Romans Disarmed Wk 1 - Jarrod McKenna - 15th June 2025

📖 Romans 1:1–2, 16–17

🔹 The gospel begins in shame — and undoes it
🔹 Jesus is Lord means Caesar is not
🔹 Phoebe preached it first
🔹 God’s justice is not abstract — it’s healing, embodied, and disruptive

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 Romans has long been read through the lens of empire, patriarchy, and personal escape. But what if it was never meant to justify power, but expose it?
This week, we opened the book not through Augustine or Luther, but through Phoebe — the first to carry and interpret this dangerous letter.
A gospel first spoken by a crucified slave, carried by a woman, read to a community of outcasts and former slaves.
This is no mere theology textbook.
It’s a call to shame-defiant solidarity.
It’s a letter of healing justice.
It’s a whisper to every outsider — you belong.

Homework this week:
📖 Read Romans 16 — slowly, with Phoebe in mind.
💭 Ask: Where have I turned the gospel into abstraction? Where might Jesus be found in what I’ve been taught to feel ashamed of?

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The Steeple Church Podcast is recorded on Wurundjeri land in the east suburbs of Naarm - that you will find on a map as Balwyn in Melbourne, Australia.

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of these lands, the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation and we pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.

Sovereignty was never ceded.

You can view the full Steeple Church Acknowledgement of Country here.
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