As parents we watch with some degree of anxiety as our children enter school for the first time, wondering how they will do, hoping that they will interact well, make friends, perhaps not be scared, and learn in an environment that is healthy and life-giving.  This continues as our children grow up and move on into college and the workforce.  As adults we experience sometimes the uncertainty and unknown aspects of beginning new jobs and perhaps relocating our lives and families.

There are also times where we have experienced a certain type of relationship with another person or group and then something happens that changes that relationship.  Depending upon the circumstance, this can heighten or lessen the level of comfort we have in this new or changed relationship. Either by choice or circumstance, we all have to embark upon journeys that ultimately will lead to new relationships.  Sometimes we welcome and indeed seek out these new relationships.  Other times they be seem forced upon us, and perhaps in a violent way.  In all scenarios, we are ultimately always going to be faced with the necessity to forge new relationships.  The attitudes with which we approach these relationships can make all the difference in the world.

In today’s first reading (Phlm 7-20), Paul, an old man and now imprisoned, is writing to his friend Philemon, telling him that he is sending back to him a former slave of Philemon’s.  This former slave, Onesimus, has been in prison with Paul and become very dear to him.  Paul is enjoining Philemon to receive Onesimus, not as a slave at all, but in an entirely new relationship:

“…that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord.”

We don’t hear how Onesimus or Philemon feel about this.  But the point that Paul seems to be making is the possibility for radical transformation that can occur in relationships when we look beyond labels and prescriptions of how we look, and indeed treat each other, to the more open and broad embrace in Christ.  Philemon and Onesimus are “brothers in Christ,” no matter their “former” roles.  This fuller context in Life opens up the possibility for new relationship.  And this new relationship will almost certainly have to begin with an openness to healing and forgiveness.

It’s not a magical formula that “being in Christ” promises. It’s rather the slow and steady yet committed response to each other that admits and acknowledges the hurt that has resulted in a relationship and then strives to remain open to the healing that can come in some perhaps unknown shape or form, but which can eventually lead to a new and transformed relationship.

Many times it takes a third party to help this transformation to begin.  We hear in the scriptures how Paul dearly loves both Philemon and Onesimus and desires more than anything that the two can be reconciled in some way. In speaking of them, Paul says to Philemon, “Beloved: I have experienced much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the holy ones have been refreshed by you, brother,” and then about Onesimus, Paul says, “I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you” Finding something new in relationships that are scarred can take creativity and imagination.  I am not talking about blindness and naiveté here.  It’s not about just “making something up.” It takes honesty, courage, openness and most of all kindness.  The deeper we have to dig, the more uncomfortable it may get, but the greater the “rewards,” which contain the germ for authentic transformation.  Could this be the type of new relationship alluded to in the “Kingdom of God?”

The Gospel provides a corrective to sometimes an unrealistic picture we may have of the kingdom of God (Lk 17:20-25):

“Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus said in reply, ‘The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.’ ”

 

The kingdom of God is not an “event” so much as it is a way of being.  We are already in it – the Kingdom of God!  It’s our ordinary lives, our current relationships, but with the constant possibility for more.  They say that there is no time like the present, but it may be more correct to say that there is no time BUT the present.  The chance to heal is now.  We can only breathe in the present. The “Kingdom of Heaven” is not before us, or after us, it’s not a location or specific time – it’s AMONG US!  The question is whether or not we will open ourselves up to the possibility that we can engage with hope in the possibility of new relationship.  If so, we have to let go of “something.”  And we’ll know what that “something” is when we are honest with ourselves and others.  Could this be the “refreshment” that Paul is speaking about in his letter to Philemon?

 

Paul mentions the word “refresh” twice in his letter to Philemon.  He speaks of how he is refreshed by his relationship both with Philemon (the slave “owner”) and Onesimus (the slave) and how this refreshment can extend outward to the two of them, in Christ, i.e., in honest solidarity with each other, and even beyond.  This “refreshment” is coming to Paul, a man who is old and imprisoned and means for him the possibility of renewed love in relationship.  This is how Paul lives in Christ – this is what enlivens him – renewing relationship with others.

How can we start to look for a “freshness” in the face of what seems perhaps in our nation and world as insurmountable divisions in relationships?  How can begin to “refresh” each other?

“Refresh my heart in Christ… because the hearts of the holy ones have been refreshed by you!”

Peace

Thomas