The Church in Her House

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This is sermon #4 of 6 in my series on women leaders in the Gospels & the early church. Here we will learn about the additional women who were leaders of house churches, plus the wider question of how the early church figured out how to be the Church.

--Rev. Stephanie Spitzer-Hanks, 7th Sunday in Easter, 2026, Homer Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Homer, New York

Painted walls from Lullingstone Roman Villa, 4th cent. AD, Lullingstone, Kent. Photo by Nick Thompson. https://flic.kr/p/DT5xoM

If you prefer to watch instead of read the sermon, the video should begin at the beginning of the sermon.

1 Corinthians 1:10-13 (NRSVUE)

Now I appeal to you, sisters and brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been made clear to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

Sermon Transcript

We continue in our series about women leaders in the Gospels and in the early church. So far we have explored the contributions of Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, who were disciples of Jesus and financial supporters of his ministry.

And in the early church so far we have learned about Lydia, whose enthusiastic embrace of the gospel prompted the establishment of a church in her house in Philippi, and then Prisca & her husband Aquila, who were co-workers in the gospel with Paul in multiple cities.

Our list of names grows by the week! And today I am going to add six more names to the list of women who were leaders in the early church, who opened their own homes as leaders of house churches.

We’ve been on this journey of learning about the early church—how it was founded, how it spread, and we’ve found that almost every story about the early church includes Paul. It is estimated that he traveled more than 10,000 miles on his missionary journeys—some of it in a boat, but a lot of it on foot. The man was tireless.

As I’ve said before, Paul had a habit of traveling to a new place, finding a place to preach the gospel of Christ, attracting converts to this new Way of Jesus, establishing churches in the homes of these new converts, and often getting arrested before he moved on to a new town to do it all over again.

And along the way, he would make time to write letters back to those churches that he had founded. Many of those letters were copied and passed around and saved and collected to form a good chunk of our Bible. But why did he write all of these letters to all of these churches? Mainly because he thought they were going about things in the wrong way.

I mean, he also wanted to encourage these new believers, and guide them, and give them more matters of faith to chew on so that they could mature as believers. Those are things he did in his letters. But often, he would get wind of conflicts and factions within house churches or between churches in the same city, and he would write to clear things up and get the churches back on track.

You have to understand, they were really making up this new religion as they went. I mean, of course, they were inspired by God and the teachings of Jesus, but logistically how that all was supposed to work in practice as a new way of relating to God and one another as communities of faith? They were figuring it out as they went.

And it was not just Paul who was traveling and preaching and guiding new churches—there were other people doing this work, too. Like Peter (who, confusingly, also went by Simon and by Cephas), and Apollos (whom we met last week, when Priscilla and Aquila pulled him aside and instructed him more fully in the Way of Christ.) And certainly there were other itinerant preachers who made the rounds throughout the Roman Empire, bringing good words to the churches, but also maybe confusing them a bit. Because different preachers bring different perspectives, right? The same is true today.

And that was what was happening in the text Joanne read today, from Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth:

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been made clear to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”

It seems that in Corinth, “Chloe’s people,” that is, the church that Chloe led in her house, have been snitching to Paul, that the churches in Corinth have split into factions. Some of the new believers there claim to “belong to” Paul, others to Apollos, others to Cephas, and still others say, “I belong to Christ.”

Paul comes down firmly in the “I belong to Christ” camp. One thing you can say about Paul: he was not interested in creating a cult of personality around himself. He always acknowledged Christ and the cross as central. He rather saltily asks, “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Of course, the answer is no. It was not Paul, but Christ who was crucified, and they were all baptized in the name of Jesus. Really, you would think they would remember that.

But, then as now, it is easy to fall into the trap of placing one’s allegiance in a leader or a movement that has captured our attention in this present moment, rather than in Jesus, whose presence endures, to be sure, but who might be less immediate to us, less tangible. Easier to ignore.

So the churches in Corinth were arguing, but this sort of thing was not unique to Corinth. All of the churches were arguing amongst themselves about something.

But what sort of things did they argue about? A reallllly big one was the question of how to integrate Gentiles (or non-Jews) into this new religion, all of whose adherents in the beginning were Jewish. There were quite a few Gentiles who were interested in Jesus, and Paul and Peter and Apollos had all preached inclusion of non-Jews.

But the question kept coming up: Did non-Jews who wanted to follow Jesus need to follow Jewish practices? Jesus had been a Jew, who had followed Jewish practice. It was a big question, and one that Paul spent a LOT of time answering.

In his letter to the Galatians he gets downright angry with them. In chapter 3 verse 1 he says, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” Remember, Paul had a tendency to get pretty cranky sometimes.

It turns out that after Paul left the church he helped the Galatians found, some different folks came and decided it would be a good idea to impose Jewish laws and customs on the Gentile members of the congregation, even going so far as to say that the male Gentile believers needed to be circumcised! You can imagine how well received that idea was.

Paul put the kibosh on that and told them that they couldn’t be more wrong. Paul had taught them a faith based on grace and love, not on rules and regulations. And he was ticked off that they had thrown away his teaching about the freedom that the love Christ has for each of us brings—a freedom to love one another as Christ loves us, a love that transcends the divisions that we like to make between one another.

Toward the end of the chapter that Paul began by calling the Galatians foolish, is one of the most quoted verses from all of his letters. He wrote:

“There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

This verse really stands out, because it is so radical. Paul said that “in Christ Jesus we are all children of God through faith.” When we make distinctions between Jew or Greek, or slave or free, or male or female, we lose sight of how God sees us—as all children of God, none of us better or more privileged in the eyes of God than the other.

You can see how this would be a radical idea! And a difficult one to wrap their minds around, as it continues to be difficult for us to wrap our minds around today.

But Paul insists that “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus had talked with and welcomed all sorts of people, including non-Jewish folks, including disabled folks, including the poor, including women. And Paul was not going to let anyone forget that.

And the early church was a place where women could thrive, even as leaders! And this was not often true for women in the Roman Empire at the time. Roman culture was patriarchal—it was only men who could hold office and vote, and women were largely expected to keep to the home.

Now, there were exceptions. There were some circumstances where women could own their own property and run their own businesses. For example, there was Lydia, who owned her own business in trading purple cloth. But by and large, women were expected to play their traditional role in staying home and running the household. The home was the woman’s sphere of influence.

But since the early churches met and worshiped *in homes*, this worked out well for women like Chloe in Corinth, and Lydia in Philippi, and Priscilla, who along with her husband Aquila, hosted a church in their home in Corinth, and later in Ephesus, and eventually in Rome. Since the home was where women were *supposed* to lead, it makes sense that women *would* lead churches located within their homes.

Now, I don’t want to imply that it was *only* women who led house churches in the early church. There were men who were leaders. Of course, there were. But it was part of the radical nature of this new religion—that it was egalitarian in calling both women and men to full participation in the life of the church.

And there were other women who led house churches, besides the ones I’ve already named. This was not a fluke thing in one or two cities, but female leadership in the early church was seen throughout the whole area that Paul traveled.

Yellow stars indicate where women were leaders in the early church. Often the biblical text explicitly notes that they led house churches, sometimes it is implied.

There was Mary, the mother of John Mark, (Acts 12:12) whose home was a house of prayer in Jerusalem. And there was Apphia in Colossae (Philemon 1-3), and Nympha (Colossians 4:15 ) and the church in her house in Laodicea. The Prominent Women (Acts 17:12) in Thessolonica don’t get named, unfortunately, but Paul notes that they were persuaded to join the Way of Christ, and it follows that they led others in turn. And in Philippi Paul urges Euodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4:2-3) to put aside their differences and remember how they struggled beside Paul in the work of the gospel. They and those whom they lead must be in the same mind in the Lord.

If we were to compare founding a church to giving birth, then maybe Paul was a midwife, who traveled around, supporting the birth of new churches, and the house church leaders were the new parents who nurtured and reared their baby churches and helped them grow. And these new parents were both women and men.

But then something happened to change the way the church operated. In the fourth century, the Christian church became the official state religion of the Roman Empire—going from a network of scrappy house churches to becoming a tool of the state. The church grew up, and moved out of homes to separate structures devoted to worship, and the leadership of the church changed.

Women were integral in raising the church from infancy, but once the church became more closely connected to the state, patriarchal cultural norms crept in, and women were pushed aside. As churches were built in the public space, the roles in that public sphere were considered fit only for men. So men became the priests and bishops, and women had to find other, less prominent ways to serve the church.

It’s almost like it’s bad for the church to become too closely intertwined with the state. When we do that, what we lose is our radical nature, our sense that Christ can transcend the divisions that we put between us as human beings, instead seeing each of us as children of God, none of us better or worse than the other.

“There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Paul was at peak crankiness when he wrote that, but aren’t we glad he put ink to paper and did?

Even when Paul says things that are problematic to my modern sensibilities, or goes off on tangents that I think maybe he spends too much time fixated on, I am glad he wrote all the letters he did, teaching new believers, helping them grow in the Way of Christ.

