http://www.ai.edu RSS feeds for Aquinas Institute of Theology 60 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/85/Living-in-a-Narrative-and-Giving-Off-Sparks.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=85 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=85&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/85/Living-in-a-Narrative-and-Giving-Off-Sparks.aspx Jerry is an ordained minister of American Baptist Churches USA, having served as Intentional Interim Minister in the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), as well. Currently serving as Intentional Interim Minister at Friedens Peace United Church of Christ in New Melle, MO. 1999 Graduate of Aquinas with Certificate in Spiritual Direction. Semi-retired, writing, offering spiritual direction. I would really like to trade in my old narrative for a new model. Let me explain. I make bold to advance this trade-in option because of the early Christian community’s example. It “traded in” the dominant Greek philosophical narrative, i.e. logos, or “word,” for a new model of logos filled with new meaning through Christ. Play with this for a moment, by substituting “narrative” for “word” in the preamble of John’s gospel: In the beginning was the Narrative, and the Narrative was with God. And the Narrative was God. In the beginning with God, the Narrative began incarnating in Cosmos. (This sentence paraphrases John’s wording that says, “He was in the beginning with God.” I’m reading “was” as an active process of being and becoming – hence, “incarnating” – rather than a simple, passive state of existing in an ethereal, immaterial, eternal past.) It was through the Narrative that all things came into being, and without the Narrative, not one thing comes into being. What has come into being through the Jesus Narrative is Life, and this Life is Light for all people. The Narrative shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. . . . And the Narrative became flesh and lived among us … full of grace and truth. Consider the power of narrative. Narrative forms us and moves us toward destiny, and destiny is defined and formed by the quality and character of the narrative. We all live in a narrative; in fact, we live by narrative. Before we opt into a particular narrative we do well to discern the destiny toward which the narrative is trending. If we desire a destiny of just peace, for example, is a narrative titled “global war on terror” actually going to deliver us there? If we desire a destiny of personal and cosmic salvation, a narrative of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection titled “Resurrecting Our Crucified Humanness” may get us closer to it than the currently dominant atonement narrative titled “Satisfying God’s Offended Honor.” Part of the power of a narrative is that it gathers our energies and resources, and focuses them, for good aims, or ill. Here are some quick examples of this from the broad American narrative, as articulated in a column in the New York Times by Timothy Egan, Dec. 7, 2010, titled A Big Idea. He is arguing that what is missing from the Obama administration and is seriously weakening its effectiveness is a big idea, a controlling, or shaping narrative. By contrast, Teddy Roosevelt crafted a narrative titled “The Square Deal.” The story line leveraged the interests and energies of the little guy to fight monopoly capitalism at a time when the gap between the rich and everyone else was almost as great as it is today. Franklin Roosevelt expanded his cousin’s narrative with one titled “The New Deal,” which gathered “enough populist punch to help a New York politician with a moneyed accent” lead the nation through the Great Depression. Ronald Reagan countered middle-class anxiety with a narrative titled “Morning in America.” These national narratives altered the configuration of socioeconomic reality, thus changing near-term destiny. At some point in our life journey, each of us will choose, if only by default, one or more personal narratives in which to navigate life’s road. But first, we inherit a narrative (actually, a kind of woven cable of several narratives; but for this essay the singular “narrative” will work). We wake up already wrapped in the swaddling cloths of some kind of narrative. This narrative is given to us through birth into a family, a community, a religion, a culture, a nation. Individuals often are not aware of what their narrative is, but it will move them, and it will shape them, aiming them toward a particular quality of destiny, unless and until they choose a different narrative. At another level, especially in a mass communications culture dominated by entertainment values, Americans seem to flit among narratives like a butterfly seeking the sweet nectar of fragrant blossoms, or a teen-ager drifting dreamily from one over-priced boutique to another in marketing-induced fantasies of trendy fashion that they hope will somehow confer, at least temporarily, a shred of definitive significance. Take our current political culture. The bus of political narrative seems almost to be careening out of control, much as the bus of economic narrative has done. While I want to trade in this political and economic narrative for a new one, it feels like someone is already imposing a new narrative on the nation, and perhaps the world, but they’re not telling the rest of us where the story is taking us. It’s happened before. Somebody knew the narrative of decline, for example, that big-box retailing was going to perpetrate on mom and pop retailers, fraying the fabric of community and neighborhood that these “little guys” sustained, but they didn’t tell us this when they started spinning out this narrative. Americans’ uncertainty and anxiety stem, in part, from a fundamentally shifting narrative. But this isn’t the half of it. The trouble we have with our national, cultural, political, and economic narrative is rooted in a seriously compromised religious narrative. America would not be America without its religious narrative. I puzzle over the reasons why a culture so deeply influenced by Christian faith fails so often to embody public policy that is more in accord with the Christ figure so broadly revered, celebrated, and argumentatively defended. Why, in this “Christian culture’s” free-ranging lifestyles do we find such thirst for violence, such health-compromising self-indulgence, such persistent manipulation of fear, such broad immersion in addictions, and so many other symptoms suggesting that we don’t really trust, collectively, the faith narrative we say we believe? Our faith narrative seems to be a damaged vehicle in need of repair, or salvage. The damage that concerns me is in three particular areas: Atonement narrative, Justice narrative, and Eschatology narrative. The dominant Atonement narrative, called the penal satisfaction theory and supported by its close cousin the substitutionary atonement theory, generally governs religious orientation in this culture. It tends toward spiritual escapism in the popular mind, and its individual salvationist aims seem more identified with American individualism than with just community. Furthermore, its aims are directed more heavenward than earthward. This spiritual dysfunction of American faith narrative gives rise to a Justice narrative governing social discourse and expectation that is too comfortably lodged in the retributive dimension of justice, while discounting and even demonizing the distributive dimension of justice. Hence, the “Unamerican,” and even “socialism,” stigma that is suddenly attached to our honored one-hundred-year tradition of progressive income tax. And then there is the great capstone of Eschatology narrative that posits the kingdom of God in the ultimate future, after human history is over, thus removing much of its transforming tension from the present. This also relieves the principalities and powers in this world of any responsibility for their damage to the present. And the gleam in the eye of some who see their culture war enemies being “left behind” in the great Eschatological Escape is almost obscene. Profound narrative distortion in these areas