apostle – Salvaged Faith

The Real Housewives

Posted on September 27, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Romans 16:1-16

Last week we explored the nuts and bolts of what a house church was, how it functioned, and who was part of it.

One of the things I lifted up is that while occasionally they would have had traveling preachers and apostles come visit, for the most part, these communities spent time reading and listening to scripture together.
They read from what we now consider the Old Testament.
And they received and read aloud letters from those who had known and experienced the good news of Jesus Christ.

The Book of Romans is one such letter.
Before Paul ever has the opportunity to travel there, he sends along his instruction and his teaching.
He wanted to share God’s good news with them and help them navigate some of the struggles they were experiencing.
And so for Christians in Rome, the very first time they would have heard these words, would have been gathered together in their homes.
It would not have been something they sat down to read.
It would have been something they heard.

My colleague Carol Ferguson writes about what it must have been like:

Can you imagine you are alive in 56AD, in the greatest city in the world, the heart of the empire, a place teeming with people, a place teeming with religious faiths and shrines of every description, a place where the spoils of nations are paraded through the streets, where a few coins will buy you a spot to watch gladiators kill each other for fun, where emperors are worshipped as gods?
Can you imagine that you are gathered together with a motley crew of compatriots, some wealthy and some poor, soldiers and serving girls and socialites, some with Jewish roots and some Gentile, because you’ve heard a letter from Paul—the Paul, the one whose letters are prized across the empire—is on its way?

Close your eyes and picture yourself there…
Crowded together others in a home, some standing, some reclining, children running around…
You can smell the food cooking from the nearby kitchen and the sweat of the day’s work…
And then you hear a voice reading aloud the words of Paul…

A quick question… as you place yourself here… whose voice did you hear?
Was it a man’s voice?
It’s Paul’s letter of course, so maybe that feels natural.
But when we turn to the words of Romans chapter 16, what we find is the introduction of Phoebe.
Paul takes time here at the end to lift her up and introduce her, giving her authority and credibility.
He asks them to welcome her and take care of her.
This was a common practice, so that the community receiving the letter would know that this person has the authority to not only speak, but also interpret what was within.
Jann Aldredge-Clanton describes Phoebe as a coworker of Paul’s “and as a minister of the church in Cenchareae… [she] led the community and presided over worship. And independent woman of some wealth, Phoebe was also a benefactor of Paul and many others.” (The CEB Women’s Bible, p. 1432)
And so after she carried that letter from Paul onto the streets of Rome, she would have been welcomed likely by Prisca and Aquila and the “church that meets in their house.” (16:5 CEB).
They would have gathered to sing and pray.
And break bread.
And then Phoebe would have stood in their midst and spoken.

Lest we think this was some kind of fluke and Phoebe was just one woman with a particular exceptional gift, the introductions at the end of Romans continue.
Paul gives his greetings to the leaders of the house/churches throughout this region, to other ministers of Christ who have been traveling, to friends he has met along the way and those who are family.
There are twenty-nine names listed here…
And ten of them are women.
Phoebe… the minister who brought the letter
Prisca… who is mentioned before her husband as the leader of the house/church… someone who was known to help mentor visiting teachers like Apollos.
Mary, the twins Tryphaena and Tryphosis, Persis… all women who have labored in Christian ministry for God.
Junia, who along with her husband, was not one of the 12 apostles, but possibly part of the 72 sent two by two by Jesus in Luke 10.
Rufus’s mother, possibly the widow of Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross of Christ.
Julia, who likely hosted one of the house/churches in Rome with her spouse.
Nereus’s sister, who probably played the same role.

I think we have typically thought back to this time and considered the place of women to be subjugated to men.
We have imagined them as housewives who cared for the family and took care of the home.
We couldn’t picture women active in ministry and if we did, they were always eclipsed by the work of those famous male apostles.
It feels relatively new for us to consider female as clergy.
In the United Methodist tradition, while John Wesley licensed women to preach, and women were ordained in the 1800s, they were only granted full clergy rights in 1956.
In other traditions, leadership by women is still rejected.

But scripture, history, and archeology paint a really different picture.
We find women leading ministry not only in the early church, but also in Jewish and Roman cultic traditions as well. Gravestones identify women as leaders of synagogues, elders, priests, and more.
In addition, many women ran their own household’s without mention of a husband, like Lydia an independent businesswoman who hosted Paul in Philippi, or Nympha who led the house church in Laodicea.
The stories of these women and others throughout scripture, show that women were essential ministers of the gospel.
They not only established house/churches, but also carried the good news from place to place.
It wasn’t some egalitarian dream world – but there was a place for the leadership of women.

