Reframed For Freedom - Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (September 7, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Deuteronomy 30:15–20 | Psalm 1 | Philemon 1–21 | ​Luke 14:25–33

Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27).
 
There was a time, back when Christianity’s place in society was simply taken for granted, that being a Christian was often equated with simply being a ‘good citizen’… an upstanding spouse, a decent parent, a trustworthy employee, and so on. In this light, spiritual practices like prayer and Church attendance served not so much to draw us closer to God and His good ways, as to uphold the status quo of society, and encourage us to stand against anything that might challenge our familiar institutions and time-honoured ways of life.
 
As widespread as that point of view may have been at times, I think this position is pretty hard to square with the words we just heard from Jesus Christ our Lord. Far from championing cherished and traditional family roles and bonds, Jesus tells us that if we want to follow Him, we need to hate our own fathers, mothers, spouses, children, brothers, sisters, and even our own lives!
​
These strong words don’t fit so easily into our frameworks… the ways that we’re used to living our lives. And that’s kind of the point. But rather than quickly dismissing them, or finding some clever excuses for ignoring them, everyone who is serious about following Jesus needs to take these words to heart… and to try to honestly understand what it is our Lord is saying to us.
 
And these words directly challenge the notion that Jesus Christ is offering us a kind of spiritual blessing to add to and compliment our otherwise ordinary lives. No, He’s calling for a complete reorganization of even our deepest priorities, and a reframing of all our relationships… to God, to others, and even to ourselves.
 
To follow Jesus is to, in many ways, abandon our claims to the status quo… to our old ways of life… and instead we’re to let everything about us be reframed and transformed in the light of Christ and His cross. 
 
And we are given an excellent example of this reframing and transformation in action in our second reading this morning, and the story of St. Paul, his fellow Christian Philemon… and Philemon’s runaway slave named Onesimus.  
 
The devastating legacy of slavery, and the bravery and stories of those who oppose it deserves a lot more time and attention than I can give them this morning. That said, I hope that our readings from Scripture today, and our reflections on the implications of the Good News of Jesus Christ will help us to see how we are called to become agents of God’s freedom and New Life in our own contexts.
 
In the first century… and indeed for most of human history, slavery was simply taken for granted as the way that societies work. It was a time-honoured tradition… a venerable institution, going back thousands of years. I can’t remember where I heard this analogy, but someone once compared it to the way we now think of the electricity grid. The forced labour of our fellow human beings was the engine that made almost everything run, and in the Roman world that the Early Church lived in, it would have been basically impossible to imagine a working society that ran without it. 
 
Modern-day critics sometimes point out that the Bible does not explicitly focus on calling an end to slavery, and that Church leaders like St. Paul seemed not to have been bothered that much by this dehumanizing practice.
 
And yet, the reality of the cross of Christ, which clearly consumed the attention of the Apostles and the Early Church, completely undercuts and deconstructs the common lies and assumptions that made slavery possible, and this eventually led Christians to become brave leaders in the great abolitionist movements… and it continues to lead many Christians today to work hard to bring real freedom and lasting peace to oppressed people all over the world.
 
But as I said, back in St. Paul’s day, slavery was everywhere, and it could happen to people for all sorts of reasons. You could become a slave by being kidnapped, or captured after a battle… or as punishment for committing a crime. You could be born into slavery. You could end up in so much dept that you’d be forced to sell yourself as a slave in order to survive.
 
Some slave owners were much worse than others. And some jobs that slaves were forced to do were much worse than others. But one thing that all slaves had in common was that they were considered to be of lower status and value than free people. There was no sense of equality, or human rights. At the end of the day, slaves were not seen as people… but as objects to be used for the benefit of someone else.  
 
Who does that remind us of today? Who is being seen and treated as if they didn’t matter? As if their hopes, and fears, and freedom were not worth worrying about?
 
Victims of modern slavery, and human trafficking?  Migrant workers, refugees, and immigrants seeking a better life, but often finding suspicions, resentments, and lack of opportunities instead? What about those labeled as outcasts and sinners in our day? Or those without homes, living rough in our cities and chased out of our neighbourhoods? Those seeking relief in addictive substances and practices that seem to offer a brief reprieve from their pain, but actually capture and hold their lives hostage instead?
 
Who do we find it easy to see as being of lower status? Not really worth caring much about?
 
The ancient institution of slavery worked by dividing humanity up like this… pushing down untold numbers of people, and forcing them to spend their lives serving those that society deemed ‘worthy’. And most people simply took this for granted as the best way to operate.  
 
But the cross of Jesus Christ changes all that, and it challenges this time-honoured, traditional story… the familiar reality we tend to live by even now… exposing the lies that allow us to keep on denigrating and dehumanizing one another, and opening up God’s New Life, even in the midst of this broken world. 
 