of faith is killing a lot of Christianity’s potential for kingdom of God influence in our culture in this world. And these distortions are standard fare in popular Christianity Let me say a word here about kingdom. I’m sympathetic with the need for an alternative term, but words like “realm,” “rule,” and “reign” all seem weak, pale shadows of the potency contained in the reality to which kingdom refers. So, I’m going to ask that you indulge me in a preference for the word basileia, as in basileia tou theou, the New Testament Greek phrase for “kingdom of God.” The English term, “kingdom,” has obvious problems for 21st-century American democratic, egalitarian, inclusive culture. John Dominic Crossan’s book, In Parables, offers a fresh perspective on basileia. He goes beyond all the traditional “kingdom” terms by positing basileia as an order of reality that none of these terms really articulates. Basileia, per Crossan, is God’s purposive, creative energy, poised to spring into action when the situation is ripe. Jesus’ parables are about basileia. Think of basileia as that with which Jesus’ parables are pregnant and about to come to term. Shifting the metaphor now rather abruptly, according to Crossan’s concept, basileia is sort of like the baseball hitter, poised in the coiled-spring stance that awaits the opportune moment, as the baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand and begins its brief flight to the batter’s box. According to Jesus, this coiled-spring basileia energy, meeting a skillfully flung challenge of history and personal experience, is poised for advent, ready to break through in every moment, in every place, in every age. Will we, the batter, swing truly, or even see the ball coming? What might our faith and this world come to be, if we gathered with others to train, practice, and play our faith in the way that baseball players do from the pickup game of kids on a sandlot to the early training of Little League to the disciplined professionalism of major league players, and including all the baseball fans who gather to watch, cheer, moan, revel in victory, and writhe in defeat? This is basileia, poised to break into this-world materiality – the kingdom-at-hand that Jesus urges us to turn and embrace. And it is this basileia quality that is embedded in a certain kind of narrative that has the potential to reinvigorate our faith narrative and to recover authentic Christian vision for justice in this world’s culture. Part of the trouble we have with our political and cultural narrative is that our seriously compromised religious narrative posits kingdom of God as a celestial retirement center, rather than a terrestrial playing field on which there is poised a potency that is so near at hand that it would radicalize our practice of humanity if we dared touch it. It is here in our faith narrative, more than our political and cultural narratives, that we face the most profound challenges, because the religious narrative that is dominant in our culture is so little interested in a this-worldly, basileia quality of cosmic reality, compared to its interest in a next-world fulfillment of our favorite this-world ego-building projects. So, here’s the big question: How might we infuse the larger political, cultural, and religious narrative with the Christic Light of Jesus? Answer: Engage the narratives that Jesus spun. Engage with “the parable Jesus” through “the Jesus parables.” And in the sparking energy of the Jesus narrative, engage the culture. Jesus and Narrative. Many NT scholars make a convincing case for Narrative of the parable kind as being the bedrock material that can connect us acutely with the Spirit that animated and directed Jesus’ life. Not only this, Jesus’ parables are almost without exception about the basileia of God and can give entry into the culture of God’s basileia. The taming of Jesus’ parables and the domestication of the baseleia that the parables encapsulate may explain why the prayer we pray every Sunday – “thy kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven” – fuels so little passion for basileia’s justice on earth, and stimulates so little resistance to the growing narrative of all war all the time, or of wealth for the few and poverty for the many. I am becoming convinced the longer I work with Jesus’ parables that these narratives can be a means of de-toxifying ourselves from addiction to the narratives of American culture. Jesus’ parables can be a force for the church’s liberation from captivity in the dominant cultural narrative. Even though, as in the parable of the talents, they have too often been used to create economically productive Americans rather than radically inventive reconcilers and passionately peacemaking disciples, Jesus’ parables can draw us into Narrative that is charged with dynamics of the basileia of God. But for them to exercise their redemptive power, we will have to reclaim them from popular misuse. Parables can transform because they are more than cute little stories with a practical moral lesson or spiritual insight. Parables are more, too, than clever illustrations that simplify complex, abstract truths that we assume are really better explicated in vast theological tomes – or wordy essays about them like this one. Parables are more than verbal articulations of invisible, otherworldly, spiritual tonic that will enhance our ability to survive the rigors of striving for success in the American Way of Life. To experience a parable of Jesus and not just hear it for its entertainment or instructional value is to find ourselves “living in a narrative and giving off sparks” (a phrase suggested by a certain tensive quality of fraught romance in Bonnie Tyler’s lyrics in Total Eclipse of the Heart: “Living in a powder keg and giving off sparks”). Several parable scholars have consistently sparked fresh thinking for me over the years, and especially in the last few years: John Dominic Crossan, Bernard Brandon Scott, Joachim Jeremias, Charles McCollough, C. H. Dodd, Robert Farrar Capon, William Herzog, Marcus Borg, among others. For Jesus, a parable is not just a story about an otherworldly ideal. It is his verbal representation of his experience, and more particularly, his experience of God. To make the incarnational point just a little more pointed, this is the God with whom Jesus engaged in his experience in this world. It is not just a fantasy concept about a God whom the pre-existent Christ left behind in heaven when he came to earth. So, if we find our way inside a parable of Jesus, we will encounter there not merely an idea of the God up in heaven but will encounter the same God in our life context with whom Jesus engaged in his earthly setting. Let me take this a step further and say that if we hear a parable of Jesus and are not shocked, or disturbed, or moved, or otherwise transported into an alternative realm of being, we have not experienced the parable. I once saw an amazing shot on goal in our eldest grandson’s high school soccer game (No, it wasn’t our grandson who made the goal … this time). The game was tight, near the end, with a score of 0-0. One of our players, Xavier, received a pass about thirty yards out, as our team was moving the ball down the field and beginning to close in on the goal. Xavier eyed a teammate positioning himself to receive a pass, as the defending team marshaled their forces against what was clearly shaping up to be a shot on goal. Then, at the moment of what might have been a kick to the intended shooter the gap for a pass closed and the potential shooter was swarmed with defenders, so Xavier masterfully re-directed his kick and hoisted the ball into the air. The ball soared, almost like an eagle in flight, arched over the heads of both teams and hooked amazingly toward the goal. With goalie’s gaze still fixed on the formerly anticipated play pattern, now abandoned, the ball passed over his head and sailed into the goal inches below the cross bar. It was one of those stunningly unexpected moments of glory that draws us to sports events again and again, or really to any event of human achievement. You can imagine the effect on our team’s