Yet, Carol Ferguson notes:

As Christianity became more structured, more institutionalized, rules forbidding women from preaching or teaching—which itself suggests that it was happening—begin to appear. And in time the church was able to forget, and argue that women couldn’t lead because women had never led—a circular argument that short-circuited thousands of years of gifted, called leaders from leaving their mark on the church.
Sometimes you can still see the eraser marks in our scripture.

Ferguson lifts up a few examples.
First, there is Phoebe, herself.
In the original Greek, she is called a diakonos. It is used in talking about commissioned ministers of the Gospel, ministers with significant status, and deacons who had official duties within the church. It can also mean someone who serves another.
I looked this passage up in my favorite bible this week and the CEB translations reads:
I’m introducing our sister Phoebe to you, who is a servant of the church in Cenchreae.
It feels more like someone who cares for the church, instead of leading it.
With that one choice of how to translate a word, Phoebe becomes a servant rather than an official minister of the gospel, even though the context reminds us that as a wealthy benefactor, Phoebe herself would have had many servants in the traditional sense.

Someone else who gets erased from this passage is Junia.
Paul tells us that she came to Christ before him.
She was imprisoned with him for the crime of being a Christian.
She, alongside her partner Andronicus are called not just apostles, but prominent among the apostles – those who are sent by Christ to share the good news.
But for centuries, the name Junia was translated as Junias.
Theologians argued it had to be a man’s name, because women couldn’t be apostles.
We imposed our understanding of the place of a woman upon the text, rather than let the text change how we thought about the ministry of women.

I recently have been studying the sisters, Mary and Martha, from Luke’s gospel.
There, too, we have an image of women who are busy doing housework, serving the male disciples… or at least Martha is doing the serving.
Mary is described as slacking off, listening to Jesus instead.

But the word used in this passage to talk about the work Martha is doing is diakanos.

Mary Stromer Hanson lifts up a compelling argument based on this text.
Earlier in this chapter, Jesus sent out thirty-six pairs of disciples in ministry, likely including women, maybe even Junia and Andronicus.
They are to go out into towns and spread the good news and to establish themselves in a home… the very first iterations of this house/church model.
Jesus then himself enters a village and is welcomed and received into a home by Martha.

Now… here is where Hanson’s argument gets really interesting…
While modern translations say that Martha had a sister, Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.
Grammatically, this could instead be translated:
Martha had a sister, Mary, who also sat at the foot of the Lord.
Meaning, they both were disciples of Jesus who listened to and followed his teaching.
Martha, it goes on to say, is distracted….
Distracted by what?
My bible says “getting things ready for their meal.”
The Message says, “by all the things she had to do in the kitchen.”
The King James Version reads, “Martha was cumbered about by much serving.”

But do you know what the word used here is?
Diakanos.
What if, Hanson argues, Martha, who has opened her home, is not preoccupied by the cleaning and the cooking… but by the ministry she is supporting in her own house/church.
In the community that she has been called to establish to spread the good news of Jesus.
Martha is suddenly transformed from a frantic housewife into a dedicated minister of the Lord.

We imagine Mary sitting there besides Jesus, refusing to help, but Hanson argues that grammatically, it doesn’t actually appear that Mary is there at all.
She has left.
Possibly, Mary was one of the seventy-two, sent out by Jesus in this act of ministry, while Martha supported that ministry from her own home.
Martha isn’t worried about Mary not drying dishes.
She claims to be overwhelmed by her work of ministry in the community, but Jesus sees past that concern to offer a word of comfort:
You are troubled about your sister being away. You are worried about what might happen to her out there in this risky ministry of evangelism. You want her to come home and serve in this way instead.
But she has chosen a good thing.

This long list of leaders at the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans are filled with servants of the Lord, ministers of the Gospel, leaders of the church.
Today, looking back, we might find the inclusion of so many women surprising.
But they simply were doing their part to bring folks together around the good news of Jesus.
Whether that meant traveling or opening their homes or preaching or leading.

And that’s what we all have done in these past six months.
We have opened our homes to God and led the people we love in the faith.
I love the way my colleague, Rev. Carole Ferguson describes this transition.
Whether or not we thought of our selves as leaders, we’ve all be worshipping in house/churches.
And you have made it happen.
You set up Zoom or Facebook so it would stream to your TV.
You brought your spouse a cup of coffee to sip during worship.
You yelled at your kids to come and watch.
You typed out prayer requests for friends and loved ones in the chat.
You lit a candle on your desk.
You sang along to the hymns.

