FINDING "FAMILY"
Peter was writing to the church on the brink of persecution, when being known as a Christian could be costly or even fatal. Christians nevertheless learned how to find one another. One thing making it difficult must have been the fact that with believers coming from every stratum of society, the only thing they held in common was their faith.
One method of identifying one another was through symbols that only Christians identified. One example is the Cirencester Word Square.
“One of the earliest textual evidences for the presence of Christianity in Britain is a graffito found scratched into the wall-painting of a Roman house uncovered at Cirencester in 1818. The inscription is a word square in Latin consisting of the words ROTAS, OPERA, TENET, AREPO, SATOR, arranged as depicted below, and usually translated as:
"Arepo the sower, holds the wheels with care."
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“At first glance, this phrase is seemingly meaningless. However, scholars soon realised that the letters could be rearranged into a cruciform pattern formed from the words PATER NOSTER or ‘our father’, with two each of the letters A and O left over, which in Greek are alpha and omega. These are both undoubtedly of powerful Christian symbolism, proving that the Cirencester word-square is an early Christian cryptogram, whose secret meaning was known only amongst those professing the Christian faith. The same word square has been found twice at Dura Europos on the River Euphrates in Mesopotamia where it has been dated to the year AD256, also twice at Pompeii in Campania which must have existed prior to the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. The Cirencester word square cannot be dated with great certainty, but estimates range from the early-second century to the late-third, making it one of the earliest evidences of Christian worship in Britain.”[1]
In this season leading up to Pentecost, we reflect on the love that comes to us from the Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament, and how this love is reflected to one another. Even if we have nothing else in common – language, color, education, wealth, nationality, culture – we have a common faith in Jesus our Savior.