Sunday 05 • 20 • 18

Good morning. This is gonna be fun. Romans 16:1-16.

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Syncrea that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and help her in whatever she may need from you. For she has been a patron of many and of myself as well. Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved, Apaenatus, who was the first convert into Christ in Asia. Greet Mary who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles and they were in Christ before me. Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ and my beloved Stocktus. Greet Apelles who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. Greet my kinsman Herodion. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphenia and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord. Also his mother who has been a mother to me as well. Greet Icynichrys, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermes, and the brothers who are with them. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nerius, and her and his sister, and Olympus, and all the saints who are with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. — Romans 16:1-16

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

I'm actually not preaching on that text. I just want to make him do that to get back at him for lots of things.

I want to say before I jump into the sermon today: thank you. Thank you guys for an amazing party yesterday and for all the ways that you all expressed your love and care for me and my family as we begin the sabbatical starting tomorrow for three months. I love being pastor here, and it is a tremendous privilege. I look forward to coming back. I'm not burned out. It's a great gift to see the way y'all—I loved every part of the surprise, the bluegrass music, the photo booth, the food, and just the gifts and notes. Thank you all so much. That means a ton to us. I sort of sat in that yesterday, and I'm really grateful. So thank you.

Let me read you a prayer. Father, I pray this morning as we open up your word, you would open up our hearts that we might more and more look like Jesus as your people. We might know him and treasure him and love him and reflect him in this dark world. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Well, you made it. We are through the book of Romans today—this is the last sermon. We started in August, and if you've been with us the whole time, you get extra gold stars for hanging in as we've gone through the book of Romans.

Back in August, I quoted a Catholic scholar named Father Capen, who said that the book of Romans is like a bomb. He said it this way: "The epistle to Romans has sat around the church since the first century and, like a bomb ticking away the death of religion. Every time it's been picked up, the ear-splitting freedom in it has gone off with a roar." I described back then that one of the challenges of preaching Romans is the gospel of grace in it is so radical and so big that a lot of times the churches played bomb squad with this book because it's almost too much for us to handle.

And yet, ten months later, I want to bear witness to the fruit that's happened, to some of the gospel explosions that have happened in the church this year. Personally, for me, this has been incredibly renewing and challenging to go through this book. But it's also been—and I want to give credit to Jesus for the way he's been at work in our church these last ten months.

We have never had a season with so many adult conversions as we have had walking through this book together. I've never had a season where I've had more lunches with people who are like, "I've never heard this, and I've been in the church all my life." It's been so encouraging to me to watch you, along with me, wrestle with the implications of the gospel. So it's a delight to be able to finish this today.

Today, as we pick up this last part, we're at the kind of boring part. If you've ever tried to read through the Bible before, when you hit this kind of section of personal greetings and these names, it's kind of like going to the end of the movie when the credits roll, and you're like, "Yeah, I can skip this part. We can leave now." Unless you really want to know a song title or one of the characters' names, you might sit there, but normally you don't. It's easy when we hit this kind of section at the end of the epistles to go like, "Alright, it's time to move on. Skip this part."

You may think you're reading someone else's mail. These are Paul's personal notes to people he knew. Skim it. Skip it. Right? And yet we believe, or we say we believe regularly, that all parts of the Bible are put here for our good.

All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, correcting and training in righteousness. — 2 Timothy 3:16

I really believe that the Holy Spirit has purposes for us in Romans 16 just like the Holy Spirit had purposes for the first group of people whose names are listed here. There are things that God has for us as we open this up this morning.

Why Are the Greetings in Your Bible?

What's remarkable about this is we know from right before this in chapter 15, verses 22 to 24, that Paul had never been to Rome. This is not a church that he knew really well because he spent two years in Ephesus with them. But he sends all these notes very personally, and it tells us that this isn't about Paul making sure he has good numbers in all his churches. There is something very personal in all of these addresses, and you can hear it—the way that each one is not a formula. He knows these people. He's greeting them because he knows of them. It's highly, highly personal.

And it tells us something really important about our God. It tells us that greeting and welcoming is at the very center of gospel grace. It's one of the ways the gospel grace is worked out. We understand the gospel by how we demonstrate that in a life of befriending grace toward other people. This matters.

