2. Finding  Each  Other

The Christian community at Antioch was a very mixed group as we can deduce from its composition.(1)

Antioch was a melting pot of people belonging to various races.(2) The original population, which must have constituted the majority of the slaves, servants, farm labourers and skilled workers, were Syrians, They derived from the Arameans, a Semitic race closely affiliated to the Jews. In preceding centuries Assyrians, then Babylonians and finally Persians had ruled Syria, leaving pockets of these nations among the population.

Then there were the Greeks who had colonised the city originally and remained the ruling class. They were administrators, craftsmen, teachers and land owners. Cypriots had settled in Antioch as merchants; and so had Africans from Cyrene, Egypt, Ethiopia and other countries. Romans served as officials and soldiers. Finally there must have been a sprinkling of Teutons and Gauls who had been imported from beyond the Alps as slaves. Their different racial origins showed itself in widely divergent languages, customs and religious beliefs.

Since Antioch had ruled the Jewish territories for about a hundred years (218 -120 BC), there was a large and ancient Jewish community too. Though ordinary citizens in many re spects, these Jews looked upon themselves as living in 'exile'.(3) They stuck to their own customs and formed pockets of Jewish settlements among their gentile neighbours.

Another cause of division was wealth and social status.(4) Archaeological evidence shows that some quarters of Antioch were built for the rich. Here the land owners and prosperous merchants lived in fabulous bungalows. Many people belonged to the middle classes: the skilled workers in metal, wood or stone, the shopkeepers, the clerks and petty officials. The largest segment of the population (certainly one third, perhaps a full half) were slaves: the people who did the hard work in the homes, the local industries, the mines and the farms.

Slaves were the property of their owners who could beat them, sell them, marry them off as they wanted. Roman laws afforded meagre protection. According to the Lex Petronia (19 AD) slaves could only be sent into the arena with the government's permission. The Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) forbade owners to kill their sick slaves. Obviously, there were considerate masters too who would treat slaves as mem­bers of the larger 'household'. But, in general, the position of slaves was not to be envied. In work and life slaves depended totally on their masters who could exploit them to their hearts' content, if they wished to do so.

Also there was a deep social divide between men and women. In traditional oriental societies, such as among the Syrians and Jews, women were subject to men in all areas of life. Among the educated Greeks and Romans, women could achieve more status and even a measure of independence; but even here real power lay with the men.

The people in Antioch presented a picture of division such as we still find in many a society of our own time. They were divided by seemingly insurmountable obstacles:

racial origin
religious belief and practice
social status and wealth
sexual inequality.

As in our own time, these basic divisions were compounded by their consequences: differences in health, education, access to means of progress ....

Members of God's family

When we understand these divisions in Antioch, we can appreciate why the creation of a 'community', of a Christian 'Church', in Antioch, was experienced as something so revolutionary. People of opposing backgrounds and social statuses were brought together to form one new 'family'.

This was something Jesus had already begun to foreshadow during his ministry.

• God, he taught, is our Father; we are all brothers and sisters.(5)
• Leaving our earthly families behind, our 'house, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children or land', we receive the same back a hundredfold in Jesus' new family.(6)
• Jesus did not consider his physical relatives to be 'brother, sister or mother', but rather all those who respond to the new plan of his Father.(7)
• Following Jesus would sometimes lead to division within one's family.(8) This was the cost to be paid for the new fire of love and peace that would change the face of the earth. (9)
• In the home of Jesus' new family, people of all races will come from east and west to sit at the family table; (10) fulfilling the messianic (11) promise that God would 'prepare a banquet for all nations, a meal of rich food and fine wines. . . .'.(12)
• In Jesus' family there is room for 'little ones';(13) for the weak, the handicapped, the underdogs, the people who do not count in society(14)
• Jesus' brothers and sisters are not just the narrow circle of his followers, they are all people in need: the hungry, the naked, the prisoners, the sick and the strangers.(15)

In other words: Jesus established totally new relationships between people - relationships that cut right across the ancient barriers. Although Jesus did not explicitly extend the bonds of unity to cover race, nationality, colour or social class, all this was implied in his radical teaching. In the eyes of his Father all people are equal.

The Early Christian communities were well aware of this new reality. From their first beginnings in all Hellenistic cities, they accepted people from all racial, religious and social backgrounds as equal members. They did not realise, we can be sure, that this radical departure from the established order would become the cause for their subsequent harassment in the Roman Empire.

