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Romans 16
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Because what we get to see here is Paul off the clock. And I think often we are at our truest when we think we have nothing left to say. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week.
Speaker 1:Head to commons.church for more information. Thanks for being here. My name is Jeremy, part of the team here at Commons. And today, we are about to complete a very long project working our way through the book of Romans. We've been coming back at this for five years now, looking at a few chapters each year.
Speaker 1:I think we're getting close to about 30 sermons total in this series now. But today, we are gonna look at chapter 16, which is the final chapter of the letter to Rome. Now next week, we are gonna take one more week, one more opportunity to look back across the entire letter together and review some of those major themes. But this right here feels like a bit of a moment. I mean, we've worked hard to get here, and it's nice to be able to tackle some of these larger scope projects as a community.
Speaker 1:However, before we get to chapter 16, we do have to gather up where we were last Sunday. And we didn't get to the end of chapter 15, and so I wanna touch on that quickly as well today. But in chapter 15, Paul addresses the entire community as we who are strong. And the mistake we can sometimes make here is assuming that he is still talking to only a subset of the community from the previous chapter. It's not what's going on anymore.
Speaker 1:Fact, Paul goes on in 15 to say that I am convinced, friends, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge, and competent to instruct one another. So this is the whole community that he is now addressing as one, and that's really important for Paul. Because within any given community, just like this, we are all going to be strong in some ways, and we're all gonna be weak in other moments. And so it's in our collective goodness and knowledge and instruction of each other that we can all help each other move forward the way that we were meant to. This is Paul's point.
Speaker 1:However, Paul goes on to say in the second half of chapter 15 that he really wants to get to Rome to make a visit. He's never met these people before. First though, he has to go to Jerusalem. So he has collected some money from some of the Gentile churches, and he wants to take that to the Jerusalem church because things are tough there. The economy is depressed.
Speaker 1:And he hopes that these churches helping each other out will draw them together in community. Essentially, what he's saying here is that when you say you love someone, eventually you will have to put your money and your resources, your time, and your energy where your mouth is. But, then he wants to get to Rome for a visit before he moves on to Spain to plant some more churches. Churches. The thing is that never happens.
Speaker 1:At least not the way he expects. Because before Paul can visit Rome, he's arrested and he is brought back to Rome in chains as a prisoner. And tradition tells us that he was eventually executed in Rome by the Roman authorities. And let's talk about this here quickly. Because it would have been really easy for the early church in the first couple 100 centuries to just delete this part of the letter.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're trying to build a new religion. You wanna tell your story. You want this to be a compelling vision for people to follow. I mean, why leave such a blatantly depressing moment in the story? The community together here, praying for a visit from Paul who is instead arrested and executed.
Speaker 1:And sometimes I think that we have been given, handed this really toxic theology that tells us that when things go wrong and when our prayers aren't answered or when we suffer, this is because we did something to deserve this. Like we prayed wrong we didn't have enough faith or we didn't believe hard enough for God and that is nonsense. That is not how faith works. That is not what prayer is for. In fact, when Paul is brought back to Rome in chains, he writes in both Colossians and Philippians, and he talks about this divine presence he senses even in the midst of his incarceration.
Speaker 1:Because that is what prayer is for. It is not about avoiding what is hard, it is for welcoming the presence of God's peace near us as we move through what is hard. Prayer is not, it has never been, not even for Paul, a get out of jail free card. And so this is actually how chapter 15 ends with Paul's unrequited prayer that he might one day meet his friends in Rome. And in a lot of ways, that is actually the end of the letter.
Speaker 1:Except not quite, because today we read the PS. First though, let's pray, and then today we have Phoebe, Priscilla, Junior, and Valentine's Day to talk about. God of all grace, who hears every prayer, who listens for every unspoken word, who notices every beat within our chest. Might we sense your presence with us at this day. If we have prayed, we've asked and pleaded and pounded and found no peace, might your spirit be near to us with healing and grace in this moment.
