Sermon Tone Analysis

On 25 August, someone Mr. Jim Sulker was discovered dead in bed, in the Winnipeg condominium he had lived at for some 15 years.

When the coroner examined Jim’s mummified body, he determined that Mr. Sulker had been dead for about two years.

When the neighbours found out they said, “We wondered where he was”.

The President of the condominium Board of Directors stated Jim’s fees were paid in advance, so we did not worry that no one had seen him for awhile.

A fellow resident and an acquaintance of Jim exclaimed, “How in God’s name could this happen?

Everyone was shocked but no one said maybe I could have looked in on him.

I wonder what makes us brothers and sisters in God’s eyes?

And God said to Cain, Where is your brother?

And Cain replied to God, Am I my brother’s keeper?

I imagine that Paul could have been thinking about this exchange between God and Cain when he wrote to Philemon about Onesimus.

The slave Onesimus had done something against his Master Philemon and then fled.

It seems that Onesimus, decided to return to his master’s household and make amends.

The only problem is that Philemon, who is a Christian, has every right under Roman law to punish or even kill Onesimus for running away.

I see Paul in my mind’s eye, an old man now, beaten, ridiculed, despised, and forsaken by former colleagues, sitting at the table before him with maybe a little light from the window or a small oil lamp writing this letter.

He presses his pen against the parchment and writes and pauses and writes again.

He hopes he can convince Philemon, that he can appeal to Philemon’s faith- that if Philemon confesses Jesus Christ as Lord, as the incarnate God then he surely must treat Onesimus with mercy, compassion just as he would treat any actual brother or sister of his own.

Philemon, Paul says, ‘by law you may be Onesimus’ master in this world but in Jesus Christ your slave has become your brother and now you must consider and act in this new relationship.

And so Paul was trying to help Onesimus come to the realization of that one great truth of the Christian faith, in Christ there is no jew, or gentile there are only brothers and sisters who have become servants to each other.

In Christ and through Christ we are  indeed our brother’s keeper.

Paul loves Onesimus like a brother and Paul is hoping and praying and praying that Jesus won’t have to ask Philemon the question he asked Cain when Cain murdered Abel, “What have you done”.

You see for Paul, the fruit of an ideal community is savoured and tasted where we live for each other as Christ lived for us.

Jesus accepted us as brother and sisters in God.

He brought us to understand with our hearts what is looks like, feels like, sounds like, tastes like, to have a relationship with each other and God.

He showed us how God relates to us so that we might strive to relate to each other in the ways of justice, compassion, and mercy for all.

So what does it mean for us to say that we are brothers and sister in Christ?

It means that we understand that God’s goal is to bring the entire universe, the whole created order into right relationship.

And in this understanding it means we strive to live in our personal relationships and social relationships for and with Christ in bringing the peace of Christ to this world.

The incarnation that is the literal birth of God in Jesus of Nazareth, the life of God in Jesus’ ministry, the death of God in Jesus cruxificion and the realization of eternal love in the resurrection of Jesus’ body is God’s way of saying to us that I have loved you as my brothers and sisters in God.

So, it hurts us personally and socially wherever we have abused each other in this world because where we live as a divided family, we have abused our brother Jesus.

And Cain said to God as if he could hide from God, the murder of his brother Abel, “AM I my brother’s keeper”.

And in horror, or sadness, or anger or all three, God said to Cain, What have you done in God’s name.

So as we reflect on Paul’s plea to Onesimus let us soberly consider that wherever we make Jesus a doctrine to be argued about instead of accepting him as the bread of life, we will starve to death: wherever law and politics is practiced without compassion God will ask us what have we done for the havoc and murder we have wrought sometimes in the very name of God.

So consider the brotherly love of our Canadian government which has refused to give the right of appeal to a person who has been denied refugee status even though the government adopted a resolution to include an appeal mechanism in the refugee process.

So now they have a reason to legally deny sanctuary to the very, very few numbers of refugee claimants who have sought sanctuary from the church’s.

We must hand them over to the government because our government deems them to be a national security risk while they are living in the basement of our church’s.

So consider that when Christians strive to make Jesus a doctrine rather then the most perfect revelation of God’s living love to be shared even among our enemies, we can justify anything.

Jerry Falwell the evangelical preacher in the United States says that the war in Iraq is a God- ordained war, in other words Jesus sanctions it.

So consider that while we argue about our health care system, every single African country is paying almost three times as much per person to service their national debt loads then they are paying per person on health care.