I want to zero in with you on the last verse. Look at the last verse:

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. — Romans 16:16

This phrase, greet each other with a holy kiss, is one of the most often repeated phrases in New Testament letters. We read this in:

All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss. — 1 Corinthians 16:20

Greet one another with a holy kiss. — 2 Corinthians 13:12

Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. — 1 Thessalonians 5:26

Greet one another with the kiss of love. Peace to all who are in Christ Jesus. — 1 Peter 5:14

If this phrase is repeated in the Bible, if this is such a regular way that the apostles tell the church how to live out the gospel, then God must be deeply concerned with how we greet one another, and whether we greet one another, and who we greet. God must care about this a lot. And so I think we need to listen to this this morning.

We're going to walk through this briefly. We're going to talk about who we kiss, and how we kiss, and obstacles and false starts to kissing, and then finally, why we kiss. And yes, I'm going to make you uncomfortable this morning.

Who Are We to Kiss?

This is the longest greeting section of any New Testament letter. In fact, it's longer than all the greeting sections in all the New Testament letters put together. It tells us a lot about the nature of the first century church. It tells us a lot about the diversity of the first century church.

As you look through these names, I know that for us these are not names we use very often. There are great options here—Trophyma, you know, like who's ever heard? But I want to point out that the diversity of the names is reflected in the languages of these names. A number of these names reflect that they're from Greek or Gentile or Asian backgrounds. There are 26 names listed here, and yet Paul describes them, even though they're not Jewish—and Paul is Jewish—he describes them very personally.

My kinsmen, my kin, my cousins. These are my people. — Romans 16:7, 11

He's saying that these people from a diverse group of ethnic backgrounds, these are his people.

Notice the diversity here of class. There are a couple of people listed here. Aristobulus and Narcissus—those names appear repeatedly at this time as being part of Caesar's household. These are royalty. These are part of Caesar's household, and they're also mentioned here. These names, Urbanus, Ampliatus, of the household of Narcissus probably means that they're slaves. So you have the most powerful, and the wealthy, and the very poor.

There's diversity of gender. Of the 26 names here, nine are women. And of those, Phoebe in particular, she's the first person mentioned. She's the only person who gets more than one verse. She's particularly honored.

She's the one who delivered this letter to Rome. She was the patron of the church there. And she is honored. Then, there are a number of other names. Let me just highlight some of them. Prisca or Priscilla, Mary, Tryfina, Tryfosa, Rufus' mother, Junia, Persis, Mary—all these names are given. And I think what's remarkable to me is that Paul doesn't say, "Well, here are the men in the church. Oh, and then there's some women." It's not hierarchical according to gender. They're all mixed together. And he seems to know these folks and view the women in this list as fellow partners in ministry. He honors them in the way he speaks of them, and there's no like, "Oh, you guys and you gals."

Here's what I want you to think about. One scholar states this very explicitly. He says, Paul is the first ethical teacher ever to give instructions to a mixed social group in all these different ways—a mixed social group—for them to greet one another with a holy kiss. First time that this happens. This is a countercultural way that he's describing to these people. He's commanding and calling them to, not just in the way he welcomes them, but to reflect that in the way that they welcome each other. The way they reflect that in the way that they care for each other. So this is a radical and countercultural command for welcoming. Not only for this church to exercise, but we listen to all those other churches that were commanded to do this. This was a first century command to the people of God.

Who We Greet and How We Kiss

It's really important who we greet. Second, how are we to kiss? Now, I know that I'm making some people in this room very uncomfortable. Good. I'm glad I am. Because it's just like us to want to explain away a passage like this, or joke away a passage like this, or say, "Well, you know, that was then." And I want to urge you not to do that. Christians love to do some kind of ninja moves to get themselves out of having to obey the Bible. We want to just say, "Oh, what? Don't be too quick here to say, Paul surely meant a warm handshake will do. Okay, we want to do that. Don't do that with this."