‘Piety’ and the established order

It is a well-known fact that Christians were persecuted in the Roman Empire in periodic outbursts that would only stop after three centuries. Why were Christians considered a menace? They had no political ambitions. In spite of some slanderous accusations, they could not be convicted of having committed crimes. Their devotion to Jesus Christ could hardly be an offence, since the Romans, and the Hellenists in general, could tolerate the worship of any god or goddess. Why was it then that they were singled out (16) for such severe punishment and repression?

The answer is that Christians were seen as offending against 'piety'.(17) In Latin this word originally meant 'respect'. A person was called 'pious' if he or she respected father and mother, grandparents and ancestors. A 'pious' person supported the state and the established order. Since the order of the world and society derived from the rule of the gods, 'piety' also involved giving the gods their due, worshipping them and respecting their position. (18)

Piety was seen as a cornerstone of the religious and social order. The Roman statesman Cicero declared:

Piety (towards the divine powers), like other virtues, cannot exist in mere outward show and pretence.
If piety disappears, so will reverence and religion.
And when these are gone, life soon becomes a welter of disorder and confusion ....
Disappearance of piety towards the gods will, in all probability, entail the disappearance of loyalty and social union among people as well, and of justice itself, the queen of all virtues.(19)

The Emperor held a key position in the whole religious and secular order. On some Roman coins the Emperor is portrayed as 'the one who restores the whole world under the providence of the gods'. The Christians' refusal to worship the Emperor was seen as a rejection of the religious structure on which the state and public order rested. But refusal to take part in the sacrifice to the Emperor was only one symptom of what Romans and Hellenists saw as Christian 'impiety'. Christians were difficult guests at parties because they rejected meat offered in the Temple or wine dedicated by a libation. 'You do not go to our shows', people would complain. 'You take no part in our processions, you are not present at our public banquets, you shrink in horror from our sacred games!'(20) The historian Tacitus accused Christians of 'hatred of humankind' .(21)  

And Pliny, the Roman Governor of Asia Minor put Christians to death, not because they could be convicted of any crimes, but simply because they did not burn incense to idols and thus upset the established order. ‘Whatever the nature of their protestation, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished’(22)

For the Early Christians, as for their contemporaries,religion and the social order were closely interwoven. The gods and goddesses of the established order kept every person in his or her place. In Jesus Christ, God revealed himself as love who broke down the walls between people.

'Formerly you were separated from Christ. You were foreigners. You did not belong to God's people. . .
You lived in this world without hope and without close contact with God.
But now, in Christ Jesus, you who at one time were far off, have been brought near, through the blood he shed.
Christ is our peace.
He has made both of us, Jews and non-Jews, one people.
He has broken down the wall that divided  us.(23)

‘All of you who were baptised into Christ, have put on Christ. From now on you are no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, man or woman; all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’(24)

Spiritual Unity

Around the year 57 AD Paul wrote a letter to the Christian community at Corinth which he himself had founded six years before. There were disagreements in the community.(25) It shows that the practice of Christian unity did not always match the ideal. It also gives us an opportunity to discover on what grounds Christian unity was based.

• ‘You are still unspiritual. If you continue to be jealous and quarrel among yourselves, does it not prove that you still behave according to this world and its standards? ’ (26)
• ‘Don't you realise that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you (as a community)? If anyone destroys God's temple (by causing division), God will destroy that person. For God's temple is holy and you are that temple!’ (27)
• 'The cup of blessing with which we give thanks makes us share in the blood of Christ.
  The bread we break makes us share in the body of Christ.
• The fact that there is only one loaf means that though we are many, we form a single body, for we all share in this one loaf.’ (28)
• ‘Though a human body has many parts, it's still one body made up of all these parts; so it is with Christ's body.
  We were all baptised bythe one Spirit to beparts of the one body, whether we were Jews or non-Jews, slaves or free citizens. We all drank of the one and same Spirit.’ (29)

From these and other New Testament texts we learn that the new bonds within a Christian community are not first and foremost a question of external organisation, but of sharing the same spiritual realities.

• We come together in a new community because Christ himself is our unity. (30)
• From our fragmentary selves he built one single New Person in himself. He restored peace through the cross, uniting all people in a single Body. (31)
• Through Christ we have, in the one Spirit, the same access to the Father.(32)
• None of us are aliens or foreigners. We are all full citizens of God's city, full members of his household, parts of his holy temple because we are filled with his Spirit. (33)

It is the interior realities that unite us. The Holy Spirit is the bond who creates community.

Inner union through the Spirit

The Decree on Ecumenism (34) of Vatican II expresses the principle of interior unity in a beautiful text which I will here render in a free translation, adding my own commentary:(35)

'After being lifted up on the cross and glorified,
the Lord Jesus poured out the Spirit,
as he had promised to do.
Through this Spirit he called and gathered together the
people of the New Covenant
- that is the Church • into a unity of faith, hope and charity.