Paul wrote a letter to the community of believers in Rome, but it was each of those twenty nine names listed at the close of this letter that did the hard work. They were the ministers.
They stepped up to lead and worship and support the ministry.
I can stand here and write and deliver a sermon, but you are the leaders of this church.
So, say hello to Karen.
Say hello to Dawn and Scott.
Say hello to Herb and his mother.
Say hello to the children in the Wright home who lead us in worship.
Say hello to Shirley and her sister-in-law, Sandy and Bob.
Say hello to the church that meets at the home of the Lockins and Osthus and Gordon families.
We have 255 households in our congregation, so this could take a very long while, so I will just say this:
Hello and greetings and love to all of you, faithful ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Keep up the good work.

Sermon adapted from: https://carolhferguson.com/2020/07/12/ladies-of-the-house-church/

Come Away With Me

Posted on July 12, 2009Leave a comment

(Adapted from an article written in the Christian Century, 1996, “Watching from the boat,” by Martin B. Copenhaver)

I read this week in an article by Martin Copenhaver, about a pastor who resigned from a suburban church where relentless demands on his time and energy were beginning to wear him down. Instead of leaving the ministry all together, he became a missionary on the coast of Maine. In this new calling, he visits small Christian communities in isolated and remote places. Most of the things that he does there are the same as what he was doing in his church near the city – he preaches, teaches, and visits the sick. But there is a huge difference in doing these things in the hustles and bustle of the city and on the coast of Maine. “Between ports of call he travels long distances by boat. Between sermons he can listen to the wind. Before teaching another class he can study the horizon. After visiting the sick he is anointed with sea spray. Interspersed with his demanding pastoral duties he takes a watery road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

When I read the story of that pastor, I realized how much I cherish the time I have away from this church. And I know that comes off the wrong way – but I, too, need time away from this building and this work, so that I can come back refreshed and replenished… re-created by God. Any afternoon I can get away to play a round of disc golf, or during the summer to sit by the water with family, is a moment that replenishes my body and soul in the same way.

There is a reason that our word for play time – recreation – can also be said re-creation… in our play, in our rest, in our time apart, we find the strength we need to begin anew.

So much emphasis in our world today is placed on productivity – on the hours we spend working and what we make out of that time. What we never stop and recognize is that constant productivity without rest, without renewal, only leads to failure.
This is the lesson that my dad has taught me many times in small ways throughout my lifetime. He has worked with his hands repairing equipment for as long as I can remember. And the rule he tries to live by on the farm is that it is better to fix a piece of equipment once and do it right, rather than patch it up quickly and get back out in the field. In the long run – that equipment will last longer and run better when you take the time out to repair it properly.

Unfortunately, that is a lesson my dad has also taught me through bad examples. While he takes care of his equipment, he doesn’t take very good care of his own body. He doesn’t stop for as long as he needs to in order to rest and replenish his most important tool. He pushes ahead, fitting as much into his day as possible, stopping here and there for a nap before heading out into the fields once more, or before working the night shift at Quaker. And now his body is wearing out faster than it needs to. Like that pastor from the suburbs – something needs to change, or someday he will have to quit the things that he loves all together.

In our gospel lesson from Mark this morning, Jesus has something to teach us about rest – about Sabbath – about re-creation. As Copenhaver points out, “Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee so many times that it is hard to” figure out what they are doing and why they are doing it. “Until the sixth chapter, that is, when the reason for the crossings is clear: the disciples need a break.

“The Twelve had just returned from their first mission. On that mission they discovered, perhaps to their surprise, that they could do much of what they had observed Jesus do. They were empowered to teach, preach and heal. They left on the mission as disciples, but when they returned, flushed with success, Mark refers to them as apostles for the first time. It was a new title signifying a new relationship with Jesus. No longer were they disciples with mere “learner’s permits,” unable to do anything on their own. They had been sent forth with the authority of a commission. They were apostles. When the apostles returned to Jesus they had stories to tell and victories to savor.”

I can picture a scene in which twelve children return home from the first day of school and crowd around their mother or father anxious to share all of the exciting and amazing things that had happened that day. All twelve voices are trying to speak at the same time, outdoing one another with stories, trying to worm their way into the conversation. In my house, there were just three of us children, and even our three little voices could exhaust my mother in about five minutes!

And that was only when we had Mom’s undivided attention! Other days, the phone was ringing off the hook, usually she had just gotten home from work herself and was trying to unload from her day, dinner was waiting to be made… you get the picture.
I remember a little sign that my mom had hanging up in the kitchen when we were kids, that said “take a number.” I’m not sure that we ever used the cute little numbers painted onto die-cut apples, but I remember thinking as I got older that perhaps she didn’t need to be overwhelmed by all of us at once.

The apostles return from their first missionary experience, but they too, had to take a number. Jesus was surrounded by people who needed healing, guidance, who were seeking peace, and there just wasn’t the time or space they needed to stop and debrief.

