Twelfth Sunday after Trinity 2025

James turns to Paul's shortest letter — the personal, urgent plea to Philemon regarding the slave Onesimus — exploring what this remarkable document says about freedom, dignity, forgiveness, and the social revolution of the Gospel.

Transcript

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So, Heavenly Father, we pray, would you send your Holy Spirit as we open your word that we might be transformed into the image of your Son and conformed to his way. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. There was an Arctic explorer in the early 1900s called Ernest Shackleton, or Ernst, excuse me, Ernst Shackleton. In preparing for one of his expeditions, he supposedly, we actually can't find the evidence for this, but it's a good apocryphal of tales, so that's not going to stop me. He supposedly put in an advert in the newspaper that read this. Men wanted for a hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months in complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. Quite the advert, eh? He's really selling it. Let me read that again. Men wanted for a hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. I wonder how you would have responded to that advert. So the story goes: thousands of young men signed up to join his expedition. Now, the reason I know that story is because uh Ernst Shackleton was an alumni of the school that I went to, and so his boat, which survives to this day, was in one of the cloisters. It's a tiny thing made of wood, uh fragile on the seas, and he and his fellow explorers uh took that boat and a couple of others down to the Arctic and they were shipwrecked. But the the important bit of the story is that all of his men managed to make it home safely. I was reflecting on that story this week as I reread the gospel reading this morning because I think Jesus' approach to ministry is very similar to Shackleton's advert. Neither of them sugarcoat the road that lies ahead of them. They don't market the kingdom of God as easy or fun or joyful. Instead, they tell exactly what the cost will be. Isn't it easy when we're talking about Christianity to want to say all the nice things and all the good bits and all the exciting bits? We want to say, hey, it's brilliant. You get to have a new life, you'll definitely be happier. Sometimes we have barbecues after the service, you'll get peace in your heart. But Jesus doesn't do any of that in this episode. Remember, he's on the way to Jerusalem. That's what we've been describing this section in the Gospel of Luke. It comes after the disciples are aware and they've decided this is who Jesus is, he really is the Messiah. And it comes on the way to Jerusalem, where Jesus will have his final uh confrontation with the political and religious rulers of the day leading to his crucifixion. And he's taking a journey down from the north of Israel, slowly through the suburbs to the city, and he's talking to the people about what it means to follow him, what it means to be on a journey with him. And at this point in his journey, he's amassed quite a crowd of people who think, yes, this man is the Messiah, and we like his miracles, and we want the fact, we like the fact that he's feeding us and setting us free. Sorry, can I ask someone to turn me down a little bit? I can hear an echo and I just think it's it's a little bit too loud. Thank you. He's amassed this big crowd, and it's so tempting, isn't it, in our day and age, but in every day and age, to want in those moments to capitalize on the prestige, to say, yes, like, subscribe, follow, find out more. And instead, Jesus turns to this crowd and he gives them a threefold message. You need to hate your life to be my disciple. You need to carry your cross if you want to follow in my footsteps. And he leaves them with this question Have you contemplated the cost? Jesus doesn't give them an easy message, something palatable to the growing crowds. Instead, he says, You must hate your life if you want to be my disciple. You need to carry your cross if you'll follow in my footsteps. And then he asks, Have you contemplated the cost involved? And he tells them two parables. In the first parable, a man is about to build a tower and he hasn't really done the maths. He doesn't know if he can afford it, but he goes forward anyway, he builds the foundations, and then he can't afford the rest, and so he's left being mocked by the people around him. And then in the second parable, a ruler goes to war, but he hasn't really thought it through. It's all bluster and bravado, and he can't actually defeat his enemy, and he's left in a worse position than he was before. Have you considered the cost of discipleship? Have you thought about what it might cost you to be a follower of Jesus to take up your cross? Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian writing while uh Germany was under Nazi occupation, and he was part of what's known as the Confessing Church, which uh went underground with refused to uh give in to the Nazis and started a resistance movement against Hitler. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship, where he contrasts two types of grace. Now, grace is the thing, if you were going to sell Christianity, grace is how you would do it. You say the good news of Christianity is that you get God's grace. All the bad things that you've done in your life, the sin that you've committed, the death that you deserve, that gets given to Christ on the cross, and by his grace, he gives you the things that you don't deserve, his life and his joy and his peace. And Bonhoeffer takes that word grace and contrasts two types, cheap grace and costly grace. Cheap grace is religion without repentance, baptism without obedience, communion without the cross. It's a grace that's preached as a general truth, a doctrine to be affirmed, but without any demand on the life of the believer. It's the kind of grace that allows us to live no differently after hearing the good news than we did before. Cheap grace comforts, but it does not transform us. In contrast, Bonhoeffer offers us costly grace. Costly grace is not something we earn, it's still a free gift, but it is never separated from the call of Christ to follow him. Costly grace comforts us with the reality that forgiveness and new life only comes through the cross. And so to share in Christ's gift of grace is to share also in his suffering. It's a grace that demands our whole life. Reconciliation, joy, and peace is given. But we have to give everything. And so Bonhoeff, the famous line from that book is this When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. When Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die. So that I think is what Jesus is inviting us to do in our gospel reading this morning, to take up our cross and follow him. Let me give you another example from our New Testament lesson, the book of Philemon. In this epistle reading, we have an extraordinary example of the cost of discipleship and the joy that can come from it from the early church. Let me give you a bit of the history of the book of Philemon because it's fascinating. Philemon was a wealthy Christian in Colossae. He was wealthy enough that his household could contain a congregation. So you've got to think a merchant of something who has a large piazza with lots of space for a congregation of maybe 20 or 30 people. Oneissimus, who's the other main character in this story, was Philemon's slave. And at some point, Onisimus ran away, probably having some stolen some things so he could afford his escape. He wronged his master, and under Roman law, Philemon, if he ever met him again, had every right to punish Onisimus severely, even to the point of death, maybe, as an example to the other slaves. This is what happens if you run away. Now, in the strange providence of God, Anisimus encountered Saint Paul while Paul was in prison. There, Anissimus became a Christian, having listened to the gospel from Paul, and became, in the years that followed, close to Paul, close enough that Paul describes him as my child and as having my own heart. And in the course of conversation, as they were getting to know one another, Paul discovers that Onisimus knows Philemon, another person that Paul already knew. And so Paul puts the dots together. He joins these three people up and says, I know Onisimus and I know Philemon, I understand the backstory. And Paul sends Onisimus back to Colossae, back to his former master, with the letter that we read this morning in his hand. Paul writes the letter, gives it to Anissimus, and says, Go back to see Philemon. And in that letter, as we read, Paul appeals to Philemon not to receive Anissimus as property, no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother in the Lord. What a striking picture we have of the gospel at work and of the way in which by picking up your cross you can ultimately overthrow the social structures of the world around you. It's worth saying that Tom Holland, a historian uh working today, describes this letter and other parts of the New Testament like it as a depth charge that was placed by the early church under the institution of slavery. It took hundreds and thousands of years for that explosion to go off. But it's because of letters like this that Paul destroyed the institution of slavery by saying, once a slave becomes a Christian, you can no longer receive them as a slave. They become your brother. And in so doing, he changed the social structure of the Roman world and of our world today. What was the costly discipleship, the costly grace, the picking up of one's cross at work in this epistle? For Oneissimus, maybe most obviously, discipleship meant risking everything to return to his former owner. To follow Christ meant stepping into a situation where he was extremely vulnerable. For Philemon, discipleship meant relinquishing his legal rights and welcoming a former slave as a brother. Discipleship for Onesimus meant financial loss, social embarrassment, perhaps even ridicule from his peers who would not understand what he was doing and probably tell him he was wrong for doing it. For Paul, discipleship meant being willing to pay the cost himself. He writes in this letter, if Onesimus owes you anything, I will pay for it. And so in one short letter, we get a miniature portrait of how costly grace can transform real lives. And as an appendix, Ignatius of Antioch, a couple of hundred years later, mentions a bishop in Ephesus named Onisimus, suggesting that not only was Onisimus given his freedom, but he went on to be a key leader in the early church. So Jesus is walking on the journey that will result in his crucifixion. And on his way, he turns to the crowd and says, If you want to follow me, you too need to take up your cross. And just like Shackleton, Jesus is clear in his advertising. The cost of following me is death. The Christian picks up their cross, dies to their own desires, to their own life, to their own hopes and dreams. Whatever it is, whatever the Spirit has been pressing on your hearts this morning, I invite you to have the courage, like Philemon, like Onisimus, take up your cross. For each of us, the call of Jesus is different, but the shape is always the same. The shape is out of a cross that Christ invites us to carry. Amen.