Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and yesterday we talked about two different templates, sets of circumstances for a reunion that can happen in life, and that we've seen happen in storytelling, and that we've seen happen in the Bible. We considered the type of reunion where nobody really did a dang thing wrong. Stuff just happened. We were in love, and I got on a plane, and then the plane crashed in the Pacific, and I was stuck on a desert island for four years, and then I had to fight my way off the island, and then I came and I found you, but you had moved on with life. You know, that kind of thing. The reunion's gonna be heartfelt. It has a high likelihood of being very pleasant and nice, but life happened. All right, so we considered that. We looked at the example of David and Jonathan in the Old Testament in the book of 1 Samuel as a biblical example of that. Then we talked about the kind of reunion that comes after people really did wrong each other. And we thought about the characters Roy and Jamie from the popular TV show Ted Lasso. And yeah, they were mean to each other, they did awful things, but in the end, you know, the relationship there was a cool reunion, a reconciliation there between the two of them. We compared that to another situation in the Bible where people really wronged each other, Jacob and Esau in the middle of the book of Genesis, and then I got choked up like a pathetic, weak man, Michael.
SPEAKER_00Look at us podcast friends. We're just like a couple of little kids reading the Bible together, having a cry.
SPEAKER_01I'm sorry, those embarrassing things happen sometimes. I could have edited it out, but it was moving to me. So we looked at these different types of reunions that could happen where really nobody did anything wrong. Another type of reunion where people did things wrong, but the reunion went well, people had soft hearts, and you got over it, and circumstances made that, I guess, possible. Today, I want to consider a third type of reunion. Oh, and by the way, the reason we're doing all of this is because we're trying to assess what kind of reunion is going on here as Onesimus is delivering the letter of Philemon to Philemon. And I think we can safely say that we've eliminated the first one. Like, understandable, we're just, oh, you know, things we just we're going different ways with our lives. No, it looks like there was some wrong here. Just how bad was it? Well, was it like Roy and Jamie bad? Or was it like Obi-Wan and Anakin bad? Because they had that scene together. This is in the third Star Wars movie. If you're not into Star Wars, it's okay, it's still gonna make sense. You got these two space wizards that fight with laser swords and stuff, and Obi-Wan, he's the old guy, he taught Anakin how to fight with laser swords and stuff. And Anakin's very pretentious, precocious, talented, arrogant, stiff-necked, prideful, and in the end, that is Anakin's downfall. And they have a confrontation finally, they have a big laser sword fight, and they both have real gripes with each other. Anakin's gripe with Obi-Wan was sometimes you were too harsh when you teach me, and I wish you would just let me do more things. And Obi-Wan's gripe with Anakin was I didn't like it when you slaughtered all those children with your laser sword. So, you know, both sides have a point here, but my point is that as a viewer, when you watch that scene, you're you're totally team Obi-Wan because you're like, the reason this reconciliation isn't going to work is because of what you did, Anakin. That was too much. That wasn't like Roy and Jamie ribbing each other in the locker room. That wasn't even like Jacob and Esau and the horrible stuff that Jacob did to deprive Esau of an inheritance that should have been his in Star Wars. Anakin, you killed kids, you're a monster. And so when you watch that, there's definitely this sense in Star Wars episode three that yeah, this isn't going to work. Too much has happened here. There's a situation that feels like it is maybe approaching that level of bad. I mean, there are a lot of situations that approach that level of bad in the Old Testament. I guess I have examples of betrayals that are so big and involve bloodshed that the reunion does go poorly. I think of stuff from the early era of the kings. I think of you know David's sons and Solomon's sons and some of the mess that happened there. But because I'm in a good mood and I want a happy example that gives us some sense of optimism, there is a story in Genesis right at the end. And this story involves the next generation after Jacob and Esau. There's a bunch of brothers, and these brothers end up lending their names to the 12 tribes of Israel, more or less. And the brothers, you know, it's the ancient Near East. They're all pretty morally complicated. We get to know a few of them, like Judah, who makes some really remarkable decisions with his family. You know, these are rough and tumble characters, but Joseph is his dad's favorite, and his dad likes Benjamin a lot as well. There's a musical and everything about this. Joseph is bequeathed a beautiful coat, and that makes all of his brothers jealous. I don't know how shrewd it was to give Joseph such a coat. I mean, I think that it might have been shrewd to kind of read the room and be like, these other kids of mine are sort of obnoxious. I think if I give Joseph a nice coat, they might be mean to him over that. But whatever the case, Joseph gets the coat, and sure enough, the rest of Jacob's sons, Jacob who also goes by Israel at this point, they are mean to him, but not kind of mean to him. They're the kind of mean to him where they push him into a pit and leave him for dead, and then they're like, wait, no, we should sell him to slavers in Egypt. Now, before we get into the reunion, because I did promise you this was a reunion story after a terrible, terrible, horrible offense and violation. But before we get into the reunion part, let me just say that the reason I wanted to point to this story is because I think it's a little bit analogous with the whole Onesimus and Philemon reunion, because they both involve slavery. And slavery, even in its best forms, and there is a gradient here. There is a sliding scale of awfulness and relative acceptability historically around the world in terms of what an actual slave master relationship might look like or what expectations might be in a culture. We're gonna get to all of that stuff in future episodes, but it involves the same institution, slavery. That's a pretty unique violation of another person. It isn't quite bloodshed, it isn't quite theft, though definitely you're stealing somebody's labor, you're stealing somebody's opportunities. So it's there, but it's a different kind of theft than like breaking into somebody's house and ripping off some of their goods or something like that. Slavery is a very unique violation, something of a category unto itself. That violation occurred between Philemon and Onesimus, and that violation occurred between Joseph and his brothers. I mean, I guess it occurred with the Egyptians who bought Joseph as a slave, and the violation occurred between Joseph and his masters when he got dragged away to Egypt in the household of Potiphar. I've got another thing we need to process through about a motif that runs through the whole Bible here. Dang it, I didn't want to split this episode in two, but I'm not gonna go soft on this motif. It's very, very important for thinking about Philemon and this idea of reconciling seemingly irreconcilable things. And it's very important that we get to that next time around and I give it proper time because it's it's of an important concept about God's role, where God is throughout the Bible when characters find themselves in these really difficult situations. So I can't shortchange it. We got to split this one in two. So I'm gonna abruptly pause right here, and then tomorrow we're gonna pick up where we left off and round out these thoughts. Cool. That's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.