Good News in Rome

Joshua 20-24; Judges 1-10; Psalms 39-41; Romans 15-16; Mark 1-3

Happy Easter! I hope your reading in The Year of the Bible has helped to make this Lent and Easter even more meaningful for you. (There’s a good chance it has made it busier…given the daily readings you’ve been doing!) Looking at the upcoming readings for this week, I was struck by the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. He’s coming to the end of this long letter, in which he has been introducing himself and his theology to the Roman Christians. Now, in chapter 16, he closes the letter with a variety of comments, greetings, and a beautiful benediction at the end.

There’s a lengthy section here that you’ll be tempted to read through quickly. Starting in verse 3, Paul gives his greetings to a variety of people. By the time he reaches verse 16, he has greeted over 25 in all! Apart from Prisca andAquila, who play a prominent role when Paul arrives in Corinth(Acts 18), most of the people who are named here are unknown to us. One interesting thing about this listing, as is often pointed out, is that some of the names refer to women. These days, it’s sometimes popular to picture Paul as a male chauvinist, or as anti-woman. But that obviously doesn’t tally with the random way he simply mixes men and women here, greeting them as co-workers in ministry as he happens to think of their names.

Another interesting thing is that Paul knows so many people in Rome…even though he’s never been there. He has met all of these people in towns along the way, as part of his missionary travels. Mostly, Paul has met them inAsia Minor (modern-day Turkey) or in Greece. But all of them are now in Rome! What’s my point? It’s really twofold. First, this shows us something about how the Roman Empire worked. We think we live in a mobile society, but the same can be said of the Roman Empire. Not to our degree, of course. Travel occurred primarily by foot, walking along the major Roman roads, or by sea, taking ships as they were available and were sailing the general direction you wanted to go. That certainly limited the amount and frequency of travel. Still, many people did feel free “to move about the country,” to paraphrase a slogan from a certain airline.

Second, and more important, Paul knew that all these friends of his would have found their way into a house church somewhere in the city of Rome, and those churches would be in contact with each other. Paul expected this introductory letter to be circulated among the Christians in Rome. This means that he could expect that all of these people would receive his greetings. It’s a reminder of just how much Christians accepted and supported each other. No matter where followers of Jesus Christ came from, they were considered to be part of the faith. They were received as though they were family (the “family of faith”), and the church truly was a welcoming and supportive community. In an age when there was no social safety net of any kind, that must have been really good news. “Christ is risen indeed.”