Speaker 1:Might your word remind us that we are always welcome even when we struggle to understand what is happening around us. And if we are still praying, we cast ourselves on your goodness, can we ask again that you be near to us? May we be opened to new voices of comfort, new sources of grace, new faithful servants who can help us see you well. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Okay. Today, we are gonna dive straight in because even for a postscript, Paul has packed a lot into this final chapter. So no stories today, just work. But in Romans 16 verse one, he says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon in the church of Syncrea. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help that she may need from you.
Speaker 1:For she has been the benefactor of many people, including me. Now, this is actually pretty typical in ancient letters. You finish everything that you want to say, and then you tack on your greetings at the end. That's essentially all that chapter 16 is in Romans. And so in that sense, this is probably about as uncontroversial as we are gonna get in Romans.
Speaker 1:This is nothing but Paul being nice to a lot of people who have helped him along the way. And yet, depending on who you are and where you come from in your Christian journey, this may actually be some of the real heat in Romans. And if you're already hot about this, things are just gonna get hotter, so buckle in. But I want you to notice a few things here. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church.
Speaker 1:I ask you to receive her in a way worthy. Give her any help that she may need for she has been my benefactor. Now, Paul is gonna highlight a number of very significant women in the early church in this chapter. So Phoebe is not an anomaly here as we will see. Notice the way that Paul introduces her to this Roman community because he is going over the top to put her over.
Speaker 1:There's at least a couple reasons for why that might be the case. Could be that Paul is simply aware of some of the cultural bias against women in leadership at that time, and so he's intent at heading that off at the past. It could be that very simply he just thinks she deserves all of this praise because of her extraordinary leadership, and so he just lets it fly. And my bias is actually more toward the second. Understand that Paul is gonna name drop some 26 people in this chapter, and about a third of them are going to be women.
Speaker 1:And of the three big categories he lists in this opening to the chapter, all of which we're gonna look at today, deacons, coworkers, and apostles, There's going to be a woman named among each of them. If Paul's trying to make a point, he's certainly making it except that I don't think he is. You see, I think this chapter is simply indicative of the leadership that existed within the very early church. Now, I'm gonna say something here, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way, so stick with me. But when you are a marginalized community on the fringes of society trying to gain a foothold in the larger cultural conversation, the leadership pool you have available to you to draw from is a lot more shallow.
Speaker 1:Now what I'm not saying with that is that there's less talent on offer in these types of communities. What I am saying is that when you are a marginal community with less social prestige, those with real leadership talent are able to rise to the top before those who already hold a lot of social power are able to shove their way in clogging up the pool. In other words, the more dominant your cause, the more likely it will have all of the typical voices around the table. The more innovative, the more challenging, the more outside the box your community is, the more your leadership will necessarily reflect a true meritocracy. Understand this.
Speaker 1:The early church simply could not afford to hold on to the patriarchy they were used to from the surrounding culture because they didn't have the social prestige to play by those rules. And so instead, in order to survive, they had to trust in the leaders that rose up from within the community regardless of whether those people had been overlooked or denied their rightful contribution in the larger culture. Now we see this in the significant role of women who surrounded Jesus. We see this in the earliest of Paul's letters like Romans and Galatian. We see women in very central roles and it's only as the church becomes more mainstream and more powerful that we start to see the role of women slowly being diminished and downplayed.
Speaker 1:Now, that's not the sign of a maturing church. That's the sign of a church that is becoming more powerful and therefore able to lean into the cultural expectation. And this is really important because sometimes we tend to think that the more wealthy, powerful, independent we become, the less we will be influenced by the culture that surrounds us. We'll be more able to think for ourselves, and yet it's exactly the opposite that generally happens. As Christianity became more powerful, we became more dependent on the culture that provided us that power.
Speaker 1:As you and I become more wealthy, we become more dependent on wealth for our imagination of what is good. As we become more influential politically, we become more convinced that the political status quo is actually just good for everyone. This is the problem with power. We tend to pursue power so that we can make change, but what happens is that power often ends up changing us. And so it's not surprising to see a Christian community that was in its earliest incarnation incredibly diverse and countercultural.
