Good morning! It's good to see you all. I see some people who haven't been here in awhile.... For those of you who are visiting with us this morning, we’ve been going through Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. And we have come to the final chapter of Romans. (It’s not the final sermon on Romans, as next week Pastor Dan is going to review the entire letter.)

In the 16th week of our series, we come to chapter 16.... At first glance it may seem to be a long, boring list of names that we might be tempted to just skim over—kind of like at the beginning or the end of a book, when the author wants to acknowledge everyone that they're thankful for. I don’t know about you, but I tend just to read that very quickly, if at all.

And it could be tempting to do that with this chapter. But as is often the case with Scripture, when we take some time to understand the context -- and reflect on how God is speaking through it today -- we discover there’s a lot to consider for our own personal growth and our growth together as a community.

It’s a long list—with far more names than Paul usually mentions in his writings.There are 26 names of individuals, and references to 5 families and the house churches that they represent.

I’m not going to read them all—there’s plenty to draw from the first nine verses. But I encourage you as I read to listen for the ways that Paul describes these people.

Reading: Romans 16:1-9

I love what these verses tell us about Paul. Throughout our study of Romans, it’s been clear that Paul is passionate (indeed, fair to say zealous) about explaining the concepts of faith. He does a lot of exhorting…not afraid to speak his mind. He has stepped on a lot of toes.

And yet after all the long theological expositions Paul shows in this chapter that he also really has connected deeply with a lot of people. And the more I read these verses, the more I sense the affection Paul has for them and the appreciation he has for what they’ve given to the work of the church. He calls them brothers and sisters, friends, co-workers, “beloved”. And I love it that he makes a point in v.13 to mention Rufus’ mother, who has been like a mother to him.

Community to Paul is not just a nice concept. Community is where we see how our words match up with our beliefs and our actions and lifestyles. Community is where we can experience God’s goodness in extraordinary (and ordinary) ways.

So…. To give you an idea of where I’m going with this…The big picture is that community is shaped by the covenant God made with Abraham -- that by faith we are one family. Back in Romans 4, Paul refers to Abraham as the father of us all. God called Abraham to make his name known among the nations (from Genesis 12), and Paul is following along the call. In chapter 16, Paul names a number of covenant family members who have played various roles in the mission to proclaim the Gospel.

There is so much that can be said about community, but I’m going to pull out three things that we can learn from this passage - all in the context of spreading the Gospel…

• The first is our need for help and our need to help – this is about mutual encouragement.

• The second if our need for diversity in and unity of the body — a.k.a. heterogeneity (for the sake of alliteration)

• And lastly, the need for hard work and affection to live into and experience God’s community.

So first -- Our need for help and our need to help.

The setting for our text…Paul is on a mission. He is determined to preach the Gospel where Christ was not known. The gospel was known in Rome (1:8). At this point he is hoping to get to Spain, and he needs the help of the Christian community in Rome to get there.

(According to historians of that day, Spain was referred to as Iberium, which meant the “ends of the earth.”).

So Paul talks about his plan to go to Spain in the previous chapter (15:23, 24) when he says, “But now, with no further place for me in these regions, I desire, as I have for many years to come to you when I go to Spain. For I do hope to see you on my journey and to be sent on by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while.”

So while Paul does want to see the Christians in Rome (as he says in 1:11) “so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you… He goes on to say “or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine,” he is also looking to the Roman Christians to support his missionary journey to send him on to the ends of the earth.

That’s some background for our passage. Now onto the list of names…

Last week Todd focused on the theme of hospitality, welcoming one another just as Christ has welcomed you. We find this same theme at the beginning of today’s passage, which says:“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae),so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you,for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.”

Phoebe has done a lot to help Paul, and now he is hoping the church in Rome will help her out. He calls her “our sister,” meaning she is a Christian, probably a Gentile Christian, given that Jewish parents probably wouldn’t give their child a name from Greek mythology. She seems to be a person of considerable wealth and influence. And the reason she is mentioned first in this letter, most likely, is because she is the carrier of the letter to the church in Rome from Corinth.

As a side note, Paul gets a lot of flack these days for not liking women—or not supporting women in leadership positions. But about a third of the people Paul mentions in this chapter are women. He certainly seems to be grateful for the contributions that they're making to the church. And many commentators point to this chapter as showing Paul’s encouragement of women using their gifts..

(And I’m sure it comes as no big surprise that I agree with those biblical scholars!) And you know, Paul has talked a lot about God’s grace in Romans, and I think we need to extend some of this grace to Paul on this topic!

Paul refers to Phoebe as a “deacon.” Biblical scholars aren’t sure if whether by “deacon” he means a church official or a general helper, though the former is more likely—probably a formal office.

