Genesis 46, Job 12, Mark and Romans 16

Romans Chapter 16 - I have been tempted in my Bible reading over the years to quickly skip through the end of the letters written in the New Testament. They are often lists of names and personal greeting given to people we do not know, and it can sometimes seem irrelevant to our lives. But I think we can learn a lot and be greatly challenged by the personal interactions between the earliest Christians that we can read as these letters close out. Romans, especially, has some interesting information for us to digest. The first person Paul mentions in his closing is a woman, which is VERY strange in the first century. The first person thanked is given a position of honor that was generally only reserved for men in their ancient society. She is also called a servant, which is "diakonos" in the original Greek...a word from which we get our church leadership title - deacon. Phoebe is clearly a leader in the church and holds a position of influence and respect that would have been shocking in the male dominated first-century. A little further down in the letter Paul mentions Junia as as a kinsmen and fellow prisoner for the Gospel of Jesus. In all of ancient Greek literature, Junia is only ever used as a feminine name. Junia is a woman. The word the ESV translates as "kinsmen" is actually "apostolos" from the Greek which is usually translated as apostle. Paul is saying that this woman Junia is a fellow apostle and prisoner for the Lord...her imprisonment is most certainly based on teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to others (which is what keeps getting Paul thrown in prison). Apparently, Junia is a preacher of the Gospel, whom Paul considers to be a peer. These revelations are culture shattering for the ancient world. So often Christians are labeled as chauvinists and out of touch and irrelevant by the secular culture around us, but what we need to understand is that Christianity was at the forefront of breaking down the barriers for women in this world. The revolutionary way that Jesus treated women gave them a foundation for the meaningful place they have taken in church and world history. We need to make sure we are not getting hung up on the gender of the Christians around us, but that we are providing opportunities for men and women to serve in a manner that makes best use of the giftedness that God has given them.