“Possession is nine points of the law”. That old Common Law precept makes the point that, in law, your shirt or your blouse are yours unless someone else can come up with either a document or compelling evidence showing that it belongs to them. The saying came to my mind because possession is the theme of all three of today’s readings.

In our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, God is telling the people of Israel that they will be blessed in the land that they are “entering to possess”, provided that they love God and obey God’s commandments. They are being told that the Promised Land is a gift, and that their enjoyment of that gift is conditional on their use of it.

In the Gospel, Jesus (as so often) issues a tough challenge to those who wish to be his disciples.

“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

In the English language, possession has a double meaning. A possession can be something that we own – the shirt or the blouse that I mentioned as examples just now – or possession can be about something that owns us. We might say “She was possessed by a strong desire for a holiday” or “He was possessed by anger at the insults he had received.” We know that double meaning reflects the way in which Jesus and his contemporaries thought. Remember the story of the rich young man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, was told that he should sell his possessions and give to the poor, and then went away grieving “because he owned much property.”  In a sense, it was the property which owned him, for it shaped his choices and prevented him from become a disciple.

“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

It’s a very difficult saying. The compilers of our lectionary understood this, and that is why they coupled this Gospel passage with today’s Epistle, which is a beautiful illustration of the way discipleship is supposed to work. Paul is writing to Philemon, a Christian who was rich enough to own household slaves. The letter concerns Onesimus, a slave who has broken the law by running away.

Paul is taking the risk of sending Onesimus back, so he is not directly challenging the institution of slavery. Instead he is appealing to Philemon to respond to Onesimus not with the punishment that Roman Law laid down for runaway slaves, which was to be branded on the forehead with the letters FUG (short for Fugitivus, or Fugitive) but with love. Paul knows that, at the heart of the Christian Gospel, is the understanding that only love can elicit and foster love, so he doesn’t order Philemon to forgive Onesimus:

“For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love…”

And Paul is urging Philemon to go beyond forgiveness, for he writes about the possibility of a transformation of the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus, a transformation in which the old relationship between master and slave, owner and possession, will be replaced by a new relationship of loving brotherhood in Christ. That transformation may lead to Onesimus being freed from slavery and allowed to return to Paul and work with him, but Paul only hints at that.

It’s a big ask, because discipleship is a big ask, and we do not know how Philemon responded. Paul’s radicalism is gentle, but it is none the less radical for that. He is asking Philemon to give up his authority as head of the household and his legal rights as the owner of Onesimus. This means moving away from one of the accepted ways of running society and embracing the good news of forgiveness and fellowship which Jesus lived out and proclaimed. Paul is asking of Philemon – and Jesus in today’s Gospel is asking of those who would be his disciples – nothing less than a wholesale change in the way that they think about possessions.

To live that way is to acknowledge the truth that we call our possessions are all gifts and, given our mortality, are only ours on a temporary basis. We have a legal title to them, just as Philemon had a legal title to Onesimus, but our Christian calling is to move beyond that narrow view towards a loving, sharing generosity. Let us keep whoever, tomorrow, is chosen to be our next Prime Minister in our prayers and let us pray that she or he will grasp this truth and act upon it.