crowd. Xavier’s parents were sitting behind me, and we all erupted in loud cheers of joy and excitement and turned to exchange high fives with Dad and Mom. It was absolutely electric. (Our team won a couple of minutes later by a score of 1-0.) Not only does an incident of successful play like this generate excitement in an athletic contest, it also confers larger gifts: Confidence, affirmation of hard effort, confirmation of ability, hope for future effort, courage to risk. God’s basileia is something like this shot-on-goal and the electric response it evoked. Jesus’ parables are charged with this kind of spiritual electric, this poised energy, ready to break through. We know we have really heard a parable when in hearing it we feel something like this spiritual charge sparking in us, or irrupting. It may not be so dramatic, but something will move in us, will shift, drawing us out of our inertness to spring into basileia movement, or perhaps to the contrary, send us fleeing from basileia into the safe room of our cultural comfort zone. Eschatological Character of Parables. I have come to understand the parables, at least some of the key ones, as eschatological, but not in the conventional sense of eschaton as events that unfold at the end of history. Eschatology has to do with an ending of world, not just the end of this world. We did not experience the end of this world on 9/11, but we did experience an ending of a world. A world ends for an individual when a beloved life partner dies and a new configuration of life emerges. A world ends when the manufacturing sector picks up and moves from the U.S. to China and leaves communities all over the country faced with the need to reconfigure their life. Will someone, some group, attempt a spiritually charged, socioeconomic shot-on-goal at an individual level, a community level, a corporate level, and risk the possibilities in transformation? What is peculiar about the eschatological in Jesus’ parables is that they have to do with the breakthrough of justice, i.e. fulfillment of God’s vision for human life, in this world. The breakthrough of basileia justice can bring about an ending of a world, or it can seize the opportunity in any world-ending experience, no matter how un-basileia-like the cause, to fashion new patterns of justice. The breakthrough of justice may occur at any time, not just at the “end times.” Thus, the eschatological dynamic in Jesus’ parables represents the sense of culmination that fulfills God’s purpose and character in a given historical moment, not just eschatological as chronologically final. A Parable Example: The Absentee Landlord (a.k.a. The Wicked Tenants). Read Mark 12:1-8 (and this parable’s other iterations in Matthew 21-33-41 and Luke 20:9-18), and read Thomas 65. Notice a couple of things about these iterations of the parable: (1) In Mark, as in Matthew and Luke, the gospel writer provides framing comments that are not intrinsic to the parable and likely were not attached to it when Jesus originally performed it. In Mark it is preceded by the question of Jesus’ authority and followed by interpretive commentary that some scholars believe is supplied by the gospel writer. The Gospel of Thomas, on the other hand, leaves the parable bare, simply tells it, without application, or framing, or interpretation. (2) The synoptic gospelers seem to be performing the parable in a particular historical setting that orients its meaning to the needs of the faith community in a very different context than that in which Christ originally told it. This can accrue added layers of meaning to the parable that put it at one remove, or more, from Jesus’ original thrust. So, how might the parable be experienced in its own right? A New Image. Charles McCollough points out three levels of violence in this parable: Structural, rebellious, reactionary (Visualized on 3-sided relief sculpture in The Art of Parables, Copper House, 2008) First scene: Landlord establishes his vineyard as cash crop, with sharecrop renters doing the work. Such a landlord was not a popular figure in a land where God was the owner and had made allotments to all with the expectation of an egalitarian, sustainable economy providing adequate benefits for all. However, now peasant land allotments were being confiscated to “join house to house, and add land to land.” (as in an earlier period – Isaiah 5) This was part of the design of the Roman imperial economy, the purpose of which was to form large estates for growing cash crops aimed at transferring the land’s wealth to an absentee, privileged elite. This system made the rich richer and more powerful and made the poor poorer and more disenfranchised. The real estate developments, marketing plans, and investment instruments for accruing and concentrating wealth were legal, if not just. What appears to be a resentful and even angry attitude by the tenant workers is not out of place. Second scene: Not surprisingly, the tenant workers’ resentment flares into the rebellious violence that is natural for tenants who seek to regain their land. They beat the landlord’s agents, including his son, while the distant landlord is awaiting their contribution to his wealth. Third scene: The third level of violence is the reactionary violence – the authorities are called in to crush the rebellion. This third level of violence exposes the cruelty of the first level, thus identifying the very foundation of the Roman empire and exposing the dominant consciousness that seeks to justify collaboration with this system among the subject peoples. Too often, the oppressed who react with violence are made the scapegoats and the villains. The landlord in his collaboration with an unjust system and its powers of enforcement is the villain in McCollough’s reading. This reading would suggest that Jesus was not telling this parable against the Jews’ religion; he was telling it against the injustice of collaboration in an economic system that produced widespread poverty and powerlessness, while generating obscenely concentrated wealth and power. The point was not God’s intention to transfer the keys of heaven from the Jews to the Christians, or to remove his blessing from the old religion and confer it upon a new religion. The parable’s point was to transform the commonly accepted reliance on the various forms of violence and to ignite a passionate sense of justice that would put the powers that be on notice that they’d better get with the basileia program, or they would find themselves under siege by God himself. And if they think Rome’s exactions on behalf of power and privilege are something, wait till they encounter God’s exactions on behalf of compassionate justice with the poor and powerless. All three synoptic writers (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) allegorize this parable to interpret it to the early church, making it a parable of next-worldly salvation: Landowner God sends his collection agents the prophets and his son Jesus Savior who are beaten and/or killed by the unfaithful Jewish leaders/tenants. Hence, God rejects the Jews and creates a new religion around their rejected Savior, who saves, by the way, by means of his passion, death, and resurrection, not by “the whole course of his obedience” (Calvin’s phrase), and thus certainly not by his passionate pursuit of compassionate justice in this life for all. This churchy reading of the parable is too oriented to ecclesiastical interests – to institutional religion’s interests – and not enough to God’s interest in human justice. Perhaps God is more interested in conversion from self-aggrandizement to justice than from non-religious to religious, speaking of superficial religiousness, of course. The Gospel of Thomas’s version of this parable gives it a non-allegorical cast, tells the story without interpretive overlays, suggesting that it may be closer to what Jesus actually told. Thomas concludes with the exhortation, “Now, you’d be well advised to listen up!” Salvation Reading, or Jubilee Reading? While a salvation-history reading tends to give rise to allegory regarding the church’s replacement of Israel as “God’s people” bearing the