Proper 18C 2013
Father Adam Trambley
September 8, 2013, St. John’sSharon
Philemon, Modern-Day Slavery, and Just War
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| Probably not how Paul, Philemon and Onesimus dressed. |
This
morning’s reading from Philemon is an interesting one, both for what it says
and how it has been used. Paul is
writing a letter to someone who has become a Christian through his efforts, a
man named Philemon. Philemon owns a
slave named Onesimus who ran away and somehow has ended up helping Paul in
prison. While serving Paul, Onesimus has also come to Christ. So Paul sends the slave back to his owner
with this short letters saying, in effect, your slave is now a Christian, so
treat him like a beloved brother, not a slave, and, by the way, I really need
his help so I’m going to ask you to send him back to me now. Paul’s rhetoric is actually sort of
humorous. He makes a pun on Onesimus’s
name, which means useful, and he basically tells Philemon that he has every
right to order him to send Onesimus back, but he’d rather ask and let Philemon
send him back voluntarily. And we don’t
have much more, except for a tradition that Onesimus later went on to become an
early Bishop of Ephesus.
At
various times, this letter has been used to argue for two contrasting
positions. The first position is that
Saint Paul supported slavery since he clearly recognizes Philemon as Onesimus’s
rightful master. Maybe he wanted masters
to be nicer to their Christian slaves, but he’s still OK with the
institution. On the other side, nothing
Paul says really supports slavery, and when he says Philemon has Onesimus back
no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother, maybe he means he really is no
longer a slave ethically, but cannot legally free him. We can see how both sides might want to use
this passage instead of hearing what the Bible is really saying here, which is
that Philemon needs to act like a Christian, even when dealing with
slaves. Christian ethics has much to say
against slavery, but discerning it requires more in depth work than a few
scripture quotes in support of an already made up mind, however noble that
mind’s decisions may be. 
Now I’m
not really interested in preaching about slavery this morning, even though it
is always easier for the preacher to rail against sins everyone in the
congregation is against, as well. No
plantation owners or slave ship captains here this morning, I trust. Before moving on too quickly, thought, I
should note that human trafficking is still a huge problem today, with the
United Nations crime-fighting office reporting conservatively that at least 2.4
million people were enslaved worldwide in 2012, and 80% of those are exploited
as sexual slaves. The I-80 trucking
corridor not far from here is one of the places in the United States where such
slavery remains a problem, and anyone who has solicited a prostitute or who
regularly views internet pornography is almost certainly supporting this modern
slave trade.
What I
want to turn to today, though, is the question of how we decide as Christians
to take military action. The airwaves
have been dominated recently about the right response for the US to make in response
to Syria’s likely use of chemical weapons.
I’m not going to give you an answer to that question today, but I want
to walk through the steps that the Christian ethical tradition has given to us
to make that decision. Part of the
strength of the Episcopal Church is that we expect people to learn what they
need to know to inform their consciences so they can make the best ethical
decisions in their own lives and in the lives of their communities. Right now, the media is filled with talking
heads, including Christian ones, that provide all sorts of reasons for their
opinions, but few who are actually evaluating what is happening based on the
best Christian ethical teaching.
I want
to start with two easy, Christian-sounding ways of addressing the question that
are ultimately inadequate. The first
method is using isolated Bible passages that are interpreted to speak directly
to the current situation. Often this
involves reading Biblical histories and prophecies addressed to specific people
about a specific situation in the past as referring directly to our present
time. Babylon or Assyria may be interpreted
to mean any current enemy. Modern Israel
or the United States may be seen as the recipient of Biblical passages intended
to give direction to Davidic kings or to Jewish exiles returning from Babylon
or to the early church suffering from Roman persecutions. Certainly scripture is meant to continue
speaking to us and it does speak into our present situations. But the modern secular state of Israel is not
the same as its Biblical forbearer, and the United States, while certainly
having a particular mission, is not synonymous with God’s people. We also always need to be cautious that no
one simply makes a decision then finds the scripture to back it up – especially
when finding scriptures speaking of the defeat of some Middle-Eastern enemy that
once attacked ancient Israel are fairly easy to find.