In our reading today, we heard most of a letter from St. Paul the Apostle written to a fellow Christian named Philemon, focussing on the future of someone named Onesimus, Philemon’s runaway slave. At the time, St. Paul was also someone who had lost his freedom… being imprisoned because of his work sharing the Good News of Jesus the Risen Lord across the Empire.  

In the letter, St. Paul subtly puts pressure on Philemon by working out the implications of the cross… the Good News of Jesus… to do something unexpected. He doesn’t insist that Philemon simply sets Onesimus free. But neither does he simply go along with the obvious and legal thing to do, which would have been to return the freed slave to their owner. Neither of these two options would have changed or challenged the story… just how the characters were interacting within it.
 
After all, any slave-owner could choose to grant their slave freedom. It may not have been all that common, but it would have been a normal part of that slavery system. But what St. Paul does do challenges Philemon, and all of us, in an even bigger way… he reframes their complicated and messy relationship in the light of the cross, and the Good News of what Jesus accomplished there for all of us.
 
What happens is, St. Paul plans to send Onesimus back to Philemon so they can be reconciled… so he could be welcomed back not as an object to be used, but as a beloved brother… as someone Philemon was now bound to care for and love. Someone to forgive and be forgiven by. As an equal. As someone who shares in God’s own image, and who now, through Jesus, shares in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. 
 
St. Paul did not focus on offering arguments against slavery as an institution… but he was operating within a whole new and very different story! The story of God’s transforming, and redeeming love in Jesus Christ… a love which completely undermines the divisive power of slavery, and which ultimately leads us into God’s freedom and New Life. 
 
After all, even God did not simply wave His hand and condemn all of the broken systems and institutions that we humans have set up over the years from a safe distance. No, in Jesus He chose to step into them Himself, and set about shattering the lies that keep things like slavery running from the inside. 
 
Jesus came among us as one of low status… born in obscurity on the frontiers of the Empire. He chose to spend His time with the outcasts, the poor, and the powerless… not to show them how to fix themselves by fitting in and getting rich… but rather, He shared God’s love and New Life with them exactly where they were… welcoming them, whatever their current circumstances into God’s fellowship… challenging them to follow Him above all else, and transforming them into a new family in God’s good Kingdom. 
 
And when our Lord offered up His life, it was not in the romantic, glorious ways that honoured heroes seek… a noble and dignified end. No, Jesus gave Himself to death the way that troublesome slaves were dealt with: robbed of all dignity… his agony and shame displayed for everyone around to jeer at. Jesus was not just killed, He was denigrated and dehumanized at the cross for us. He took the place of the lowest of the low… in order to raise us up. 
 
And this is where the miracle… the Good News of the cross truly comes to light! For even though we humans tried to dehumanize Jesus, the way that so many people throughout history have been dehumanized, by completely sharing in the shame of the powerless and the lowly… Jesus shattered the bonds that keep us all bound.
 
God raised Jesus again from the dead, overturning our conceited and false conviction… lifting Him up to share in the glory and honour and majesty of the Most High. 
 
And through faith in Him, Jesus now shares with us His own glory, honour, and the freedom of the New Life of God. He joined Himself to us in our slavery to sin and death, and now He’s set us free to share in God’s family… not just in Heaven some day, but beginning right now… in our lives and relationships that are already being reframed by God’s redeeming love in Jesus Christ the Risen Lord… reshaping everything about us by His Holy Spirit at work within us. 
 
Our old family ties, our claims of status, and culture, and identity are all being called into question by the cross of Jesus. None of them truly define who we are anymore, or deserve our fullest devotion. Instead, we are now to learn how to live alongside and with others… and love others… not based on shared blood, or social status… but based on the gracious gift of God’s saving love, freely offered to us and to all through Jesus Christ our Risen Lord. 
 
Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27).
 
To be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to be defined… to have our lives completely reframed by the Good News of what He has done for us all at the cross: Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free… we all belong to Him, and we belong together.
 
If we would rather hold onto our old sense of self based on our world’s divisive categories, then we can choose to do that. We can choose to keep on living as though these other connections and bonds are what really give us life.
 
But if we choose that path, we will be unable to take part in the New Life that God has opened up for us through Jesus His Son. The New Life where all are equally welcomed, and challenged, and changed, and set free to share in God’s love forever. 
 
Paul called Philemon to embrace and welcome home his old runaway slave as a brother… completely changing, and reframing their relationship from the inside out. 
 
And Jesus calls all who follow Him to know that it will come at a real cost: the cost of letting go of our old ways,  and categories, and allegiances… ways of relating to those around us… even those closest to us… in order to have our own lives and relationships reframed in the light of God’s saving love at the cross, and the Good News of Christ’s resurrection. 
 
So today, may we count the cost of saying yes yet again to Jesus, and still come forward in faith to receive, and to live out the New Life that He offers us and our world. Amen.