Remember this was before the internet, these folks didn’t have cell phones, heck they didn’t even have phones that plugged into the wall, or access to a postal system. If Paul wanted to get a message to a church, either he had to go himself or send a letter with a messenger. Those were his only options.

And still, even with these limitations in technology, this new religion, Christianity, spread. Because the gospel is that electric, that radical. The way of Christ spoke to people, and they wanted to be part of it, to know more, to be in community with others who sought to relate to God in this new way.

Even if they had trouble figuring out the right ways to be in community, the gospel of Christ was strong enough to convince them to keep trying. And isn’t that what we are still doing today? Trying to figure out how best to be a community of faith that honors Christ and does Christ’s work in the world?

What if Paul were to write a letter to this church, what would he say? Would it be one of his cranky ones, where he has to get on to us about something? In what ways would he need to correct us? In what ways would be praise us? It’s something for us to think about, because we are all in this together, figuring out how to be the church in this time and place. And there will be things we get right, and there will be things we get wrong. But by the grace of God, may we continue to worship God and love one another, as best we can.

To the church of God that is in Homer, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: grace and peace to you from God and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

May we now pass the peace of Christ with one another.

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Prisca/Priscilla (and Aquila)

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This is sermon #3 of 6 in my series on women leaders in the Gospels & the early church. Today’s focus is on Prisca, aka Priscilla, whose husband and ministry partner is Aquila.

--Rev. Stephanie Spitzer-Hanks, 6th Sunday in Easter, 2026, Homer Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Homer, New York

If you prefer to watch instead of read the sermon, the video should begin at the beginning of the sermon.

Acts 18:1-27, abridged from The Voice

From Athens, Paul traveled to Corinth alone. He found a Jewish man there named Aquila, [who with] his wife Priscilla had recently come to Corinth from Italy because Claudius had banished all Jews from Rome. Paul visited them in their home and discovered they shared the same trade of tent making. He then became their long-term guest and joined them in their tentmaking business.

Each Sabbath Paul would engage both Jews and Greeks in debate in the synagogue in an attempt to persuade them of his message…Eventually, though, some of the Jewish people stopped listening and began insulting him. He shook the dust off his garments in protest.

Paul said, “I’ve done all I can for you. You are responsible for your own destiny before God. From now on, I will bring the good news to the outsiders!” He walked out of the synagogue and went next door to the home of an outsider who worshiped God. 

At the end of 18 months, Paul said goodbye to the believers in Corinth. He wanted to travel to the east and south to Syria by ship; so, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila, …the three of them sailed east to Ephesus where Paul would leave Priscilla and Aquila. Paul [continued traveling]…visiting city after city…strengthening the disciples in each place.

Meanwhile, back in Ephesus, a Jew named Apollos made contact with the community of believers. He had been raised in Alexandria. Apollos was eloquent and well educated in the Hebrew Scriptures. He was partially instructed in the way of the Lord, and he added to his native eloquence a burning enthusiasm to teach about Jesus.

He taught accurately what he knew; but he had only understood part of the good news, specifically the baptism preached by John, the forerunner of Jesus. So, when Priscilla and Aquila heard him speak boldly in the synagogue, they discerned both his gift and his lack of full understanding. They took him aside and in private explained the way of God to him more accurately and fully. 

Apollos [traveled] west, into an area where Paul had recently been, to preach there…Upon his arrival, he was of great help to all…who had, by the grace of God, become believers.

Sermon Transcript

We continue in our series about women leaders in the Gospels and in the early church. So far we have explored the contributions of Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, who were disciples of Jesus and financial supporters of his ministry, and Lydia, whose enthusiastic embrace of the gospel prompted the establishment of a church in her house in Philippi.

This week, we turn our attention to a woman named Prisca, who also went by the nickname Priscilla. When she is mentioned in Acts and in the letters of Paul, she is always mentioned alongside her husband, Aquila.

The two of them are mentioned a total of six times, and four of those times, Priscilla is mentioned first, ahead of Aquila.

I mean, it is a big deal that she is named at all, considering alllll the women in the Bible who get the “daughter of so-and-so” or “so-and-so’s wife” treatment.

For comparison, consider Peter’s wife: he is a contemporary of Paul, who also was a leader in the early church, who also went on missionary journeys to found and encourage new churches. Peter has a wife—who even traveled with him—and we never ever get to know her name. Which leads us to think maybe she didn’t take an active role in the work Peter was doing in the world, preferring to stay in the background.

