Romans 16 “Scope It Out”

You may have noticed that we did not read the first sixteen verses of chapter 16. I do not want to be remiss. When we go through a book of the Bible, then we go through all of it! Yet, we also read these passages from the pulpit on Sunday morning. I did not want the lay liturgist to have to struggle through all of these names. Whoever heard such strange names before? “Phoebe”? “Mary”?

But, since Phoebe’s name is mentioned here, I guess I should bring up an important point. Phoebe is a woman. Did anybody else notice that? Phoebe is definitely not a man. And, what does Paul say about this woman whose name is Phoebe? Ah, she is a deacon of the church in Rome. We have a woman who is a deacon of the Roman church. Do you see how extraordinary this is? A woman has a spiritual leadership role in the church way back in the First Century. This has nothing to do with the rest of my sermon, I just wanted to mention that Phoebe is a woman! Point: we see a lot of female church leadership in the original post-Resurrection church. Male-dominant leadership of the church came into play in the later years of the church.

And in two places in our scripture for today we see reference to “wisdom.” This includes the Wisdom of God in the last verse. This was known as a fourth aspect of God, “Sophia.” A female aspect of God. Not just the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost; but also this fourth aspect of Wisdom of God. This aspect was later very much erased as the Trinitarian doctrine was confirmed at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD.

Indeed the names that are mentioned in Paul’s greetings tell us a whole lot about what was normative in the church back then, just after the Resurrection of Jesus. One of the names mentioned is named as the Treasurer of the City. This was also a very important point for the day. You see, the church in Rome was filled with people all with the same name. They were simply called “SLAVE.” Yes, the church was filled with slaves who found a kind of freedom in Christ that they could not find elsewhere. They were even free to take leadership roles in the new church.

In Paul’s letter to Philemon there is a plea from Paul for a slave named Onesimus. He ran away from Philemon to join in ministry with Paul. There is so much emphasis on the lower slave class in the New Testament that we might forget that even the upper class were becoming Christians. The city treasurer was a Christian! There were Centurions and Senators that had come to Christ. Galatians 3:28: “There are neither slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female; for all are one in Christ. . .”

One last thing about the people who are mentioned in the Letter to Romans at the end of the Book. It is interesting to note who is not greeted! We have some of the church founders who were among the 70 sent by Jesus way back in Luke 9. Epaenetus is mentioned in verse five as the first convert in Asia. He is sent by the Spirit to Africa to build churches there. He is in fact the first bishop of Carthage, in modern day Tunisia. So, we have some really big names! Who is missing? Where is the soon to be bishop of Rome, whom we call “The Pope” even today? You read all these names and you realize that Saint Peter just is not part of the party at all. The presumed head of the universal church, bishop of Rome, and first Pope is completely dismissed in this letter.

While Paul is talking about not having any dissension in the church and being one in Christ, he kind of “cancels” or “ghosts” all of the Twelve chosen apostles. Not a one of them is mentioned.

Now onto the good stuff: Paul tells the church in Rome to keep an eye on things. The term “keep on eye on” here is σκοπειν in the Greek. Literally we can say “Keep the church under the scope.” Or, “scope it out.” Scope out the church for dissensions.

How do we put the church under the scope? What are we looking for when we are looking for dissension? How do we know what that looks like? What do we do if we find it? I think it is possible to just look at a church and without knowing much of anything at all come to see dissension. If you see people whispering to one another in the corner rather than praising God together in the congregation, then you might have some dissension. Go over to invite those folks back into the joy of worship. Satan is taking their hearts away from Christ. You can with the help of the Holy Spirit bring them back.

I say this but then realize that the history of the larger church has been a history of dissension. Our church here is of the United Church of Christ—that sounds promising—a church based on the idea of coming together rather than dissenting. Yet, the United Church of Christ is the successor organization to the Congregationalists, who were not only known to be “Protestants” but also “Separatists.” I shake my head when I see that it took 1959 years of Christianity before someone got the bright idea that we ought to be working together rather than constantly dissenting, protesting, and separating.

