Philemon 1-21 Unlearning (Hoffacker) – Bible study

Sermon Philemon 1-21 Unlearning

Check out these helpful resources
Biblical Commentary
Sermons
Children’s Sermons
Hymn Lists

Philemon 1-21

Unlearning

The Rev. Charles Hoffacker

At this time of year, students and teachers are returning to educational institutions of every kind. Pre-schools. Elementary schools. Middle schools. Hugh schools. Colleges and universities and graduate schools. New friendships are established. New books are cracked open. New subjects are explored. This is the season when the great national engine of learning cranks up to full speed. This is an exciting, energetic time. The air around every school building and campus just about crackles with newness.

In our better moments, we are a people in love with education. Families celebrate vigorously the graduation of one of their own from high school. It’s a milestone when a family produces a college graduate, whether the first one or the fiftieth. More and more, we find that education does not, should not, cannot stop. Often the most eager students on a college campus are people well into adulthood. Programs such as Elderhostel demonstrate that love for learning can burn brightly in hearts of any age.

We nod in agreement then, when Henry Ford tells us: “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning is young.” We nod in agreement also when we hear a more modern slogan: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Yes, in our better moments, we are a people in love with education.

All of us need to continue our learning; it should be a lifetime enterprise. But for every one of us except the youngest children there is another task that’s also important: what I will call unlearning.

As opportunities for learning continue to multiply, so there is increased need for unlearning and the wisdom it brings. Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock, put it this way: “The illiterate of the future are not those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Today’s second reading is the complete text of a short letter in the New Testament: Paul’s brief, provocative, almost teasing note to his convert Philemon. In it, Paul challenges Philemon to unlearn something and to learn something else in its place.

To start with, some background. Paul is in prison. There he has made the acquaintance of a runaway slave named Onesimus. Onesimus has become a Christian. It turns out that the master Onesimus ran away from is none other than another of Paul’s converts, namely Philemon. Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon bearing is his hand the letter we heard read this morning.

And what does Paul say? Paul gladly acknowledges how Philemon has been an excellent example in showing love to other Christians. Paul also recognizes that he could command Philemon’s obedience, but prefers instead to appeal to him on the basis of love.

Then Paul goes on to the heart of his letter. He is pleading with Philemon on behalf of Onesimus, the runway slave he has sent back from where he came. Paul calls himself the father of Onesimus, his spiritual faith in the Christian faith, and admits that Onesimus could have remained with him and helped him greatly in his old age. But Paul chose instead to recognize Philemon’s claim on Onesimus, and so sent the slave back to where he had escaped from.

Paul indicates that Philemon is not to receive Onesimus back as a troublesome slave, but instead welcome him as a beloved brother in the Lord. Any wrong Onesimus has done is to be charged to Paul’s account. In other words, the debt of Onesimus is to be considered paid, since Philemon was in debt to Paul for his Christian life.

A SUBSCRIBER SAYS: “BEST OF ALL THE “HELPERS” I’VE FOUND!”

TRY SERMONWRITER!
Resources to inspire you — and your congregation!

GET YOUR FOUR FREE SAMPLES!
Click here for more information

What we have in this letter is an invitation to unlearning. Philemon starts out thinking of himself as the slave owner offended against by Onesimus. Paul invites him to unlearn that understanding of himself and to accept instead a different self-understanding. Philemon is to see himself not as the master of Onesimus but as his brother in the Lord. To achieve this purpose, Paul, writing from his prison cell, chooses to persuade rather than command.

What finally happens? This brief letter is all Scripture offers us about the story of Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus. But according to a church tradition, Philemon did manage to unlearn and relearn. he set Onesimus free, and dispatched him to Rome where once more Onesimus was of great help to Paul.[ The Great Horologion or Book of Hours (Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1997), p. 421.]

What we need to unlearn is often firmly embedded in our minds. It may be something we have never examined or considered. We simply assumed this was the way things were. If we are to unlearn something of this sort, it hardly seems effective for someone to command us to do so. The best others can do for us is to persuade us, gently yet firmly, to unlearn and relearn. Such persuasion can be long, hard work, with no guarantee of success, yet it can produce surprising, even widespread results.

A case in point is the work of the American Quaker John Woolman. Woolman lived in the eighteenth century. Many of his fellow Quakers were affluent, conservative slaveholders. As a young man, John Woolman set his goal to do what he could to rid the Quakers of the terrible practice of slaveholding. His adult life was largely devoted to this. What was his method? Like St. Paul, he resorted to persuasion.

Although Woolman was not a sturdy man, he nonetheless traveled repeatedly up and down the East Coast by foot or horseback over the course of many years. He would visit Quaker slaveholders and ask them questions questions like: What does the owning of slaves do to you as a moral person? What kind of institution is this slaveholding that you intend to pass on to your children? He helped them unlearn what almost the entire society took for granted. He helped them learn something else in its place.

These Quakers were not pushovers. Yet Woolman made progress, slow progress, one person at a time, over the course of thirty years. Gradually the Quakers gave up slaveholding. They became the first religious group in America formally to denounce and forbid slavery among their members. This transformation was due in large part to the work of John Woolman.

What if America had had several people like that criss-crossing the colonies, persuading their fellow citizens to give up slaveholding? Perhaps the Civil War, with all its carnage, could have been avoided. Perhaps race relations would not be what they remain today: an unhealed wound in our national soul.[Robert K. Greenleaf, The Power of Servant Leadership, ed. by Larry C. Spears (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1998), pp. 133-35.]

There is another name for this process of unlearning and relearning, a specifically religious name. It is conversion. The essence of conversion is seeing things differently than you saw them before. Christian conversion is a matter of seeing more and more of life in the radiant and truth-revealing light of Christ.

As the terms unlearning and relearning suggest a process, in the same way conversion refers to a process, or if you will, a series of conversions. Whatever the order in which they appear, these conversions can include conversion to God, to Christ, to the church, to discipleship, to a life of prayer, to the sharing of faith, to the doing of merciful deeds. There can be conversion to the poor, to the world, to creation, and other conversions as well.

Like our learning, our process of unlearning and relearning needs to be life-long. There are so many wrong directions we can go, and Christ keeps calling us to turn around, turn around and meet him in the thousand ways Christ makes himself known. Our turning around is conversion, an unlearning and relearning.

Unless our heart has hardened to a remarkable degree, each of us is caught up in some process of unlearning at this time in our lives. It can feel awkward, even painful. Something we once counted on, that we may have accepted without question, is appearing hollow and untrue and no longer alive. Do not fear! With the unlearning comes relearning. What is no longer acceptable gives way to something authentic.

Love learning. It brings knowledge and mastery. But love unlearning even more. It brings wisdom and wonder and mystery. It clears out a space in the heart where the Trinity comes to dwell.

— Copyright 2006, The Rev. Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission.