A knock at the door. That is one of the most interesting concepts in the history of ever because a knock at the door is a mystery box, right? You don't know what's gonna be on the other side. There are other things in life that are metaphorical mystery boxes. Like when I was a kid growing up, you know we had landline telephones, we didn't have caller ID yet. So the phone would ring and it's a mystery. Who's on the other side? If you're in a family of five, is a 20% chance it might be for me? Is it opportunity? Is it tough news? Is it information I need to know? Or is it going to be some stupid scammer trying to get me to buy their dumb thing? It's a mystery box. You get notifications on your phone. The mystery doesn't linger very long because it takes a tilt over the wrist and a glance of the eyes to see whatever the dumb notification is, and the tension goes away very quickly. But a knock at the door, that's kind of the granddaddy of them all in terms of a notification, isn't it? There's a lot of energy that goes into a knock at the door. Somebody had to decide to figure out where you live, to set aside all other things they were going to do with that time in their life, and they had to march themselves over there and put themselves out there in real human space and knock at your door. Well, when that happens, you don't immediately know who it is most of the time. You're in another part of the house, the apartment, the property. And what's your first thought when you hear that? It's who could it be now? I don't think I'm expecting anyone. I wonder what that would be about. And you start to make your way toward the door, and you've got time there to let the mystery percolate. And then doors are just amazing mystery boxes, too, because physically you go from I can't see you because there's a thing in the way to swing it open and oh, the mystery is revealed. Here you are. But sometimes the mystery persists even after you open the door. You're like, well, who is this person? Why are you here? Other times you immediately know what this is about just by nature of who the person is who's standing at the door. Well, I know who you are, and I know what you're here to talk about. And of course, sometimes when we think about the really memorable knocks in our lives, they're sad memories, because what was on the other side of the door was really tough news. Other times, though, some of the most beautiful blessings of my life have happened there. People who haven't seen in a long time, or even more so, people I never thought I would see again standing on the other side of that door. So before the knock, I had a relationship I thought was over and a part of my past, but as soon as I swung the door open, all of a sudden, I'm opening the door on resurrecting that relationship. And that is exactly the kind of scenario we're running into here in the ancient first century letter of Philemon. There's a knock at the door, and it's somebody who should not be knocking at the door. It's somebody who the person inside the household thought they would never see again. So here's Philemon, master of a house. Anybody at this point in history who was master of a house would have had bondservants and slaves attached to that household. Some of them would have done difficult labor and service around the household, others would have been trained as scribes, managers, tutors. My guess would be that Philemon's former slave Onesimus was the latter. But at some point, the understandable and innate call of freedom that all of us feel rang loud in the ears of Onesimus, and he decided that he was going to take a gigantic risk, a risk that would put his very life in danger. But he took the risk nonetheless. It looks like Onesimus stole some things from Philemon, his master, and used it to fund his escape. Onesimus, as we've discussed, then somehow runs into the Apostle Paul while Paul is in prison, and there Onesimus becomes a Christian. He and Paul agree together that Onesimus should go back to his former household, his former master, probably the only household Onesimus had ever known, and that Onesimus would not be going empty-handed, but that he would instead be carrying a letter written with the authority of Paul, the authority of the church, indeed the authority of Christ. And that letter was intended to compel Philemon to reimagine his relationship with his former slave in the context of Christian brotherhood. This is very complicated. This is very delicate. On the one hand, when Onesimus knocks on the door and Philemon swings it open in shock to see someone he never thought he'd saw again. On the one hand, this is like scenarios you've experienced where you've had a falling out with someone, and now one of the two parties has made the effort, and I never thought I'd see you again. I have imagined so many times what I would say, but now it's here and the words are caught in my throat, and the adrenaline rush is making me shaky. And I'm afraid if I open my mouth and speak, my voice is going to crack and betray how terrified and shocked I am in this situation. On the one hand, this is a very familiar scenario to you and me, but on the other hand, this isn't a normal falling out. These aren't peers. The one guy, even if it was completely normative in the entire world in this moment in history, still the one party owned the other party. Now, I've never tried to reconcile something like that before, not in my own life, not with pastoral counseling, not with jumping in