Okay, we explained it away by saying ‘those guys weren’t real Christians, but we are,’ style of thing. But it needed some fast talking...

...until we decided to look fair and square at the problem. Why (on earth!) did the gentile church get so homicidal to God’s people? And the question held a clue to the answer. It’s all in the little word ‘church’. And the relationship of ‘the church’ to the Jews.

To a reasonably literate person, ‘the church’ is something to do with Christian gentiles. But ‘church’ is a slippery word. Sometimes it is capitalised, sometimes not. It can mean a building, a congregation, a denomination, or even all Christians throughout time and space. Many groups (not only Roman Catholicism) regard themselves as the (true or only) Church.

Centuries of usage have firmly established all those concepts in popular thought. Speakers can glide effortlessly from one meaning to another in a sentence or two. An impassioned appeal for ‘renewal of the church’ may imply a call for greater spirituality, a simple membership drive, or even a working bee with Dulux and putty.

We would venture (with our usual modesty) to suggest that current usage is totally wrong. In other words, usage has caused the word to drift from its original meaning. So, let’s look at the evolution of the word - and the concept - of ‘church’.

In Greek - ignoring the meaning for a moment - the word for ‘church’ is ekklesia. Latin versions of the New Testament merely transliterated the word into ecclesia; in the early marketplace society it would have still been understandable. Later translations acknowledged that ecclesia had no linguistic meaning and substituted the Greek kyriakus domus. It was intended to mean ‘household of God’, but quickly became modified to ‘house of God’. Then, shortened to the German ‘Kirken’ and Scottish ‘Kirk’, its transition to the English ‘church’ was complete.

So, what did ekklesia originally mean?

In Greek, ek means ‘from’ or ‘out of’; kaleo is ‘to call’. The compound ekklesia was a Greek word in normal usage, meaning ‘summoned’ or ‘outcalled’. It was also used of Greek citizens summoned to attend a civic gathering.

However, one point mustn’t be lost. When the New Testament was originally written, there wasn’t the faintest intention of Jews breaking away from Judaism - yet ekklesia was used, not sunagoge - ‘synagogue’, a ‘gathering together’. So the sense of civic gathering wasn’t the reason the word was used, or ‘synagogue’ would have done nicely-thank-you. Rather ekklesia was used to stress the out-calling.

We can demonstrate this.

In Acts 7:38, the King James version of the Bible uses a phrase which has caused nearly 400 years of English speakers to do a double take. In a passage which is clearly talking about the children of Israel, they are anachronistically (that means ‘something that didn’t relate to that time’) called ‘the church in the wilderness’. But is that an anachronism, or simply a pointer to the faulty translation of ekklesia by ‘church’? The children of Israel had been called out of Egypt; hence they were ‘the outcalled’. ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’ occurs in both Old and New Testaments, the (Septuagint and NT) Greek using the similar form ekalesia.

So, what was the term ‘outcalled’ intended to signal?

We would suggest it indicates the fulfilment of several prophecies. One is that the Jews were to be ‘a light unto the gentiles’. (This is echoed in another form by the categorical statement of Jesus: ‘salvation is of the Jews’.) A second is that there was to be a time (Jeremiah 31:31-34) when God’s relationship with the children of Israel as a people would be personalised and individualised, with the Law written on their hearts, because each one would personally know Him.

It happened. It’s a matter of historical record that not only Jews but gentiles also were called out by a personal on-going revelation from and of God.

Make no mistake. Jews stay Jews in the original Christian teachings. Jesus, for all his criticisms of certain Pharisees, commanded his Jewish hearers to observe Torah. But this wasn’t put on gentiles. And for the remainder of that first century it was possible and acceptable for Jews and believing gentiles to enjoy dialogue and fellowship. ‘The outcalled’ was intended to indicate that degree of unity.

Sadly it’s also a matter of historical record that the pressures of change wrought by the destruction of the second Temple and the take-over of the ekklesia - the outcalled - by Roman political forces to form a gentile religious organisation forced a separation between Jews and believing gentiles.

But you get the idea. The outcalled are (strictly ‘is’ ) the ‘one new man’ of Ephesians 2:15. The outcalled – believing Jews and gentiles – are the explanation of the odd statement in Galatians 3:25: ‘neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Jesus the Messiah’.

Remember – it’s a battlefield out there. Not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual (and that means very real) forces that are trying to polarise and divide the outcalled, the believing Jews and gentiles.

Yet that division has never been total. Down the centuries there has always been communication. In recent days Lord Shaftesbury prompted Theodor Herzl to remember the province of Palestine as the God-given homeland for Israel. Colonel Orde Wingate, Bible in hand, taught young Jews how to defend their land. And, of course, there was General Allenby, to whom God gave the privileged task of liberating His land from the Turks.

There were many others. And today there are countless thousands of believing gentiles who are frankly surprised to feel an affinity with the Jews.

Yes, there is an element of sentimentality and romanticism. What do you expect when we former pagans become aware of a nation chosen by God some 3,000 years ago. Yes, there is an element of guilt. What do you expect when we are linked by the very use of the word ‘church’ with organisations that ignored, marginalised, persecuted and massacred the People of God.

We have a gratitude for the scriptures which originally came from Jews and to a great extent have been preserved lovingly by Jews. For the gift of Jesus, God’s Passover Lamb, slaughtered for the sins of the world. And we rejoice in a living, dynamic relationship with God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

But in addition to all that, the call which gentiles have heard from God includes a love for the Jews and the Land of Israel. We don’t have a hidden agenda to put on them the gentile mistakes of centuries, nor do we make any claim on their land. If this isn’t true of all believing gentiles, we can confidently say that those who listen attentively to the call of God are being drawn to God’s People.

This new millennium failed to begin the glorious time of peace that many gentiles expected. We had forgotten that each new day - in Jewish reckoning and in God’s - begins at sundown and gets darker and darker. So the present darkness is the certain forerunner of a great and lasting Day, just as labour pains assuredly presage the joy of birth.

We look forward to that Day with eagerness. Together.

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