And here's why. We live in one of the most lonely moments in modern history, and I've been hitting this gong a bunch over the last couple of sermons. We live in an incredibly lonely moment. And one of the ways that plays itself out is that all touch right now is dangerous touch. If you work in social work or teaching or church or ministry context or an office environment, you know, you have to be really careful about the way that you touch people. And what this means—we have to be careful with this because any touch can be construed as sexual touch.

And I want you to hear me say this: to care for and exercise caution for those who have been touched in ways that are inappropriate—man, that is so right that we care about that. And so I'm not just going to run over that. But one of the unintended consequences of this highly sexualized culture we're in, where touch always can mean something else, is that people can go a long time without being touched. And if you don't have little kids, or if you're not married, or if you're not in a warm marriage, you can go weeks or months without being touched by another human being.

And that may sound like, "What? Well, we need physical touch." There was a study done by Carnegie Mellon a couple years ago. Sheldon Cohen was the psychologist who talked about how human touch affects people, how other forms of touch. So just regular, appropriate touch reduces stress levels, lowers blood pressure, it helps increase the production of the hormone oxytocin, which is responsible for producing feelings of caring and nurturing among people.

I listened to a podcast recently on a show called Hidden Brain, and it was called "The Lonely Man." And it diagnoses and talks about, especially among men, it is really hard to know how to express touch to another man in a way that's just care. And they talked to one guy who had gone through a series of really difficult circumstances in relationships, and he'd gotten to the point in his home where he had a floor-to-ceiling pillar in one of the rooms of his apartment, and he would go hug it. He's like, "I know that this is messed up. But just to have some sense of something else that I'm holding on to that's not pushing me away." And he's like, "I need this so badly." And it's just so sad.

I mean, why do we have to take companion animals to assisted living homes? People need touch. And I want to think about this: What if in God's economy...

In addition to the gospel being a way that deals with our sins, and the gospel being a way that provides for us this community that we experience in this church regularly, what if the gospel also provided a way for this to be met, for us to experience touch in ways that are appropriate and redemptive as a community? Is that possible?

See, as a church, people always evaluate us for our friendliness. A lot of people, they'll come in the first couple Sundays and say, "Hey, music, pastor," but what keeps people at a church is not me and not the people up front here playing music. It's you. It's whether they experience a sense of belonging and connection, and people know their name, and they want to know them. That's what makes people stay at a church. People evaluate church based on that. Sadly, people evaluate our God based on that. They evaluate our God based on whether or not the people of God are warm and loving. So if one practical application of this is physical touch of the Gospel, physical touch, we should listen to that.

So verse 16 is one of the outworkings of the therefores of the Gospel. You remember, we've been walking through Romans, and I told you over and over: Romans one through 11 is all about the content of the gospel and we marinated in that stuff up until Easter. But chapters 12 through 16 turn—it's like a hinge on chapter 12, verse one, where you get to the therefore.

Therefore, in view of God's mercy, offer yourselves as living sacrifices to God. This is your holy and acceptable worship.

I think that the way we use our bodies to love one another, to welcome one another, is kind of a sacrifice for a lot of us.

Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

You know, one of the ways we might be transformed in the way we relate to each other is the way we welcome and greet each other. So, look, I'm not saying we gotta kiss each other on the mouth here. Nobody needs to run for the exit right now. I know that's what some of you are afraid of, but I don't think a fist bump is what the Apostle Paul has in mind. Does that communicate, "Hey, bro"? Is that the kind of love and real sense of embracing that is laid out in this passage? I just don't think a holy fist bump is what Paul had in mind.

Obstacles to Holy Greeting

So here are some obstacles and false starts that we have to overcome in exercising some holy kissing in our church. Let me give several of these.

First, we have an issue with personal space. Americans have about two and a half feet of personal space even in intimate conversations with friends. I went for a summer in Mexico City during college, and one of the elders in our church was just a master of not letting me get away. He would grab me by my elbow and pull me really close, and I'm trying everything I can to bob and weave away from this guy, and he just kept pulling because he talked to me this close, which in Mexico City, that's no big deal. That's just friendly. And I'm like, I can't handle this. And some of you, when I say greet each other with a holy kiss, you're like, personal space.