Speaker 1:The community that stood in stark contrast to the status quo slowly begin to evolve into something that looked a lot more like the expectations that surrounded it. Because that's what power does. It disincentivizes innovation. This is why it's not a woman's job to be here explaining to the church why she should be able to lead. It's why it's not the job of people of color to explain to me why their voice is important.
Speaker 1:It's the job of those with power to look for everything that is missing at the table. And trust me, the last thing that you want is a powerful Christianity because that Christianity will become indistinguishable from the culture that provides the power. And yes, I am talking about our politics right now as much as I'm talking about Rome. But back to Phoebe here. Let's talk about how Paul introduces her.
Speaker 1:He says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe. Now, this is actually a pretty standard greeting in the ancient world, and what it referred to here was the person who was bringing the letter. There was no mail delivery in the ancient world. You didn't drop a letter in a box at the end of the corner and expect it to make its way to Rome. You had to send that letter with someone.
Speaker 1:Now we'll see why Paul sends Phoebe in a moment, but understand the role of the letter carrier was not just delivery. When you sent someone and you commended them, they were taking your place in the conversation. So their job would be to bring the letter, to read the letter out loud, to explain the letter, and then to answer any questions the audience might have about the letter. And not to put too fine a point on it here, but that's what I do for a living. Except that I do it without Paul's personal commendation to you.
Speaker 1:So could women preach in the early church? Well, depends on what you think preaching is, but if you think preaching is essentially explaining scripture, then absolutely 100% yes, that's what Phoebe is doing. But that's not all. Because then Paul says she is a deacon in the church of Cenchrea. Now, this one's interesting because the word deacon is the word, the yakanos.
Speaker 1:And literally, what this word means in Greek is something like assistant. Usually, it will get translated something like servant or minister in the New Testament. However, apart from church use, the Greek word simply means the one who gets something done at the behest of a superior. Now in this case, the superior is Christ, so servant of Christ is usually how it gets translated in the New Testament. But in the early church, Diaconos played a dual role, where everyone who serves Christ, we were all together.
Speaker 1:We read that a lot in the New Testament. But then within the structure of some churches, a formal leadership was emerging with overseers and deacons. And the fact that Paul indicates that she is a deacon of a particular church in Cenchrea here indicates almost for sure that she held some kind of a recognized formal place of leadership in that particular community. Now understand, we're talking about very early in the Christian story. Jesus' death and resurrection is in the early thirties.
Speaker 1:Romans is written in the mid to late fifties. So there's really not much in the way of formal structure anywhere at this point in the church. But clearly this woman is one of the first very significant leaders. In fact, she is the first deacon to be named anywhere in Christian history. And yet Paul is still not done.
Speaker 1:Because next he says, receive her in the Lord, give her any help that she may need for she has been the benefactor of many, including me. Now, we'll take this all together. Because what's likely going on here is that Phoebe is wealthy and she's a financial supporter of Paul. So she has come to Rome to bring the letter, but also probably to prepare for Paul's visit and then eventual trip into Spain. Of course those don't end up happening, but that seems to be the plan here.
Speaker 1:And Paul wants the Roman community to welcome Phoebe as if she was him to help her probably find a home that she can rent in the city so that once she's set up she can begin preparing for Paul's visit, his time with the Roman church, and his subsequent missionary trip into Spain. And so she seems to be, in a lot of ways, basically his tour manager. And I'm only slightly joking about that because the really interesting part about this word benefactor here is that in Greek, this is the word prostastis. And the way that it shows up here as a noun, this is the only time it shows up anywhere in the Bible. Paul does, however, use the cognate verb proistemi a few times.
Speaker 1:And in fact he's already used that verb here in Romans in chapter 12. There he's talking about gifts in the church. He says in verse six, we all have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. So if your gift is prophesying then prophesy. If it's serving, then serve.
Speaker 1:If it's teaching, then teach. If your gift is to encourage, then give encouragement. And if it's to give, then give generously. If your gift is to lead, then do it diligently. So if this woman is Paul's benefactor financially, and she's representing him in community before he arrives, if she is the one preparing for him and planning his trip into Spain, directing, leading his agenda for him, I think it's more than fair to say that she is not just the money behind Paul.
