Romans 1.1-17 and 15.14-16.27                                                                  AJM Holy Trinity September 03

 

Introduction

 

Good morning. I’d like to start by asking what kind of a world do we live in? How would you describe it, what are the things you’d pull out if you wanted to explain the pressures and opportunities of life in 21^st century England? Some of it’s great. We live in a time of unprecedented freedom, don’t we. We can travel all over the world easily and safely. Everyone can go to university, anyone can rise to fame and fortune. We are free to express our beliefs and set our priorities as we choose. Choice and opportunity surround us on all sides.

 

But there’s a darker side too. These are some of the headlines from last week’s paper. ‘Binges leave British the worst for drink’. Apparently we are the heaviest drinkers in Europe, and we drink in order to get drunk; the technical term for it is ‘high speed vertical drinking’. One of the results is what the article calls ‘a trail of filth and damage disfiguring our cities every weekend’; Westminster council has to hose down its pavements every morning. Alcohol abuse, drink related crime, and alcohol-related A&E admissions are soaring. People even go on holiday specially to do this full time, fitting in a bit of sex in between, in a nice Greek resort called Faliriki.

 

What else. We take our responsibilities towards the oppressed seriously, but sometimes it goes wrong. Here’s another headline: ‘Terrorist gang let into Britain to seek asylum’. ‘A gang of suspected Algerian terrorists with alleged links to Al-Quaeda are on the run in Britain after immigration officials allowed them to seek asylum without tipping off security services.’ Meanwhile the murky world of media-dominated politics causes defence experts to commit suicide in peaceful Oxfordshire villages. But then again, the media also enables freedom-seeking Americans to exhibit themselves in glass boxes hung from cranes and call it art. You really can choose to live your life in all sorts of ways these days.

 

So here we are, and we’re going to spend the next few weeks looking at the Epistle to the Romans. It was written by a rather assertive Jew born in Turkey, to a bunch of Christians who lived two thousand years ago in Rome, the capital of an empire which now no longer exists. It is not an easy read. It starts with a theological greeting which goes on for a whole paragraph. It offers a detailed discussion of human depravity, a lot of stuff on the law, reams on the complexities of Jewish Christianity, a useful section on the faith of Abraham, a chunk on how to deal with the Roman secular authorities and a whole chapter of ‘give my regards to’. And the language can be a tiny bit technical. Just as an example, let me quote you a chunk I’ve picked at random from chapter 3:

 

What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way! First of all, they have been entrusted with the words of God. What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: ‘So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge’.

 

I rest my case! There is a natty chapter on vegetarianism, and a diatribe which may or may not be about homosexuality, but otherwise it’s the kind of letter that doesn’t exactly make for gripping bedtime reading. It’s hard to see, at first sight, how it relates to the world we now live in.

 

Let’s pray.

 

Beginning at the beginning

 

Well, we didn’t have a reading. That’s because we’re starting off by looking at both the beginning and the end of the letter. The passage set is actually the first half of chapter 1, the second half of chapter 15 and the whole of chapter 16. That’s because Paul has done what ancient writers often did, and ended where he began. It provides structure. As my school French teacher used to say when telling us how to write essays, ‘you tell them you’re going to say it, then you say it, and then you tell them you’ve said it’. That’s roughly what Paul does here.

 

Greeting : 1.1-7

Chapter 1 vs 1. Paul begins by saying who the letter is from. This was normal usage at the time. What wasn't normal was to pack quite such a lot of stuff into it. Again opening at random, take Peter’s first letter. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect. Short and to the point. Or take John. The elder, to my dear friend Gaius. But Paul doesn’t do it that way. Here it is:

 

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God -  the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

As a way of saying ‘from me, to you’, that’s rather long-winded! I think there are two reasons. First, most of these Christians he doesn’t know personally. The whole of the next section makes that clear. He talks about his longing to visit them, about how much he prays for them, about how he wants to minister the gospel to them. And so he’s anxious to start off well. He is desperately keen to make sure they know who he is, and that they become as anxious to receive him as he is to visit them. So he comes up with this long statement of his identity. It’s tempting to skip over it. But let me suggest an exercise to you. If we are to be firm in our identity and effective in our ministry, we need to know who we are and what our purpose in life is. This is Paul’s own version of that. But we can do it too. Try it. Start off, Alison, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be – what? – and set apart for – what? Then it will go on the same, defining who the Christ Jesus that you serve is. And then you get to verse 5. Through him I received grace and – what? – to do – what? If you can sit down with that passage and fill in those 4 gaps, then you have understood who you are and what your life is all about. If not, you haven’t. Try it!

