Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 8, 2013
“Philemon: The Gospel Transforms Relationships” (Philemon 1-21)
Today I’m going to preach to you an entire book of the Bible. In fact, you already heard an entire book of the Bible as one of our readings today. Well, almost. You heard 21 out of the 25 verses that make up Paul’s Letter to Philemon. Philemon is one of those little one-chapter books that we have in the Bible. There are five of them: Obadiah in the Old Testament, and Philemon, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude in the New Testament.
Now even though Philemon is a very short epistle, there’s a lot here. This letter from Paul tells us a lot about how Christians deal with each other. It tells us about grace, mercy, kindness, and forgiveness. It is a demonstration of the power of God to restore relationships. And so it has much to speak to us. Yes, Paul’s Letter to Philemon may be a short story, but there’s a lot here about how “The Gospel Transforms Relationships.”