as a friend and trying to negotiate something between mutual friends who've got crossways with each other. I don't have any experience with this. I don't understand that dynamic from a firsthand perspective, but I'm smart enough to know and I just barely have enough empathy to understand that this reunion, this knock at the door, and subsequent opening of the door was going to have a lot of layers of complexity to it. Here's the thing it's easy to sit on our high horse of we know everything because we're the ones who are alive now. And whoever's alive now, I guess, by default, is the smartest. And the dead people aren't really here to defend how they saw the world and what they did. So we will tend to win all the arguments with the dead and with previous cultures about how things ought to be. It is very easy for us to sit in the judgment seat and look back on history and be like, this is how everybody ought to have done things. And maybe we're right. Know that people in the future are going to sit in the judgment seat toward you and toward me as well. And they're going to have a lot to say about a lot of the things that we thought were normal as well. Well, as we imagine this door swinging open, I have to invite you to try to extend to both parties here the benefit of the doubt and the ability to imagine that these might be okay people in the same way that you can extend that grace and that patience to yourself and to people you love in this day and age, even though we're all doing stuff that people in the future are going to look back on and think we were complete idiots for doing it. Here's the point two people who are humans, who are both sort of doing the thing that makes sense in their moment in history, are caught together in this instant where there is a knock at the door. The knock happens, the door opens. Either Philemon himself swung it open or he was summoned to the door by whoever answered. And then there's this moment of shock as they size each other up. Who speaks first? What did it sound like? Let's imagine a couple different scenarios. Sometimes, especially in movies, when you see something like that happen, the greeting is nothing more than the other person's name. Hang on a minute!
SPEAKER_01Onesimus. Or the other way. Hang on a minute! Philemon. Or by title. Hang on a minute! Door opens.
SPEAKER_02Master. Maybe it was like that and it was ice cold when Onesimus showed up. Maybe personality-wise, they play it more like we do in the mountain west or the upper midwest of the United States of America, which is to downplay the obvious tension and try to act cool. Hang on a minute! Hey, Philemon. Onesimus. Wow. How are you doing? I think that's the way we would do it now, or most people who exist in my circle, and then we would inch our way toward the difficult thing. There's another way I like to imagine it might have played out for the sake of time. Maybe we'll explore that one tomorrow. But this is what I know for sure. The companion letter to Philemon, that's the book of the Bible we call Colossians, was carried to Colossae at the same time by the same guys. And we know that Onesimus was one of the two dudes who showed up with these letters. Let me just read you the passage real quick. Colossians 4, right here toward the end. Tychicus, T-Y-C-H-I-C-U-S, cool name, will tell you all the news about me. He's a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow servant of the Lord. This is Paul talking to the people, the church of Colossae, which would include Philemon. I'm sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts. He's coming with Onesimus, our faithful and dear brother, who is one of you. They will tell you everything that's happening here. So look, we might not have the details of what this meeting looked like, but I think we can pretty clearly establish from what we read at the end of Colossians that this meeting did happen. That Onesimus, with Tychicus in tow for maybe emotional support, did deliver this letter himself to Philemon. The runaway slave voluntarily walked right back to his master's household and handed him a letter and began the incredibly complex process of figuring out how they move forward in light of so many factors. It would be really easy for us to just flip open the book of Philemon. That's only 25 verses. Let's read it. Okay, well, that's nice. Paul looks, sounds like he's talking to somebody he knows and he's like, oh, there's a you know problem with this guy. Let's work things out and have it just be that simple. But picture the most impactful knocks on the door in the history of your life. Picture the most significant relational tensions from which it feels like there's no way out in the history of your entire life. And together, we got to try to empathetically apply how those things feel and the complexity of that kind of stuff to this situation and these few words that we get as an opportunity to peek into something like that, into what was really the biggest thing that had ever happened for at least one participant in this conversation and maybe more. The book of Philemon might feel short, simple, and straightforward, but before we even get into the theology of it, the relational nature of what is happening here is massively complex and delicate. Tomorrow I want to imagine that other scenario for their greeting and how it might have played out that I teased a bit earlier. I'm looking forward to that, but this is plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.