 

Context of letter : 1.8-15 and 15.23-33

Let’s move on. I want to look at two passages, ch 1 vs 8-15 and ch 15 vs 23-33. These two sections of the letter give us its context, and we need to understand that if we are to understand its content.

In these two sections Paul tells us why he is writing to them. He wants to visit them. Let’s look at the second passage.

 

But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to see you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to visit you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while. Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the saints there. For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings. So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this fruit, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ. I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.

Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there, so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed.

 

Paul has been visiting the churches in the provinces of Macedonia and Achaia, collecting money for the relatively poor mother church in Jerusalem, and he is about to deliver it. He’s a bit worried about the reception he’ll get from the authorities in Jerusalem, but he hopes it’ll be OK and he is looking forward to spending some time in Rome on his way to Spain where he hopes to proclaim the gospel and plant churches just as he has done in Asia. In the event it wasn’t OK; he was arrested in Jerusalem, imprisoned for several years, and eventually sent to Rome to be tried before the emperor. So he did get there, but not quite as he had hoped, and he never did go to Spain. He died in Rome. For the moment he is writing from Corinth, where he is staying at the house of Gaius, and the letter is to be delivered to Rome by Phoebe, a minister in Cenchrea, which was a port 6 miles from Corinth. The year is probably 56 or 57 AD.

 

Purpose of letter : 15.14-22

So his initial purpose is to introduce himself and secure an invitation to visit. It worked; we know that when he did finally reach Rome the Christians there came out to meet him on the road and gave him a triumphal escort into the city.

 

But Paul has a more fundamental purpose even than that, which I suppose is why chapters 2 to 14 are there as well. He doesn’t want to wait till he sees them, he wishes to begin to share the gospel as he has received it with them even now. It seems that the gospel had reached Rome not as a result of special missionary journeys, but in the course of the travel of ordinary believers who had visited the city, which was after all the capital of the empire. It was probably shared first of all in the synagogues. Some Jews became Christians, and unrest seems to have resulted. In the year 49 the emperor Claudius responded to this by booting all Jews out of the city. They had been allowed back after his death; but meanwhile a community of Gentile Christians had grown up in the city, strong in their faith and understanding of the gospel, but weak in their experience of the Holy Spirit. So Paul tells them he wants to bring them spiritual gifts (1.11).  He wants their faith to be sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit (15.16). He talks here about the power of signs and miracles and the power of the Holy Spirit (15.19), and much of his teaching will be about the spiritual foundation of our life of faith.

 

 

The church and the world

Greeting the believers : 16.1-23

 

So that’s Paul’s purpose. We need to understand it or we won’t get much out of the study. We accept it as valid and we admire it.

But there’s another question. What can this letter offer to us, who live in a world that is vastly different from theirs? Reading about what a group of people needed to complete their life of faith two thousand years ago is very interesting, but is it and can it be any more than that? Well, I want to suggest to you that it can, and for two reasons.

 

I said before this is a letter. That means it’s written to some actual people. The whole of chapter 16 tells us who they are, and it tells us some fascinating things about their situation. Many of those things link them with us much more closely than we would expect. Let’s look at the list.

 

Phoebe

First is Phoebe. Phoebe, says the NIV, is a servant of the church in Cenchrea. But the word translated servant isn’t the one Paul used of himself when he said he was a servant of Christ. The word used for Phoebe is actually the Greek word deacon, and it isn’t even used in the feminine, deaconness, but in the masculine, just deacon. Phoebe was an appointed leader in the church. It wasn’t just that she had the gift of service, it was that she held a named and recognised ministerial office. She was, in short, the vicar. In Zambia they call the clergy Father. I am clergy, so when I was there they called me Father too. Father Alison. I got used to it eventually. That’s how it was with Phoebe. Deacon Phoebe. She must have been a dynamic woman. She’s off to make the long and dangerous journey to Rome, where she will deliver this letter.

 

Priscilla and Aquila

Let’s move on. Priscilla and Aquila. They are a well known couple who crop up in Acts and 1 Corinthians too. They were Jewish, from Rome; they were amongst those expelled. They lived for a time in Corinth, where Paul stayed with them and worked with them. He took them with him to Ephesus, where they planted and led a church in their house, continuing to pastor it after he’d left. They are now back in Rome, and again they are leading a church. They are normally mentioned as Priscilla and Aquila, not Aquila and Priscilla; it seems from other early sources that Priscilla had a particular teaching gift. We don’t know in what way they risked their lives for Paul.

 

Epenetus and Mary

Then there are 2 people called Epenetus and Mary. Epenetus is a Greek name, but we know only what Paul says here, which is that he was a key early convert in Asia.

Mary we know nothing about, except that she is a church worker.

