I’m hooked on Disney+.
It wasn’t my plan. My original plan was to purchase a subscription and keep it for one month, just long enough to watch a few movies with the family over Christmas. But that was before I saw the promos for WandaVision, Marvel’s nine-episode miniseries exclusively on Disney+, with episodes dropping every Friday beginning in January.
So I moved to plan B: hold off a couple of months until WandaVision wrapped up in March. But then I saw the promos for Marvel’s next series: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, slated to start in March. As I write this column, it’s a Friday afternoon in April, and after dinner, I’ll be on the couch for the next Falcon/Winter Soldier episode. Another series starts in June (Loki), so no more plans for me.
What’s amazing about Marvel’s shows is that even though the episodes are only 40 minutes long, the end credits can easily take five minutes. It’s an endless stream of names and titles, as many as a full-length movie. Whether it’s a short story or a feature film, it takes a small army behind the camera, i.e., the crew, to produce and distribute a program.
It’s like that when we read the New Testament. We’re familiar with the cast, like Paul, Peter, and James, but there were many crewmembers behind-the-scenes that enabled the recipients of those letters, both then and now, to read them.
Romans is an excellent example. In this masterful work, Paul explains and defends the gospel message of salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, which wouldn’t have made it to Rome if not for Phoebe.
Phoebe carried the letter we call Romans from Corinth to Rome. Paul commends her in chapter 16:1-2, describing her as a sister and servant of the church in Cenchrea, a seaport outside Corinth. He also describes her as a benefactor or patron in some translations, which was an individual that came to the aid of foreigners by providing housing, financial assistance and representing their legal interests to government officials. This suggests Phoebe was “high society,” with enough financial resources to make the 10-day, 700-mile journey from Corinth to Rome, undoubtedly accompanied by servants for her protection. The patron willingly became a courier. The world may have considered her a major character, but she was willing to become part of the crew for the gospel’s sake, and because of her faithfulness, we have Romans.
It’s a powerful reminder that just as the New Testament writers were anointed and guided by the Holy Spirit to accomplish their work, so was the “crew,” and both were indispensable. Paul may have dictated Romans, but if Tertius hadn’t diligently recorded Paul’s every word, we wouldn’t have passages like Romans 10:9, that if we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. If Phoebe had carelessly misplaced the manuscript on the boat, we wouldn’t know that in everything we are more than conquerors in Christ (Romans 8:37).
Paul sends greetings to other crewmembers in Romans 16. In verses 3-15, Paul commands the church to greet 26 individuals on his behalf, and only two (Priscilla and Aquila) are mentioned in any other New Testament book. Nine out of the 26 are women, and Paul even calls some of them his fellow workers, a radical concept at the time. Priscilla and Aquila were a Jewish couple, financially secure enough to host house churches in Corinth and Rome, but besides that, based on the names, most of the people Paul greeted were Gentile slaves or freedmen. Some were well placed in government circles, such as the believers who were slaves in the household of Aristobulus, a brother of Herod Agrippa the first. And there’s Rufus, who may have been the son of Simon of Cyrene, the one who carried Jesus’s cross, and his mother, who Paul claims as his mother in ministry.
That’s a small sample but large enough to note the diversity of the church and be reminded that ministry requires a team made up of people serving both out front and behind the scenes and are diverse yet like-minded. The homogeneity that’s the norm in today’s church should be an anomaly. If we believe we were baptized into one body with its various parts and that Jesus tore down the dividing wall of hostility (Ephesians 2:14-15) such that there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free (Galatians 3:28), we should be alarmed when we don’t see it. John Stott has said, “Heterogeneity is of the essence of the church… so we must declare that a homogenous church is a defective church, which must work penitently and perseveringly towards heterogeneity.”
This May, we celebrate Mother’s Day and Pentecost. This Mother’s Day, let’s give thanks to God for the mothers in ministry He’s given us, like Rufus’s mother was to Paul. Without fanfare, they faithfully taught our Sunday school classes, made crafts, prayed with us, and in many other ways shaped our faith behind the scenes. But let’s also celebrate Pentecost, remembering that Jews from all over the world were present in Jerusalem with their diversity of cultures and languages on the church’s birthday. But when they responded to the gospel, the same gospel we heard and believed, they became one family.
Diversity is in the church’s DNA; it’s an asset, not a detriment. Our mission is to share the good news with the world and see his kingdom advance, which and we can only do if we Advance Together.