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/