Being a bishop can be a funny experience. Some people seem to think bishops are able to resolve every problem in the church. Others seem to think bishops are responsible for every problem in the church. Of course, neither extreme is true. Bishops are human beings like everyone else.
God does not show favouritism (Acts 10:34, Rom 2:11). God loves everyone equally. Recent events, such as the appointment of our new Prime Minister, protests about migration and the tragic loss of life in Tibet and Nepal, have set me thinking about how incapable we seem, in our church and our nation, of treating everyone equally.
We often have very unrealistic expectations of our leaders and they in turn often make unrealistic promises. As a society, we seem incapable of giving equal treatment to refugees, those with different skin tones and those of different nationalities and faiths, to pick just three examples.
At this point, the little book of Philemon came to my rescue. It is Paul‘s shortest letter and the three protagonists come from very different places on the social spectrum.
Paul is the learned rabbi and the great apostle. He writes to Philemon, an undistinguished member of one of the churches he started. He is writing about Onesimus – a runaway slave who belongs to Philemon.
Paul could have addressed this situation using the power of his position. But instead of ordering Philemon and Onesimus what to do, he chooses to appeal to them on the basis of love (V9).
Instead of reminding them of their place in the pecking order below him, he use his words like “friend“ “fellow worker“, “fellow soldier“, “dear brother”, “partner”.
Instead of seeing himself as their superior, he sees himself as their equal. His attitude is the same as that of Jesus, who became one of us so that we could become like him.
For Paul, the gospel requires that every person is treated the same, because every person is loved equally by God. Some commentators believe that this seemingly insignificant letter to Philemon was like the planting of a tiny seed that grew in time to undermine the practice of slavery in the entire Roman empire.
In the same way, the gospel calls us to dismantle deference to senior clergy, to destroy racism and every other kind of prejudice in society and to drop the seeds of the gospel to demolish every barrier to God’s love. May Jesus give us the courage to do this in our own conversations, whenever the opportunity presents itself.
A postscript: many have wondered how this tiny letter came to be included in the canon of scripture. It is just possible (though no one really knows) that it is because the runaway slave is the same Onesimus who later became the great Bishop of Ephesus, after the death of the first Bishop – Timothy – Paul’s “true son in the faith” (1 Tim 1:2).
If true, this further illustrates the power of the gospel to “put down the mighty from their seat and exalt up the humble and meek”, as the Magnificat puts it.
This is my story too: this bishop was once running away from God and a slave to his own appetites and sins. But God – who shows no favouritism – rescued and restored me and has given me, as he has given you, this beautiful gospel of grace.
Please let’s treat each other as equally precious in the sight of God – and take the love of Jesus into every conversation we have.
