Daily Manna · Day 103 · April 13
No Longer Strangers
“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;”
Around AD 60, in the province of Asia, a mixed congregation is meeting: some of them Jews who grew up in the synagogue, most of them Gentiles who did not, and until recently the second group had no standing at all in the covenants the first group had been raised on.
Picture it as a room. On one side, people who can name their grandparents' place in the story. On the other, people who converted out of the temple of Artemis eighteen months ago and are still learning who Moses was. Paul is writing to a room like that, and he is trying to say something that will hold both halves without patronising either.
What he says is legal rather than warm. Ye are no more strangers and foreigners. Both words are technical. Xenoi are aliens with no rights; paroikoi are resident foreigners, permitted to live in a city and pay for the privilege, never enfranchised. Against those he sets two better words: fellowcitizens, full standing, and of the household of God, which is nearer still, because a household includes people who could never buy citizenship. And then he keeps building for three more verses: a foundation, a corner stone, a building fitly framed together, growing into a temple. The Gentiles who used to stand outside a stone barrier are now described as part of the structure.
Six verses earlier he named the price of it: by the blood of Christ. It was not granted because they finally fitted in. Which is why it is steady. A belonging you did not earn cannot be revoked on a day you underperform.
Somebody stood at the edge of the room the last time your congregation gathered. Learn their name this week and sit next to them. You know exactly how the edge feels, and you now have the standing to bring somebody in from it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 103 is Moses Does the Arithmetic (Numbers 11:23).