Co-Laborers; Co-Heirs: Ministry Partners and Paul

If we have not met, I'm so glad to welcome you into this place. And since y'all are avoiding me—I don't know what's going on but nobody will sit up front. So, thank y'all.

This morning, we're gonna be reading together in Romans chapter 16, verses one through 20. And I'm gonna ask this question: Any native Greek speakers here this morning? Okay. Good. So I'm going to ask y'all as we go through these names, you're going to butcher every one of them. That's really okay because there's nobody you're going to offend. So do so boldly this morning. And my sermon is dedicated to you. If you are a middle school or high school student and you're here this morning, this sermon is for you.

So let's read God's word aloud together. Romans 16:1–20:

I recommend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is in Cenchreae, that you received in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of you, for she herself has also been a helper of many and of myself as well. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risk their own necks for my life, to whom not only do I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Also, greet the church that is in their house. Greet Epenetus, my beloved, who was the first convert to Christ from Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsfolk and my fellow prisoners who are outstanding in the view of the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and Stachys. Greet Herodion, my kinsman. Greet those who are of the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord. Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, workers in the Lord. Greet Persis, the beloved, who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, a choice man in the Lord, also his mother and mine. Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers and sisters with them. Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. Now I urge you, brothers and sisters, keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned and turn away from them. For such people are slaves not of our Lord Christ, but of their own appetites, and by their smooth and flattering speech, they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting. For the report of your obedience has reached everyone. Therefore, I am rejoicing over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. — Romans 16:1–20

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

So, true story: I did very poorly in Greek and Hebrew in seminary because I read all of Greek and Hebrew with a Spanish accent, which I'd learned earlier. And my professors used to make me read out loud so they could laugh at my pronunciation. So you're in good company this morning. If you butchered those names, I wouldn't know. Great job reading all those names.

On Language and Definition

You ever played the game Balderdash before? So when I was a kid, before Balderdash came out as a game, we played it in my family and called it the dictionary game. My grandmother used to play this with us, and she'd pull out the big family dictionary and find a word that nobody knew. Then what you do is everybody makes up a definition and you collect the definitions. Then somebody reads them and you vote on whose is the best.

Now I think Balderdash is a helpful example for us when we talk about gender. We're in a series talking about gender, and we're almost done with this. But Balderdash is a great parallel to gender because we live in a time and place where everybody knows there's something to this, but nobody wants to define the words: What is a man? What is a woman?

For example, this past year we saw the appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. And if you watch the proceedings for that, it was really fascinating because over and over, she talked about how important it was to have a woman and a woman of color on the high court. Very true. But when reporters and pundits would ask, "Well, what is a woman?"—she dodged the question. And I think it's probably smart for her to do so, because we live in a time and place where it's really hard to answer that.

And yet, as people of God's word, we do have some answers. And we have answers that are really important for us to be able to know. We've talked in this series about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, to be an image bearer of God—equal yet asymmetrical, not exactly the same. And gender, we've been saying throughout this series, here's the main idea: gender isn't a burden. It is a gift.

Now a lot of people in our culture like, it's kind of like a gift I'd rather return, but we believe gender is a gift for gospel partnership. The goal of this series is the elevation of women and men on par and in partnership. I recognize that talking about this stuff in church may feel really divisive. This may feel really risky to you, and I understand that. But my hope, our hope as a group of elders in our church, is to create an environment where we can disagree and do so agreeably. That may sound really odd to you in a church, but you can disagree agreeably.

Now, if you feel oppressed, that is not of the Lord. And I want to encourage you: if you feel oppressed in our church, you should go find another church. There are lots of great churches in Raleigh. That is not what we want for you. But disagreement is not oppression. Disagreement is where we come together and wrestle with hard conversations together.

We're going to have a forum coming up on November 17. We want to hear from you. That's going to be November 17, Thursday night, 7PM right here. We're going to talk about this series. What did you like? What did you not like? What did you hear? What were you struggling with? We want to hear from you. I hope you'll put that on your calendars.

