persis and rufus? - Paul and his fellow church planters name twenty-eight people that they seem to share a history and story with. Though Paul spends no recorded time planting churches in Rome, we can only guess the adventures of bravery, compassion, and transformation that binds writer and recipients together. With Christians in Rome and specifically those names ones, Paul offers this marvelous benediction that begins with the formulaic "Now to him . . . " and ends with "the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ. Amen." What lies sandwiched between this sentence are more than modifiers, prepositional phrases, and verbs and direct objects. We see some insight into Paul’s basic mission statement that includes and defines his mission to the non-Jewish population groups.

nib on this passage:

It should not surprise us that the letter ends in most manuscripts with an invocation of the one true and wise God, made known in and through Jesus the Messiah . . .

. . . Ultimately, Paul’s vision of the renewed community is of united worship, based on shared faith (15:6; 8-13). The praises that arise to the one God from the renewed community will thus reflect God’s righteousness, the covenant faithfulness in which the Jew first, and also equally the Greek, are drawn into one family . . . that is what all this letter has been about. [1]

Recall some of those "around the world" before Christmas day meal prayers that we hear offered every once in awhile at public or family gatherings-especially when everyone is salivating over the cooling food.

• Why might prayer be a good vehicle for one’s theology or passion?
• If we knew nothing of Paul or his mission and passion for spreading the gospel to everyone, what could we gather from this prayer? What might your congregation pray "between the lines?" That is, what would fill the content of our community prayers?

block #1 - Explore the unique qualities of these closing words . . . the opening phrase and the closing phrase and the expanded in-between parenthesis.

block #2 - Shift to contemporary contexts-when have you seen this sort of thing? Prayer around the world? The dinner table? (I’ve seen similar kinds of clarifiers stuck right into the name of churches or their mission statements-my favorite: "____ Church, a undenominational church" which suggests that this group has not joined any organization or ministerium and are proud of it!)

block #3 - Shift to the parenthesis to unpack what the content is about. What would our local congregation put into these lines that reflects what we passionately believe and are about?

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[1] New Interpreter’s Bible X (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), page 760-770.