"An Extravagant People"
Philemon
November 2, 1997

Last Lord's Day morning we considered the historical background of this letter and its teaching on slavery. Paul is sending Onesimus, Philemon's runaway slave who has become a Christian under Paul's tutelage, back to his master and is asking his master to receive him as a brother and to treat him accordingly.

But, in that, Paul and the Holy Spirit are setting before us all a mark or characteristic of Christian living that we find in many different respects in the teaching of the Bible. I am speaking of an extravagance of devotion, of obedience, of commitment, of service. Salvation such as God has given his people, love for them such as he has poured out into their hearts, a promise and inheritance as incomprehensibly great as heaven is, is not to be responded to prosaically and conventionally. It is not enough simply for a Christian to show himself a Christian by keeping certain commandments and living according to a pattern laid out in God's Word. Important as that is, it does not adequately convey the wonder and the thrill that so great a salvation ought to be to sinners who have been saved by grace, it does not express an appropriate gratitude for mercy so surprising, so immeasurable, so undeserved.

And, so, in the Bible, while a strictness of obedience to God's holy law is always the beginning of Christian service and Christian thanksgiving, that obedience is also invariably surmounted by an extravagance an intensity of devotion that the world, and even many Christians, invariably think is excessive. Christianity is a religion that produces a holy fanaticism in those who embrace it fully, as it ought to be embraced. And the reason for that is that Christianity is supremely a religion not of works but of love, of a supreme love, of love answering God's own infinite and eternal and unchangeable love, and that love craves some adequate expression, and the only possibly adequate expression is an extreme, extravagant expression.

You find this immoderation and this extravagance everywhere in the Bible in answer to the terrible devotion of love that Christ displayed for his people in seeking their salvation and eternal life. A love that is worthy of that love will not be a love that is pitched only on friends -- for anyone can love that way, but it must be a love that is given, that is even lavished on enemies as well. A love that is worthy of that love will not seek to please God to the extent that he can be pleased with a modest effort or sacrifice. It will seek his pleasure and his will even if it means gouging out a right eye or cutting off a right arm, if it means giving up houses, fields, homes, children, parents, and husbands and wives. This is why the martyr is in the book of Revelation the representative, the model of each and every Christian -- for every Christian wishes to make the supreme sacrifice for Christ even if he or she is never called to make it. Martyrdom is the Christian way of life because the Christian life is supremely to be a demonstration of a fanatical love for God and Christ.

And what grand illustrations we are given of this in the Bible! You remember Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Remember how just a few days after the Lord had given back to her her brother from the dead, when the Lord was again in their home, she took a bottle of perfume, pure nard, worth almost a year's wages to a working man, and broke that bottle and poured the perfume over the Lord's feet and then wiped his feet with her hair. The entire house was filled with the smell of that perfume. Judas complained about how much it cost; what a waste! But A.B. Bruce, in his great work, The Training of the Twelve, understood: "There was such a love in her heart for her friend and benefactor as imperatively demanded expression, and yet could not find expression in words. She must do something to relieve her pent-up emotions: she must get an alabaster jar and break it, and pour it upon the person of Jesus, else her heart will break." Not just words but perfume; not just any perfume, but a very expensive jar of perfume; not just some of the jar but all of it until the entire house smelled of it; not just wiping the Lord's feet once they had been wet with the perfume, but wiping them with her own hair. And not in private, but in public, a woman in public with many men in the room, men who, if she stopped to think about it, could almost be calculated to ridicule her for what she was about to do. Imagine what that woman would have looked like both doing that deed and after it was done -- but she didn't care. Love made her utterly careless of everything but showing her love!

Judas faulted her for her lack of restraint, for her being so carried away, but Jesus rebuked those who thought that way, and promised, "Wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her" [Mark 14:9]. In other words, Jesus said, this is what Christians do! What they must do and what they want to do and what they ought to do! Those who have been loved greatly must love greatly in return.

So what Paul is asking Philemon to do is nothing else but to act like a Christian in love with God and Christ -- not to calculate his losses, not to consider how others might view his actions -- "what will the rest of the slaves think if you just let this runaway off the hook!" --, but to act in holy love, freeing his slave for no other reason but that Christ loves him. Paul clearly doesn't feel he is asking Philemon for something as much as he is giving Philemon something, the opportunity to do something beautiful for God!

And Paul expects that Philemon will respond in this way. Rejoice so much in Onesimus' conversion that he will forget all about the fact that the man ran away from him sometime before, that he will be so glad to have him as a brother he will not think twice about giving away a substantial piece of his property, and be so glad for the opportunity to do so that he will care nothing that others may think him a fool for doing what he did.

All through the centuries believers have done such things -- thrown caution and self-interest to the wind -- and gladly acted out their love and devotion to Christ in some entirely extravagant and immoderate way. Some simply gave away all their money, all of it, all at once, to be used by the poor -- Ambrose did so; so did Cyprian, the great North African bishop -- although both were wealthy men! Others left other prospects in order to give themselves entirely to Christian ministry -- from Justin Martyr to Lloyd-Jones and Charles Colson -- and, of course a great many went to the stake or block or gallows for the love of God. And, many others, simple Christians and men and women of reputation, did one thing or another that had this wonderful character of holy fanaticism. And they still do today.