But here's where we're going this morning: we're going to talk about Jesus's family photo, Jesus's gendered family, and Jesus's family values.

Family Photo of the Early Church

Romans 16, what we just read, and you guys wrestling over all those names—this is part of the Bible that we skim or skip, isn't it? I mean, if you're reading through the Bible and you come to Romans 16, you're like, "I don't know any of these people. Not sure why I should or what I can take from this." And yet I want to help us look at this again because I think it's really important. This is just a little snapshot. Paul is not writing this to make a point for later readers. He's just greeting people—the people who were in this church. What's really important that I want you to notice, what you may not notice reading these names, is that the majority of these names are female.

Now that's really striking. Who writes this letter? The letter of Romans. Well, it's from the gender bad guy of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul. There are lots of people who, when they study the Bible, look at it and go, "Man, Jesus—I love Jesus. Jesus is great. Paul is rough, especially for women." Paul wrote things like this:

I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet. — 1 Timothy 2

As in all the churches, the saints, the women should keep silent in the church, for they are not permitted to speak but should be in submission. — 1 Corinthians 11

I mean, what's going on here? What do we do with that? This is one of the reasons it's really important that we look at both of these together—the family photo and some of those words. What's happening is what's normal for the church: we let the Bible help us interpret the Bible. We look at all the passages and see how they inform one another. It's really important.

So this passage begins, and I'm going to work through a couple of these names, but I'm going to spend the most time on the first person listed here: Phoebe. I want you to look with me at Phoebe and think about her. She's listed first because it's a place of honor. Now, why would Paul put her first in a place of honor? Because she's worthy of honor. That's just for me—I came up with that myself. That wasn't a Bible commentator. That's free. But I want you to notice he's honoring this woman at the top of the list. And he goes on to describe why she's so worthy of honor.

First, she is described here as our sister. We're going to make a lot of this next week, but the language of sister and brother is not from the nineteen fifties in the United States. Brother Bob at the potluck. This is highly biblical language, and the language of siblings describes a relationship of ownership, of obligations and privileges in our relationships with one another that is extremely important.

Second, he describes her in two leadership positions. She was a servant of the church of Cenchreae. Now, why is this highlighted for us? Why do I want to talk about this for a moment? The word there in your Bibles that we read this morning says she is a servant. If you look at other Bibles, not just the one in the bulletin, you'll notice at the bottom it's got one of those little asterisks by it. At the bottom it says deaconess. Now, that's an interpretive decision, and I want to explain why I believe the Bible is holding her up as a member of the diaconate of that church and why we view women as deaconesses in our church. There are three reasons which support this view.

First, let me make this really clear. The word servant is the literal translation of the word deacon or deaconess. So we use that word—it's a Greek word in our church. But Paul uses a masculine adjective to apply to a female person. Now, like a lot of languages, Greek has genders to nouns and genders to adjectives and usually they match. So normally what you get is Phoebe is female servant. That's what it'd be like in Greek. But instead here it's in the masculine. And what that seems to imply is that this is not just a descriptor of her as really, really awesome at serving, but actually she's inhabiting some formal role within this church. She's a deaconess in that church.

The second reason we think this is important and not just like a descriptor of her is that this is the only person in the Bible who's described as a diaconis of a local particular church. Everywhere else this is used, Tychus is called a servant Lord in Ephesians 6. Epaphras is called a servant of Christ in 1 Corinthians 1. Timothy is called a servant of Christ Jesus in 1 Timothy 4, but Phoebe only is described here as a diaconis of a particular church.

