READING:
Philemon 1–21

Hospitality and Love

at the Heart of Christian Community

I wonder what it feels like to live in a world where your life is owned by someone else? Where your voice, your choices, your very body are treated not as your own but as someone else’s property. And I wonder, too, how we carry the legacy of slavery, both historic and modern, in our communities today. What scars remain in our societies, in our economies, even in our churches? And what does it mean for us, as Christians, to face them honestly?

The television series Roots, broadcast in the 1970s, brought the reality of slavery home with harrowing clarity. Following the story of Kunta Kinte, an African man captured and enslaved in America, it forced audiences to face the brutality, dehumanisation, and generational trauma of slavery. It shocked and unsettled, but it also opened the way for deeper conversations about justice, dignity, and human worth. It was a cultural moment that dared people to ask uncomfortable questions about how the past still shapes the present.

The tiny New Testament letter we hear today, Paul’s letter to Philemon, might seem at first glance like a polite, private note. But it, like Roots, confronts us with uncomfortable truths. It brings us face to face with a slave- Onesimus – whose future lay entirely in the hands of his master. In the polite tone  of letter-writing, Paul addresses a situation that cuts to the heart of the gospel. He invites us to imagine something radically different, something countercultural: a new way of seeing one another, not as possessions, but as beloved siblings in Christ.

Paul’s Unusual Approach

Paul could have commanded Philemon to act. He had the authority, he had the theological conviction, and he had the moral right. “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty,” Paul writes, “yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.” Notice what Paul does: he refuses to make this a matter of rule or law, and instead makes it about relationship and transformation. He doesn’t demand obedience. He asks Philemon to see differently. To see Onesimus as no longer a slave but a brother, as a human being.

Hospitality as the Mark of Christian Community

This is a huge challenge. Paul continues: “If you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.” Hospitality here is not a matter of politeness, of serving tea and cake to guests. It is about reshaping the very terms of relationship. To welcome Onesimus as Paul himself, to treat him as an equal partner in the gospel, meant overturning the social order. It meant no longer defining people by their usefulness, their class, or their status, but recognising in them the image of Christ.

Hospitality, in this sense, is the mark of Christian community. It is the test of whether we have truly been changed by the gospel.

Love, Not Command

Paul’s approach rests on love, not compulsion. Love, not law. He refuses to pressure Philemon into doing the right thing. Instead, he appeals to the heart, to freedom. Because love cannot be legislated. Love cannot be imposed. Love must be chosen.

And here lies the question for us: I wonder what changes in us when we act out of love, not duty? What happens when hospitality is no longer an obligation but an overflow of compassion? What happens when we extend love not only to those who look like us, think like us, or worship like us, but to those whom society has pushed to the margins – the refugee, the ex-offender, the homeless neighbour, the person we find most difficult?

The Cost of Reconciliation

Paul knows that such transformation is costly. It is not cheap grace. To Philemon he writes, “If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.” Paul is willing to bear the cost himself. Love, real love, demands risk. It calls us to bear one another’s burdens, to take responsibility, to step into broken relationships.

Reconciliation is never easy. It asks us to look honestly at the wounds of history, at the fractures in our families and churches, at the divisions in our politics and communities. It asks whether we are willing to make space for the other, to risk forgiveness, to start again in love.

I wonder

• how far we are willing to go in our own context.
• How far are we willing to repair what is broken?
• To stand alongside those who have been exploited?
• To make room for them as brothers and sisters rather than as outsiders?
• What does true reconciliation look like, not as an abstract idea, but in the very real lives we live each day?

Hospitality as the Shape of Christ

Ultimately, Paul’s letter mirrors the very shape of Christ and the Gospel .  Just as Paul offers to bear the debt of Onesimus, so Christ bears the weight of our brokenness. Just as Philemon is asked to welcome Onesimus as a brother, so Christ welcomes us into God’s family. The pattern is the same: grace received, grace shared; welcome received, welcome extended.

The church is called to embody that same shape, that same hospitality, that same costly love. Not communities marked by exclusion or hierarchy, but communities reshaped by Christ’s radical welcome.

Conclusion

Paul’s letter to Philemon may be only twenty-one verses long, but it carries an urgent and unsettling challenge. The gospel calls us to live not by command but by love, not by coercion but by freedom, not by exclusion but by hospitality. In a world scarred by slavery, inequality, and exclusion, the invitation is as urgent now as it was then: to build communities where every person is welcomed as a beloved child of God.

I wonder how we might begin to live this today- in our homes, our churches, our workplaces, our politics, our economics. And I wonder whether, if Paul were writing to us, he would still be saying: “If you consider me your partner, welcome them as you would welcome me.”

Photo Credit: Priscilla Du Preez (Unsplash.com)