It is often the case that people of faith are called
irrational and weak, and told that their Christian faith is just a
psychological crutch. It grows even
worse if a person of Christian faith claims to have had a “spiritual”
experience. Then we are called crazy. 500 years ago such thinking would have been
rare. But today, such thoughts are
regular occurrence for us living in the wake of two key philosophers, Renee
Descartes who lived in the 1500’s concurrent with the Reformation and Immanuel
Kant who lived in the 1700’s. Forgive me
the lesson in philosophy to which I will subject you.
Descartes was a mathematician who became preoccupied
with the question “How do I know I exist”.
His answer came to him one afternoon while he was awakening from a
nap. “I think, therefore I am.” I exist because I can have inner thoughts,
reason, and know things. This idea of his pushed the Western world into an over
fascination with subjectivity and individualism. Subjectivity, the inner world of “me”, began
to take our world be storm.
Moving on, if you ever wondered how Mainline
Christianity found it’s demise in congregations becoming social clubs concerned
with moral good due to religious beliefs, then Immanuel Kant is your man. He was fascinated with how we know what we
know. He concluded that there is no such
thing as objective knowledge. We cannot
know a thing in itself. All we can know
is our experience of a thing and what sort of sense we can make of it in our
own heads.
Kant’s effect on the world of religion was to say
that God is ultimately unknowable and all we can know of God (if there is one)
is a matter of our own personal beliefs. The great physicist, Sir Isaac Newton, taught
that God gave order to the universe.
Kant turned that into being us who order the universe with our innate
ability to reason. In Kant’s world, the
human mind becomes Newton’s God. Kant
further went on to hold that the only good that belief in God and participation
in church can serve is the undergirding of moral order in society.
Due to Descartes and Kant for us Westerners faith has
become a matter of intellectual assent to ideas about God in whom we struggle
with placing personal trust. Faith is
purely a subjective matter. When this is
all faith is, atheism soon abounds.
This bias towards subjectivity shows up in how we
translate into English Paul’s great definition of faith that we find in
Hebrew’s 11:1. We read: “Now faith is
the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (NRSV). Words like “assurance” and “conviction” turn
faith into something totally subjective like “I believe, therefore God is.” That is not what Biblical faith is.
A study of the Bible shows that God is real on God’s
own terms. God makes himself known. God communicates to us. God has revealed himself to us in, through, and
as Jesus Christ. God is at work in his
world in, through, and as the Holy Spirit and has included us as his people,
the church, in his saving, restoring, renewing, and recreating work. This is a given. It doesn’t matter if we “believe” it or
not. It’s what God is doing and God will
bring this promised hoped for saving of his creation to its completion. What matters is faithfulness.
A more literal translation of Hebrews 11:1 is “Now
faith is the ‘hypostasis” of the hoped for things, the coming to light of
unseen things.” What Paul is saying
there is far from a subjective matter of personal belief. The word “hypostasis” is a word that belongs
in the world of objectivity. To the
ancient Greek philosopher it meant the actuality or actualizing of a hidden
reality. To the ancient Greek scientist
“hypostasis” was the result of the sedimentary process. Fill a bucket with pond water. It appears clear or mostly clear but come
back later and sediment will have formed in the bottom of the bucket. This is the coming to actuality of things
hidden. To the ancient Greek doctor
“hypostasis” was urine and feces – the actualizing or end result of hidden
processes.
For Paul “hypostasis” is God’s plan for creation
coming into our sphere of reality – on earth as it is in heaven. Faith is the coming into our sphere of
reality of the hoped for things, the coming to light of hidden things. God’s faithfulness in love brings it about. The part we play is not a matter of
subjective beliefs and trust, but more so to respond in kind to God’s steadfast
love and faithfulness. In fact, it would
be closer to Paul’s intent to say that faithfulness rather than faith is the
hypostasis of the hoped for things, the coming to light of things hidden.
Looking at Philemon, what we have in this letter is a
good example of what this “hypostasis” looks like. It is the forming of Christian fellowship by
faithfulness and love. Paul commended
Philemon for his faithfulness and love for the Lord Jesus and all the saints
that has given rise to fellowship in Philemon’s household church. Paul had a word for this fellowship,
“koinonia”. Koinonia was “in Christ”
fellowship – gatherings of people in which Jesus was embodied through the work
of the Holy Spirit amidst the faithfulness and love of God’s people.
