Phoebe, deacon
Lesser Feasts and Fasts (September 3)
Eternal God, who raised up Phoebe as a deacon in your church and minister of your Gospel; Grant us that same grace that, assisted by her prayers and example, we too may take the Gospel to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Lesser Feasts and Fasts)
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well. Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert in Asia for Christ. Greet Mary, who has worked very hard among you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. (Romans 16:1–7)
“All roads lead to Rome.”
A famous saying full of historical truth. The empire had created an incredible highway system, reaching out and beyond the capital city, like river tributaries, and blood arteries, beyond the horizon to the vastness of the kingdom. As Roman Emperors continued to believe that they were the conduit to God or that they were even God, followers of Jesus turned toward their Savior as the direct link to God.
A Hebrew convert to the Way, formerly Saul, now Paul, wrote to the people scattered across the Empire, organizing the followers of Jesus, calling on them to make the ways of God known through small, transformative communities. Because of the Roman Empire’s superhighway on both land and water, Paul was able to travel and meet and preach to citizens everywhere, proclaiming the love and grace of Jesus the Christ.
As he traveled, Paul was ultimately preparing for a visit to Rome. As part of that preparation, he had written a letter to the people. Paul’s Letter to the Romans is considered his most significant work. Pauline scholars tend to agree that interpreting the letter is difficult because of its many layers.
N.T. Wright, when speaking about Paul’s Letter to the Romans, shares, “It remains the case that anyone who claims to understand Romans fully is, almost by definition, mistaken.” Wright suggests that at its core, the letter is about God’s righteousness and how this plays out through the relationship between Jews and Gentiles and God.
Throughout the letter, we encounter a faithful God whose love for creation is manifested in God incarnate in Jesus Christ. Paul felt his letter would transform the Roman Empire into the Kingdom of God—delusions of grander, I guess. And he entrusted his friend and partner in ministry to deliver the letter to the Romans prior to his arrival. That friend was Phoebe.
Today the Church celebrates Pheobe, comma, deacon - a colleague in ministry with Paul who delivered the letter. Phoebe was named after the god Titan found in Greek mythology. The name is sometimes translated to mean “shining like the moon.” It was a common name given to slaves so perhaps Phoebe was a freed slave. Being named after a Greek god also suggests she was probably a gentile, a convert to the Way, and a follower of Jesus.
In the Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Phoebe is identified as “servant leader” of a house church in Cenchreae, a port suburb of the city of Corinth.
It is hard to get at what was exactly meant by the identity of a deacon during Paul’s day. Perhaps Ignatius of Antioch, who lived and wrote during the second century, helps us a little when he shared this in one of his seven surviving letters, “In like manner let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of apostles.”1
From Paul’s writings, and the writings of others, we start to discover that deacons were leaders, who called on the community to follow Jesus, to remember the poor, and to serve one another. They were proclaimers of the message of service and accompaniment and interpreters of faith.
Paul writes about this in his Letter to the Romans when he introduces them to Phoebe, the letter's deliverer. Often, the recipients called on those who carried the letter to interpret it.
In early Christian gatherings, as Bishops claimed power and priests took the best seats at the table, the servant leadership of the deacon was often misinterpreted or pushed aside. Although deacons have always served in God’s church, it would be centuries before they were given serious attention again, and found their place at the table, for the most part!
In the Episcopal Church, preparation for the 1979 prayer book was well underway, and we saw an intentional restoration of the diaconate.
Our dean of the School of Theology at the University of the South, Jim Turrell, in his essay written for Education for Ministry, 50 Years of Engaging, Responding, and Reflecting, shares this: “In the 1970s, The Episcopal Church upended its understanding of the Church, of ministry, and of what it means to be a baptized Christian. Formerly, it held an ecclesiology in which the Church was defined by ordination, not baptism; ministry was something the clergy did; baptism itself was merely the first step in a two-step initiatory sequence (the other being confirmation). In the second half of the twentieth century, the Episcopal Church adopted a new theology based on baptism. This “baptismal ecclesiology” can be reasonably summed up in three propositions: baptism constitutes the Church; the Church is the whole people of God (clergy and laity alike); and baptism is a call to ministry.”2
Growing up in New Orleans and being sponsored for formation for ordination by the Diocese of Louisiana, I had the privilege of meeting and ministering alongside one of the thinkers and shapers of the modern-day diaconate, the Rev. Ormande Plater. Ormonde was an Episcopal deacon, writer, and liturgist well-known for his deep commitment to the diaconate and liturgical life.
In his book on the diaconate, Many Servants: An Introduction to Deacons, he advocated strongly for the restored and renewed role of deacons in the Episcopal Church following the 1970s movement to reinstate the vocational diaconate as a permanent order.
Ormonde shares, “In 1971 the Episcopal Church began to ordain a new style of deacon, in what was actually an attempt to recover an old style — the classic diaconate of the early church. A few years earlier, in the Roman Catholic Church, Vatican II had called for this recovery in the form of a permanent diaconate, which Paul VI promulgated in 1967. The Lambeth Conference of 1968 had urged Anglican churches to open the order to men and women in ordinary life. Liturgical trial in the Episcopal Church, leading eventually to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, included deacons and other baptized persons as vital parts of a diversified liturgy. Women could be deacons. Most important, the Episcopal Church began to expect deacons to function directly under the bishop as symbols of the servant Christ and as special servants of the poor in the world.”3
According to the ordination vows for a deacon, they are to study scripture, make the redemptive work of Christ known, interpret to the Church the needs and concerns of the world, assist bishops and priests in public worship, and the famous line thirteen - to carry out duties assigned from time to time, - and through life and teaching that, in serving the helpless, they are serving Christ himself. To this day, the Episcopal Church and all mainline Christian denominations struggle to empower all, both lay and ordained, to live into their baptismal ministry.
Perhaps today, as we honor Phoebe, deacon, we may look to her for servanthood, seeking inspiration in her conversion, in her choice to say “yes,” in her calling communities following loving God into being, and her faith in her Creator as she carried her friend’s letter across a vast empire to the seat of government with courage and determination.
Ignatius of Antioch. Letter to the Trallians. In The Apostolic Fathers, edited and translated by J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, rev. Michael W. Holmes. Chapter 3.
Taliaferro, Maggie, Mary Ann Patterson, Kevin M. Goodman, and James F. Turrell. Education for Ministry: 50 Years of Engaging, Responding, and Reflecting: Collected Essays. (Function), Kindle edition, p. vii.
Plater, Ormonde. Many Servants: An Introduction to Deacons. Kindle edition. (Function), p. 46.