 

Andronicus and Junia

Then we come on to Andronicus and Junia, whom he describes as apostles, which if you read Ephesians is one of the early leadership ministries of the church, and just means people who establish churches. Now this really has put the cat among the pigeons in the past. Just as translators find it hard to persuade themselves to say that Phoebe was a deacon, so they have said to themselves that if Andronicus and Junia are apostles then they must both be male. Junia is a female name, and in some manuscripts it comes up as Julia. Nonetheless they have tried. They called her Junius, short for Junianus. Just that as far as we know no one’s ever been called Junius. They may well have been husband and wife; we don’t know when they were imprisoned with Paul.

 

Then we get a series of common slave names. Ampliatus , Urbanus and Stachys in vs 8, and Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas and Hermas could have been either slaves or ex-slaves. The ‘brothers’ with them are presumably the other members of their house church. Other translations say ‘brothers and sisters’.

 

Apelles in vs 10 is a common Greek name. Aristobolus is a name common the in family of Herod the Great. His grandson was called Aristobulus and was living in Rome at this time. Herodion was probably a slave or ex-slave from the same household.

 

Then Paul greets the Christians in Narcissus’ household, but not Narcissus himself. There was a famously wealthy ex-slave of Claudius called Narcissus, forced to commit suicide after Nero became emperor; the members of his household would still have been there a couple of years later within the imperial household.

 

Then we get some more women singled out for their ministry: Tryphena and Tryphosa, who may have been twin sisters, and Persis, a name commonly given to slaves from Persia.

 

Rufus was probably the son of Simon of Cyrene who carried Jesus’ cross; he’s mentioned by Mark. Then another house church, whose members are named as Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas.

 

So the question is, what do we do with all this. I do three things with it, maybe even four. The first I’ve already mentioned:

 

Women in the church

 

Paul mentions men and women in one breath, not just as Christians but as church leaders. Phoebe was running a church, Priscilla was the leading edge of the partnership with her husband, and Junia was an apostle. It is clear from these greetings that women were as prominent in leadership and ministry as men. And this wasn’t because the culture was egalitarian, because it certainly wasn’t. The social status of women in the first century was very low, especially in the Greek and Greek dominated cultures, and the gospel offered them the first chance to be equal with men. When Paul wrote that in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, he meant it, and the church lived it. The gospel was so attractive to women that in the year 370 the emperor wrote to the Pope to ask him to prevent missionaries from calling at the homes of pagan women, so many were becoming Christians! Evidence suggests that women began to lose their leadership roles only as churches moved out of the home into the public domain, conforming as it did so to secular ways of doing things. Women in leadership in the church is something that, despite the protestations of large sections and whole denominations of it today, goes right back to biblical times.

 

Cell church

 

The second thing I notice in these greetings is that they are addressed to small groups of people who are said to be meeting in someone’s home. It seems that the Roman church consisted of cell groups meeting in the leaders’ houses. We know that there were no church buildings until the 3^rd century, and the earliest ones were modelled on the floor plan of a typical home. So here we have Priscilla and Aquila’s cell group, another group in vs 14 whose members included Asyncritus, Phlegon and others; and another in vs 15 whose members included Philogus, Julia and others. Those in the household of Aristobulus may have been another, and those in the household of Narcissus another. Some seem to have been family groups. We’ve just been introducing the concept of cell groups in Tanzania, and several of them decided to begin by running a group consisting of members of their own family, meeting in their own home. If we didn’t have all these buildings, it would seem obvious.

 

I also notice that the members of these cells were very mixed in terms of their social status. Many carry slave names. Others are said to be Paul’s relatives. Aristobulus seems to be a member of the ruling classes. Persia is a foreigner. Others have kind of middle class Greek names. Some are Jews, some are Gentiles. And I think that’s true of us too. We are a very mixed Christian community. Leicester has lots of groups and subgroups, and a complete range of the social spectrum. Perhaps we are one of the few places in the city where members of all those groups come together. We have rich people and poor people, government representatives and asylum seekers, college lecturers and street people, people born here and people from other lands. We are the body of Christ in this place.

 

 

The importance of greetings

 

The next thing I notice is the enormous importance Paul attaches to these greetings, because they take up so much space. I think there are a number of reasons.