Another obstacle is personality type. Some people are just people people, and some of you extroverts out there are weird. There's a reason why my office is in a little tiny closet in the back of the building. I'm an introvert. And we have one of our kids who came out of the womb extroverted. We're sitting at a table with him at a year old, and he's making eye contact with everybody in the restaurant. And I'm like, what is this? But look, the Apostle Paul doesn't say, "Hey, extroverts greet other people with a holy kiss. You introverts run for the bathroom." He doesn't do that.

Then there's the issue of gender relationships. I want to be really clear in this moment when the Me Too movement is so much in the news—because there is so much good that is actually happening with that. But one thing I find in churches is an overreaction to inter-gender relationships. Billy Graham had this rule that he exercised to make sure that women in his ministry knew there was going to be nothing inappropriate in relationships with him. So he would not give a woman a ride alone in his car or meet a woman privately, and that was about propriety. But I think in many cases, churches have taken the Billy Graham rule and way over-applied that.

Is it okay for men in our church to be friends—a man who's married, or a man who's single—to be friends with another woman who's married, who's not his wife? Or a woman to have a real friendship with a man who's not her husband, and that not be weird and sexualized? That's not right.

The way Paul greets the women in this passage is so warm and appropriate and respectful and not weird. I've talked to godly women in our church who said to me, "There are men in the church who won't look me in the eye and don't know how to have a conversation with me." That is not okay. We don't want to assume that just because the person's the opposite gender, they just want to jump your bones. And we don't want to be inappropriate. But it is really important that we learn that our culture needs to see men and women who have redeemed friendships. That matters.

On Physical Affection Between Men

There's careful, and there's over careful. I know some of y'all are frustrated with me saying this, but I think it matters. You know the three-pat hug? "I love you, man. I'm not gay." You already know this.

In a lot of other times, men have been comfortable walking down the street holding hands. Men have been comfortable embracing one another in public, and we're just not. This is what happens in the modern American church. We live in a homophobic culture, so all contact between men is suspect. We don't want to risk our status as macho or authoritative by being physically gentle. We don't ever want to deal with rejection when we reach out to another man.

That makes me so sad, because I think some of the men in this room are probably the most starved for just being loved in a right way by other men. And that's really appropriate.

On Cliques and Belonging in the Church

My high school had a horseshoe-shaped cafeteria, and it was divided by social hierarchy. If you were in the middle, you were with the really popular people. My group—the marching band nerds—was not quite there. The Latin club, we were not there. My math team, we were not there either. So I was all the way at the far end of the cafeteria. And you could tell where you ranked because you could move toward the center.

I find the church can be like that too. There could be a sense of "these people are in with each other and I'm not." Isn't it sad how life doesn't progress much sometimes beyond high school?

This past Sunday, we got a note in our attendance pads during gospel hospitality from a family who said, "We've been visiting your church four times now, and nobody's ever spoken to us during the gospel hospitality time." Yeah, we're not awesome at this. We have some room to grow.

On the Kiss of Peace

Why do we kiss? Why greet each other with a holy kiss? I was thinking about this this week, and it made me wonder: Have we ever experienced the kiss of God? Have we ever experienced the warm welcome and embrace of Jesus?

One of my favorite musicals is Fiddler on the Roof. The husband and wife have these daughters they're trying to marry off, and they're talking lots about love. Tevye, the dad, turns to his wife one day and asks, "Do you love me?" And she responds:

Do I love you? You know, for twenty-five years, I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked your cow. After twenty-five years, why talk about love now? Do I love him? For twenty-five years, I've loved him, fought with him, starved with him. Twenty-five years my bed is his. If that's not love, what is?

To which her husband nervously replies, "Then you love me."

You see, it's easy to see what his wife is missing in that moment. He's not looking for proof of all the things that she's done. He just wants to know that the duties of love that he's seen from her are driven by the delights of love—that she prizes him.

The wife here is, in a lot of ways, a parable for us as Christians. Caught up in the pressures of daily life, the things that you do for love can become the things that you just do. I wonder about that for Christians. I'm afraid there are a lot of Christians who are like Tevye's wife. Their Christian doing is good and right, and yet the duties of love have lost the delights of love.

And I think that matters. That matters greatly. Isn't this what we want from God?