And you know what as they die of diseases related to their hunger and lack of fresh water, they are struggling to pay of their debt which they owe to us their brothers and sisters in the G7 nations.

Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author who wrote War and Peace must have been reflecting on Cain’s reply when he wrote, “I sit on your back, choking you and making you carry me, and yet I assure myself that I am very sorry for you and that I wish to lighten your load except by getting off your back”.

Paul’s letter to Phiemon is very important to us the divided family of God.  Paul is beseeching that Philemon take his Christian faith seriously.

That he remember he and Onesimus are brothers to Jesus, the son of the living God.

And this means living a full live that moves us out of spiritual slavery into the freedom of Christ.

Who is my brother and sister.

Why he or she is the person who is actually in my life now, while I am plotting to be somewhere else.

He is Jim Sulker abandoned in his condominium, She is the refugee living in the church basement.

They are the brothers and sisters in Africa whom we sit on.

The Kingdom of God is with us when we become in spirit and action the brothers and sisters to each other.

In Christ and through Christ, Paul answers Philemon, Onesimus is your brother.

Eileen was a pastor and Chaplain to the elderly who were suffering with Alzheimer’s disease.

She was having trouble connecting with a group of seniors and so Eileen went to each one and introduced herself personally.

This one particular lady told Eileen that her name was Ethel.

Eileen replied why that’s the name of my mother-in-law.

Ethel the lady in the chair sat straight up and beamed with delight and said.

Oh my dear that means we are related!

And in that moment, a lady who could not remember her name from one moment to the next and the chaplain became sisters in their common humanity, related in spirit, bound in joy and laughter.

Even when the brain fails, when the body weakens, God the creator, Jesus our brother, and the Spirit our comforter is known to the human heart and God’s presence is felt there.

And Christ is there desiring, willing that the greater be joined to the least, the wise to be united with the simple through brotherly affection.

To consider others as brothers and sisters in Christ is to become empty of selfishness, so that we can receive the other into our hearts.

My brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus with his apostles created a new spiritual family.

And he did this most simply by telling all who would listen about the nature of God’s love for creation.

Jesus is our brother, he knows me and you.

He knows our names, our birthday’s.

He notices us.

He notices when we hurt ourselves.

He hears us, really hears us.

He is concerned with what we do not say as much as what we say.

He values us.

We are important to him, more important then anything else in life.

He trusts us with his life.

He trusts that we would allow ourselves to be the instrument of his compassion and mercy for others.

Jesus comforts us.

He puts his hands on our shoulders in a way that is reassuring, that helps us through our terrible days.

His touch affirms our very beings.

Jesus is our brother and we are his brothers and sisters.

And he teaches us that as he is brother to me, he is brother to all.

Amen.

Identity and personhood.

We can become slaves to our identity.

To what we do.

But we can lose all that in a blink of an eye.

Validation of our person hoods is a validation that we have a relationship with God.

God’s strategy for humanity and indeed any sentient being that lies out there is to bind us in one spiritual family, to unite us in love with the Divine creator.

There is no other form of Christian life except the life of forming relationship that goes well beyond blood lines.

Until and unless Christ is the first brother or sister in faith, the gospel will only be an abstraction.

Until the sacrifice and grace of Christ embodied in you and I is passed on personally, the Philemon’s of the world will not accept Onesimus’  back.

Peacemaking and reconciliation among us and with those outside us are the cornerstone of family ties.

They are the price of brotherhood and sisterhood with Christ himself.

Paul came to believe that we are united in God in even a more deeper way then blood brothers could be united through the person of Jesus Christ

 

God’s goal is to bring the entire universe, the whole created order into right relationship.

The incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth, his ministry, his death and his resurrection is God’s way of saying, I have loved you as my brothers and sisters in God and I take you back to God who created you.

The fruits of the ideal community in Paul’s view will itself reveal the righteousness of God.

We will live for each other as Christ as lived for us.

He called us not servants but friends.

He accepted us as brother and sisters in faith.

He brought us to understand with our hearts what is looks like, feels like, sounds like, tastes like, to have a relationship with each other and God.

He showed us how God relates to us so that we might strive to relate to each other in the ways of justice, compassion and mercy for all.

What makes us brothers and sisters in Christ.

It is to live to empower all members of creation.

It is to remain in an uneasy relationship with the Ceasar’s of the world who claim to be of Christ and yet who claim to kill in the name of God.