The role of deacon in that time is a bit different from how we’ve defined the role of deacons in our church today. In our Presbyterian system, we have church offices of elder, deacon and some churches have trustees. Our deacons have the role of caring for our congregation.

And I would like to testify that we have wonderful deacons in this church. In the past two years I’ve had two babies. After each birth (when we definitely were in need of help), the deacons organized quite a list of people who brought food that nourished our bodies and souls. What a huge gift, the ministry of meals. At one point my husband, Jim, said: “We should keep having kids so we can keep getting these great meals!” I responded that there’s got to be an easier way.

So Paul has gone through a lot in his missionary journeys…and he has needed a lot of help. I can almost hear the joy in his voice as he lists off the names of people who have touched his life…

And when we look into the backgrounds of the people listed in Romans 16, we find a remarkable range of places where people have come from.

This leads me to the next thing we can draw from the passage, which is God’s desire for diversity and unity within the covenant family.

In this list, there are Greek, Jewish and Latin names. There are common names for slaves—Ampliatus, Urbanus, Hermes, Philologus and Julia. Those are common names for slaves. There are people of great wealth—Phoebe, Aristobulus was quite likely the grandson of Herod the Great and friend of the Emperor Claudius at that time. Narcissus, a rich and powerful freedman who exercised great influence on Claudius. Rufus may well have been the son of Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross to Golgotha.

It’s an encouraging picture of what Paul says in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Another thing I’ve come to appreciate about Paul during this study on Romans is his intense passion for the unity of the church (not to be confused with sameness). He wants so badly for us to show God’s grace with each other and to see ourselves as one family. Throughout this whole letter to the church in Rome, Paul has been calling for the reconciliation of relationships, particularly between Jews and Gentiles.

It’s common sense but often overlooked - we don't take the time - that in working towards unity, it’s important to know where each other is coming from. Knowing each other’s history helps us work towards understanding each other. And understanding leads to unity.

So to better understand the situation in Rome between the Jewish and Gentile Christians, I’ll share some brief notes from history that I found quite interesting. Remembering that this letter was written in 56 A.D...

35?-49 AD: Jewish Christians lead the church in Rome

49 AD: Emperor Claudius, tired of these people he considers agitators in the name of Chrestos, expels all the Jewish Christians from Rome. So then in 49 A.D., the Gentile Christians move in and fill the leadership gap. They do this for about 5 years.

50 AD: Paul goes to Corinth, where he meets Aquila and Pricilla. He works with them.

54 AD: Emperor Claudius dies and the ban is lifted. Jewish Christians return (including Priscilla and Aquila) to Rome.

56 AD (2 years later): Paul writes the letter to the Romans.

So you can imagine the challenges the church in Rome faced in becoming a unified body of believers. There's the pain of the past from being expelled for some, the emotion surrounding different ways of doing things. There's tension over practices - do we call Jesus Messiah or Jesus as Lord - pride, power issues...

It kind of reminds me of my days in DC. One day one political party was in power. The next day it changes, and a new administration comes in. Suddenly one group is out of their jobs and are leaving town, and another group is moving back to the capital, looking to regain their positions of influence. Suddenly there are a lot of new faces in our congregation.

We found it helpful to preach a lot about grace in that setting – receiving it from God, extending it to others. Usually it’s easier to extend grace if we have at least some understanding of each other’s history and reasons for thinking the way we do about things.

Paul is not calling for reconciliation between groups because he thinks it will help the church to grow faster. It’s certainly not expedient to call people from different backgrounds to worship and live out their faith together. He’s not saying this because it’s trendy. Paul is calling people together because this is his understanding of what God wants for the world - the radical transformation of relationships which are embodied in a unified community of faith.

The late Dr. Samuel Hines was the pastor of Third Street Church of God in D.C. for 25 years. He often said that “reconciliation —with God and each other through Christ - is God’s one-item agenda.” Reconciliation with God and with each other through Christ. God's one-item agenda.

As Paul names all these people—he’s saying, “This is the church. There are Jews, Gentiles, slaves, free, men, women, rich, poor people from all over the map… This is the church! Now live into your identity as the church/body of Christ!”

Really, we need to be with people from different backgrounds because it helps us to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God. This happens as we hear how others interpret scripture and experiences - their understanding of how God has been at work.

And we need people from different backgrounds in our lives in order to grow in our understanding of ourselves, which plays a big role in how we minister to other people from our experience and where our biases are in our understandings.

John Stott, in his commentary on Romans had some strong words to say about this. He says:

…people like to worship with their…own kind; and it may be necessary to acquiesce in different congregations according to language, which is the most formidable barrier of all. But heterogeneity is of the essence of the church, since it is the one and only community in the world in which Christ has broken down all dividing walls.