Two weeks ago now our Kauai Association UCC held a meeting in Koloa on a Tuesday night at which David Vasquez-Levy, President of the Pacific School of Religion, gave a lecture on “Christian Nationalism.” One very salient point he made was that we need to engage those churches that might be deemed “nationalistic” rather than just talking about them in the third person. So there we were in Koloa UCC talking about reaching out, but right next door is Pastor Kilbourn’s church. Nobody from that church was in attendance or was even invited to be there. Across the street is the Koloa Missionary Church. Again, no one from that church was there. I like those other pastors. I sometimes watch their videos, and I know they sometimes watch ours. They have some great ministries that reach out to the community. This saddens me. We talk about being inclusive, but we are not!

Here on the Westside of Kauai, we are truly blessed to have the West Kauai Ministers’ Association that hosts praise sings and Lenten worship with all the churches together. We could all be off in our own little churches saying that “we don’t agree with this theological point or that theological point,” but instead we set that aside and come together to worship. We realize that dissension among Christians is not the witness that Jesus wanted for us. Dissension is the work of the Evil One for sure.

Paul in his writing does not just say that we must keep an eye on dissension. We see that there is a second warning: Offences. He does not specifically list what those offences are; however, he is referring to breaking the Ten Commandments. That is what would constitute an offence against God for sure. We have already heard how Paul wants even the Gentiles to understand and be obedient to the original covenant that is the Ten Commandments.

It is hard for us to imagine today that already just so few years after the resurrection of Jesus that the church would have issues with such things as are mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Are people already in trouble with stealing, murder, adultery, bearing false witness, and the like?

The fact of the matter is, the church is very much a human institution while at the same time being a spiritual one. When we talk about Jesus, we state that he was wholly God and wholly human. He was not like half God and half human. He was both. The church is the body of Christ in this world today. It suffers from the same issue. WE are wholly human, and wholly in the divine! The church is completely a spiritual endeavor—made up completely of human beings!

Paul’s advice to the church in Rome is to avoid the dissensions and the offences. First, keep an eye on them, then do not get involved in them! We know in Matthew 18 that we are told by Jesus that we are not simply to avoid others in the church who are causing dissent or offending the Law. That scripture makes it plain that we are to engage our brother or sister who has offended and seek reconciliation immediately. We go to the person alone. Then if need be, we go to a group of elders in the church—perhaps deacons such as Phoebe. Then lastly we take the matter before the entire church. In order for reconciliation to be complete thereafter we week forgiveness seven times seventy.

I understand that Paul is telling us to try to avoid dissensions and offences, but when they do occur, then it is not our call to simply turn our backs. Then, we must intercede as brothers and sisters of the faith. Avoid these things if you can. If they do occur, follow the protocol of a Christian to defeat them.

In verse 20 the Apostle Paul states that we will be able to crush Satan under our feet. I really love this image. I want to see Satan down on the floor of the church here. Every time he tries to get up, someone comes and just pushes him back down again with his or her feet. All week long we here in the church wear our slippers around, but when we come to church on Sunday, we put on our good shoes. That is why we do it. We got to get those high heels digging into Satan! Keep him down!

In verse 22 we come to a point that has in fact caused some dissension in the church. It says “I, Tertius, have written this letter.” Were we not assuming the whole time that it was Paul who was writing this? Is this a case of plagiarism? Is someone here breaking the 9^th Commandment and bearing false witness? No, not at all.

Tertius was Paul’s scribe. So was Timothy at one point, too, by the way. We have to remember that this letter with all of its high theology and big Greek words was written by a man, namely Paul, whose fourth language was Greek. Paul spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek from what we know. Three different alphabets for those four languages. He needed help with the Greek to make it correct and intelligible.

All that we have read all these weeks has been communicated by Paul in this fourth language fashion. Now that in and of itself is a miracle of God. Then, Tertius cleaned it up so that it would be worthy to be sent out to all the churches and to be canonized eventually into the bibles we have today.

To be sure this is all that we know of Tertius except for the fact that he eventually becomes the bishop of the church in Iconium after Sosipiter (also mentioned in the greetings here). He penned this letter for Paul. He took this little opportunity at the end of the letter to make sure that Christian history would remember his small contribution. How would you like to be remembered? Just doing what was needed for the Lord, I hope!

In Bible Study, Mary mentioned that the names that are in this text are so difficult that we should just replace them with the names of people in the congregation! I really liked that idea. That is your homework–write your own name and the name of our church brothers and sisters into Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Make this text your own this way, and then own the ministry that it calls us to!

Amen.