Those disciples wanted to tell him everything, but they were hot and tired and hungry and exhausted, so Jesus found a small window of opportunity and suggested that they get in a boat and seek a deserted place.

“Come away with me by yourselves… come and get some rest.”

That boat ride to the other shore was a moment of fresh air. It was the sea breeze blowing over the missionary pastor on the coast of Maine. It was the gentle wind that blows through the trees on hole 3 at the Sugar Bottom disc golf course. The apostles relaxed in the boat, took turns telling their stories, took turns listening, dug into their sacks for a piece of bread, and replenished their souls.

“When they reached the shore, however, they discovered that a crowd had followed them… The sick had run, hobbled, or been carried to meet Jesus… The people waiting for them looked like a huge gathering of baby birds, their hunger so constant that their mouths were always opened wide. It was enough to overwhelm a mere apostle. But Jesus had compassion on the crowd and began once again to feed them with his words.”

Can you imagine being in the middle of your rest and renewal, your vacation, your one day off and getting a call from the office? Having a family emergency that pulls you away? Even though it is your work, or your family, or even something that you might love… because your time of re-creation is interrupted, you get a little irritated.

If we were to continue on with our reading in the gospel of Mark this morning, the apostles did just that. As Jesus stood on the shore teaching and healing, his disciples called out from the boat – “Hey Jesus… it’s getting late! We’re in the middle of nowhere. Tell everyone to go home, get something to eat, and come back tomorrow!”

Here’s the part of the story where Jesus gets the disciples to pull a few loaves of bread and two fish out of their bags and he feeds the entire crowd with their meager offering. And it’s a wonderful story – but one we’ll save for another day.

Sensing the apostles’ fatigue, Jesus basically told them to wait for him in the boat, much as a parent might tell tired children to wait in the car while she does one more errand. All they had to do was reach into their sacks and hand over some bread – Jesus did all the rest. He realized that they just couldn’t do any more… at least not tonight.

“The sociologists call it compassion fatigue. All of us are capable of compassion on occasion. But when we’ve seen too many emotional television appeals for hunger relief or walked down too many streets crowded with human sorrow, we discover that our compassion is limited… Only God can extend constant compassion. God is the only one who never suffers from “compassion fatigue.” In the constancy of Jesus’ compassion, his kinship with this God is revealed.”

Wayne Mueller in his book, “Sabbath” puts it another way. He writes that too often, we do good badly. Sure, the disciples could have gotten out of the boat, and lent a hand. They were empowered to teach, preach and heal as Jesus did, but ministry in the name of Christ is exhausting business. They were tired and worn out, and if they had decided to help out, they could have done more harm than good.

Mueller shares a story of an experience where exactly that happened. He had been working as a part of the deinstitutionalization movement in the 1970’s. They were trying to release young people from juvenille centers and institutions and help them return to their homes. The idea was that they would be better rehabilitated living amongst their own families, rather than being locked up. It was a great idea, only very little time was taken to think about the consequences of their actions. No time was taken to listen to the families of these young people, or the communities they would return to. No teaching was done before they were sent home. Mueller writes that they didn’t even take a Sabbath day of rest to consider the implications of what they would be doing.

“Now”, he writes, “the nation is awash in lost children, some violent, many in pain… We, for our part, now rush to blame them for threatening the safety of our society, and we cannot build prisons fast enough to hold them… We were in a terrible hurry to do good, and there was no rest in our decisions. And just as speech without silence creates noise, charity without rest creates suffering.”

“John Westerhoff has remarked that atheism in the modern world is characterized by this affirmation: ‘If I don’t do it, it won’t happen.’ The apostles–even after their newfound success as teachers, preachers and healers–knew better. They waited in the boat.”

All of us who are called by the gospel and by God’s spirit need that reminder too. We need to remember that the power of God chooses to work through us, but that God also can work without us. That sometimes another person is called to respond. That sometimes we have to stand still before we can move forward. When the compassion of the apostles was spent and their ability to respond exhausted, people were fed anyway, as if with manna from heaven, and they could only watch from the boat.

And when the meal was finished, Jesus sent the disciples back onto the lake in the boat… told them to cross over to the other side, and he climbed a mountain to pray.

Even Jesus needed rest. Even Jesus needed to be replenished. Even Jesus let prayer re-create his soul.

Sabbath time is a time of blessing. We pray for strength and courage and happiness. We rest, eat, play, walk, and listen. That is the spirit of the Sabbath prayer that we heard in response to our Psalter this morning.

So today, stop. Take a deep breath. And come away with Jesus.

(I then played the music video from Norah Jones “Come Away With Me“