Koinonia is egalitarian in nature. All people are equal. Churches in Paul’s day were household
churches in which slaves and their wealthy patrons and matrons, Jews and
non-Jews, men and women all shared the same status of child of God. They gathered together for worship in which
everyone could contribute and then they shared a meal that included a
celebration of Holy Communion. They sat
at table together.
This type of fellowship was unheard of in Paul’s
world. Master and slave did not sit at
the same table for a meal regarding each other as equals. But this fellowship, this “koinonia” on earth
is the hypostasis of as it is in heaven.
Faithfulness in Jesus name is displayed by regarding no one as better or
less than yourself and by erasing the dividing lines of wealth, status, gender,
race, nationality, and especially hostility.
Christian fellowship is faithfulness exhibited in mutual, sacrificial,
unconditional love. It is fellowship
that actualizes the hoped for new humanity – the family of God in Christ who
bear his image.
Koinonia, “in Christ” fellowship, is a faithfulness
that embodies reconciliation. When
relationships in the church are broken, we in and according to the love of
Christ strive to heal them. This is the
hypostasis of Jesus having reconciled humanity to God through his death on the
cross that destroyed anything and everything that separates us from God and
from one another.
Paul’s letter to Philemon is a case study in all
this. Paul wants Philemon to accept Onesimus
into his fellowship in a way different than before when Onesimus was an
unbelieving slave. Philemon was a
wealthy patron of the Colossian church.
Onesimus was his slave. Somehow
Onesimus and Paul met up due to Paul’s imprisonment. Historically, scholars have said that
Onesimus was a runaway slave, but it is more likely that Philemon sent him
there to assist Paul in prison.
While there with Paul, Onesimus became a follower of
Jesus. Paul says he gave new birth to
him in the Lord and calls him his own child and so also he reminds Philemon
that he owes Paul his life as well in the same way. Paul goes on to make a strong yet innuendo-ed
case that Onesimus and Philemon are now brothers in the Lord due to Paul.
Philemon, fathered by Paul in the Lord, should have
come to prison and cared for Paul himself but he didn’t and sent Onesimus in
his stead. Paul is now sending Onesimus
back to Philemon because Paul has discovered something. Onesimus, the slave, is also Philemon’s
brother. It would have been totally
acceptable in Paul’s day for male heads of household to have children by their
female slaves. Onesimus was likely a
half-brother to Philemon. In verse 16
Paul makes it clear that he wants Philemon to accept Onesimus back into his
household with a new status - “no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a
beloved brother especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh
and in the Lord.”
Paul makes it clear that Philemon and Onesimus are
not only brothers in the Lord. They are
also brothers in the flesh and he wants Philemon to do right by his half-brother
and not regard him anymore as a slave but more so as an equal in his household
which he inherited from their father. In
“koinonia” the fact that Onesimus is the son of a slave woman has no bearing.
The implications of this are huge. This is reconciliation that lifts up the
lowly and raises them in status. It is a
skeleton in the family closet being brought out into public view and made
right. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in
Heaven.”
Paul in all his wiliness is making sure that Philemon
will follow through. He addresses this
letter to the whole household and therefore, the whole household will hear it
read to them in public and Philemon will have to follow through on order to
save face. Paul also says to prepare a
room for him because he will soon come and see that Philemon has followed
through. Paul also assumes any debt
Onesimus might have so that Philemon has nothing to lose but everything to gain
through his faithfulness in the Lord.
Philemon is a little letter, 300 words, about the
faithful handling of a family matter that would have absolutely overturned the
social norms of power and status in Paul’s world. Philemon, known for his faithfulness and his
love towards Jesus and the saints, must deal faithfully with this “family
matter” created by his father’s adulterous affair with a slave. But according to “koinonia” it is not right for
Philemon to own his half-brother as a slave so he must resolve this blemish in
a way that it becomes an hypostasis of the King Jesus’ kingdom on earth.
The family can be a place of painful secrets which
faithfulness and love in Christ can heal.
The hypostasis of heaven on earth is a family matter. May it come to light in our own. Amen.
