper understanding of Paul, and after examining what he wrote elsewhere, I think that Paul was about as friendly and compassionate for those who were enslaved as anyone in his generation could have been.

It probably would have saved us some fair amount of turmoil and trauma in this country if Paul just flat out said that slavery was wrong and contrary to the gospel and needed to be abolished. And I really wish he had said that!

Then again, those who are ruled by fear and hate will always find some way to justify their ideas. 

That leaves it up to us - you and me - to continue the work of presenting the gospel as a source of liberation and freedom from oppression for all people. 

After all, it is the gospel that brings good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. It is the gospel which brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly.  It is the gospel which, as even Paul says, is based in love; the gospel which makes all people, slave and free, one in Christ.