One of you drew my attention to news reports of the brothers Jan and Paul Baan, Dutch Reformed Christians from the town of Ede in what is known as Holland's Bible belt. You Boeing people may know the name of Baan, because it was Boeing's large order from the fledgling Baan company, a computer technology company, that put the little firm on the map and sent it on its way to becoming the billion dollar giant it now is. Its stock was first offered on Wall Street at $8 per share in 1995. It has been selling recently over $60 and its market capitalization has reached $6.3 billion. One of the articles I read was entitled "Calvin and the art of super software" because the Baan's are Calvinists and are devoutly loyal to what the writer calls "their unorthodox management techniques and Calvinist principles." They come from a family of eight children and Jan and his wife have eight children of their own (Paul has eleven!). Many of his employees -- the company is located in the rural Holland where the Baan's have always lived -- attend the same Reformed church as do the brothers. They keep the Sabbath, they recruit workers primarily on the basis of their morality, he refers to himself not as the boss but as the "steward," the "servant-leader" of the company, and Jan tells customers and suppliers right away that "I pity workaholics, I'm not interested in extravagance, and I don't need other women." That way, he says, people know it would be pointless to invite him to a nightclub.

All of that is interesting and most commendable in a Christian businessman. But what is quite a bit more striking, unusual, and, really, still much more Christian, is something else the Baan brothers did. Just before the company went public and the big money began rolling in the brothers sold their remaining shares to a non-profit foundation they set up and still control but from which they can take no personal profit. They called the foundation "Oikonomos," the Greek word for "stewardship," and are using it to do good works in the most desperately poor countries of the world. The foundation has built orphanages in Indonesia, paved roads in New Guinea, brought medicine to leper colonies in India, helped the poor start businesses in Bolivia. The fortune the two brothers gave up and which is now in the possession of the foundation is now estimated to be approximately $2.8 billion. Indeed, the foundation now has larger assets than the Rockefeller Foundation!

What this means, of course, is that two men who could have been among the super-wealthy of the world are only quite well-to-do, no different from many other Baan employees who have profited handsomely from a corporate profit sharing plan. To devalue their fortunes, to give up an immense personal wealth, is strange and wonderful enough. But it is still more interesting to hear their explanation. They feared the effect that money would have on their lives and, still more, feared the effect of it on their children. They thought, Jan said, "it would be unfair to burden my children with it." "We protected our kids so they won't inherit the money."

How many people have you heard of who have made such choices in the face not of the mere possibility of being rich, but in the face of the certainty that one would be super-rich tomorrow! And for reasons that come straight from the hope of heaven and the love of God?

But, take the teaching of the Bible and the experience of Christians together and such extravagance, such immoderation seems simply wise and appropriate. Something a Christian easily understands, just like Philemon giving a runaway slave his freedom because, after all, he is a Christian and his business is not to store up treasure on earth but in heaven!

Or, take another example. When Erich Honecker was deposed as the ruler of East Germany on October 18, 1989, he left office as the most hated man in Germany. He also had malfunctioning kidneys, was suffering from cancer, and needed medical attention. He had to vacate the official residence where he and his wife, Margot, had lived comfortably for years. But, now, no one was willing to take them in, old and feeble, sick and disgraced. The Communist party, of which the Honeckers had been lifelong, loyal members, turned its back on them. So did their daughter.

And then finally someone stepped forward, a Lutheran pastor, Uwe Holmer and his wife. The Holmers had themselves suffered under the Honecker regime on account of their Christian faith. Their children had been denied higher education under the policies Margot Honecker had established as Minister of Education. His telephone had been routinely tapped for years, his mail monitored, he and his family followed. He led a Christian community for the mentally handicapped, the aged, and the epileptic outside East Berlin.

But the Holmers understood that their Lord and Master had commanded them to love their enemies and so they took the Honeckers into their home, January 31, 1990. The public was outraged. Crowds of angry protesters gathered outside the Holmer residence, the telephone began to ring incessantly, hate mail poured in -- 3,000 letters in a few months time --, bomb threats were received, but the police said that they could not guarantee the Holmer's safety.

The Honeckers themselves were stunned by what they saw. All the years of his regime Erich Honecker apparently had believed that the cheering masses assembled for military parades had really loved him and his German communist state. Now they heard people calling them pigs, the worst kind of scum, shouting that it would be better if they were dragged out of the Holmer home and shot. Their hatred toward him, which now he could not mistake, left him speechless. He was physically weak also and appeared to be shell-shocked by what was happening to him.

Margot was as dumbfounded as her husband. She was supposedly an even more passionately committed communist than her husband and what was happening to them simply did not fit the picture of the world and of mankind that her ideology had supplied her. Neither of the Honeckers, by the way, ever repented of their communism or of the particular manner in which they had run the German state, or even, for that matter, of their mistreatment of Christians as a policy of the state.

At one point Pastor Holmer wrote a letter to explain to the people why he and his wife had taken in the Honeckers.