Spending a bit more time in Ephesians, and thinking about Ephesians in this way, as we hear the words of the letter from the position of participation in the community meal, thus providing an adequate context for the letter’s concern with the relationship between Jews and Gentiles and the unity between the two that is to be espoused by the church, we have an entirely new world opened to us as we consider “So then you are no longer foreigners and noncitizens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household, because you have been built on the foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone” (2:19-20). Not only is temple language put to use, which was very important for the early church as it understood and presented itself as the new temple in its representation of Christ, but when we hear “In Him the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (2:21-22), echoes of the “body” language found in Paul’s treatment of spiritual gifts from the first Corinthian letter, along with everything else implied by Paul’s treatment of “the body,” should be ringing in our ears.
Approaching Ephesians with this mindset---social practice and the messianic banquet---should go a long way in crystallizing our thinking about what we see in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. As would have been the case with the letter to the Romans and the letters to the Corinthians, the letter to the Galatians would have been read out loud to a congregation, with a possible expectation by Paul that said congregation would be gathered at a meal table as a fundamental aspect of their fellowship (always keeping in mind the meal-table-heavy Jesus tradition and its intrinsic tie to the messianic banquet). How much deeper goes the reading from Galatians as we place ourselves with this church at their table and hear “But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he had clearly done wrong. Until certain people came from James, he had been eating with the Gentile. But when they arrived, he stopped doing this and separated himself because he was afraid of those who were pro-circumcision. And the rest of the Jews also joined with him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray with them by their hypocrisy” (2:11-13).
Of all things with which he could deal, Paul makes it a point to bring up issues surrounding the church’s meal practice. Of course, having already seen this with the churches at Rome and Corinth, as well as with what seems to be implied by the letter to the church at Ephesus (though this may have been an encyclical letter), this should no longer be a surprise to us. Indeed, at this point, we should be find ourselves surprised by a failure to on Paul’s part to cultivate thoughts in line with the messianic banquet in his communications to the churches. Most certainly, this illuminates a portion of the controversy to be found in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, and the decision to be delivered to the Gentile churches “that you abstain from meat that has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from doing these things, you will do well” (15:29). Now, we will not be dogmatic in the least little bit at this point, as this does take some stretching, but does such language not evoke images of the symposium?
Returning to the Galatian letter, it is this mentioning of the meal table of the church that is the grounds for Paul’s immediate movement to “We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ” (2:15-16a). As we saw with the Ephesian letter, with the mention of boasting that puts us in mind of the symposium and therefore a component of first century meal practice, which then leads into talk of justification, so we see the same thing here. A clear pattern appears to be at work. Along with Romans then, the Galatian letter, and therefore the two letters of Paul that are held up as containing the pinnacle of the message of justification (and therefore the pinnacle of what is thought to be Paul’s message, though like Jesus, Paul is most concerned with the kingdom of God), inextricably entwine justification, with all of its requisite associations with the kingdom of heaven (God’s rule), with a demonstrable concern with Christian meal practice that should be reflective of the messianic banquet.
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