I remember being in High School in an English literature class and the assignment was to read one of the forty six books in the Bible for homework. We all gasped. Read a whole book for the next day!
Of course, we were thinking of Moby Dick or To Kill a Mocking Bird. But the books of the Bible are much shorter. The longest of the Gospels is by Saint Luke at 19,482 words, less than a quarter of the size of To Kill a Mockingbird.
But that didn’t come close to satisfying our laziness, as we sought out the very shortest books of the Bible. Some of my more industrious classmates found the Third Letter of John at 219 words, while others found the Second Letter of John at 245 words. But I was close, finding Paul’s letter to Philemon, weighing in at just over 300 words! And all this without the benefit of the internet.
Of course it probably took me an hour to find a short book, and less than a quarter of an hour to read it. And boy, was it confusing!
Saint Paul, you see, happens to be in prison again, and the fellow who has been taking care of him is named Onesimus. I thought that was a rather funny name, as I had never met anyone named Onesimus. But then again, I didn’t know any Philemons either!
Anyways, while Paul has great affection for Onesimus, calling him his adopted son, Onesimus has a really interesting back story. You see the young Onesimus was a slave, back in the city of Colossae (remember Paul’s letter to the Colossians) who sought Paul out in Prison, because his life was now all messed up and he needed some good advice.
Paul, from prison, scrapes the young Onesimus off the ceiling and tells him about Jesus and what life is really all about. He converts the runaway slave to Christianity, and presumably baptizes him, after which Onesimus becomes entirely devoted to the elderly prisoner and takes care of him.
But now, for the rest of the story. For Onesimus, it turns out, was a slave who belonged to one of Paul’s old friends, Philemon, from whom he had stolen something when he ran away and came to Paul for help. Now, Paul tells us, Onesimus is a changed man. And more importantly, he tries to tell Philemon the same thing.
Now picture Philemon, a fairly rich and influential leader back in Philippi. As Paul relates in the opening verses of his letter, Philemon is a man of deep faith, whom Paul regards as a coworker in spreading the Gospel. He is probably a leader in the local Church, whom Paul became well aquatinted with during his missionary journeys. But now he is just a master whose slave ran away from him after stealing. And that’s where it gets interesting.
Paul begins the second chapter of his letter by taking about unity or communion. Little Martin over there received his First Holy Communion last week and in just a few minutes we will all go to Communion. The word for communion in Greek is KOINONIA. It’s a peculiar word, which describes a common union in Christ, the intimate union we receive in Baptism. In being joined with Christ, we become sons and daughter of his heavenly Father and brothers and sisters of all the Baptized. Saint Paul refers to Christ as the “first born of many brothers and sisters,” and repeatedly speaks of our insertion into the life of God, our union with the Blessed Trinity.
The Fathers of the Church spoke of this communion, this koinonia, as well. Just as the Father loves the son with a total paternal love, so the Son loves the Father with perfect filial obedience, each pouring out that love which is God on the other, in an action which is the Holy Spirit, a love so tangible, as my grandmother used to say, that “you could cut it with a knife.” And this communion, this koinonia of love which is the Blessed Trinity, which is God, is what we become one with in Baptism, and which we receive in Holy Communion, one bread, one cup, one Body in Christ.
That means that we are one in Christ, you and I, no matter what happens and no matter where we go. It’s what I will pray for in a few minutes in the Third Eucharistic Prayer:
grant that we, who are nourished
by the Body and Blood of your Son
and filled with his Holy Spirit,
may become one body, one spirit in Christ.
It is the self-same faith which we profess in “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”
This unity is not born of human affection or political calculation, but of the grace of God working in our lives. We forgive others not because they are necessarily worthy of our forgiveness, but because the grace God demands it and gives us the strength to do it. We lay down our lives for anyone who needs us not because we are such good people, but because the grace of God gives us the power to love others as he first loved us.
Each time we love, then, it is not so much a testament to our goodness, as to Christ’s grace. And it is only because we are one with him, that we can love one another.
Fidelity to that love is, then, fidelity to God, and the failure to love my brother or sister is a failure to love him, which is why Christ tells us that when we love the hungry, the poor, the homeless or the prisoner, we are really loving him.
This is the great mystery of Koinonia and of Holy Communion, that having been made one with Christ, having been loved by him as he hung upon the wood of the Christ in the perfect sacrifice of praise, we can now love one another. Just picture him looking down at us from the altar of the cross and saying, “love one another, as I have loved you.”
So, now back to poor Philemon, having lost his slave and the stuff the wretch stole from him.
That slave, Paul writes to Philemon, is no more. For I am sending the baptized Onesimus back to you, “no longer as a slave [but as] a brother.” He is now your brother in Christ, whom, Paul tells Philemon, you should welcome in the same manner that would welcome me.
For that’s what the love of God does. It turns slaves into brothers, and prisoners into free men. It turns thieves into disciples and strangers into obedient sons.
Which is not quite what I got out of this little book the first time I read it, all 319 words. But it’s something I’ve learned. That we are nothing without the grace of God, and with it, we can love just like him.
