Galatians is finished. Ephesians begins today, and the change of temperature could hardly be greater: Galatians opened with I am astonished, and Ephesians opens with a benediction so long that it cannot be punctuated.
What happens
"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of Theos, to the holy ones who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus… Blessed be the Theos and Father of our master Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ… In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us… he has made known to us the mystery of his will… as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth."
What to notice
The first thing is a fact about the Greek that no translation preserves. Ephesians 1:3–14 is a single sentence — two hundred and two words without a full stop, the longest sentence in the New Testament. It has been compared to a snowball rolling downhill and to a fugue; whatever the figure, the point is that it will not break into propositions. Every English version chops it into five or six, and the chopping is a kindness that costs something. The opening play is on one root: eulogētos ho theos… ho eulogēsas hēmas en pasē eulogia, "blessed be the Theos… who has blessed us with every blessing" — behind it the Hebrew barukh, the opening of every Jewish benediction. Ephesians begins by saying a berakhah.En tois epouraniois, "in the heavenly places," is a phrase unique to this letter, where it occurs five times. Huiothesia, adoption, is a Roman legal term worth its context: an adopted son entered the family with full inheritance rights, took the father's name, and had his previous debts cancelled — and a natural son could in principle be disinherited, while an adopted son's status, once conferred, was extremely hard to undo.Eperisseusen is the verb for a river over its banks and for the twelve baskets left over after the feeding. And then the word the passage is built to reach: anakephalaiōsasthai ta panta en tō Christō, usually rendered "to sum up all things in Christ."Anakephalaioō comes from kephalaion, the total written at the head of a column of figures in ancient accounting; the same root gives kephalē, head.Both meanings are live, and the Greek does not choose. One textual note: the words en Ephesō, "in Ephesus," are missing from the oldest manuscripts — P46, and the original hands of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. The likeliest explanation is a circular letter with a blank left for the town's name, which is why it carries no personal greetings for a congregation Paul supposedly lived with for three years.
One of the enthronement psalms — a short, loud, public poem, here because it says in Hebrew what Ephesians says in Greek: the scope is everybody.
The selected verses
Psalm 98:1."Sing to Yahweh a new song, for he has done wondrous deeds; his right hand has won victory for him, his holy arm." Psalm 98:2–3ab."Yahweh has made his salvation known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice. He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of Israel." Psalm 98:3cd–4."All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation by our Theos. Sing joyfully to Yahweh, all you lands; break into song; sing praise."
What to notice
Shiru la-Yahweh shir chadash — "sing to Yahweh a new song." The phrase occurs six times in the Psalter and always after something has happened; a new song is a response to an event, not a preference for novelty.Psalm 98:2 is the verse the lectionary wants: l'einei ha-goyim gillah tzidqato, "in the eyes of the nations he has uncovered his righteousness."Galah is to strip, to uncover, to expose — the verb behind golah, exile, when a people is stripped from its land. What is uncovered is done where outsiders can see it, which is Ephesians 1:9's mystery made known in different vocabulary. And Psalm 98:3 puts the two halves together without any strain: he remembered his hesed and his faithfulness to the house of Israel — andall the ends of the earth have seen.The particular commitment and the universal audience are the same sentence. Ephesians will spend three chapters arguing for that.
The last of the woes, still at the Pharisee's table. It has stopped being a lunch some time ago, and Luke ends the scene by telling us what the guests did on the way out.
What happens
"Woe to you! You build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed. Consequently, you bear witness and give consent to the deeds of your ancestors, for they killed them and you do the building… in order that this generation might be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who died between the altar and the temple building… Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter." And then: "the scribes and Pharisees began to act with hostility toward him and to interrogate him about many things, for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say."
