Dear Friends,

This is the second message in a series on Paul’s Letter to Philemon.

Paul began his letter to Philemon with this salutation. “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our dear friend and co-worker, to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil 1-3).

I read Paul’s words, “the church in your house,” with an intense yearning to be home where I belong. Paul’s salutation addresses and embraces a prisoner, a young man of mixed ethnicity from a single parent home, a wealthy businessman, a woman given equal dignity with the rest of them, a companion on the missionary journey, and others who meeting in a living room with Christ as the natural topic of conversation, sharing a meal in the kitchen, and praying in the courtyard and the closets. In other words, Paul was talking about a blended family living together in a home sharing the grace and peace that comes from God in the person of Christ Jesus. I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’d like church to be. It sounds like a home to me.

The original theological meaning of the word “church” was the company of all believers in Christ formed as his spiritual body, reflecting his glory and spreading his truth and love on earth (1 Cor 13-15). This was what Christ apparently had in mind when he commended the faith and spiritual discernment of a blustering, conflicted fisherman who recognized that Jesus was the Messiah. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” (Mt 16:17-18).

The word “church” is so used and abused that it has lost significance. We also use the word “church” to describe a building, the congregation that meets in the building, a group of Christians who emphasize one particular aspect of Christ or his teachings (also called a “denomination”), an ecclesiastical authority as opposed to a secular power as in “church and state,” the clerical profession (“he entered the church”), a worship service (“having church”), and, in the teachings of the founder of Christian Science, “the structure of truth and love.”

We “join” the church, “belong” to church, “go” to church, “attend” church, “leave” the church, “serve” the church, “work” for the church, “volunteer” for the church, “build” the church, “grow” the church, “hold” church, “have” church, “house” the church, “split” the church, “equip” the church, “lead” the church, “administer” the church and ” we are” the church. There are “churchmen,” and “church ladies.” There are people who are “churched” and those who are “unchurched.” There is “high” church and “low” church.  It is easy to understand how so many people are confused, disappointed or disillusioned with the church, but what “church” would that be?

When Jesus referred to “my church,” he used a word translated in the Greek as ekklesia meaning “a calling out.” He was talking  about those who answer his call to leave a “business as usual” existence to live a life devoted to worship and service. When we use the word, we too often are describing an institution or organization smudged with the fingerprints of our grasping control.

Jesus Christ was accustomed to religious services where viewpoints on Scripture were frankly exchanged. (Luke 4:16-31; Luke 13:10-17; Luke 20:1-21:38, John 7:11-52). He spoke of the church as an experience of confession, accountability, intercession, agreement, intimacy and forgiveness (Mt 18:15-21).

Jesus said, “Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (v. 19-20). Paul echoed these words by repeatedly describing the gathering of believers as experiences of devotion, truth-telling, reconciliation, peace and nurture (Col 3:12-17; Eph 4:1-5:20). Along the same line, the author of Hebrews urged the assembly of believers to gather for encouragement of one another (Heb 10:24-25). These admonitions all make the church sound like a healthy home.

Home is the place where you learn life. Home is where you have to share the bathroom, take your turn with the chores, learn to leave some food for the others, sometimes yield your point for the common peace, and forgive or else live in perpetual misery. It’s always “amateur night” at home. There’s no such thing as a professional family member.

Home is where you find out that you’re better off together than alone even though no one is perfect, you don’t always get what you want, and sometimes there are messes. Because if we have no place to learn and practice love, the floors and upholstery may be spotless, but we will never know what love is without a chance to clean up the messes. Home is where we learn the lessons of love.

If Christ is someone you can spend time with at home or at work, a question that must be considered is what difference does a life with Christ make over a life without Christ? Without a real answer to that question, Christianity is, in the words of Paul, “nothing but noise” (1 Cor13:1). This is not an abstract concern. A difference that does not affect our family, friends and co-workers for good is meaningless.

Home and the workplace were where Christianity grew to become the dominant religion in the West in just three hundred years. Early Christianity was a living room and marketplace religion. Archeology demonstrates that Christianity did not depend on special temples of worship unlike virtually every other religion in history. Until Constantine nationalized Christianity and began building church buildings in A.D. 323, Christ was worshiped and the Gospel was proclaimed in the well-traveled places of daily life. (You can read more details of this history in Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community [Grand Rapids, MI; Eerdmans, 1988]; James Rutz, The Open Church [Auburn, ME: The SeedSowers, 1992; Rodney Stark, “The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginalized Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries [San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997] .

