Word to the Wise
Friday, October 30, 2009 - Friday in the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
[Romans 9:1-5 and Luke 14:1-6]For I wish that I myself were accursed and cult off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. They are children of Israel; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; their the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.
It is easy for us in our time and cultural circumstances, influenced as we are by Greco-Roman ways of thinking and pragmatic/utilitarian values, to create an image of Jesus Christ as really someone like ourselves. St. Paul reminds us today that Jesus was a First Century A.D. Palestinian Jew. As such he would have been part of all that St. Paul lists as the spiritual and cultural heritage of the Judaism of his times, as well as physical ancestry. For instance, the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that Jesus was descended from the tribe of Judah (and not from Levi, as hereditary temple priesthood required at one time), just as Paul was himself descended from the tribe of Benjamin! The fact that Jesus was historically a Jewish man living in the Roman-occupied Palestine of his times has tremendous theological consequences. It is the key element in interpreting his teaching in the New Testament, overlaid by concerns that arose after he had died and risen. Those consequences appear in St. Paul's words above because he is lamenting the overall failure of the Christian mission in preaching to the Jews and he is concerned for their spiritual future. He ultimately concludes that God has a different plan for them because God's promises are irrevocable. In realizing that Jesus' roots were solidly in Judaism, we must also realize that our own roots are to be found there as well, even if they later included other cultural and philosophical ways of interpreting God's revelation in Jesus. (E.g. - the use of Greek philosophy) Any form of anti-semitism is therefore sacriligious because it attacks the very foundation of Jesus' own person as a Jew!!! Jesus died to save all people, no matter what their cultural and religious understanding may have been or is now, but we cannot ignore his own religious and cultural background if we wish to truly understand his mission and meaning for us today. AMEN
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