Options in the Midst of the Pandemic

I just got done hearing, with ears that hear, Servant Leadership in the Midst of Pandemic by Fr. Marc Boulos and Dr. Richard Benton, called by the Orthodox Christian Leadership Initiative's Executive Director Hollie Benton. God's life-giving word is always timely, but today it felt even more timely to me. Over the past six weeks I have been reading, and hearing readaloud, the Epistle to the Ephesians by the Holy Apostle Paul, alongside the faithful in their 20s, 30s, and 40s whom I minister to at the Virgin Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Cathedral (and now in the digital rooms of our video meeting software).

We covered chapter four two weeks ago, and today I heard a call to hear it again. The call I heard was no divinely revealed grace, nor was it the decision of a rugged American individualist or transcendentalist. Rather, it is a communal call for the body of Christ found across space and time that gathers around a textual tradition they hold in high esteem. This is the call of the sunni and sufi muslims and orthodox christians in Ethiopia and Eritrea who wake up every morning to their respective religions on the loudspeaker. The Greek term ecclesia from which this call comes, is the name many women in the Ge'ez Rite have been named transliteratively from Greek to Ge'ez.

There are parts of Ephesians Chapter 4 that my bible study group and I glossed over when we communally read it aloud, that I was able to better sink my teeth in today due to the ministry of Fr. Marc and Dr. Richard.

making every effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the bond of peace
spoudazo tereo ho henotes ho pneuma en ho syndesmos ho eirene
Ephesians 4:3 Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament

1) The unity here is henotes. It looks like it shares a beginning with my name Henok but that is a totally false cognate as my name is the result of transliterating Hebrew into Greek and then into Ge'ez. However, it ties etymologically to a tremendous ecumenical effort across centuries entitled the Henoticon . I encourage you to look into that as you think about and act on the unity that the body of Christ should have. It is not a mystical unity, but a practical community with shared goals, speech, and actions.

2) The Spirit here is pneuma. Greek has no distinction of capital and lowercase letters. I knew this already, but today I was reminded (zkr). Any capitalization of spirit or any decision to write wind or spirit, is a biblical interpretation. Let us attend. Let us be careful. Let us remain watchful.

3) The bond here is syndesmos. We live in such a sanitized world that sometimes the figurative meanings are accepted at face-value as abstractions, rather than the grounded realities upon which they were built. Yes, a bond is kumbaya worthy, but its roots are in incarceration, imprisoning, captivity etc. Dr. Richard calls the bond we have as the body of Christ a chain-gang. Like George Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou? I would make an educated guess that our word seenodos or synod, as in the assembly of bishops that guide us and shepherd us, comes from this word.

4) I have met many an Irene in the Coptic or Alexandrian Rite. They have shared with me that their name means peace, and is found in their liturgical rubric. You can see here that eirene resides alongside a multitude of loan words from Greek to Coptic. Thank the Ptolemaic Dynasty, in so far as we can thank Alexander the Great, or our mysterious Lord who worked through them to make Greek a lingua franca of the world so that the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth could be more easily spread.

Please subscribe to and listen to the podcasts in The Ephesus School Network. You can find Tarazi Tuesdays, the Bible as Literature, Teach Me Thy Statutes, Ears to Hear, and Tewahido Bible Study. I hope you enjoy this charis(ma) (gift), and share these labors of love with your neighbors, strangers, and enemies.