We may or may not be able to identify with the concept of church, but we all want a home. That’s the human story since the fall from grace left our ancestors homeless (Gen 4:22-24). It is what compelled Abraham to leave Ur in search of Canaan, the migration of the Exodus, Nehemiah’s and Ezra’s reconstruction efforts in Jerusalem, Jesus leaving heaven to find us and his promise to return, and Jesus’ stories of lost sheep and lost children. We are estranged from our heavenly Father and our place at his side. We are desperately homesick, lamenting with the Judean exiles in Babylon when their captors asked them to be cheerful about their fate: “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps 137:4).

Here is how Madeleine L’Engle describes our homesickness:

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes….

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We know in our hearts that the Garden was there, the place of beauty and home where we were all what human beings are truly meant to be. And somehow we blew it. We messed it up. We lost it. And we have been homesick ever since….

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When we are truly in love, not in the sense of romantic erotic love, but in the sense of God’s love for all that the Power of Love created, then our homesickness is alleviated. When we are in love we are no longer homesick, for Love is home…

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But where, ultimately, is that home that we long for? It is not the Garden, for we cannot go back to the Garden. When human beings left the Garden, it was forever.

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So where is the home for which we are so homesick? It is something that is still to come; it is that towards which all Creation is groaning in travail. It is the kingdom of God that will be ready when Christ comes again, not only to us on our little planet, but to all of Creation. We are homesick not so much for something that was, and was lost, as for something that will be, and is to be found (The Rock That Is Higher [Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1993], p. 24-25, 29-31).

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This side of heaven, Christianity travels the path of community from the incarnate Christ to the individual to the family to friends to the workplace. In First Century Colosse, the house of Philemon probably combined all of these. Society was changing quickly in that time and place. Christianity brought an uncommon equality to the households of the Roman Empire. Paul wrote to the Galatians: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27-28).

Even though Roman citizens had three or four names, Christians refused to use their family surnames. It sounded conceited and vain and reflected their standing in society rather than their new life in Christ. Using only first names, put every one on the same footing (The Open Church, at p. 51). Recognizing that what happens in household relationships is where Christian belief takes life or dies, Paul wrote Timothy that one who does not pay attention to the welfare of home has no business in leading the Church (1 Tim 3:1-13).

What does this mean for us? I ignore the persistent pleas for funding for the “big project” that pour into my office from media ministries. My time and effort and resources go into accurately and appropriately representing Christ to those with whom I already have a relationship. These include my spouse and my son with whom I pray and worship, my colleagues and clients who will read a book that I give them because I am credible to them, healthcare professionals who I know are delivering care to those who desperately need it, adversaries with whom I learn to experience forgiveness, programs of ministry to or from persons with whom I can maintain a relationship or see a difference being made.

The church that makes a difference for me is birthed in my heart and grows in my household and transforms every one of my relationships into an opportunity for grace. My spouse brings me fresh inspiration from the Word. A secretary and I intercede in prayer for a client. An executive and I share nourishment in Christ in a phone call about business. A corporate controller ministers encouragement. My son and I recollect the day and face the morrow with a late evening prayer. I comfort a grieving client over their wandering and damaged child. Colleagues contribute notes of love and affirmation to be opened by the daughter of a co-worker on a retreat that will send her home with a saving relationship with Christ.

The Quaker writer Thomas Kelly in a wonderful book on devotion to God and fellowship speaks of the transformation of reality that “the church in your house” represents–
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Not only do our daily friendships become realigned; our religious friends are also seen anew. Many impressions of worth are confirmed, others are reversed. Some of the most active church leaders well-known for their efficiency, people we have always admired, are shown, in the X-ray light of Eternity, to be agitated, half-committed, wistful, self-placating seekers, to  who the poise and serenity of the Everlasting have never come. The inexhaustible self-giving of others of our religious acquaintances we now understand, for the Eternal Love kindles an ardent and persistent readiness to do all things for, as well as through, Christ who strengthens us. In some we regret a well-intentioned, but feverish over-busyness, not completely grounded in the depths of peace, and we wish they would not blur the beauty of their souls by fast motion. Others, who may not have been effective speakers or weighty financiers or charming conversationalists or members of prominent families are found to be men and women on whom the dews of heaven have fallen indeed, who live continuously in the Center and who, in mature appreciation, understand our leaping heart and unbounded enthusiasm for God. And although they are not commissioned to any earthly office, yet they welcome us authoritatively into the Fellowship of Love (Thomas Kelly, Testament of Devotion (Harper & Row, NY 1941), p. 77-79).
So for you, my friends, I pray for all the possibilities and opportunities of the Fellowship of Love to be realized in the church in your house. As Paul wrote to Philemon, I write to you “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3).

Next week’s message will discuss the impact of gratitude on relationships as we continue the series on the Letter to Philemon.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).
Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.