 

The first is that Paul understands the importance of encouragement and affirmation. These people are not anonymous, they are all valued individuals, and he wants them to feel valued. We tend to place a high value on autonomy, on individuality; they placed a high value on community, and it is important for Paul to affirm his relationship with them by name. It reminds me again of Africa, where every gathering has to start off with greetings. When we met with 40 pastors and evangelists our time together began with a service. During that service they were each asked to introduced themselves personally; and so were we. It makes our peace look quite understated! I have worked out that it is important to start each conference with greetings. So I collect greetings before I go, from the bishop and from Roger and from the English pastor who used to work there and has now come home; and from previous team members, and from Holy Trinity as a whole. And I trot them out. They are always received with enormous smiles and cheers. If I don’t do it, I come across as cold and impersonal. And every conference has to end with speeches of thanks and gifts of appreciation. It’s a way of emphasizing the importance of relationships.

 

The second is that Paul wants them to read his letter very carefully, probably more than once. He says in chapter 15 verse 15 that he has written to them quite boldly on some points. And he knows that you can’t just set people right, you have to show that you care about them, that you are committed to them, that you believe in them and value each one of them before you can start telling them what to do. Maybe we can learn something from all that.

 

Their world and ours

 

Finally, it begins to occur to me that perhaps their world is not so very different from ours as it might seem.

 

We live in a highly mobile society, but so do they. Paul has never been to Rome, but he has met all these Christians in different places throughout the empire. Phoebe is off now to travel from Corinth to Rome. Paul wants to go to Spain. Persis is from Persia. Epenetus is from Asia. Rufus is probably from Jerusalem. Rome is a city at the centre of an international empire with an excellent road network. Anyone could cross the empire from one side to the other in a summer, and many did.

 

We live in a city of many faiths and many races. Here in Holy Trinity we have people from Cameroon, Eritrea, Kenya, from China, from Russia, from France, Belgium and Germany, from South Africa and Holland, from Hong Kong and even from Wales. In the Roman church are people from different faith backgrounds : Jews, Greeks, Romans, and Persians. Rome itself was the centre of the imperial cult as well as a city of many gods and goddesses. There were other temples where people could follow Greek, Egyptian and Persian mystery religions with their various occult practices. There was a strong Jewish community. There’s a lot in this letter which tells Christians from different backgrounds how to get on with one another, respecting one another’s customs without forcing them onto others.

 

We live in a world of opportunity; so did they. Narcissus had risen from slavery to fabulous wealth.

We live in a world where moral values are in constant decline; so did they. The Roman historian Tacitus gives an astonishing description of political intrigue, state-sponsored terrorism and depraved living which offers frightening parallels to some of the things we read about in our own media today. It’s full of infidelity, suicide, occult practices, false rumour, fraudulent use of public money, and the constant threat of barbarian tribes from outside its borders. I’d love to read you some of it, but I haven’t time. It’s fascinating.

 

And yet Rome was a city of gardens and marble, of games and theatre, of great sophistication and complexity. It was hard to know how to live in a society that was both so rich and so threatening. How should the Christians behave? What was permissible to them and what would undermine them? Were they bound by the law or free to make the most of the opportunities of a self-indulgent society? We started with the Sunday Times and binge drinking, with the behaviour of the British tourist in Faliriki. Romans offers this: let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy; rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (13.13) Some of them had obviously given way to the temptations of the culture. So have some of us. Others were clearly straining hard to keep the rules, to live by the law, but discouraged by their own failure. So are some of us. Romans offers this: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. So I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! For there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (7-8). And on it goes. This letter is written to a group of sincere and committed Christians who find themselves struggling to live out their freedom in the midst of a confusing world. That’s where we are too.

 

Encouragement

 

So. Romans perhaps isn’t as far away from where we are as we might think. It still isn’t an easy read. But it’s worth putting a bit of effort into. Let me end with some encouragement. One day in the year 386 a rather dissolute young man named Augustine was in tears in a friend’s garden, his life in a mess. He heard a child singing over the wall, ‘take up, read’. He picked up the scroll nearest at hand, and read the words I quoted about living not in drunkenness or immorality, but in Christ. This is what he wrote later: ‘instantly, at the end of this sentence, a clear light flooded my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away’. 

 

In the year 1515 another man, a university lecturer called Martin Luther, had to teach Romans to his students. He wasn’t like Augustine, fond of the world’s ways of living; he was a monk, trying his hardest to live a life pleasing to God, but feeling he wasn’t much good at it. He found the letter hard to understand. But he stuck at it, and this is what happened: ‘night and day I pondered until I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.’

 

In 1738 a young clergyman called John Wesley found himself attending a meeting he didn’t want to go to. They were reading Luther’s introduction to Romans. This is what he experienced: ‘about a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken my sins away, even mine; and saved me from the law of sin and death.’

 

Augustine, Luther and Wesley went on to become spiritual giants and great Christian teachers. It all began as they read Romans. Romans isn’t written for enquirers, it’s written for established and committed Christians. It’s written for us. Let’s see if we can get out of it what they did. But I warn you that it won’t be easy!