Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent – 13th March 2022 : Gen 15, 1-12, 17-18; Philemon 3, 17-4, 1; Luke 13, 31-end.
Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
It is around the late 50s AD. We might be in the city of Rome, or maybe Caesarea or Ephesus, there is some doubt, but we are definitely in a prison. A slave is one of the prisoners. His name is Onesimus and by upbringing in the ancient world he was most likely a worshipper of the pagan gods. In his prison he has converted to the Christian Way. His prison companion is a man who was born in Tarsus and he is known to us as St. Paul. Onesimus has become a believer in Jesus.
Onesimus was as a slave in Colossae. His slave owner may have been someone called Archippus (Col 4, 12-16) or possibly someone called Philemon. Slave ownership was part of the normal order across the Roman Empire of the ancient world.
From prison Paul sends a letter to Philemon who has some sort of leadership of the church in the city of Laodicea in Asia Minor very near to the city of Colossae, to whom St. Paul also directed one of his letters – the Letter to the Colossians.