ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

TRINITY 2, 2006 Evensong & Benediction

Fr Alan Moses

“The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”.
Romans 11.29

On his recent visit to Poland, Pope Benedict visited Auschwitz. He declared that the events which had made that place infamous reduced him to silence. There was of course a particular sensitivity about the visit of a Pope, head of a church which is widely considered to have remained silent when it ought not have done, and who is also German.

This is not just a matter of history. At the same time, Vatican officials have been trying to silence the clergy who run Radio Maria, a Polish station which broadcasts a steady stream of poisonous anti-Semitism, as if Auschwitz had never happened. And this in spite of the consistent witness of the late Pope John Paul II against this dark side of his church’s and his nation’s past.

Chapters 9-11 of the Letter to the Romans, of which tonight’s passage is the conclusion, have received nothing like the attention given to the first 8 - particularly since the Reformation. Its descendents, in making common cause with Paul, have tended to project on to him their own struggles with uneasy conscience and disapproving Catholicism. So Romans came to be viewed as a kind of personal salvation manual, a road map for guilty lost souls in search of a gracious and forgiving God.

So the remainder of the epistle, especially chapters 9-11, whose concern is the fate of Israel was left orphaned.

The tragic fate of European Jewry and the recognition that the Christian churches had contributed to the poisonous climate which had produced such horror, and had been singularly ill-equipped to oppose it, has placed this passage back at the centre and climax of Paul’s argument. There has also been a re-evaluation of those passages in scripture which have been understood in an anti-Semitic way.

That Jesus himself and all his disciples were Jews, and that the message of his kingdom was initially preached to his own people, are facts that were soon eclipsed by history, as the mission of Paul and his companions to the other peoples of the Roman empire quickly took precedence. Paul’s relation to his own people was one of agonised involvement.

Tension emerged from the beginning:

First, between those Jews who recognised Jesus as the “one who was to come” and “of whom Moses spoke” - as John’s Gospel said, referring to Deuteronomy 18.18, and those who did not. This conflict is reflected in the gospels themselves with their polemical stance against the Pharisees and the Sabbath.

Second, between Jewish Christians and pagan converts. The decision not to demand circumcision of the latter had the effect of detaching Paul’s mission from Israel, the original people of God. So began a process whereby that people came to be seen as those who had been given a divine promise, designed to prepare for the good news to be effected in Jesus for the salvation of the entire world: “not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (John 11.52)

Similar sentiments are forthrightly expressed in the Letter to the Hebrews , long thought to have been written by Paul. The letter says that “in speaking of a new covenant he treats the first as obsolete.(8.13). Then, placing the words of the Psalmist in the mouth of Jesus, “Lo, I have come to do your will”, clearly asserts that “he abolishes the first in order to establish the second.” (10.9).

So the dominant outlook that came to characterise Christian thought on Israel was supersession.

It is important to remember that the polemic against the Pharisees and the Sabbath which we find in parts of the New Testament, was part of a dispute between Jews. Other Jewish sectarian literature of the time makes what we find in the New Testament seem quite mild.

A different reading of the situation can be found in Paul’s agonised reflections on his own people in Romans 9-11, culminating in his insistence that the gifts and call of God are irrevocable, but the bulk of Christian-Jewish history to date had to relapse before that perspective had even a chance to prevail.

The concern of Paul in Romans is not so much to explain justification by faith in Christ as to explain how such an understanding of salvation upholds God’s righteousness, especially towards non-Christian Israel. Without the surprising conclusion in tonight’s passage (11.25-36), we might wonder if unbelieving Israel’s present status does not expose “unrighteousness on God’s part.”



Paul begins chapter 9 by saying “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart”. Why sorrow if nothing is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord?” 8.39. Because it appears that Israel is not among the “us”, that Israel is alienated from God’s love.

Paul mobilises two arguments against this, to him, intolerable conclusion.

First, he contends that now as in the past, only a portion of Israel has been faithful; so the present situation is not exceptional either from the side of Israel or that of God. This argument does not entirely persuade even Paul.

Paul’s second answer locates the solution outside present history - and therefore beyond the thwarted means of the church’s Jewish mission; at the return of Christ, “all Israel”, even “disobedient Israel”, will be saved. In this belief Paul, finds a solution to the problem of God’s apparent unrighteousness: God, being God, must save Israel.

The period of Gentile evangelization is not for ever: “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in”. After the mission to the Gentiles is complete, God will act to bring faith to Israel and to complete the drama of salvation: “So all Israel will be saved; as it is written, ‘the deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.’”; “’and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins’”



So, when all is said and done, God’s election of “all Israel” stands. No details of the make up of Israel are given but it is clear that, at the very least, this group includes many if not all who are from Paul’s perspective ‘disobedient’ , ‘ungodly’, or even ‘enemies of God.’
The “mystery” revealed in this last part of Paul’s treatment of the problem does not follow on logically from the rest of the epistle. He could have stopped at 11.10: “let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and keep their backs for ever bent.” and concluded that only a small remnant of Israel is or ever will be saved. The Church’s mission to the Jews had failed, and that is that.

But present appearances belie ultimate realities. The resolution to Paul’s sorrow and unceasing anguish is found at length in his trust in the ultimate triumph of God’s righteousness. The issue is decided in the end not by reason but by faith.

So Paul’s disclosure of the divine plan leads him to doxology, an expression of awe at the greatness of the God who uses even disobedience to produce mercy. It is not God’s inscrutability or power alone that compels Paul’s adoration; above all it is God’s righteousness that is proved in God’s ‘ways’ and ‘judgement’.
In coming to understand God’s mysterious plan for Israel, Paul has looked beyond the veil and glimpsed ‘riches’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘knowledge’ beyond human calculation. Paul’s hymn of adoration crowns his argument, affirming with rhetorical beauty and force the apostle’s trust in God’s trustworthiness. Disputation at an end, Paul points to God’s future, believes in God’s triumph, and worships.

Is this just about the way we Christians must think about our Jewish brothers and sisters, or does it have something to say to us about the way we treat our co-religionists with whom we disagree?

That “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable”, is something that Christians need to remember in our internal disputes when we are tempted to regard those with whom we disagree as “disobedient” or even as “enemies of God”. If God could use the Jews for our benefit, is it not just as possible that he can use liberals or traditionalists whom we might be tempted to write out of the script, for our salvation?

This is no easy prescription and it is one which it is tempting to abandon because it is not clear cut. Giles Fraser, the Vicar of Putney recently wrote in frustration about Archbishop Rowan’s agonised pursuit of dialogue between people whose views seem incompatible. We might read tonight’s passage as the theological underpinning of such a course. We cannot see how things will come together but we must have faith that they will.

There is a good Anglican precedent for this which is something more than ecclesiastical fudge. In the 16th Century when Richard Hooker was battling to establish an Anglican theology over against the Puritans, one of their complaints against him was that he said that Roman Catholics, whatever the errors of their Church, were still Christians. They could still be saved because salvation depends on the righteousness of God. The Puritans could not accept this and their latter day descendents still cannot of any group they find beyond the pale. They read Romans 1-8 a lot. Perhaps they should spend more time on chapters 9-11.