And finally, in 1 Timothy 3, if you flip over you read 1 Timothy 3 tells us all of the character requirements required to be in the roles of leadership that are set apart for the church—those of elder or overseer and those of deacon. And we pay a lot of attention to these when we select leaders for our church. So 1 Timothy 3 describes all the character traits of an elder. Then it describes all the character traits of a deacon. And then it goes on to describe the women of the deacons. That's what it says in Greek. Interesting. There's no women of the elders. Some translations render that the wives of the deacons. Some of them translate it the deaconesses of the deacons. And it makes sense to us as our elders have studied these things to say, gosh, you would think that if this was describing wives that they would be character requirements for the wives of the elders too, but not so. So hence, again, we've ruled this as our church saying, this is a necessary named biblical role for our church to have deaconesses who are commissioned to do the work alongside our deacons of caring for the needs of the church.

Phoebe's Leadership Role

But what's most notable about Phoebe, I want to really highlight, is the leadership role that she's given. She's commissioned by Paul to deliver the book of Romans to this little local congregation. She's the one who carries it. She's the go between between the church and Rome. Here's Paul. He's in Rome in prison. He writes this and he sends this to the church care of Phoebe.

Now I want you to think about that. This is perhaps the most important section of scripture theologically that we have and this is entrusted to Phoebe to deliver and to take to this little church. Let me ask you a question. If you've read the book of Romans before, is this an easy book to understand? I don't know. Anybody ever had any questions reading the book of Romans? I have. I'm like, now wait, wait a minute. What is this righteousness of Christ that you keep talking about? What does it mean to be grafted in? Like all these questions.

I want you to think about Phoebe being commissioned by Paul to go deliver this letter. If you were sitting in the congregation that Sunday morning when they're reading the book of Romans out for the whole church, I wonder who you might ask questions to about this particular book. Michael Byrd, husband of Amy Byrd, he makes this comment. He says, you know, it would be most appropriate to ask the question to the deliverer of this book. Paul must have had a lot of confidence in her to entrust her with this. If Paul was opposed to woman teaching anytime anywhere, why wouldn't he send Silas or Barnabas or Timothy or Titus to deliver this book?

A couple other things about Phoebe: she's called a benefactor. This means patronage, financial support. And finally, he says, she is quote one of us. She is on the team. It's not Phoebe bakes brownies for the gathering of the leaders. She's on the snack committee. No, no. Phoebe is very much one of us. This is really important.

I want to ask this question: As we think about Phoebe, do we commend in our church, in our relationships? Do we commend women, sisters in our church this way now? Do we honor women this way now? Obviously, Paul is very invested in her, thinks a lot of her. Do we do the same?

And Paul demonstrates what I would say in this letter over and over again, what we see in his relationships, I would call mutuality or reciprocity. And he demonstrates the fruit of this even in the other names that he mentions—the way he greets them and highlights them. He greets Priscilla (called Priscilla in some translations) and Aquila as coworkers in Christ. There's a husband and wife ministry team.

He says they have a church in their home. They've been so helpful and important in ministry. He also called Timothy a coworker and Apollos a coworker. Do you see? He's saying there is this coed ministry thing that we're doing here that's really, really important to the church, the functioning of the church.

He uses special commendation here for Mary, Tryphina, and Tryphosa, and Persis as women who worked very hard in the lord. Lots of names here that nobody seems to be naming their kids. Lots of available baby names here. Tryphosa—never heard that one.

And we haven't even gotten to the hotly debated name on this list: Junia. Some translators have debated whether or not this was a man or a woman. We have textual variants that say both. And what's confusing here, we don't know much about him or her. This person only appears one time in the Bible. Paul says that Junia and Andronicus are either two things: outstanding among the apostles, or well known among the apostles or apostles. So it appears this one place. It's hard to draw a lot of data from that. But it's clear, man or woman, a very important person to the apostles.

And what I want you to see here again is here's Paul who's the gender bad guy of the New Testament. Lots of people like, "I like Jesus. Hey, Paul. Paul is a misogynist." Really? Look at the family photo. Notice how the family photo that's presented to us in Romans closely matches the family photo of Jesus and his disciples.