Speaker 1:She is his manager, for lack of a better term. And so of course, he's excited to commend her. Of course, he's effusive in his praise for her because she is his right hand man, and I say that with all irony intended. For Paul, it's obvious that Phoebe is worthy of the respect of the Romans because she has an incredible amount of agency to decide how and when and where she will choose to help Paul out, and he's thankful for that. But in case you imagine this is anomaly, look at what comes next.
Speaker 1:Verse three, greet Priscilla and Aquila, my coworkers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me and not only I, but all of the churches of the gentiles are grateful to them. Now, Priscilla and Aquila, we know from the book of acts. Aquila is a Jew, and Priscilla we're not sure about. There are some indications that she may have been a gentile though.
Speaker 1:So it's possible that this is a mixed marriage, which might be why they seem to be so influential, particularly in the gentile churches. But Paul meets them in Corinth because they had left Rome when the Jews were expelled by Claudius. Talked about that a couple weeks ago. From there, they go with Paul to Ephesus. They help him start a church in that city, and they even end up coaching Apollos who ends up being an early church planter as well.
Speaker 1:But then somewhere in the intervening years, they have come back to Rome after Claudius' death in '54. So if Romans is being written in the mid to late fifties, these were probably some of the first Jews moving back into the city, which means they were likely instrumental in establishing this Jesus community here in Rome. And Paul calls them both coworkers. Now coworker may not sound all that exciting to us. It certainly doesn't sound as fancy as deacon or elder or apostle.
Speaker 1:Those all sound very religious to us. But is an important word because it generally doesn't carry significant religious overtones. It does, however, carry important social indicators. In Greek, can be used in the dative, meaning a coworker to me, and that generally indicated a subordinate relationship. Or it can be used in the genitive, meaning a coworker of me.
Speaker 1:And in that case, it indicates a relationship of mutuality and partnership. Partnership. So any wild guesses as to which Paul uses here? It is the genitive. He says, they are coworkers of me in Christ.
Speaker 1:And Paul sees no need to subordinate this couple to himself. He sees no need to subordinate Priscilla to her husband Aquila. In fact, it's interesting here because if you go and you look their introduction up in Acts 18, it's Aquila who's introduced first, and then later Priscilla is introduced as his wife. But by the time that they start working alongside Paul in ministry, something flips. And from that point forward, it's always Priscilla and Aquila that we read about.
Speaker 1:Now does that mean anything? Maybe not. But it could be an indication of which partner took the lead in their ministry together. Now, we don't have a lot of time left here, but we do still have one more very important woman to meet in chapter 16. A woman with an interesting story, but maybe even a more fascinating postscript.
Speaker 1:In verse seven Paul says, greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been imprisoned with me. They are outstanding among the apostles and in fact they were in Christ before I was. Now, if you were to open an American Standard Version or even a new American Standard Bible from either the 1977 or the 1995 edition, you will read something slightly different here. Because even though as far back as the 1611 King James bible we have known that this woman's name was Junior, American translators in the nineteenth century decided that a woman could not have possibly been an apostle, and so they just changed her name to Junius, which was the masculine form of the name. Now it's slightly more complicated than that.
Speaker 1:The NASB did not make this up out of whole cloth. There is an eleventh century text designated b two. There is a Byzantine text from the sixth century designated d two, and both of those use the masculine form. All of the early texts, including the big ones, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, show Junia here. In fact, some of the early manuscripts actually get her name wrong, but they refer to her as Julia.
Speaker 1:Point is, scholarship is basically undivided in acknowledging that Andronicus and Junia were a couple that were both recognized, in fact seen as outstanding among the apostles of the early church. So what does that mean exactly? Well, by the mid fifties when Romans is being written, apostle is probably not yet a technical term designating a specific rule or authority. It is however certainly a designation of great respect. It's one that Paul claims for himself as well.
