Am I right in assuming that most people will have seen “Ben Hur” at some time or other? There is, of course ,underlying that story, the belief that human life is played out against a background of cosmic significance in which humans are following a destiny of which we may be but dimly aware and which the Rector described in the first sermon of this series . This would be familiar idea to those Gentiles who saw Greek plays in the theatre at Ephesus or any of the other Graeco -Roman cities of the time. However, I am leaving the grand scheme of both Ephesians and Ben Hur for the moment for a particular event. You may recall ( and for the sake of those who may not have seen it) that Ben Hur is condemned to serve as a galley slave in a Roman ship, that in a shipwreck he saves the life of the commander of the galley after which he is adopted, as an ADULT, by the same commander, Quintus Arius.
There was nothing unusual in adult adoption. Wealthy families without natural heirs adopted sons to inherit the family fortunes and perhaps, even more importantly, to carry on the family name. Sometimes it was a relative who was adopted, Julius Caesar adopted his great nephew but it did not have to be so. Nor was it always a patrician family who did the adopting; there were cases of sons of noble patrician houses seeking to be adopted into plebeian families in order to be eligible for the powerful office of tribune. You could not be a tribune of the people if you were not one of the people. So when Paul writes of the Gentiles becoming members of the family or household of God, as he does in our reading this evening, and elsewhere he writes of the Gentiles becoming the children of God by “adoption and grace”, he is not talking what may be described as sublime mysticism: he is making a comparison to a situation with which his readers would have been familiar.
When you were adopted two things were required of you; you changed your name and so Judah Ben Hur became Quintus Arius and you acquired a new identity ..... you became a new person. The new Quintus Arius found the first of these conditions easier than the second because he went back to Palestine, did he not, to find out what had happened to his birth family and sought revenge on the officer who had harmed them. Theoretically, he should not have done so..... but I am concerned here with the theory of adoption in Roman times. Paul is using it to assure the Gentiles that they were members of God’s family as much as the Jews and, symbolically, a part of the temple . Remember, to the peoples of the ancient world , a temple above all was the dwelling place of their god when he or she visited earth; it was a sign of his or her presence among them. The temple of Artemis in Ephesus was one of the wonders of the ancient world.
The Temple in Jerusalem had the same significance of the presence of God in their midst for the Jews .It worked on a concentric plan, Gentiles could not advance past the outer court then Jews, then only priests and, at the centre, the Holy of Holies which only the high priest could enter after suitable sacrifice on the day of Atonement. Paul, at the end of this evening’s reading is telling his readers that THEY may become part of the Temple because the spirit of God can dwell with them. This should be true for us too, that our bodies, yours and mine should be temples of the Holy Spirit in the world today. It was not only the Jews who thought they were a superior people; the Greeks too could be arrogant. The word “barbarian” meant someone who did not speak Greek and seemed to be saying “bar bar bar ; they applied it to the Persians who were, certainly in material things more advanced than they and very highly cultivated. Later the Romans used the term to describe those who could speak neither Greek nor Latin but the Romans had a more open door policy and were prepared to grant Roman citizenship to people of other races one of whom of course, was Paul himself and he uses this metaphor along with that of the family to help the Gentiles understand their belonging. To this new community ........ and to the feast of all nations which Isaiah describes and to which all are called.
When Paul spoke of the children of God and citizens, doubtless he referred to the Christian community in Ephesus, or Corinth, Philippi or wherever; in the Middle Ages it was probably interpreted as the community of all baptised Christians. How does this apply to us today ? “Am I not a man and a brother ?” was the question put into the mouth of a slave by those campaigning for the abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade who were the subject of our Lenten groups two years ago . They did not trouble to ask if he were a Christian or not and this was part of that movement we call the Enlightenment of which we are all the heirs which saw a wider family. Other campaigns have followed have they not? I think for example of the Red Cross founded to help all wounded in battle regardless of on which side they had fought. Attitudes to Prisoners of War and the Geneva Convention are all movements reflecting a common humanity in spite of race, colour or creed. The UNO Declaration of Human Rights came in 1948, some think it was a long time coming but then we do not know God’s timetable. Nor do we know this with regard to the Church; we may be suffering from teething problems, a mid life crisis ...or old age.
But to return to the earlier metaphor of adoption.... one of the things that happened when you were adopted was that your adoptive father had to PAY YOUR DEBTS. He redeemed you in the most obvious way. You were chosen, adopted and redeemed as the Rector said in the first sermon. This also alludes to what Mark was talking about last week does it not? We all have debts to be paid, we all fall short of the mark. However, good we try to be there is always the need for forgiveness and grace.
But I want to end by telling you about a young lady in my last parish which was “Christ the Redeemer”. Her name was Kirsty, she was in a confirmation class I was taking and she knew all about redemption because she was the eldest of a large, but not very prosperous, family and it was frequently her lot to go to the pawnbrokers with the ticket and redeem whatever the family had had to pawn. I gather that father’s van and tools were sacrosanct but that anything else might be pawned from time to time. She was about 13, a little older than the others in the class, was completely unabashed about her visits to the pawnbroker, explained what she had to do, they listened transfixed and understood something of redemption. It was in reply to a question from one of them she said, “Well it’s yours and you want it back”. Could it be better put? We are all God’s children; somehow we have strayed and God wants us ALL back.
Amen.