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Letters Nineteenth Sunday
in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
August 9, 2002Paul has completed two major sections of the exposition of his teaching that he is offering to the Romans. He has explained how everyone is in need of salvation (1.6-3.20). He has given an overview of the nature of the salvation that God offers us and of some of the consequences of that salvation (3.21-5.21). Now he begins a new section, chapters nine through eleven. This part of Romans is concerned with the place of the Jews in God’s plan of salvation.
Most Christians of Paul’s time would have been aware that, although Jesus lived and died in the context of Judaism and that, although much of His teaching is based on Jewish scripture and Jewish religious categories, yet most of the members of the Church were not Jews but Gentiles. This situation raised a whole swarm of questions. If both Jews and Gentiles needed salvation, as Paul has demonstrated in the first part of his letter, why did the Jews seem to reject it? If the law and the prophets pointed toward Jesus, why did Gentiles seem to recognize this more than the Jews? Did God change His mind about His plans for the Jews? If God changed His mind about the Jews and their salvation, couldn’t God also change His mind about us Gentiles? These are all questions that Paul will deal with in the next three chapters.
Our reading for this Sunday is a kind of prologue or overture to the long disquisition to follow. It is worth noting that there is no lead-in to the new section, no connection with what has gone before in Paul’s letter. He starts off cold, without any preparation for this new theme, as if it would be obvious to his readers that the question of the Jews should come next.
With great earnestness he attests to his affection for his people and to his sorrow at their present posture. With fervent rhetorical exaggeration he says that he would even be willing to give up salvation for himself if that would be of any benefit to his "kin according to the flesh."
Next he lists seven privileges and prerogatives that give the Israelites their importance and that are the source of Paul’s continuing love for them. They are God’s adopted children, chosen as God’s son at the time of the exodus. They have been touched by the glory of God dwelling in His temple in their midst. They have been involved in God’s covenants with Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David. They have had the benefit of God’s gift of the law to them and have participated in the worship God directed them to offer. God made irrevocable promises to His people through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David. God gave them giants of faithfulness, the patriarchs, as their ancestors. Finally, from among them, came the humanity of the Messiah. God’s anointed one is their kinsman. For all this, let glory be given to God! (Because the early Greek manuscripts were without punctuation, it is not clear whether the end of verse five means, "... comes the Messiah, who is God over all, blest forever," or "... comes the Messiah. God who is over all [be] blest forever.")
After this elaborate opening, Paul will go on in chapters nine and ten to explain that not all those are true Israelites (i.e., pleasing to God) who happen to be physically descended from Abraham. Consequently, not all qualify for God’s blessings. Moreover, many Israelites mistakenly looked on God’s gift of righteousness as a reward for their scrupulous observance of the law, and so disqualified themselves from salvation by faith.
What do these abstruse theological inquiries have to do with us? For one thing, they remind us that, although we may speculate about the general outlines of God’s providence, we have to be very cautious about speaking of the "rejection" of salvation on the part of any individual or group. Salvation in Christ is offered to every human being of every race and nation. God wants all of us to share the holiness of Christ and God doesn’t play favorites. Salvation involves the mysteries of individual human freedom and nobody but God can sort out degrees of responsibility and blame for any apparent "rejection" of salvation.
The same thing does not apply in the other direction. We cannot determine why some people do not have faith, but we can say why some do. If people have faith and so share in God’s gift of justification, it is not because their own personally acquired virtue, but because of what God has done for them.
This passage and the reflections that follow it in chapters nine and ten of Romans teach us that we have to be very respectful about our attitudes toward God’s initiatives and the way they are addressed to other people and to ourselves. God’s gifts and their intent are far beyond our capacities of comprehension and interpretation. We are not able to understand everything that God does or everything that God intends. We can try to understand, of course, as part of an effort to appreciate God’s goodness in our individual regard. But final truths and final explanations belong to God alone.
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Conversation Questions.
To what extent have I ever tried to gain salvation by my own good works?
How do the gifts and privileges granted to the Israelites contribute to my salvation?
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