What to notice
The first woe is a piece of logic with a hook in it. Building a prophet's tomb looks like honouring him, and monumental tombs for the prophets were in fact being built in Jerusalem in this period. The argument is that it is a division of labour across generations: they killed them and you build.Syneudokeite, "you consent, you approve alongside," is a legal word for concurring in an act. You cannot venerate the dead prophet and be sure you would have listened to the living one, and a monument is a good way of not finding out. The span "from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah" is the most elegant thing in the passage and is invisible without the Hebrew canon in front of you. Abel is Genesis 4 — the first book.Zechariah son of Jehoiada, stoned in the temple court, is 2 Chronicles 24:20–22 — and in the Jewish ordering, Chronicles is the last book of the Bible. So the phrase is not the earliest to the latest murder chronologically; it is from the first page to the last page — the whole scroll, cover to cover. And the phrase attached to it is today's best coincidence: apo katabolēskosmou, "from the foundation of the world" — while Ephesians 1:4, read twenty minutes earlier, says pro katabolēs kosmou, "before the foundation of the world."Same phrase, one preposition apart. The last woe is the one Teresa's memorial reaches toward: ērate tēn kleida tēs gnōseōs, "you took away the key of knowledge" — airō being to lift and carry off. It was not lost or broken; it was removed by someone, and the charge has two halves: you yourselves did not go in, and you hindered those who were going in.The second is worse and is the one Luke puts last. Luke's closing sentence is unusually well observed: deinōs enechein, to press upon terribly, and apostomatizein, a rare word meaning to draw answers out of somebody's mouth — the term for a schoolmaster's oral examination — while enedreuontes, lying in ambush, tells us why.
All the blood shed since the foundation of the world — and the key taken away
Two totals are being drawn up this morning, and the lectionary has put them one preposition apart.
Ephesians is doing accountancy of a kind. The word the whole two-hundred-word sentence has been travelling toward is anakephalaiōsasthai — from kephalaion, the figure you write at the head of a column when you have added it up. The plan for the fullness of times is a summation: everything in heaven and everything on earth brought into one total, under one head. And the sentence cannot be broken into clauses because that is the point of it — chosen, destined, graced, redeemed, forgiven, lavished upon, informed of the mystery, all governed by a single main verb, so that no item can be lifted out and considered on its own.
And the temporal marker is pro katabolēskosmou — before the world was laid down. Whatever else is true of the reader, the decisive thing about them was settled before there was a world for it to be settled in.
Then Luke, who adds up a different column. Apo katabolēs kosmou — since the world was laid down — and what is being totalled is blood. From Abel to Zechariah is not a long list; it is the entire canon, first book to last, and the sum is charged to one generation. It is a terrible sentence and it is constructed with the same instrument as Ephesians 1:10: everything gathered, nothing left out, one head.
So the day sets two summations side by side and does not soften either. All things summed up in Christ; all the blood summed up against a generation. The same universe is being totalled twice.
What connects them is the middle reading, which is why it is not decorative. Psalm 98 says the righteousness was uncovered in the eyes of the nations — galah, stripped bare, made visible to people with no stake in it. Nothing here is transacted privately. Ephesians says the mystērion has been made known; Luke says the key of knowledge was carried off.Between those two sentences lies the whole question of what religious authority is for.
Because the last woe is not about ignorance. The lawyers had the key. They are not accused of failing to understand or of teaching error; they are accused of taking away the thing that opens the door, and then of a second act that Luke puts in the emphatic position: you hindered those who were entering.Not those who might have entered — those who were on their way in.
And that is where the memorial belongs, more exactly than most. Teresa of Ávila spent her life on the question of how a person gets in. Her great book describes the soul as a castle of successive rooms and is mostly concerned with what keeps people standing in the courtyard; she wrote it under obedience, for her sisters, having been told by her confessors more than once that her experiences were probably diabolical. Her papers were denounced to the Inquisition. The nuncio called her a restless, gadabout woman. She reformed the Carmelites anyway, founded seventeen houses in twenty years while chronically ill and travelling by mule, and was made a Doctor of the Church in 1970 — the first woman ever given the title.
A woman who was hindered on the way in, and who spent her life handing out the key.
A Question to Sit With
They built the monuments, and the argument is that the monument is how you avoid the question — you cannot honour a dead prophet and also find out whether you would have listened to a living one. I have a great deal of respect for people who said hard things in the past, and it costs me nothing. If somebody were saying the equivalent to me this week, in a voice I found irritating and without any of the authority that time confers, what are the odds I would hear it — and what am I building instead?