For this Mother’s Day weekend, Pastor Bryan Jarrett helps us look to the last chapter of the book of Romans…Romans 16. Most people who read this chapter rush through it because all they see is a list of hard to pronounce names that seem to have no relevance to rest of the Bible or to their lives. It’s a long list of Paul’s personal greetings…and if that’s all you see…you too…may miss the significance of the last few verses of Romans. These farewell greetings in Roman’s 16 give us a window into the soul of early Christian life. Paul refers to people from every strata of society. Paul greets slaves and aristocrats, business professionals and unskilled laborers, government officials and people he led to the Lord in prison…people who in his culture would have never interacted together in a cordial or mutually beneficial way…and yet…the cross of Christ and the community of their faith transcended their cultural taboos and well defined social lines. Many of these people had nothing in common but their decision to follow Jesus…and that tie bonded them together stronger than any other. This diversity was the life of the early church.