The vision we have been given of the church triumphant is of a company drawn from ‘every nation, tribe, people and language,’ who are all singing God’s praises in unison. So we must declare that a homogeneous church is a defective church, which must work penitently and perseveringly toward heterogeneity.

(Makes me wonder what John Stott would say about Presbyterians. We can work on it.)

We can hear that and nod our heads in agreement, but the tension often comes from knowing how to move from good ideas to action ... and not getting paralyzed by the complexity of the problems…

I find this a lot as I participate in dialogues about racial reconciliation – the ups and downs internally that go through me. Last month I was part of a discussion hosted by SPU’s Perkins Center for Reconciliation. Kerry Dearborn and others were sharing about what they learned at a recent week-long institute on reconciliation.

It was a very stimulating discussion. We were tracking with each other. There was this sense of joining together in mutual mission and working towards something that was dear to God’s heart. And it was a good time of connecting with friends and colleagues. It was just this high of being together.

But I found that as soon as I walked out to my car, though, I could feel the energy draining. And when I got back to Queen Anne Street and started passing people on the street and there was just no eye contact. I just felt this familiar sinking feeling.

I thought, okay, I believe there is spiritual battle. It's real. and enters in with thoughts of how much hard work is required. And it makes me just want to run to the computer and go to my inbox and start just responding to e-mails and do something tangible.

You know it’s a lot easier - for me at least - to just stay busy with emails, our lists of things to do … than to do the hard work of venturing into new territory and risk being misunderstood, risk being “inefficient” with my time…

But the good news that we can keep coming back to is that Jesus has already done the hardest work. Jesus has done the wall-breaking work of reconciliation. We just need to follow in his ways, keep loving as Jesus loved, keep forgiving as he does, resisting the evil one’s attempts to discourage us, and keep reminding ourselves of the wonderful life-transforming work that is happening in Jesus' name. So much. The needs are great, but we can each do our part.

And this leads me to the third aspect we can draw from today’s Scripture. The group of people Paul lists is characterized by hard work (not to be confused with busyness) and affection (the agape kind of love).

Seven times Paul describes the people in this list co-workers, hard workers, benefactors… And four times he describes people as “beloved.” It’s almost like he's alternating between describing them as hard workers and as “beloved.”

After mentioning Phoebe, in v.3-4, Paul says to “Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the churches of the Gentiles.”

Priscilla and Aquila are a married couple - two Jewish Christians who got expelled from Rome. They had quite a remarkable missionary history of their own. After being thrown out of Rome, they worked with Paul in Corinth and Ephesus. Ephesus is probably where they risked their lives for Paul, during a riot there (Acts 19:34-40; 2 Cor 6:5; 11:23). They were very dedicated to community and founded house churches in Ephesus and Rome.

And I'd be very curious to see how they re-entered life in Rome after being expelled, and worked with the Gentile leaders there. We don't know, but Paul praises them in his letters, so I assume they took the high road.

You know, one reason I’m generally a fan of short-term mission trips is that very often these trips are great opportunities to work hard and to practice what it means to be a Christ-centered community. A group is stuck together for a week or two - usually away from computers, TV, the usual distractions.

And most often they entail venturing into a new neighborhood, connecting with people from different backgrounds—learning lots about ourselves, others and God, meeting tangible needs, spiritual devotion times together... And then there's always (almost always) some conflict, some big issue to work through. And being in community like that provides a great opportunity to work it through and to come out stronger.

And then the hard part of these trips is coming back; incorporating these short-term experiences into a long-term lifestyle. It’s so easy to get caught back up into the busyness and trappings of society.

So maybe we can approach our work on committees, our work volunteering in the schools, and our different places where God has us as long-term missions. As we get involved in things we can ask ourselves:

1. How am I making Christ known here?
2. How am I offering and receiving help in this situation (working towards mutual encouragement)?
3. Am I working to build a diverse community/relationships?
4. Am I working hard – or just staying busy?
5. And how am I showing God’s love?

At our staff meetings I am often so encouraged to hear the many stories of how people had been working hard to serve each other. People are reaching out to each other in times of grief, financial hardship, loneliness (delivering meals is a really nice one), helping out with tasks around the house... As I look out at this church family, I could name a lot of ways that people are really working hard to reach out.

Just today, a group will be going to the zoo with refugee families (through World Relief), connecting and sharing God’s love. The Families in Service ministry has provided many great opportunities like this. I bet if Paul were to write a list of names from this congregation, commending ways that you’ve been partners in the gospel, the list would be really long.

To conclude…

Unity is a challenging call/hard work, but the rewards are sweet when we even make small steps in that direction– rewards such as a deeper understanding of God and of each other, closer relationships - intimacy with God and with others, increased hope for peace, a stronger witness to the world, and that wonderful sense that we are playing our part in God’s mission to the ends of the earth…!

Would you pray with me?