Jesus is the one who gathers us.
He does so through the Spirit.
We are united because we share the same
belief,  the same vision, the same love.

We find this in apostolic teaching:

'There is one Body and one Spirit, parallel to the one vision to which you are called;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism'.(36)
For 'all of you who have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There are no more distinctions between Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. All of you are one in Christ Jesus’.(37)

The external unity derives from our interior oneness in Christ and the Spirit

The Holy Spirit,
who lives in those who believe
and who pervades and rules over the entire Church, brings about a wonderful communion of believers and joins them so intimately together in Christ that he,
the Spirit,
is the principle of the Church's unity.

The Decree then goes on to mention the ministries and external organisation which, it says, are charisms given by the Spirit.

This is the sacred mystery of the Church's unity,
It exists in Christ and through Christ
with the Holy Spirit giving power
to its various functions.

The highest model and source of this mystery
is the unity of one God in the Trinity of Persons,
the unity of Father and Son in the Holy Spirit.

Just as in God it is the Holy Spirit who makes the Three Persons one, so in the Church it is the Spirit who unites us.

Community means 'acceptance'.

The realisation that Jesus had broken down the walls that divide people: gender, race, religion, social position, wealth, and so on, called for new social principles. Eventually it would have to produce a programme of social liberation.(39) The earliest Christian communities were grappling with too many problems at once and were too small (40) to overthrow the existing social system. Rightly or wrongly, they struggled to show that their religious beliefs did not make them 'enemies of human-kind' or political opponents of the State.(41)

The Early Christian communities did their best to adopt a new life style of true harmony. They could not, all at once, abolish the enormous chasms that existed in society, created by slavery, the inequality of women and other injustices.(42) But even where they failed to implement the deeper social implications, at least they saw that through Christ, relationships were altered, were made subject to a higher law.

Paul expressed it in this way:

'If you were a slave when you were called (i.e. when you became a Christian), don't be upset. On the other hand - if you get the chance to become free, use it. A slave who is called in the Lord, becomes a free person for the Lord; a free person called in the Lord becomes Christ's slave.
God bought all of you for a price; do not become slaves of people.'(43)

This was by no means the complete realisation of the radical consequences of the Gospel. But it was the beginning of a new awareness that would eventually, in the course of the centuries, make complete social equality a clearly defined goal.

What the Early Christians understood, in spite of the restrictive social divisions they were still subject to, is that within the Christian community all should be treated equally as mem­bers of God's family whatever their social status.

'Suppose a man comes into your meeting dressed in expensive clothes and wearing a gold ring. A poor man, dressed in rags also enters. If you show more respect to the well-dressed man and say to him: 'Have this place of honour', while you tell the poor man 'Stand over there' or 'Sit on the floor by my feet', don't you then make distinctions among yourselves, settingyourselves up as judges of people with warped standards?'(43)

The principle Paul gives is:

'Accept one another in the same way Christ accepted you'.(44)

Christ accepts each person without discrimination of race or gender, status or religious background. Christ accepts each person totally, happily, fully. Only if we adopt the same attitude, can our 'community' become a true Body of Christ, a sacramental expression of the Spirit's love for each individual.

QUESTIONS FOR PERSONAL STUDY

1. The universal Church is first and foremost an inner bond, a communion in the Holy Spirit. What are the implications for us?

* Have we as a Church overcome the barriers of race, culture, social status and gender that threaten to divide us? Why has it taken so long for the basic unity and equal­ity to be translated into new social structures?

* Are we aware of the inner spiritual life we share with Christians all over the world? What does this 'communion' mean in practical terms?

2. Is our own local Christian community welcoming and accepting? How does it measure up to these simple norms:

* Can everyone in our community really feel 'at home'; even the elderly, teenagers, single parents, those who are handicapped. . . . ?

* Is there anyone forced to remain alone with his or her problems? Anyone expected to hide fears or disabilities? Are all accepted as they are?

* Do all in our community have a chance to contribute their talents; or do a few appropriate all power and all credit?

* Can we accept each other in friendship even if we disagree at times? Do we come to common solutions by listening to each other?

* Are we happy to 'celebrate' life together without ever excluding outsiders who want to join us?