Yet we get to know Aquila *and* Prisca, so clearly she took an active role in their ministry. We never hear about one without the other. *And* four out of six times, Prisca is mentioned first. Why would that be?

No reason is given. Perhaps she had a stronger force of will, or maybe it was her superior intellect that brought her name to mind ahead of her husband’s. Maybe she was born to a higher social class? We just don’t know.

But as I’ve said time and again, the biblical authors chose their words carefully. Who gets mentioned and how, matters.

So what was special about Prisca?

Well, even though we read her name six times in the Bible, the mentions in Paul’s letters are brief—one or two verses of greeting within a passage where he greets lots of people whom he has worked with in all the various places he has traveled. Those mentions are like this one from 1 Corinthians:

“The churches of Asia send greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, greet you warmly in the Lord.”

Or in 2 Timothy: “Greet Prisca and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus.”

So, not a lot to go on there. But in his greeting in his letter to the Romans, Paul does add some interesting detail:

“Greet Prisca and Aquila, my coworkers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but also all the churches of the gentiles.”

What’s this about risking their necks for Paul? Who knows, Paul was always getting into trouble, it could have been anything. But whatever it was, Prisca and Aquila put themselves at risk in protecting Paul.


Paul thanks them, and adds the thanks of “also all the churches of the gentiles.” Which gives us a hint that this pair was influential not just in one house church in one city, but that they were well-known throughout the region.

We get the most information in the book of Acts, chapter 18, which Joanne read parts of for us. Let’s take a closer look at that passage.

We catch up with Paul in his interminable travels as he heads to Corinth, in the south of Greece. There he meets the married Jewish couple: Aquila & Priscilla. They had just been evicted from their home in Rome, “because Claudius had banished all Jews from Rome.”

But why did the emperor Claudius banish all the Jews from Rome? At this time very early in the Christian church, it was all very confusing—was Christianity a subset of Judaism? After all, Jesus had been Jewish, and all of his early followers were also Jewish. So there was conflict between Jews who followed Jesus and those that did not.

There was also conflict *within* Christian churches on whether and how to admit non-Jews—in the translation I am using today, these folks are called “outsiders,” but most translations use the term “Gentiles,” which just means “not-Jewish.” Should the non-Jewish folks be required to follow Jewish ways of living and worship, or should a new way be found to be a new kind of believer who follows Christ, regardless of one’s ethnic background?

So, there was a lot of conflict to go around. And it is probable that the disturbances between Jews who followed Jesus and those who did not got to be too much for the Roman authorities, so the emperor Claudius kicked them all out to maintain order.

This ban on Jews lapsed with the death of Claudius about 5 years later, and Jewish folks (both those who did and did not follow Jesus) began returning to the city, which is how Paul was able to send greetings to Prisca & Aquila in Rome just a few years after the events of our story today.

All that to say, Prisca & Aquila had been forced to leave Rome and the home they had made there, and Paul met them where they had settled temporarily in Corinth. It’s unclear whether they were already followers of Christ or whether Paul won them over. What is clear is that they all *really* hit it off. Turns out they were all in the same trade—tent making. Paul moved in with them and they all went into business together, making tents.

But you know Paul, he wasn’t in Corinth just to stitch some canvas together. He was there to preach the way of Christ! So, every Sabbath he would go down to the local synagogue and debate anyone who would engage with him, whether they were Jewish or Greek.

As time went on, the Jewish people at the synagogue tired of Paul’s relentless debating. The text says that “some of them stopped listening and began insulting him.” So, “He shook the dust off his garments in protest” and left.

I love that. “He shook the dust off his garments in protest.” It was a little like shouting, “I know when I’m not wanted!” before slamming the door on the way out.

But there is a precedent here—Paul’s dusting himself off echoes Jesus’s instructions to the Twelve in Matthew, when Jesus sent them out on mission. He gave them instructions on where and how they were to travel, and he ended with this: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

Now, I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but let me tell you: it is ok to disengage from folks who refuse to engage in good faith with you. It is ok to step back and step away from situations and from people who do not welcome you, who insult you, who do not listen to you. It is ok to shake the dust from your clothes and just walk away. You do not need to spend any more of your time and energy on folks who return your good will with insults.

And so Paul had had enough of the folks in the synagogue and their refusal to listen and their insults. He said, “I’ve done all I can for you. You are responsible for your own destiny before God. From now on, I will bring the good news to the outsiders!” He walked out of the synagogue and went next door to the home of an outsider who worshiped God.” And where presumably he was given a warmer welcome.

