22-7-2018-Notes

For Jews… Who was in and who was out mattered a lot...

Family or Nation, we have a shared identity, a shared hope, a shared home

The invitation goes out to all

Bible Thoughts (Eph)

You are citizens, you are part of the family. What does it citizenship mean, what does being part of the family mean?That you are no longer a guest...On what basis are you citizens…When you are born into something, I’m not sure that you really spend much time thinking about it… Home just is...In the same way, Marriage as the greatest missionary undertaking, you often aren’t even aware of how different families do things...Remember that there was a time that you didn’t belong...Will need to find some quotes or images for how Jews were to treat gentiles...

We are reminded that what started with Jesus wasn’t just a one-time amnesty, a one-time window of opportunity for a few extra people to be welcomed into God’s family...

Online Thoughts

The Jewish prayer service averred, “Our Father, our King, we have no King but You”. Rome was called “the wicked kingdom” and was often referred to in a form of code in rabbinic writings, e.g. by using the name Edom with the meaning of Rome (Midrash Ex. R. 15:6). Rome returned the compliment. “Jews were generally considered in the ancient world,” writes Martin Goodman (The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt Aghainst Rome AD 66-70, Cambridge: CUP, 1987, p. 97), “to be hostile, prickly people, quick to take offence and unfriendly to aliens” (see also Menahem Stern, ed., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (vol. 1: Jerusalem, The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities), 1974. - https://www.oztorah.com/2008/07/jewish-attitudes-to-gentiles-in-the-first-century/#.W1KwiNIza00

Logos Thoughts:

​The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)The peace theme in 2:11–22 serves as a subpoint for Paul’s central proclamation in his letter to the Ephesians: God “has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (1:9–10).

​The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have comes not to abolish but to fulfill” (), and Paul himself also claims to “uphold the law” (). Therefore, the abolition of the law he speaks of here has to do not with the holiness, justice, and goodness of the law (see ), but with the law’s involvement in the enmity that divided Jew and Gentile. The law’s involvement in enmity expressed itself, for example, when “those who are called ‘the circumcision’ ” would presume superiority over “Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ ” (2:11). It also expressed itself when the very structure of the temple included a “dividing wall” (; cf. ) that excluded Gentiles and prevented the temple from being “called a house of prayer for all the nations” ().

​The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)All this Jew-Gentile material may seem distant to believers today until pastors explain how Jew-Gentile unity offers a paradigm for all social relations in the church. Every congregation includes insider and outsider groups whose differences parallel the differences that divided Jews and Gentiles in the early church. Some believers feel very near to the traditions of the church; others feel far off. Some believers feel like strangers and aliens to the cultural convictions of others, and this can divide the church into warring camps. On top of this are denominational, national, racial, ethnic, class, gender, and other differences that compete with believers’ primary identity of being “in Christ” (cf. ).

​The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)Holiness, which characterizes all the saints (cf. 1:1 and 2:19), has to do with being set apart for a particular relationship with God and purpose in God’s plan. Believers grow into a holy temple as God relates to them in grace and works in them to display Christ as the destiny of the new creation. God’s temple people will express this purpose insofar as they are “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone” (2:20).

​The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)The thematic verses of Ephesians remind believers that all church activities are for the sake of God’s creation-wide purpose to gather up all things in Christ. The second half of alerts churches to how God’s wide plan for a universal kingdom of peace can be expressed especially in relationships of reconciliation among groups. And the culminating image of the temple prods us to think how God’s purposes and human reconciliation can shape everything believers do.

​The Lectionary Commentary, Volume 2: The Acts and the Epistles (The Second Readings) Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Joel E. Kok)Giving special attention to children at the Lord’s Supper, working together to repair the church building or the neighborhood around the church, making our dinner tables into places where “people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God” ()—these and countless other activities are all ways churches can be holy temples that witness to the day when there will be “no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (). Faithful preaching of and listening to this passage can anticipate that day by allowing this passage to shape reconciled groups of believers into churches “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” ().

​The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians (2) Their Present Access (2:13–18)No longer did circumcision or uncircumcision have any religious relevance: such matters as the observance of special days or abstention from certain kinds of food belonged henceforth to the realm of personal conscience; with regard to them everyone should be “fully convinced in his own mind,” without being condemned or despised by anyone else for his decision ().

​The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians (2) Their Present Access (2:13–18)Such a vertical barrier stood in the temple precincts in Jerusalem, preventing Gentiles from proceeding from the outer court (“the court of the Gentiles”) into any of the inner courts. Josephus describes how this barrier encircled the higher ground which contained the inner courts and had attached to it at intervals notices in Greek and Latin warning Gentiles not to proceed farther on pain of death. This was indeed a material barrier keeping Jews and Gentiles apart. It cannot be said with certainty that it provided the analogy for the wording of our text, but it would have been a more appropriate analogy than any horizontal barrier. It might indeed be asked if the readers of this epistle would have recognized such an allusion.116

Paul arrested due to letting gentiles in...

​The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians (2) Their Present Access (2:13–18)Whatever the readers may or may not have recognized, however, it should be remembered that the temple barrier in Jerusalem played an important part in the chain of events which led to Paul’s becoming the “prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles” (as he is called in ). For, according to , Paul’s arrest came about because he was charged with aiding and abetting illegal entry by a Gentile Christian through the temple barrier.