Do we experience a sense of His delight in us? You know, I was talking this week with one of my sons who's in our youth group about what they're studying in youth group. And it suddenly dawned on me, do we ever experience the kiss of God? I think we do.

The prodigal son story tells us of this unique moment of embrace. This is familiar—Luke 15, probably all of you could tell me the story. But at the high moment of the story, there's a shocking thing. If you were a first century Jew, you'd be shocked by one action of the father in that story. When the prodigal son starts coming home, what does the father do? He runs. He hikes up his skirts and he runs, and he embraces his son and he kisses him.

I was thinking about that kissing. One of my heroes, Charles Spurgeon, was so captured by this. In the last couple of years of his life, he wrote a whole sermon on the kiss of the father. I just want to direct you to this. This is what he says. Let me try to describe the scene. The father has kissed his son, and he invites him to sit down. This is what Spurgeon imagines: Then he comes in front of him, and he looks at him, and he feels so happy. He says, "I must give you another kiss." Then he walks away for a moment, but he's back again before long saying to himself, "Oh, I must give him another kiss." He gives him another, for he is so happy. His heart beats fast. He feels very joyful. The old man would like music to strike up. He wants to be at the dancing, but meanwhile, he satisfies himself by a repeated look at his long lost child. The repeated kiss meant a repeated blessing. For every time he puts his arms around him, he kissed him. He kept saying, "Bless you. Oh, bless you. Bless you, my boy."

This version says this: "Oh, sinner, if you only knew how God welcomes you, how he looks at you, how he loves to bless you. Surely, you would at once and regularly repent and come to His arms and heart, and find yourself happy in His love."

Spurgeon says, "The many kisses meant a repeated delight. It is a very wonderful thing that it should be in the power of a sinner to make God happy. He is a happy God, the source and spring of all happiness. What can we do to add to His blessedness? And yet speaking after the manner of men, God's highest joy lies in clasping His willful prodigal children to His breast."

This—that's why we kiss. That's why we kiss. Because this is how God the Father relates to you. And I know that for some of you, this is like old news, but would you sit in this this week? That God, your God, your Father, looks at you and is like, "I must have another one. I just can't stop kissing her. I just can't stop kissing him. They are so precious to me. I can't get over it."

Brennan Manning writes, "Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone else. It brings an inward sigh of relief and a strong sense of being finally safe." This is what Jesus offers us. For the first time today, for the one billionth time today—this is for you. This is why we kiss.

Gospel Welcome in Action

So in sum, here are the applications. Remember, no general applications. Who we kiss matters. Who we greet as a church matters. When we greet those whom we know and are only just like us, we communicate something about the gospel that it's only for people like us. Who we greet, who we embrace, whom we welcome—it really matters.

Second, how we greet matters. Whether or not we greet matters. I know some of you are like, "I only have so much space in my life for more people, and it feels all full right now." But let me press this upon you. How you greet in this place, whether or not you have more space in your life, communicates a quality of the gospel to other people. It really does. It really, really matters. And even if you can't give yourself in your schedule, you can give in yourself a warm greeting to others in a way that says, "You matter, and it's so good you're here."

And then finally, how we greet matters. The gospel is so personal. Jesus calls His sheep by name. We're told over and over that our names matter to God, that our names are inscribed upon His very hands, that He knows how many hairs are on our head. He knows everything about us. He knows us completely, and He calls us by name. So can you humor us with some name tags? I know some of you are like, "I'm never going to wear a name tag." Nope, I'm sorry. We're going to exercise gospel welcome and learn each other's names because that's what Jesus does with us.

And finally this: can I ask every person in this room to take one step? One step, whatever that is, from beyond the fist bump toward warmth. For you, whatever is appropriate—you know what that is—but would you take one step in the way that you greet and welcome one another? See, my prayer is that we would become more and more the Tommy Boy Church. Right?

Brothers don't shake hands. Brothers got a hug. In the name of the father and the son, the holy spirit. Amen.

Let's pray together. Father, you are so good to us. And we don't even fully grasp what it means to be this embraced. Father, pray for each man and woman in this room that we would just sit in that today and that You would change us from the inside out. Pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.