gift of salvation for the next life, a Jubilee reading would concentrate the parable’s conclusion something like this: “This just goes to show why it is necessary to enact the Year of Jubilee every fifty or so years. Sinful human nature requires that the social, political, and economic arrangements be re-shuffled and re-fashioned on some orderly pattern to assure egalitarian participation in the community’s life and access to the community’s resources. This can also deepen the community’s draft upon and its practice of compassionate justice. Without such an orderly reconfiguration of society, God’s beloved human family will suffer and atrophy, ultimately generating social conflict and repression.” (This author’s summation) Naming the Parable. Alternative titles encountered in parable research include these: The Wicked Tenants (most frequent in one form or another); A Man Planted a Vineyard (Scott); in J. B. Phillips’ translation there is simply the heading: Jesus tells a story with a pointed application; The Wicked Landlord (Wm. Herzog); McCollough’s title: The Absentee Landlord (Matthew’s term is oikodespotes: household despot). What if we named the parable in 21st century terms, following Herzog’s and McCollough’s lead? For example, “The Inaccessible Higher-ups.” Even “Absentee Landlord” works as a modern phrasing, as in urban absentee landlord and the pattern of exploitation that often goes with this role. (You might think of Paul McKee, who is advancing a vast North St. Louis development proposal. However, the point is not really the person; it is the system that is skewed to benefit wealth and power at the expense of the poor and disenfranchised. McKee may be as good a person as any of us at this table, but has simply decided to use what some would consider a deeply flawed urban sociopolitical system to further enrich himself and perhaps do some good on the side, as he defines it, for the city at the same time.) You might think of other titles. Here’s the thing about naming: The power of naming is the intellectual power to assume the prerogative of seeing things in a fresh and different way. It is the freedom to re-think and re-frame and re-orient perspective on a given reality. The power of naming something is the power of insight. It allows us to read the parable freely, without the inherited title’s bias. The power of naming is the power to re-calibrate and re-configure, opening up new possibilities for insight. Then, there is also the power to name: The gospel writer, and not even Jesus, for that matter, as far as we know, titled Jesus’ parables. This was done later, perhaps much later. The power to name is the power to bind the mind, or to liberate it. It is the power to set the course of a narrative’s meaning. Consider the power to name that devolved upon the President of the U. S. on Sept. 11, 2001. What might the outcome have been, if, when he stood before the nation to galvanize our response, the narrative had been named “The Campaign to Reconcile with Alienated Peoples,” instead of naming it “The Global War on Terror?” And what if commensurate resources, equivalent to those applied to “The Global War on Terror,” had been deployed? We had been reinforcing for a long, long time the “war” metaphor as a way of naming our concerns, organizing them into a narrative: The War on Poverty, The War on Crime, The War on Drugs, The War on Violence(!?) Is it any wonder that we are moving more and more deeply into a mindset of all war all the time? That we find ourselves mired in this metaphor, this narrative of “war,” even in our domestic politics? A Modern Parable. Finally, perhaps one way of discerning the level of one’s understanding of a parable is to write a contemporary, twenty-first century version and then compare. Here, in conclusion, is my attempt: A Wall Street banker designed a credit card and saturated the market with tantalizing promotional offers. Enticing short term incentives drew the poor and economically marginal into this system, along with the rich who enjoyed much more favorable terms. Material standards of living improved markedly as the poor acquired many things that made their lives easier and more enjoyable: Washers and dryers, microwaves, flat screen TVs, Bibles, computers, I-phones, home furnishings – all the things that fulfill the American Dream, making the formerly powerless feel that they were finally driving their own narrative. Minimum Required Payments were dutifully paid each month. The Wall Street banker thrived. Then, as promotional rates expired, elevated normal rates were imposed. The required minimum payments increased and penalties were exacted for late payment and for surpassing the credit limit. Interest rates were raised further to reflect a now-blemished payment record. Penalties piled upon penalties. Low-income consumers were less and less able to remit even minimum payments. The banker’s profits began to shrink. The banker sent bill collectors to pressure, harass, and frighten consumers into using their food and prescription and mortgage money to pay their credit card bills. The bill collectors employed outrageous and unethical methods. The consumers found themselves sinking in a bog of debt, drowning in the American Dream. Finally, the low-income consumers banded together and chased the bill collectors out of town. The banker appealed to the courts, who sent out sheriff’s deputies with subpoenas. The consumers stripped the deputies of their uniforms and sent them packing in their undies, while tossing the subpoenas in the trash. Finally, the company’s owner sent his son, the First Vice President for Community Relations, offering reward points for consumers who could be cajoled into some minimal form of compliance. The banker told himself, “They will be impressed by my exceptionally smooth and persuasive son, and they’ll be happy to get these consumer heaven goodies, and he will bring a great harvest of additional profits.” But the consumers said, “This is the banker’s only heir; come, let us strike terror into the banker’s heart by brutally killing this son of his. Then, the banker will know we mean business. He will be so intimidated that he will retreat into his secure, high-rise condo, and give up on trying to get us to pay. And then, all these goodies of the American Dream will be ours, debt-free!” So, they seized the banker’s son, beat him brutally and killed him, and threw his body out of the branch office into the street, so that all the world could see what happens when the powerful and rich elite overreach in their exploitations. Anyone with two ears had better listen! The point? Not that the authorities should be duly respected. Not that the absentee banker should prevail. Not that the son will redeem and redirect corporate heaven’s blessings. Not that the rebellious tenants should be condoned in their misbehavior. The point is that the whole system is screwed up and requires a basileia transformation. So, what, asks this narrative, are we going to do to live into these basileia forces now that history has pitched us this fast-breaking curve ball? The parable’s message is that it’s time to wake up and pay attention, because the whole house of cards is about to crumble (which it did, after Jesus’ death, forty years later), and it is in this crumbling that the advent of God, reversing everything, calls us to action on behalf of basileia. How are we going to participate in God’s incarnating the basileia here and now, in this world? When we live into Jesus’ Narrative of the Absentee Landlord, do sparks fly? They did when Jesus told it, according to the canonical gospels, because “…they wanted to arrest him.” This essay was presented at Chi Alpha, an ecumenical ministers group, meeting for dialogue and mutual encouragement since its founding in St. Louis in 1884. A different member each session (semi-monthly October through May) presents a paper for reflection and discussion. Administrator Account Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:41:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:85 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/86/They-Shall-Look-Upon-Her-Whom-They-Have-Pierced-Violence-against-Women-Ancient-and-Modern.