Suddenly, it may happen. We see things differently. We realise how little we know about our neighbours, our colleagues, our team-mates, our fellow-church members. That should not surprise us. If we are candid, there is a lot we don’t know about ourselves (and sometimes others know us better than we do). This eye-opening experience comes home to us anew when we look at the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. The place-name Cenchreae comes in verse one. It was home to a Christian community
Cenchreae? Which of us could with confidence declare what we know about the good people of Cenchreae? Paul mentions these people in passing when he refers to the church that Phoebe belonged to. We have some ideas of the rip-roaring life of the citizens of Ephesus and the tumultuous activity of the church in Corinth but of Cenchreae we know nothing. We do have what is an illuminating aside: Paul had a hair-cut in Cenchreae. Illuminating because it suggests that much went on in the infant Church, Nazirite vows, for instance, of which we are less than well informed. Of Phoebe we know slightly more. Paul says she has ‘been a good friend to many, including myself.’ He wholeheartedly commends her to readers in Rome.
Prisca and Aquila we know well. Paul knew them even better. ‘They risked their necks to save my life,’ he says. ‘All the gentile churches are grateful to them.’ Why? How? We don’t know. The members of the church who met in their house would have known.
Andronicus and Junia, fellow-prisoners with Paul, were ‘eminent among the apostles and were Christians before I was,’ says Paul. None the less they are no more than names to us.
Then we have two who were probably sisters and maybe twins: Tryphaena and Tryphosa. They worked hard in the Lord’s service, as did many more, presumably. We surmise that their names meant Delicate and Dainty. Whether they grew up to delight in those names or to detest them we cannot say.
Finally there is in this last chapter a mention of one whom Paul regarded as his mother. She is not named but her son is. Paul describes Rufus as ‘an outstanding follower of the Lord’. Outstanding as he was, we know nothing of what he did. We know nothing, too, of what led Paul to speak of Rufus’s mother in this way. This is perhaps a good point at which we have to acknowledge our extremely limited knowledge of events in the young Church – beginning perhaps with what Barnabas went on to do after he and Paul went their separate ways.
If there is much that happened in the early Church that never got recorded, we should not beat ourselves up about our own ignorance. We should be glad of what we do know.
SIDMOUTH QUESTION
David Wade, who edits the handsome magazine serving the Sid Valley churches, is proposing a 50 per cent price rise for the publication. The magazine has strong sales of advertising space but he thinks quite reasonably that it should pay its way with an increase in the cover price. Parish magazine editors up and down the land face this question with varying degrees of urgency. David Wade is sounding out his readers. I hope they will back him. Editors deserve that kind of support.
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