This arrangement in Corinth—living with Priscilla and Aquila, working together to make tents during the week, and seeking out converts to the way of Christ on the weekends—it all lasted a year and a half.

Then Paul was ready to move on, and this time, Priscilla and Aquila traveled with him. The three of them traveled by boat from Corinth (which, again, is in the southern part of Greece) to Ephesus (which is in the eastern part of Turkey).

After staying just a short while with them, preaching in the synagogue there, Paul left the couple in Ephesus, while he continued on, “visiting city after city…strengthening the disciples in each place.”

Which would have been, like, his favorite thing to do.

While Paul was traipsing across the Middle East, Aquila and Priscilla were getting settled into Ephesus and founding the church there.

At some point, the community of believers in Ephesus was approached by a Jewish man named Apollos. Apollos was from Alexandria, a city that was world famous for its library and was widely regarded as a seat of higher learning. Apollos had clearly taken advantage of his city’s opportunities for scholarship, since he is described as “eloquent and well educated in the Hebrew Scriptures.”’

And he also was enthusiastic! He was ready to speak out with eloquence and elegance about Jesus!

But there was a problem: he had only learned part of the story. He lacked a full understanding of the way of Jesus. What he knew he spoke boldly and convincingly, but he only knew so much.

Priscilla and Aquila listened to Apollos speak in the synagogue, and they immediately read the room and thought, “Here is a guy who is smart, well-spoken, and eager. All he needs is a little tutoring.”

So, the text says “they took him aside and in private explained the way of God to him more accurately and fully.”

Let me underscore—it was *they* who pulled him aside and explained to him. And this is one of those instances where Priscilla’s name gets listed before Aquila’s. Perhaps because she was the one who was more active in doing the explaining?

This is an instance of a woman (alongside her partner) giving instruction to a man. This is significant, because 1) it would have been unusual at the time, and 2) in many churches today, it would still be unusual. But here, it happens, and no one seems troubled by the occurrence of a woman instructing a man in matters of theology.

In fact, Apollos seems to have taken it all rather well! After his private tutoring at the hands of Priscilla and Aquila, Apollos is ready to branch out on his own, following in the footsteps of Paul to another church where he could preach the gospel of Christ. The text says:

“Upon [Apollos’s] arrival, he was of great help to all in [that region] who had, by the grace of God, become believers. This gifted speaker publicly demonstrated, based on the Hebrew Scriptures, that the promised Anointed One is Jesus. Then, when the Jewish people there raised counterarguments, he refuted them with great power.”

Apollos went on to become as influential a leader in the early church as Paul. Paul mentions him several times in his letters as a fellow missionary who moved from church to church, city to city, preaching and inspiring believers.

But what if Priscilla and Aquila hadn’t pulled him aside that day? What if they hadn’t decided to help him learn? What if he had refused to listen? Things could have been really different if Prisca and Aquila had not stepped in and spoken up.

Sometimes we think we aren’t smart enough, or we won’t be able to find the right words, or we feel too self-conscious to speak up to another person about matters of faith, to share the effect that God has had on our own lives.

Priscilla and Aquila could easily have thought they weren’t right for the job of tutoring Apollos. After all, they were tentmakers, and Apollos was a scholar from one of the most famous universities around!

But speaking about our own experience of faith doesn’t take a college degree or specialized training. What it takes is courage and a willingness to step out of our comfort zones to tell someone how our faith has impacted our lives and our values and how our faith influences the decisions we make and the things we put our energy and time into. I mean, why would we keep something so significant to our lives a secret?

Now, I am not suggesting that you go knock on doors or stand on street corners passing out religious pamphlets. What I am saying is—be ready to share what matters to you with people who matter to you, when the opportunity arises.

I think that Stef helped some of you to make a good start of it when she asked the question, “Why do you choose to come to Homer Congregational Church?” She recorded those answers and made a video, a part of which she shared on our social media this past week, and there is more on our YouTube channel. It is absolutely worth a watch.

May it inspire you to reflect on why this church and your faith matters to you. And may we all have the boldness of Prisca and Aquila in speaking up when it matters, when we have important matters of faith to share, when it is the right thing to do.

But also remember: if you find yourself in spaces where your authentic self is met with hostility and insult, where your attempts at earnest dialogue are shut down, you can and should shake the dust off your clothes, walk out that door and into one that is open to you.

So let us go from here to wherever you go this week, with the courage of our convictions and a readiness to share with our neighbors and friends why your faith matters to you.

Amen!

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