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=86 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=86&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/86/They-Shall-Look-Upon-Her-Whom-They-Have-Pierced-Violence-against-Women-Ancient-and-Modern.aspx Carol F. Williams Carol Williams is a retired physician who has studied at Aquinas Institute since 1998. Forty years’ experience delivering health care to women and young girls impresses one with how frequently intimate violence is a part of their lives.  The statistics are impressive:  one in six American women has experienced rape or attempted rape; nine of ten rape victims are female.  Fifteen per cent of sexual assault victims are under age twelve. (RAINN)   While physical assault that causes severe enough injury to bring a woman or child to medical attention is the type that is officially reported, less obvious, more subtle forms are frequent and most often remain hidden within the collusive silence of a family or culture.  Beatings that avoid the face and leave marks on the body normally covered by clothing are not uncommon.  Verbal abuse that demeans the girl or woman frequently accompany slapping and beating.  Physical abuse affects 4% to 8% of pregnant women. (Burnett, Adler)  Some would say that the failure of a male partner to exercise sexual continence in the face of increasingly severe, life-threatening medical complications with repeated pregnancies of the mother is a form of violence, as is the abortion forced upon the woman by her partner under threat to her life or to the lives of her children.  Domestic violence affects 30% of women in the United States, very likely a conservative estimate, given that many episodes go unreported.  A justice system that traditionally has tended to down-play both children’s and women’s testimony about abuse and violence compounds the difficulty they have had in obtaining justice. The rape victim suffers not only the horror and pain of the rape itself, but also the indignity of the rape exam in the emergency room, followed by the skepticism often heaped upon her by investigating police and the defense attorney if her case goes to trial. All of this is compounded by the sometimes desultory, incomplete processing of specimens in police laboratories.  There is the further horror of discovering she is pregnant from the assault, or worse, that she has contracted the HIV virus. Rape as a weapon of war is as old as wars themselves, continuing into the recent past and today in places like Bosnia, Sudan, Rwanda, and The Congo where rape is an integral part of genocide.  Western armies, including the U.S., have their own dismal history of raping civilians in places like Vietnam, as well as their comrades in arms.  The “comfort camps” visited upon the conquered people of Korea, China, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asia countries by the Japanese in World War II are well documented. The barbaric custom of female circumcision continues virtually unabated in eastern and central African nations, reinforced by a culture that sees such mutilations as guarantee of marriageability for the young girls.  Young Catholic nuns in one African country are forced by priests to have sexual intercourse in order to obtain supplies for the parish school; when they become pregnant, the priest takes them to the abortionist; alternatively the nuns’ order ejects them to an uncertain future on the streets where they are shunned by their families.  The preference in China for male children feeds the killing of unborn and born female babies.  The trafficking of women and young girls for the sex trade goes on unabated in both eastern and western hemispheres. Raping of children including infants has increased 400% since the end of Apartheid in 1994 in South Africa.  Infants are gang raped to the point of having to have extensive reconstructive surgery to repair their genital areas; many die from their injuries. (Meier) Violence against women and girls is global, endemic, and epidemic. Habakkuk’s cry rings out:  “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?  Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?  Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?  Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.  So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.  The wicked surround the righteous – therefore judgment comes forth perverted.” (Hb 1:2-4 NRSV)   Habakkuk’s cry might well be that of Woman who down through the ages has suffered the horrors of rape and genocide, of status as chattel with no rights independent of man, unseen and unheard in the conversations of life.  Are the ancient prophets aware of her as a person? The prophets spoke their oracles against the backdrop of the Sinaitic Decalogue that regarded the wife as property of her husband (Ex 22:21-24) and as source of ritual impurity when menstruating. (Ex 19:15)   Further, the father was enjoined not to “profane [his] daughter by making her a prostitute.” (Lv 19:29)  The cost of causing a pregnant woman to miscarry was to be determined by her husband, and if injury more than miscarriage occurred, it was to be “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Ex 20:17; 21:22-25)  All decisions about recompense were in the hands of men without any input or opinion from the woman.  One of the more blatant imbalances of the ancient law code is in Numbers 5:11-31 where the woman is forced to take the blame for a man’s jealousy by drinking holy water mixed with dirt from the floor of the tabernacle; if she gets sick, she is guilty of adultery and if she does not get sick, she is innocent.  The curious episode of Miriam’s leprosy as punishment for questioning the sole authority of Moses in leading the people (both she and Aaron had questioned it) is an example of the common mechanism of laying the entire blame at the feet of the woman for something that is a joint affair.  Women as spoils of war (women of Shiloh, Jgs 21), as sacrifices to satisfy a vow (Jephtha’s daughter, Jgs 11), or to protect guests from demands of a mob (Lot’s daughters, Gn 19:1-11) are other examples of a general blindness to injustices visited on woman in Israelite culture. It is in this atmosphere of suspicion and of general disregard for woman as a full person that the prophets developed whatever attitudes they had toward her. Amos inveighed against the exploitation and injustice suffered by the masses of poor people during the period of peace and prosperity experienced by Israel prior to the final Assyrian invasion, but seemed oblivious to the particular plight of women who undoubtedly comprised the majority of the poor.  Further, while other Biblical writers are particularly concerned about the precarious circumstances of widows (Ex 22:22-24, Pr 15:25, Is 1:17, Ps 94:6, Gn 38:1-30), Amos is silent about them.  One also has to wonder about his condemnation of wealthy women (“cows of Bashan,” Am 4:1-2).  As Judith Sanderson points out, only gradually is widespread domestic violence across all economic classes beginning to be recognized in the modern world.  The powerlessness of women in domestic violence is rarely acknowledged.  It seems unlikely that it did not exist in ancient Israel, even among the “cows of Bashan.”   That said, Amos does hold women to the same ethical standard as men in their treatment of the exploited poor – the prophet denounces wealthy women because they use their positions of borrowed power and wealth to crush the poor.  An ethical demand that applies equally to the genders is present also in Hosea 4:14, where Yahweh does not punish whoring daughters and adulterous daughters-in-law because the men are committing the same sins; God does not punish one while the other goes scot free (but remember leprous Miriam).  Sanderson also points out that Amos does not consider the effect of war and its atrocities on particular women.  What happened to the pregnant women whose bellies were ripped open and whose children were killed before their very eyes?  