So many people have noted Jesus was countercultural in the way that he engaged with women. Right? He had significant conversations with women in public. Rabbis did not do that in his day. He praised women for their faith, calls a woman that he heals a daughter of Abraham—same thing he calls Zacchaeus when he forgives him, the son of Abraham. He accepted women to receive his teaching. Women were part of the larger community that followed Jesus. Women were the ones who went to the empty tomb. It would have been highly unusual in antiquity for women to be disciples of a great master and yet you see this picture when Mary and Martha of Bethany have Jesus and the disciples over in their home, this great crowd.

Martha is running around trying to get all the food together and she begs Jesus, "Make my sister Mary help me out." What does Jesus say? "No, Mary has chosen the best place, which is where? Sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning from him. It will not be taken from her." Do you see how the family photo of Jesus's family matches what we see here in Romans?

Gender, Mutuality, and Partnership

This picture—here's my question. What do we make of this? What do we conclude about our church? I appreciate Michelle Lee Barwell, who I've used for a lot of this series. She's very helpful here. She writes: "Egalitarians argue that this is a reflection how Jesus promoted full functional equality between men and women. And she says, while Jesus' treatment of women was indeed groundbreaking, the notion of equality may not be the most accurate lens through which we try to understand the importance of these actions."

Several scholars have demonstrated that Jesus' concern was not to create an egalitarian community. Instead, it's more helpful to understand the issue according to the idea of mutuality, partnership. Again, equality is not the most important thing in the Bible. God's people united. Partnership—men and women. Gender is a gift that's given to the church for us to be about the glory of Christ and the upbuilding of one another.

So let's ask this question: what about Jesus' gendered family? You know, let's go back to the appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and her failure to define in any specificity what is a woman and what is a man. And for our purposes, why particularly do we need—not just for equality sake or parity sake, but why can we say we need the gifts of men? We need the gifts of women. We need both in our church. Why would we say that?

Let's back up and ask this. It's dangerous when people try to define gender according to essentialist categories, and you can sniff this one out, right? If we say men love hunting and hardware stores and the color blue, and women love flowers and shopping and the color pink, those are essentialist categories. Men are essentially this, women are essentially this. And we know that that's wrong. I mean, instinctively, you can tell you know that's wrong. Why is that wrong? Well, it's because we're taking what's presented in our culture and saying that must be for all times and places. And what happens is you end up alienating people who are outside of that. I mean, are women who love hunting. And this guy loves flowers, right? Like, there are always outliers to those things. It's wrong to baptize essentialist qualities as if those are dropped down from heaven because they look a little bit too much like our own culture.

What we see in the Bible are relational categories that are about not what we are but what we do in relationship. Specialties—they aren't exclusive categories. So if you read carefully your New Testament, you'll see that Paul writes a lot about men and women in creation. He says there are some differences in creation. There are differences in order and origin and intent and these begin to be worked out in terms of how we relate to each other partnered in relationship.

So he says things like this: the man is to take initiative and take responsibility and give security. The woman is to give rest and promote and be an Ezer—which means strong help, save the day. And again, those are not based in "women are this way and men are this way." It's a dance of gender. It's a calling for us to inhabit those specialties in our partnership with one another.

And it doesn't mean that women can't take initiative. We see that with Ruth. We see that with Abigail. We see it all over our Bibles. We also see that it doesn't mean that men can't help or promote. We see that with Boaz. We see that with Barak. But it does mean we lean into those relational categories with one another.

Now maybe you're like, I don't like any of that stuff. I don't even understand what you're talking about. Let me try another approach. I appreciate this from Elise Fitzpatrick in her new book, Jesus and Gender, and this is what she says. She says we are embodied souls and there's a way in which our bodies inform our experience along sexual lines, along gender lines that are different for us, men and women.

Most men—it's the case, not all, but most men—are physically larger and physically stronger than women. So part of our maturation for a man is learning how to steward strength. To use the greater strength and size at the right time, in the right way, for the right purpose. Ideally, she writes, this means from an early age, young boys are taught how to use their bodies to protect, not harm. A young man becomes aware of the temptation to use strength to take what he wants regardless of consent. He must learn restraint and servanthood.