On the
other side of the coin, some Christians hold a pacifist ethic saying that war
can never be used in any situation. This
position is one of the oldest in Christianity, deriving from Jesus own words
about loving our enemies and turning the other cheek. Those Christians whose consciences direct
them to such sacrificial love are to be commended, and, if consistently lived
out, this conviction may be considered the height of Christian virtue. But while pacifism may be one valid Christian
response, it is not the only valid Christian response to injustice. John the Baptist’s instruction to the Roman soldiers
who came to him allowed them to continue as soldiers, and the Ten Commandments
require us “not to murder,” as opposed to forbidding all killing, even if the
circumstances in which killing is permitted should be incredibly rare.
Yet
between the two poles of total pacifism and a sense of divinely-ordained
military actions stands a fifteen-hundred year old Christian tradition of just
war that admits the utter horror and tragedy of war, while recognizing that
sometimes no better options exist. Saint
Augustine described the need for tragic yet just wars on some occasions, and his
insights were taken up later by Thomas Aquinas and other theologians and moral
thinkers. At the core of the just war
tradition is the overwhelming understanding that war is always a last resort
when all other options have been exhausted.
Even then, military force may only be used when circumstances meet certain
conditions and then the military conflict itself must be undertaken according
to strict guidelines.
For
military action to be justifiably undertaken, the following criteria should
first be met. (This summary comes from
the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2307-2317, which
represents the just war tradition well. Direct quotations are in italics.)
First, the damage inflicted by the aggressor on a
nation or a community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain. There is no room here for war based on purely
economic interest or political calculation.
A real threat to innocent lives must be imminent.
Second,
all other means of putting an end
to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective. Diplomacy,
sanctions and all other steps short of war must be attempted or
considered. Serious prayer and fasting
for peace, which are perhaps are most effective weapons, must also be
undertaken. In this vein,
Third, there must be serious prospects of success. A hopeless effort that results in more
killing but no positive resolution is not just.
We also must seriously question military engagements without any
definition of what a successful outcome would be.
Fourth,
the use of arms must not produce
evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern
means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. This criteria means that the weapons used in
the war cannot bring more destruction than the evil the war was meant to
avoid. The damage done in winning a war
cannot be worse than the damage that would have been done by the aggressor if
war was not undertaken. The more
significant the weapons involved, the higher this threshold is.
When the proper legitimate authority, generally a recognized
government or collection of nations, determines that a potential military
actions falls within this criteria, the armed conflict itself must still be
undertaken according to certain ethical guidelines. All is not fair in war. Some generally accepted guidelines include
the following:
- Military activities are to be undertaken with the minimum destruction of life and property possible.
- Indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is forbidden. Use of atomic, biological or chemical weapon of mass destruction is forbidden.
- Non-combatants and civilians may not be targeted.
- Wounded soldiers and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.
- Actions directed toward the extermination of a people, nation or ethnic minority are forbidden.
- Use of tactics considered evil in all circumstances, such as rape, forcing soldiers to fight against their own side, or forcing children to serve as soldiers, is forbidden.
When all of these criteria both for beginning and for fight a
war are met, that military action may be considered justifiable from a
Christian perspective. Obviously these
criteria are difficult to meet, and they should be. War is always the last resort and is always a
great tragedy.
Men and women of goodwill can disagree when applying these
criteria to specific situations, especially when all the facts may be difficult
to obtain. But we should hope that these
criteria would play a considerable role in the final decision-making of our
elective leaders when it comes to military decisions, and, to the degree we
have an opportunity, we can lift up this Christian ethical approach. Perhaps most importantly, we can all lower
our knees and raise our voices in prayers for peace, especially for peace in
those areas where our own nation is involved in or considering becoming
involved in military action.
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