What was the effect on Amaziah’s wife when she was forced into prostitution? (Sanderson, 218-221) Grace Immerson notes that against the backdrop of the patriarchal culture of ancient Israel, woman’s voice is mediated through that of an injured male, if it is heard at all.  The characterization of Israel as a whore or otherwise faithless woman reinforces the image of woman as evil against the image of the ideal male. (Immerson, 677)   Only one woman is mentioned as a leader of Israel by the prophets:  Miriam, who along with her brothers Moses and Aaron, led the people of Israel out of Egypt through the wilderness and to the threshold of the Promised Land. (Mi 6:4)   One comes away from a cursory survey of the Hebrew prophets with the sense that there was a general tendency to lay the burden of Israel’s guilt for its sins on the shoulders of woman.  Widows were the only women who should be protected from exploitation; even children rarely warranted particular protection if the family fell into debt and the father sold them into slavery.  Is there no end to the relational nightmare between men and women in a patriarchal society? God, answer the cries of our hearts, for our fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons do not hear!  Is your answer still the one you gave to Habakkuk?  “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.  For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it: it will surely come, it will not delay.” (Hb 2:2b-3 NRSV)  What is the vision that God asks Habakkuk (and us) to wait for as it relates to violence against women and children?  Despite the patriarchal tone of prophetic writings, are we missing God’s quiet voice calling us to change how we relate to one another as male and female? I imagine desert places as generally quiet but barren places, harsh landscapes stripped of obvious signs of life.  In the prophet Hosea we hear Yahweh’s gentle invitation to Israel to begin their relationship all over again in the wilderness where their relationship first began.  Listen as Yahweh woos Israel:  “Therefore, I will now allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her…There she shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.  On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, ’Ishi’ (my man), and no longer will you call me, ‘Baali’ (my master, husband, owner, idol).” (Ho 2:14, 15b-16 NRSV)  This is language of courtship, of one person seeking union with a beloved other.  It assumes that both persons are of “marriageable age,” free to make a mature decision to enter into a covenant of mutual vulnerability and intimacy, of shared life in which an exploitative power differential does not exist, in which neither person is slavishly subservient to the other, a life of mutuality, of respect and dignity in which the operative principle is love.  I hear in this passage Hosea yearning for such a relationship with his wife.  He is no longer ranting at her; his anger is stripped away.  “Let’s go back to the beginning, into the silent stretches of the desert where we will not be distracted by the noise and violence of the world.”  Where are the opportunities for such new beginnings in male-female relationships in today’s world? Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearing, South Africa, 1996:  A white police officer is finishing his recital of what he had done to the son and husband of the older black woman sitting before him.  He had dragged her son, a non-violent protestor of Apartheid, out of the village, tortured him, killed him, and tossed his body into the river.  The officer came back later, took her husband away to an isolated area, doused him with gasoline, and set him afire.  He finished speaking, and the woman was asked what should be the officer’s punishment.  “Take me to where you burned my husband to death so I can gather his ashes and give him a decent burial,” she said.  “Then I want you to spend one week per month in my village, in my house, so I can mother you.” Rwanda, 2004:  A woman sweeps the dirt floor of her hovel.  Outside some ten year-old boys play kickball in the dusty yard.  The woman speaks:  “Every time I look at him, I remember – my husband and children hacked to pieces, the rapes over and over and over.  Six weeks later I realize I am pregnant.  I think about going to the abortionist…but I don’t go.  Those of my village who survive shun me because I carried the child of a Hutu.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t remember that day.  My rapists were Hutus; I am Tutsi.  He’s (nodding toward the outside) Hutu and Tutsi.”  She pauses.  “He’s Rwandan.” Nagasaki, August 9, 1945:  All is quiet now, unnaturally so, the mushroom cloud dissipated, the firestorm playing out its ruin as it spreads out from the center of Ground Zero – the Catholic Urakami Cathedral.  Only Mary remains, remnant of a statue that stood on the altar, her eyes charred hollows gazing out on a vaporized scene, her scream of horror stunned into silence.  Seventy-five thousand of her people are gone; more will die in the years to come of illnesses due to the effects of radiation.  A woman is three months pregnant at the time and will give birth to a baby boy who will become Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki.  In May, 2010, he will travel to New York City, bringing Mary with him, to plead for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.” Oh, my people, God is calling us to those places, those desert places where silence reigns after the total annihilation of all that is human, after human beings have done the worst that they can to other human beings and to the earth that is their home and source of sustenance.  There in the vaporized silence, in the ashes and blood of genocide, sexual and racial oppression, God is calling us to start all over again in our covenanted relationship with God and with each other.  Listen…listen…listen…and hear the quiet voice of God nudging open our hearts and minds to hope for redemption.  Hear God in the South African woman when she invites the white police officer to accept her remothering of him.  Hear the hope in the voice of the Rwandan mother for a different future in Rwanda through the sons and daughters conceived in the slaughter house of 1994.  And hear Mary of Nagasaki pleading for a world free of nuclear weapons through her son Archbishop Takami.  It is a call to relearn what it is to be human, to remember the devastation that comes when we forget that true power does not reside in crushing the other, whether male or female, black, white, or yellow.  It is a call to transcend our wounds and learn how to forgive and to help the aggressor learn compassion and respect for the other.  It is a call for a new creation wherein male and female work together to bring God’s vision of universal peace to reality. They shall look on her whom they have pierced – by rape, by murder of husband and children, and the myriad other ways woman is pierced by her experience in a violent world.  Do you see Mary at the foot of the cross?  Do you hear her voice?  Do you hear Yahweh’s voice in hers?  Listen, my people!  She is calling you to lay aside your sense of shame at what you have done to her in so many ways and learn what it is to be the child from her womb, to be a child of God.  She is calling you, sons and daughters, to learn how to trust one another in mutual vulnerability, abolishing the power differential that makes one gender slavishly subservient to the other. “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.” Sources Consulted Burnett, Lynn Barkley, M.D., Ed.D., LLB(c) and Jonathan Adler, M.D.  “Domestic Violence.”  eMedicine (August 18, 2009). Donohoe, Martin, M.D., FACP.  “War, Rape, and Genocide:  Never Again?”  Medscape Ob/Gyn & Women’s Health, October 18, 2004. Fahrenthold, David A.  “Statistics Show Drop in U.S. Rape Cases.”  Washington Post, June 19, 2006. Green, Llezlie L.  “Sexual Violence and Genocide Against Tutsi Women,” excerpts from “Propaganda and Sexual Violence in the Rwandan Genocide:  an Argument for Intersectionality in International Law.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 33 (Summer 2002):  733-776, 733-755. Immerson, Grace I.  “Hosea.”  In Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, edited by James D.G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson, 676-685.  Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans, 2003. Kykelhahn, Tracey, Allen J. Beck, Ph.D., and Thomas H. Cohen, Ph.D.  “Characteristics of Suspected Human Trafficking Incidents, 2007-2008.”  Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report (January 2009). “’Mary the Survivor’ of Nagasaki Visits Nonproliferation Conference.”  In “Signs of the Times:  Nuclear Disarmament.”  America, May 17, 2010, 6-7. Medline Abstracts.  “Violence Against Women During Pregnancy – Update 2005.”  (August 11, 2005). Meier, Eileen, M.P.H, J.D., R.N.  “Child Rape in South Africa.”  Pediatric Nursing (2002:28). Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 211th General Assembly.  “Background:  Resolution on the International Criminal Court (June 1999). Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN).  Web Page accessed October 10, 2010. Sanderson, Judith E.  “Amos.”  In Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringer, 218-223.  Westminster:  John Knox, 1998. ______.  “Micah.”  In Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringer, 229-231.  Westminster:  John Knox, 1998. World Health Organization.  “Female Genital Mutilation.”  Fact sheet 241 (February 2010). SuperUser Account Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:59:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:86 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/90/The-Letter-to-Philemon.aspx#Comments 0 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=216&ModuleID=743&ArticleID=90 http://www.ai.edu/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=90&PortalID=0&TabID=216 http://www.ai.edu/Resources/Blogs/AquinasMatters/tabid/216/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/90/The-Letter-to-Philemon.aspx Rev. Seán Charles Martin Paul’s letter to Philemon is the shortest letter that Paul ever wrote.  And while it does not address the great theological themes of his longer letters, themes like justification by faith, or the gifts of the Spirit in the life of the Church, or hope in the promised return of the Lord, the letter to Philemon gives us an intriguing glimpse into the mind of a man who, despite his own serious problems, takes the time and makes the effort to save someone whose difficulties are at least as serious as his own.  Paul is in prison as he writes this letter, perhaps his final imprisonment in Rome.  Yet his concern is not for himself – indeed, he seems to have thought that he would be released (see verse 22, where he mentions his upcoming plans to visit Philemon) – rather, his concern is for the fate of a young runaway slave named Onesimus. Background to the letter to Philemon While, technically, the Letter to Philemon is addressed to an individual (Philemon) and his wife (Apphia), and Archippus (probably their son), the letter is not private correspondence, meant solely for the eyes and ears of these three.  Philemon is the owner of the house in which the Christian community meets for their weekly liturgies (verse 2).  The house-church they hosted would have heard the letter proclaimed by the letter-bearer (probably Timothy) when the community gathered for its weekly liturgical assembly.  That house-church was probably relatively small – 15 or 20 people, at most – and would have comprised other members of Philemon’s household – his extended family, his employees, even his slaves. The ugliness and brutality of slavery forms the immediate backdrop for this letter.  So we have to imagine Philemon’s other slaves listening to Paul plead for the life of this runaway slave, Onesimus.   What might their reaction have been upon hearing this letter?  Hope that Paul’s words would be persuasive, and the boy’s life would be spared?  Resentment over the fact that Onesimus has escaped and has now returned without retribution?  Fear that perhaps Philemon will ignore Paul’s plea, and order the boy’s death? Paul and Philemon have known one another for a long time.  In the preface to the letter (verses 1-3), Paul calls Philemon his “co-worker” (synergos), a term usually reserved in the Pauline letters for Paul’s closest friends and associates, like Prisca and Aquila (Romans 16:3), Timothy (Romans 16:21; 1 Thessalonians 3:2), Titus (2 Corinthians 8:23), or Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25).  Precisely because Paul and Philemon have enjoyed a long-standing friendship, Paul can make this extraordinary appeal on behalf of Onesimus. Why has Onesimus run away from his master, Philemon?  We will never be able to know; though, given the risks a runaway slave ran (see sidebar), Onesimus’ life as a slave must have been awful.  Somehow, Onesimus has made his way to Paul.  How did he do it?  Again, Paul’s letter gives no indication.  But it does seem clear that Onesimus has run to Paul for protection.  And this letter is one of the best ways than an imprisoned Paul can protect the runaway slave. Sidebar: Slavery and the Roman Empire Slaves constituted perhaps as much as 25% of the population in the Roman Empire.  You could become a slave in the Greco-Roman world in a couple of different ways.  You could be captured as a prisoner of war, for instance, and sold into slavery.  Or your debts could grow so large that the only way to pay them back would be to sell yourself, or even your family members, into slavery.  It is impossible to know, nearly 2000 years later, how Onesimus became a slave, though, since Paul calls him “my child” (teknon: v. 10), he may still have been quite young.  That might mean that his parents had sold him into slavery.  The fact that his name, which means “Useful,” was a common name for slaves in the Greek-speaking world, might indicate that he was actually born into slavery. To be a slave means that someone else owns your time, your work, your wages, and your energy – your owner even owns your body.  In ancient Rome, the lot of a slave seems to have been particularly difficult.  Martial, the first-century Latin poet renowned for his witty epigrams, upbraided his friend Rufus for harsh treatment of his enslaved cook: Esse negas coctum leporem poscisque flagella. Mauis, Rufe, cocum scindere quam leporem You say that the rabbit is not well-cooked, and ask for the whip; Rufus, you would rather carve up your chef than your rabbit. (Epigrammaton III.94) If a poorly prepared meal could merit a whipping for the one who cooked it, imagine the lot of a slave who tried to run away.  In fact, any act of disobedience was dealt with very harshly.  Runaway slaves could be put to death.  So when Paul writes Philemon, he is very diplomatically, but very definitely, pleading for the life of Onesimus. What is Paul’s interest in this runaway slave?  Once Onesimus runs away, he flees to Paul, and places himself under the apostle’s protection.  At some point during his time with Paul, Onesimus becomes a Christian.  In fact, Paul is the one who baptizes the young runaway, which is why Paul calls himself Onesimus’ father (v. 10). Onesimus’ new Christian identity places him in a new relationship with God, of course, but it also places him in a new relationship with other Christians.  He is no longer an outsider, but a brother to other members of the Christian community.  And we must remember that the churches of the Pauline mission prided themselves on welcoming slaves and masters, men and women, people who were born Jewish and people who were not.  Indeed, one of the antiphons sung at baptismal liturgies in the churches of the Pauline mission celebrated this inclusivity: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Religious identity and social realities But what happens when religious ideals clash with social realities?  Pauline Christians may well have welcomed slaves and masters alike to their worship, and set aside social distinctions based on nationality, class, and gender, but once the liturgy was concluded and people returned to their homes, those social realities reasserted themselves.  