And likewise, for women: a woman's body is built to be able to carry and sustain human life. Not every woman does so, but every woman has a monthly physical reminder that her body is made with that capacity. So part of maturation for a woman is knowing how to steward nurture and care—again, at the right time, in the right way, for the right purposes. And because of this, she writes, women are trained early through their bodies to be aware of the needs of people around them and to learn what it is to nurture others. This part of the human experience is unique to women alone. It shapes them in ways that men don't experience.

This is why we need women and men in partnership. The fact that we're different—men and women—is not something that people dispute. It's how. But what's fascinating in the Bible is it doesn't focus so much on the ways that we're different as much as on the ways that we're called to partner together. That's what's really important. This is what Carolyn Cussis James called the blessed alliance.

So let me go back to the beginning. We don't have to play boulder dash to define some of these terms. Men—what's valuable and unique about being a man, why that's such a great thing? Why I can stand up in front of this congregation and say, man, if you're a man, that is awesome. That has to be celebrated. I can stand up in front of the congregation and say, if you're a woman, that is an incredible gift. That is a beautiful thing, not to despise. And in our church, we're continuing to say, this is what's called for: men and women partnering together for the glory of God. Partnering together. We need both in the family photo.

Jesus's Family Values

Let me move to this: Jesus's family values. It's really important as we read this that we take into ourselves what it means to be a part of Jesus's family and to live out his family values. I'll look at this really briefly.

First, notice how Paul models greeting one another. Now, this is not unusual. This is the way a lot of first century letters in the Roman Empire were written. At the very end, there's all these greetings. Paul's not trying to make a point, but he is modeling something for us, for our relationships with one another. So here's my question: do you greet one another this way? Paul makes a great point of being very specific in his greetings. Do we look one another in the eye? The opposite sex. Are we glad to see one another? Do we warmly greet one another? Is that part of our culture as a church?

Notice second how he models esteeming one another. You see how Paul honors the women he's writing to? He's very specific. He's not just like, hey, it's great that you're there.

He is very specific person to person for their contributions, the things that matter. Here's my challenge for you: Would you in your relationships across gender lines with the opposite sex find ways of honoring one another in ways that are specific?

One of the things I noticed—and maybe you're just like, "Hey, middle-aged guy, I get it, you're getting old"—but right in front of us is that we don't take the opportunities to be specific, to tell other people why they matter to us so much. We're not very specific with people we have no guarantee about, with how much time we have. Are we specific in naming, "This is why you matter to me"?

Here's my challenge to you: Find someone this week across the gender line and say, "This is why you matter. Your life has mattered to me."

Pursuit, Not Permission

Third, pursuit not permission. One of the words that's used a lot in the intramural egalitarian, complementarian debate in the church is "permit." What is a woman permitted to do in the church? What's a woman not permitted to do in the church? That is such a sad word.

You might love the word "permit," but let me ask this: What if next week we stood up in front of church and said, "Hey, got an opportunity for you to be a part of a community group. We will allow it. You have our permission to go to a community group"? You'd be like, "Yeah, no, I'm not interested in bearing permission to do something." What if next week we said, "We're gonna give you permission to serve in the nursery"? Anybody gonna sign up for that? No, because "permit" just means you are barely allowed to do this.

Pursuit is completely different. Pursuit is like we need you. We need your gifts, your perspective, your experiences. We need all of you in this meeting. We need to hear from your voices. So one of my callings for us as a church is brothers—specifically to men—brothers, will you help us pursue the voices and gifts and perspectives of women in all levels of our leadership of our church? In all of our community group settings, all of our team meetings, in our youth ministry. I call on you like teenage boys, are you pursuing the gifts of women? Are you looking for them?

