🐮 Proper 18

Philemon, Soldiers, and Choosing Life

This Sunday’s lectionary gives us a compact but weighty reading: the letter to Philemon. At only 25 verses, it’s among the shortest texts in the New Testament. Yet within its brevity lies a sharp admonition and a vision for what Christian community could look like if it truly embodied the gospel.

Who Was Philemon?

Philemon was a wealthy house-church leader—likely a military veteran. His household included enslaved people, among them Onesimus, who had escaped and found refuge with Paul (Saul). Paul sends Onesimus back with this letter, but not as property. He urges Philemon to receive him “no longer as a slave, but more than a slave—a beloved brother.”

The clues about Philemon’s military past matter. Enslavement in the Roman world was often the spoils of war, and Paul even greets Philemon’s family in military terms, calling Archippus a systratiotes—literally a “little battle buddy.” Paul knows the culture he’s writing into, and he leverages it with precision.

Paul’s Rhetoric

This isn’t a friendly pastoral note. Paul writes “with my own hand,” stressing his authority. He plays with Onesimus’s name (which means “useful”), flips it into irony, and presses Philemon to live into the gospel he professes. He even hints at a follow-up visit: “Prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you.” In other words—Paul will know whether Philemon follows through.

The stakes are communal. Letters were read aloud. If Onesimus himself carried it, he would have stood there as Paul’s words were proclaimed to the church. Imagine the weight of that moment: a formerly enslaved man being reintroduced not as property, but as family.

Choosing Life

Here the Deuteronomy reading echoes: “Choose life.” For Paul, choosing life means aligning behavior with the gospel’s moral arc—using influence and privilege to dismantle entitlement. If Philemon really believes Christ is Lord, then Caesar—his former commander—no longer holds ultimate authority. That shift of allegiance demands a reordering of household and community.

Why This Still Matters

Philemon shows us that faith requires more than literal readings. Paul relies on nuance, irony, and symbolic meaning to make his case. To miss that is to miss the gospel itself.

Many people leave the church today not out of apathy, but out of discernment. They see leaders unwilling to embrace complexity or to embody the hard demands of freedom and grace. Exodus can be judgment. If Christians cannot read, hear, and act with both eyes open, then others will walk away.

The letter to Philemon is a test. Can wealth, status, and tradition be subordinated to Christ? Can power be redirected toward life, justice, and family? Paul believed it was possible. He pressed Philemon—and us—to believe it too.