And we must remember that those social distinctions between persons of different nationalities, or between persons of different classes, or between persons of different genders were reinforced by Roman law itself, which gave some people – Romans, men, and slaveholders – more rights than those who were neither Roman, nor male, nor slaveholders. Which is to say that Onesimus’ new-found status as a Christian would not help him one bit, should he return to his master, Philemon.  His life would have been at terrible risk.  He certainly would have been tortured, and probably would have been killed.  He needed protection.  He needed a personal plea from Paul. Paul’s appeal to Philemon: verses 8-17 Paul’s language here is extraordinarily diplomatic.  He knows he can command Philemon to take back the runaway (verse 8), but he would rather Philemon do so out of love (agape).  Love for whom?  Paul?  Certainly, but also love for Onesimus himself, since now Onesimus belongs to the Christian community that Philemon has already shown himself to love so dearly (verse 5). In characterizing Onesimus, Paul’s language is full of contrasts: v. 11: formerly, he was useless to you but now, he is indeed useful, both to you and to me v. 12-13: I am sending him … to you I wanted to keep him with me v. 15: he was separated from you for a while so that you might have him back forever v. 16: no longer as a slave but … a beloved brother Paul’s language of contrast serves two purposes.  On the one hand, Paul acknowledges the loss Philemon has suffered, once Onesimus ran away.  From the slaveholder’s point of view, the one who was supposed to be useful (remember, that’s what Onesimus’ name means in Greek) has turned out to be useless.  The slave is gone.  The negative economic impact on the slaveholder cannot be underestimated.  And Paul recognizes that. But Paul’s language of contrasts is also meant to lead Philemon to acknowledge that a transformation has occurred in Onesimus.  Because the runaway is now a Christian, he has a supernatural bond with his master.  Onesimus has become Philemon’s brother.  You do not kill your brother, even if an unjust law might permit it.  And Paul wants Philemon to recognize that. Affection and Restitution: verses 17-19 Paul’s plea in this section takes two forms.  Since he himself is now Onesimus’ spiritual father, he wants Philemon to receive the runaway as though Onesimus were Paul himself.  In effect, Paul is saying, “If you’re my friend – and you are, there’s no doubt about it – you’ll take this kid back, because he’s like a son to me.” The other form Paul’s plea takes here is the promise of restitution.  Paul will pay Philemon back for whatever loss the slaveholder has incurred.  And he is quite definite about it: “I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it” (verse 19).  This raises an interesting question.  Did Onesimus steal from his master in the course of escaping from him?  Is the boy not just a runaway, but a thief also?  It is certainly possible.  If that is the case, then Paul is balancing the budget, so to speak.  Philemon has incurred a loss, and Paul is rectifying the account. It is also possible, however, that Paul is even willing to pay Philemon for the value of his (former) slave.  This would have been an extraordinary gesture on Paul’s part, and an extraordinary expenditure of money as well.  But it would have secured Onesimus’ life, since he would then have a new owner (Paul), and his former owner (Philemon) would no longer have any power over him. Mutual indebtedness: verses 19-21 Yet even as Paul assumes the debt that Onesimus owes to Philemon, he reminds Philemon of the debt that he owes to Paul: “I say nothing about your owing me even your own self” (verse 19).  It seems clear here that Paul was the one who was responsible for bringing Philemon into the household of faith.  From Paul’s point of view, this is a debt that can never be repaid, since what is at stake in Philemon’s debt to Paul is eternal life itself. Here we encounter the heart of Paul’s plea to Philemon.  In the light of what Philemon owes Paul, what Onesimus owes Philemon seems very paltry in comparison.  Paul’s diplomatic but pointed reminder of Philemon’s own enormous debt is reminiscent of the parable told by Jesus in Matthew 18:23-35, in which a king forgives one servant an astronomical debt – ten thousand talents, the equivalent of 150 years of wages – who then in turn refuses to write off a trivial sum of one hundred denarii owed him by another servant.  The king denounces the first servant: “You wicked slave!  …Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave as I had mercy on you?” (Matthew 18:32, 33).  Paul’s language is less threatening, but the point cannot have been lost on Philemon. A promised visit and the example of Paul’s companions: verses 22-24 The body of the letter concludes with another request: “Prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you” (verse 22).  It seems cheeky, by our standards, to ask for guest accommodations on top of everything else Paul is demanding of Philemon.  Yet we must recall that in the first century – long before there were super-highways and hotel chains – travelers depended upon the hospitality of a network of friends and associates as they made their way across country.  Paul is asking from Philemon no more than any traveler would have asked from a friend.  There may be, however, the slightest hint that this upcoming visit will also include an enquiry after the well-being of Onesimus.  The boy had better be okay. The greetings that conclude the letter (verse 23-24) demonstrate that, even though Paul is imprisoned, he is not isolated.  He has Epaphras, whom he calls a “fellow prisoner,” and with whom he is confined, but he also has, presumably as visitors and care-givers, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke – all of whom, like Philemon, are “fellow workers” (synergoi).  Early Christians took very seriously the command of the Lord to visit those in prison (Matthew 25:36).  Such visits were not merely social.  Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke would have been bringing food, drink, and clothing for Paul and Epaphras – for the two would certainly not have been fed or clothed by the prison officials!  Paul’s visitors are quite literally his life-savers.  There is a lesson for Philemon here too.  Just as Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke preserve Paul from death, so should Philemon preserve Onesimus from death. Was Paul’s plea successful? The fact that the letter was preserved argues that Philemon heard Paul’s entreaty, took his message to heart, and spared the life of Onesimus.  There are legends – probably impossible to verify – that Onesimus later became a bishop in Colossae.  The legends assume that Paul’s words did not go unheeded, and that the runaway slave was not only accepted back into the community from which he had escaped, but that later in his life, he rose to a position of leadership. Moral Issues While we (rightfully) see slavery today as morally repugnant, many people in the first century seem to have been blind to the moral problem of slavery, given how widespread it was.  Furthermore, it is important to note that nowhere in the letter to Philemon does Paul raise a principled objection to the very institution of slavery.  It is probably unrealistic on our part to expect Paul to have objected to the institution of slavery.  He was enmeshed his culture, just as we are enmeshed in ours.  Furthermore, his own eschatological expectations – that Lord was returning any day now, and that the world as we presently experience it will be completely and utterly transformed – led him away from a concern with the problem of constructing a just society, one that recognizes the God-given dignity and value of every human person, irrespective of their nationality, language, class, or gender. In reading the letter to Philemon, we will need to grapple with the question of our own moral blindness.  What practices in our world will subsequent generations look back on and wonder, “How could they have allowed such a thing to go on?” SuperUser Account Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:38:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:90