3. If there are still divisions and inequalities among us, are these due to a lack of awareness on our part?

Notes

1. Acts 13,1

2. In recent years a spate of studies have appeared that try to reconstruct the social conditions prevailing in the hellenistic cities of the time. I recommend: G.THEYSSEN, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, Edinburgh 1982; W.A.MEEKS, The First Urban Christians: the Social World of the Apostle Paul, New Haven 1983; R.F.HOCK, The Social Context of Paul's Ministry, Philadelphia 1980; N.PETERSON, Rediscovering Paul. Philemon and the Sociology of Paul's Narrative World, Philadelphia 1985.

3. Jews living in foreign countries were said to live in the diaspora, that is: 'dispersion'. The term derives from the Greek trans­lation of certain texts, e.g. 'You shall be dispersed to the furthest corners of the earth' (Deuteronomy 30,4; see also 28,25); 'Gather our dispersed people, free those in bondage among the nations' (2 Maccabees 1,27). Peter writes his letter to 'the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Minor and Bithynia' (1 Peter 1,1); James to 'the twelve tribes (of Israel) in the Dispersion' (James 1,1).

4. R.MACMULLEN, Roman Social Relations, from 50 EC to 284 AD, New Haven 1974; G.E.M. de SAINTE CROIX, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, London 1981.

11. In the Old Testament God had promised to send a redeemer whom the Jews at the time of Christ began to call ‘the Messiah’. This Aramaic word literally means ‘the anointed one’. The same word in Greek is translated as Christos.

16. The Jews were persecuted at times for the same reason as the Christians, but they presented a smaller threat because of their seclusion within racial communities.

17. Latin pietas, Greek eusebeia.

18. C.KOCH, 'Pietas' in PAULY-WISSOWA, Realencyklopddie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Stuttgart 1951, vol.22, col.1230; D.KAUFMANN-BUHLER, 'Eusebeia' in Reallexikon furAntike und Christentum, Stuttgart 1966, vol.6, pp.985-1052.

19. CICERO, De Natura Deorum, 1,3-4.

20. MINUCIUS FELIX, Octavius, par 12.

21. TACITUS, Annales, 15,44; see H.FUCHS, 'Tacitus uber die Christen¹, Vigiliae Christianae 4 (1950) 65-93.

22. PLINY THE YOUNGER, Epistolarum Libri Decem, no 96; see R.L.WILCKEN, ‘The Christians as the Romans (and Greeks) saw them’, in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, ed. E.P.SANDERS, vol. I, Philadelphia 1980, pp. 100-125; The Christians as the Romans saw them, New Haven 1984, esp. pp. 1-67.

34. 'Ecumenism' derives from the Greek oikoumenê, ‘the inhabited world’, i.e. thhe whole world. In Church terms it originally designated actions affecting the universal Church (like having an ecumenical council). Nowadays the term is generally used for the moement towards world-wide Chritian unity.

35. Unitatis Redintegratio, no 2; A.FLANNERY (Ed.), Vatican Council II, Dublin 1975, pp. 453 - 455; see also W.M.ABBOTT, The Documents of Vatican II, New York 1966, pp. 343 - 344.

36. Ephesians4,4-5.

37. Galatians 3,27-28.

38. The implications of the Gospel for social justice are discussed in our WALKING ON WATER courses My Galilee, My People (see Course Book, pp. 115-137 and 161-182) and The Gospel Transcends Barriers.

39. At the beginning of the second century AD the Roman Empire, from Britain to Syria, counted 60 million inhabitants. Christians probably numbered less that 50,000.

40. The later letters of the New Testament recommend social submission by children, women and slaves and link this to the concept of piety (compare 1 Tim 6,1-2 , on slaves, and 1 Tim 6,3, 'teaching that is in accord with piety'; compare also 1 Peter 2,13 - 3,7 with 2 Peter 3,11). 1 Peter 2,12 explains the reasoning: 'Maintain good conduct among the pagans so that when they accuse you of wrongdoing, they will have to acknowledge your good deeds'.

41. Read: W.M.SWARTLEY, Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women, Scottdale 1983. This matter is explored more fully in the WALKING ON WATER course The Gospel Transcends Barriers.

42. 1 Corinthians 7,21-23; see also Galatians 3,27-28; Philemon 10 -18. Other New Testament texts are more accommodating to the practice of slavery; read Colossians 3,22 - 4,1; Ephesians 6,5-9. S.SCOTT-BARTCHY, First Century Slavery and 1 Corinthians 7,21, University of Montana 1973.

43. James 2,2-4

44. Romans 15,7. Through community we break down the barriers erected in society; our individuality is the ‘sin’ that can destroy Christ’s community. See J.MURPHY-O’CONNOR, Becoming Human Together. The Pastoral Anthrolology of St Paul, Wilmington 1982