The Union of our Spirits: Ekklesia as Epiclesis

One might imagine that the very first words of the Orthodox Liturgy consisted of a blessing pronounced by the priest saying, “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!”  It is not so.  The very first words of the Liturgy consist not of a blessing by the priest but of an observation by the deacon.  He turns to the priest and says, “It is time for the Lord to act!” Then follows a brief dialogue between priest and deacon which ends with the deacon exiting the altar to stand before the Royal Doors to invite the priest to offer the loud initial blessing.  It is only after this that the priest intones “Blessed is the Kingdom”.  Most of the people are not aware of this bit in the service books, either because their congregation does not include a deacon or because the exchange between priest and deacon is conducted in low voices.

What does the diaconal observation mean?  It is a citation of Psalm 119:126 where it refers to the Lord acting to smite the wicked because they have broken His Law.  Here is refers to something different entirely.

The roots of all this are found in the Lord’s promise in Matthew 18:20. There the Lord promised that “where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst”.  That is, the Lord promised that whenever His disciples would gather and assemble as a group of His disciples He would manifest His presence among them, even if the group were no more than two or three.  The term for a “gathering” or an “assembly” in Greek is ekklesia, usually translated as “church”.  As the use of the term in Acts 19:41 shows, the gathering doesn’t need to be held for religious purposes.  Any deliberate gathering or assembly of people for any pre-determined purpose is an ekklesia. 

In the New Testament, the term therefore almost always refers to the gathering of the baptized disciples of Jesus on a Sunday for Eucharistic worship.  “The Church” is therefore not primarily an institution or an organization (much less a clergy) but a gathering of Christ’s disciples.  A “gathering” is what happens after people gather; an “assembly” is what happens after people assemble.  It is at this gathering/ assembly of disciples that the Lord fulfils His promise to manifest His presence and be in their midst. 

That is why sacraments “work”.  Sacraments such as baptism and the Eucharist and ordination are not magical rites that work like so many Hogwart’s spells because the magic words are pronounced.  They are what the Lord does when He is present in the midst of His people. 

Thus, for example, baptism regenerates the faithful catechumenal candidate because the Lord is present in the midst of the gathering and He bestows the new birth upon the candidate when he or she is baptized.  It is the priest’s hand which dunks the catechumen and the priest’s tongue which says the words but it is Christ, invisibly present, who does the work of regenerating, forgiving, and bestowing sonship.  That is what the West meant by saying that sacraments work ex opere operato.  Christ is the true celebrant; the priest is simply His vessel and instrument. 

So, what about the deacon’s first words to the priest?  Why does he say that?  The deacon is the liturgical liaison between the nave and the altar, between the assembled faithful and the clergy.  That is why he moves so much between the altar and the nave.  He intones his litanies from the nave (i.e. in the midst of the people) offering their concerns to God as subjects for intercession but he also assists the priest in the altar.  Part of his liturgical task was seeing what was going on and ordering people about.  That is why he says things like “pray to the Lord, you catechumens” (i.e. come forward) and “depart catechumens” (in the days when the Church wanted the catechumens to leave halfway through the Liturgy) and “in the fear of God, draw near” (i.e. come up to receive the Eucharist) and “let us depart in peace” (i.e. everybody go home).  He was a bit like a traffic cop keeping order in the assembly.

His opening exchange with the priest is part of this.  As the liaison between the priest and the laity he observed that all the laity had assembled.  Everyone was in their place waiting for the Liturgy to begin.  (This presupposed the ancient practice when everyone indeed came to Liturgy on time and did not straggle in midway through the antiphons or after the Gospel.)  It was because all had assembled that it was time for the Lord to act. 

That is, the Lord had promised to act by manifesting His presence whenever His disciples assembled (Matthew 18:20) and the deacon was reporting to the priest that because everyone had assembled, the Lord was indeed about to act.  The deacon was not saying to the priest, “It’s now ten o’clock so we should start the Liturgy”.  Some might indeed get this impression when the words “it is time for the Lord to act” are mistranslated “it is time to begin the service to the Lord”.  The issue is not the clock on the wall but the bodies in the nave.  Regardless of what a clock might say, the disciples have gathered and the Lord is therefore fulfilling His promise.

This is also what Paul Stookey (a part of the famous 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary) meant when he wrote The Wedding Song and recorded it on his first solo album in 1971.  The first words of that beautiful song are as follows:

He is now to be among you at the calling of your heart.
Rest assured this troubadour is acting on His part.
The union of your spirits here has caused Him to remain
for whenever two or more of you are gathered in His name, there is love, there is love.

         Note: what causes the Lord to be among us and remain among us is the calling of our hearts, the union of our spirits—in other words, our gathering together as one in His name every Sunday.  The Lord’s sacramental presence among us at Liturgy is a gift, a charisma, the gracious fulfillment of His promise to manifest Himself when His disciples gather together.  It was this presence that lay behind the Pauline image of the gathering/ ekklesia as “the body of Christ”: just as someone is present through their body and works in the world through their body, so Christ is present and powerful in the world through His gathered disciples. 

Obviously, Christ is also everywhere present and fills all things and rules the world from His heavenly throne at the Father’s right hand, but He is savingly present to heal and transform us through His ekklesia.  The Sunday morning union of our spirits, our fulfilled intentions to meet together, is the cause of this manifested presence.  One might therefore say that the ekklesia is itself an epiclesis, our gathering together is by its very nature an invocation of the Spirit, the divine presence of Christ in our midst.

What is the practical significance of all this?  Two things, one of them obvious and the other less so.

First, the obvious bit:  Christians should be on time for Liturgy and not be late.  If one were invited to a meeting with King Charles one would not show up late.  How much more when we are invited into the presence of the King of kings?  Excusing lateness by saying that “the Liturgy is eternal and ongoing” will not do.  It is true that worship is eternal and ongoing, but it is also true that the deacon is instructed by our tradition to look around the nave, see the assembled people, and report “it is time for the Lord to act”.  The Greek word rendered “time” is kairos, not chronos.   Chronos is what you measure on watches and calendars; kairos means the moment of decision and opportunity.  It means that the Lord has decided that He will now appear in our midst.  Devotion to Him requires that we be there when He does.

Secondly, this all means that we attend Liturgy to experience the divine presence of Christ.  We do not primarily come to listen to the choir or kiss icons or hear Bible lessons or learn from the homily, though of course we do all those things.  But those things are means to an end, not ends in themselves.  The end, the goal, the purpose for our assembling is to encounter Christ in our midst, to receive Him into our hearts and bodies through partaking of the Eucharist and to experience the ongoing healing and transformation that is our Christian journey. 

St. Clement of Rome wrote to the erring Corinthians in about 95 A.D. reminding them of their former happy condition when “an abundant outpouring was upon you all”. It is for that outpouring, that divine presence, promised by Christ and fulfilled every Sunday morning, that we gather together.  We leave our homes and assemble together with our beloved fellow Christians as an ekklesia every Sunday.  The assembly is how we call on His name from our hearts and ask for His presence among us.  His presence is our salvation and our joy.  Could there be anything more wonderful than that in all the whole wide world?