Η εκκλησια — the true ‘United Nations’

Greek εκκλησια ekklisía, from εκκαλειν ekkaleín, to summon forth: εκ- ek-, out; + καλειν kalein, κλη- kli-, to call. Hence, the called out people.

Called out from what?
from where?
and why?

"…you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."
1 Peter 1:29 NIV

On what is called ‘the Sunday of Orthodoxy’—the first Sunday falling within the kairós of sarakostí, the forty days of the Great Fast before Pascha, the resurrection Sunday of the Lord, Jesus the Christ—the Orthodox Church commemorates its victory over heresy, culminating in the Seventh Ecumenical (Greek οικουμενη ikouméni, the inhabited world) Council, famous for the restoration of the ikons. Cut away every other facet of Orthodox Christianity, what's left is the veneration of ikons, known to no other church. ‘Ikons are just pictures,’ as I've heard said. ‘They don't replace, and aren't meant to replace, the Verbal Ikon, the Holy Bible.’ Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but this Word is worth a thousand pictures. Maybe that's why I sometimes don't carry a pictorial ikon during the procession around the outside of the temple. I carry my Bible. (I see some others doing the same.)

Back to the theme of this post, the called out people, the ekklisía, more properly the ekklisía tou Christoú, the called out of Christ.

One of the first things that converts were taught over twenty years ago when I rejoined the Orthodox Church was that Pentecost is a reversal of the Tower of Babel. What started happening in that upper room where the disciples along with the mother of Jesus were praying together on that fiftieth day, pentikostí, after Pesach, the Jewish Passover, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the speaking in various languages, was the beginning of a great reversal for mankind.

In our natural state, this is man:
“Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis 11:4 NIV

Because of the contamination of sin, God would not allow us to destroy ourselves, so He confounded us, that is, divided our languages from one into many. This was to be in effect until the kairós (appointed time) of His grace, when, freed from sin through the Blood of His Only Son, mankind could be entrusted with the Holy Spirit, through whom “we hear them [the apostles] preaching in our own language about the marvels of God.” Acts 2:11 JB

By accepting the Christ of God, Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit, who makes everyone speak the same language, in the spirit. This is how Pentecost is a reversal of Babel.

With that in mind, as I look around me from time to time during the liturgy, it all becomes quite clear in my mind's eye. I am granted a glimpse of this…

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
Revelation 7:9-10 NIV

Truly, gathered together is the whole ikouméni in the little space of Aghía Triás cathedral, my local church. People from all over, at least you could read their ancestry in the faces and forms. Eritreans from the Red Sea coastlands. Phoenicians from Lebanon. Arabs from Syria. Copts from Egypt. Greeks from Europe and Asia Minor. Blonde Slavs and Scandinavians from the east and north of Europe, Celts from the utter west of it. A Native American from Alaska. An Indian from the coast of Malabar. A Balinese woman, the first-fruits of her native island. And of course, Americans whose families are by now so well mixed of several nations amd races that we can now finally be called Americans.

Add to this picture the fact that I am not watching this on TV, am not a stranger to these people. I actually know many of them personally, I know their stories. Their stories in His story.

On every Lord's Day, the Church commemorates its victory over iconoclasm, and what gives meaning to it all is not knowing the history of churchly struggles, but experiencing the presence of the living ikons around me, praying and worshipping with me. I wish this could be carved in big letters on the bronze doors of the church…

“What you have come to is nothing known to the senses: not a blazing fire, or a gloom turning to total darkness, or a storm; or trumpeting thunder or the great voice speaking which made everyone who heard it beg that no more should be said to them… But what you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the whole Church in which everyone is a first-born son and a citizen of heaven. You have come to God Himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with the spirits of the saints who have been made perfect; and to Jesus, the Mediator who brings a new covenant and a Blood for purification which pleads more insistently than Abel's. Make sure that you never refuse to listen when He speaks.”
Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24 Jerusalem Bible