Ecclesia is the Koine Greek word for the gathered assembly, the church. The word literally means, “the called out ones.” I spent last week in Austin at the Seminary of the Southwest for continuing education. Our topic was Paul’s so-called “first” letter to the Corinthians, the ecclesia under Paul’s aegis in Corinth in the first century. Our professor for the week is a notable Pauline scholar who has spent much of her professional career reconstructing what these early communities of faith looked like…these egalitarian communities that followed this enigmatic pharisee who birthed the early church. We took on the difficult chapters first in our study, the ones about women keeping quiet in church, speaking in tongues and their interpretation, whether to eat meat blessed by other gods, Paul’s preference that the faithful remain celibate, the appropriate means of prophecy. In all of these issues the common theme among them was the question of how to deal with and manage the new found freedom that is manifest in Christian community, and how to live responsibly into the empowerment freedom brings. Paul writes that they are freed from the Law…but that with such freedom comes balance and perspective and responsibility.
It is clear in Paul’s writing that the “called out ones” are call to freedom, and called for freedom…their own freedom and the freedom of others. (which makes the passage about women keeping quiet in church something of a non sequitur…in fact there are scholars who argue that the passage is a later addition to the letter)The practice of the Christian faith in its beginnings was about liberation…liberation from oppression and injustice…liberation from hunger and thirst…liberation from squalor and disease…to be included and participate in the heart and soul of the community, the family meal, as equals, one experiences first hand the peace that comes of justice, and the joy of living in dignity…the high water mark of salvation.
Paul is also clear that this calling is not about the individual, but the calling of a community….all bearing each other up, the whole greater than the sum of its parts, all bearing each other up with unique and many gifts in the imaginative process of salvation….saving and empowering freedom for, as Paul puts it, and Hebrew scripture as well, the ethnes, the nations, all peoples.
In the United States we speak often of freedom, and we celebrate rightly that freedom this coming Sunday, and it is indeed something to celebrate, but let us remember that freedom and empowerment is meant for all. Perhaps in our national deliberations on foreign policy, in health-care, in economics, in issues concerning immigration, in warfare, that our rubric becomes freedom and empowerment, not just for us, but for all of humanity, all whose birthright is freedom because all are made in God’s image, and with freedom comes great responsibility for all as well. May we as the called out ones of All Saints Church bear this freedom and power we share with passion and courage, because the world waits for it, waits in hope…Let us be that hope called out.
