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Series: Family
For Dummies
3. God's
Family - Where No One Stands Alone
DM - 2.18.7
Romans
16:1-13 (NIV)
1
I commend to you our sister Phoebe,
a servant of the church in Cenchrea.
2
I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to
give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to
many people, including me.
3
Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus.
4
They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the
Gentiles are grateful to them.
5
Greet also the church that meets at their house. Greet my dear friend
Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.
6
Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.
7
Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives
who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles,
and they were in Christ before I was.
8
Greet Ampliatus, whom I love in the Lord.
9
Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys.
10
Greet Apelles, tested and approved
in Christ. Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus.
11
Greet Herodion, my relative. Greet those in the household of Narcissus who
are in the Lord.
12
Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord. Greet my
dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord.
13
Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to
me, too.
Could this possibly be the dullest passage
in the whole Bible? It might be, and if I were preaching a whole series on
Romans, I'd probably skip this, the
first half of Romans 16, because
what does it have to do with us?
Oddly, THIS would have been the best part of the letter for the Christians
in Rome who were the original recipients of the letter. Why the best part?
Because maybe, they thought, MY name will be written there. And even if my
name isn't mentioned, this is the part of
Romans that talks about our family, the believers in Christ. So the
Christians in Rome would have been thinking, "Nice letter from Paul, huh?
Good thoughts on freedom in Christ, and salvation by grace through faith. He
obviously put a lot of work into it. Hey, could we read that last part
again? The part where he mentions my aunts, Tryphena and Tryphosa, the
twins? Tryphosa was outside with the baby and didn't get to hear it!"
When the letter to the Romans gets down to family business, that's when it
got interesting...to the Romans, because like us, their church family was
the strength of their lives!
Look at it again in that light. Oh, there is a new girl in town, Phoebe.
Even though we don't know her, if she's a friend of Paul's, then to us she
is a sister we just haven't met yet. Priscilla, Aquila, sure. We all know
how much they've done for the cause of Christ. Andronicus and Junias. Paul
calls them his relatives. Are they blood-relatives? Maybe, but probably not.
They're his brothers, though, because in the church this family stuff is a
lot more than just talk. BTW, where ARE A and J? Oh, Paul says they're out
standing among the apostles. :)
Also, did you notice that there's a guy named Narcissus in this list? In
Greek mythology, Narcissus was the name of a guy who fell in love with his
own reflection and was trapped for all eternity staring at his own face in a
pool, so giving your son this name is like naming him "pretty boy". So Paul
says to greet those in the household of "pretty boy"!
I like v. 13 - "Greet Rufus, chosen in the
Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too." I heard Fred
Craddock preach on this passage and he imagined Rufus' mother saying to
Paul, "I don't care if you are an apostle, sit down and eat your supper!" I
hope we all have someone like that in the church. Billie Cutshaw has been
like that for me for almost 20 years! Brenda Moore and Linda Mowrer are kind
of like that too (though I'm not saying that ANY of these folks are old
enough to be my Mom!)
This passage shows us something about what the church ought to be. It shows
us that, when things are as they should be, the church becomes family to one
another, and we all have sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles,
grandparents and parents and little siblings looking out for us whom we also
look out for. It means that a single mom has people she can call when the
load gets too heavy, and the couple going through a rough spot in their
marriage has people who will pray for them. It means that the women whose
husband walked out will find support and help and the guy who just became a
widower will have people who won't leave him hanging out there alone and the
kid who has good spiritual instruction and lots of love at home will get the
same from her family at church. It means that if one of us gets into
financial trouble someone will help, and if I'm causing my trouble, they'll
make sure to help me see that and change. It means that if our clothes dryer
goes down, the Gunters up the street or the Cutshaws next door will let us
use theirs (which they did this week!)
So as we move on in this series called Family For Dummies, it's appropriate
that we talk about how the church needs to play a vital role in modeling a
strong family by being a strong family. No
One Left Behind is our theme this year, our vision of what the church
could be. This lesson is about what it looks like when the church becomes
God's family, where no one stands alone.
Two ideas to describe the family of God. The family of God...
1. Consists of all ages
1 Timothy 5:1-2 -
1
Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but
exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers,
2
older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.
I'm sure we agree that the MAIN POINT of that text is how to treat
other people of different ages and genders, but do you also see the obvious
subtext that says that in a healthy church there ARE people of all ages and
genders? The local congregation, like any extended family, should be made up
of males and females, young and old and in-between, grandpas and uncles and
sisters and cousins. In fact, I believe that this is an area where the
church needs to strike off in a very different path from the rest of the
culture. As an outpost of the Kingdom of God, we ought to be a redemptive
alternative to a society that is highly segmented according to age, race,
economic class, musical taste, and every other preference you can think of.
For today's purposes, since we're talking about the church as a family,
let's talk about age.
The stereotype of the older person in church is that he's cranky and set in
his ways and he doesn't really want younger folks around. Young people are
loud and noisy and they aren't as respectful as they should be and they
don't really care about God's house or about older people. Well, that
stereotype may hold true somewhere, but by and large I don't see much of it
here. I was visiting with the Freemans the other day when Truman made a
statement that I've heard several of our older folks say over the years: "I
don't care much for their music (in church), but it brings in young
people." That kind of attitude has helped us to grow into a strong family
of God where we have been able to bring in young people and not lose all the
older ones.
The stereotype of the young person is what I just described as the prejudice
of the older person: Young people are irresponsible, disrespectful and
ungrateful, and they're totally self-centered. And again, there are
certainly young people like that, but as I work with the K-5 bunch on
Wednesday night or the Middle School kids at church camp, I encounter a very
different attitude among our kids, and last Sunday night, Rick Cox and the
other sponsors testified to it as well. Our kids may be noisy and
energetic, but many of them have a heart for God and they're willing to
respect adults and even welcome us into their world and their lives.
Yet even with a good bunch of young and old people who are committed to the
Lord (not to mention us middle-age folks who hold the whole thing
together!), we have to constantly resist the temptation to segment ourselves
by age, and the reason we have to resist is that it is the MOST comfortable
thing to do.
How do I know that? For one thing,
a very common type of church all across America is the small congregation
where the average age seems to be north of 70. It isn't that young people
aren't interested in Christ and it isn't that these churches made a
conscious decision to keep youngsters out. But by catering to the comforts
of the senior citizens, they gradually became churches that are exclusively
for older people.
For another thing, let me
tell you something I often hear young people say when they come home from a
convention, or when they come home from their first few weeks at a Christian
college, or from a vibrant campus ministry...they often say: "It was so
awesome to praise God with a thousand people MY OWN AGE." Now they may be
saying that after being around so many people in high school who didn't know
God, it was great to go somewhere and see that they're not alone, that faith
goes beyond their own youth group. But they may be saying: "It was
comfortable to be with my own age group, and not have to worry about what
older people might think." We all need to resist the temptation to enjoy
the company only of our own age group because the church is broader than
that, if it is a family.
How do we combat this temptation to fracture along generational lines? I
don't think we need to get rid of youth groups or adult classes or anything
like that. We do learn differently and have different discipleship issues
to deal with. No, the key is to intentionally reach across the age-based
lines.
Morrison Hill Christian
Church
P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E. Race St.
Kingston, TN 37763 (865) 376-5205