Speaker 1:But what does that mean? It means that there was a point in our shared collective history when we really believed what Paul said when he said that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. And notice here, even in this chapter we have Phoebe who is a wealthy gentile. We potentially have a mixed marriage in Priscilla and Aquila who are clearly not wealthy enough to avoid their expulsion from Rome and they become internally displaced in their own country. Now we have Andronicus and Junia who Paul calls fellow Jews, but also together apostles with him.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is Paul now living out of his most generous imagination for what the church might become. And here's the thing, he doesn't even mean to do it. And see this is what we really have to understand about chapter 16. Paul is done with his letter. He's made all the points that he wants to make.
Speaker 1:He's actually not trying to teach us anything anymore. He is simply saying thank you to all the people who have helped him get here. And in some ways, that is exactly what makes chapter 16 so important for us to read. Because what we get to see here is Paul off the clock. And I think often we are at our truest when we think we have nothing left to say.
Speaker 1:I joked about this on Facebook this week, but on Friday, which happened to be Valentine's Day, I got a text from my wife, Rachel. She was at the hospital with our new daughter that we've just adopted, and she said to me, I'll get a coffee this afternoon so that I can stay awake and watch a movie with you tonight. And then she gave me some heart eyes, and I responded with a heart emoji. And then she said, you know, it's pretty great doing life with you. I'm happy with what we've done together.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being such a great partner, husband, father, and best friend, and that's the most mush I'll put you through today. And I said, we've done alright. Notice the heart emoji there from Rachel. Now, I read all of this to you so that you can understand what a really great person that I am. That's a joke, by the way.
Speaker 1:But actually, I read this because there really is something about those moments where everything that needs to be said has already been said. And if we can simply lean into all of the relationships that sustain us. In these past few weeks, watching my wife Rachel fall in love with our new daughter, Em, This has reminded me of everything that made me fall in love with her, and yes, I did tell her that after I used our conversation for a joke. But there is something really beautifully profound about watching Paul slide into his DMs here. Not to make a point and not to get something off his chest, not because he wants to teach us anything, but simply because he wants to let the people he loves know that he loves them and why.
Speaker 1:That's why chapter 16 is so incredibly important for us to absorb because this is Paul at his best. At his most open and honest, at his most generous and optimistic, this is Paul at his most grateful and thankful, and this is what I want to take from Paul as we leave Romans. That he is perhaps better when he's off the clock than he is when he thinks he's on the stage. And that is everything that I aspire to in my pursuit of Christ. The way that I speak about my friends, that the way I create space for others to lead in this community, The way that I welcome and I listen and I learn from those around me.
Speaker 1:The way that I honor those I love and I tell them very clearly and very specifically why. That all of these things would be even deeper within me when I am away from this stage and away from my agenda and away from the profile that I'm interested in constructing for you. Because this is Paul at his best when he doesn't think he's teaching anymore. Now we get to see who he really is. May your boundaries be opened in new ways this week.
Speaker 1:May you recognize new voices who can orient you in new directions. Those teachers who can challenge you, those prophets who can speak to you, those who carry the very spirit of God in ways that you have been conditioned to overlook. May the voices from just outside your view become the voices that shape you in new ways this week. And may the person that you are off the clock slowly become the person that you are working to become. And now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with the good news I proclaim about Jesus.
Speaker 1:To the only wise God be glory forever through Christ Jesus. Amen. The end. Let's pray. God, for all of those relationships that shape us and change us, that challenge us and help us to see the world in new ways.
Speaker 1:May we be at our best toward them. Our most open and our most generous when we are away from whatever spotlight there is in our lives. Would we be at our best when we think that no one is looking. May we be the most generous when there is no one who is watching. May we actually begin to learn from each other, to welcome new stories, to tell each other that we love each other and why, to lift each other up, and to do that not because we're trying, but simply because your grace and peace has found root in the deepest parts of our soul.
Speaker 1:And as that grows within us, as it takes root and becomes us, May that love flow out of us naturally even when we're not trying. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Romans 16, guys. Next week, we're gonna take one week.
Speaker 1:We're gonna gather up the whole thing from Romans one all the way through and look at some of those major themes before we move into the season of Lent together. But we will end today, as always, with this. Love God. Love people. Tell the story.