Unity and the Defeat of Satan

Fourth, unity. Finally, look at the last part of this—verses 17 through 20. Paul again calls us to something really deep, and this is throughout the whole of the New Testament. He calls us to unity. He calls us to be one, and he does so by saying something really odd.

Did you notice what he says here in verse 20?

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. — Romans 16:20

If I'm writing a letter, if I'm even writing an email, I doubt I'm using that phrase as a closing to my email. "Hey, I hope you have a good day. May the God of peace soon crush Satan under your feet." Right? We don't talk that way.

But if you've been tracking through this series, I want you to understand that that has some deep roots way back in the Old Testament. In fact, the first series we taught in this on gender was from Genesis chapters two and three—it's about Adam and Eve and the fall, the fruit in the garden, the serpent. And after the fall, God gives them this uber promise:

The seed of the woman, a child coming down the line of the woman, will crush the head of the serpent. — Genesis 3:15

It's a promise that like, "Hey, we're not just done after the fall. I'm not just like, forget people, I'm tired of y'all, you have screwed up my creation." God is like, "No. There will come a redemption, and this is what we read throughout our Bible."

There comes one who is a seed of a woman—Jesus, born in the line of Adam and Eve, fully human—who does, at His death on the cross and His resurrection with the empty tomb and His ascension to the right hand of the Father, this: He crushes the head of the serpent. Right? Death is undone at the cross. Sin is crushed at the cross. The beginning of a whole new way is opened up at the cross.

We celebrate this all the time. This is really, really important to us, and yet this is what's being emphasized in this little letter in Romans right here: There's something about that that's worked out in our relationships with one another. That's why Paul would close the letter and say, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet."

He's writing, "Hey, there's people stirring up dissensions, but this—when you live out gendered partnership—there's something about that that's crushing Satan under his feet. There's something about that that's being realized in our partnership with one another. Every act of greeting one another is a participation in the crushing of the serpent. Every act of giving glory and esteem for one another in unity, again, participation in the victory of Christ."

Every act of pursuing and not permitting, that is an undoing of the curse. Every act of gospel partnership is participation in the victory of Christ. I mean, isn't this amazing? God is allowing us, inviting us into his victory through our gendered partnerships with one another. That's insane.

Let me close this way. You guys remember the movie Back to the Future? Some of you are like, I've never seen this before. Maybe you saw it with your parents. I'm that old, right? So this movie is about Michael J Fox's character Marty McFly, and he travels in a DeLorean back in time, and he goes back to when his parents were in high school. And what happens in the course of the movie though is that he disrupts this moment when mom and dad—who are very opposite ends of the social spectrum—they meet and they kiss and fall in love and happily ever after.

Well, as he's back in the past, Michael J Fox's character Marty realizes he has a photo of his family in his back pocket: him, his parents and his siblings. And so he pulls out the photo and when his parents don't fall in love and don't kiss, what begins to happen in the photo is this, remember? What happens to his siblings? They begin to fade away. They begin to turn ghostlike. And the longer the time lapses, they're growing fainter and fainter. So he realizes his goal was to get mom and dad back together, get them to kiss, and then he saves the day, right? That's the whole premise of the movie. Sorry I spoiled that for you.

But look, this is so important for us as a church community. It is the death and resurrection of Jesus that makes us family. But it is our interactions with one another that make sure people are seen and known and don't just fade into the background. The way that we greet one another, the way that we live out in gendered partnership, what it means to be the fullness of the body of Christ—this is what makes the family of God visible. This is what makes brothers and sisters visible. This is so important for us.

We want everybody in our church to be seen. We want everybody in our church to be valued. We want everybody's gifts and full participation and all of you to show up in the family photo. May God make it so.

Prayer

Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. And Lord, we confess to you that it is challenging for us to talk about gender. This is frustrating for some. Lord, this brings up hard things. Lord, we pray that you would help us as a church to live as a counterculture for the common good, to highlight for one another in our relationships what should be instead of what has been. Lord we pray, Father, that you would do this for our glory and your glory and our joy. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

I'm gonna invite you to