Lectionary Commentaries for July 31, 2011
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew and Mark both record that Jesus once fed 5000 (men, not counting women and children) and later fed another 4000 or so people.

The repetition of these feeding stories serves a narrative function (especially in Mark) that highlights the disciples’ lack of comprehension. That is, when we come to the second situation where a crowd needs bread, we who are reading the story know that Jesus can feed them, but the disciples apparently do not.

The narrative effect, then, is that the reader has the opportunity to demonstrate a better understanding of Jesus than the disciples. As we follow the lectionary readings, however, we will never have a chance to experience that second feeding, so we need to treat this one in Matthew as an isolated incident.

We are, therefore, more in the position of Luke and John who only record a single feeding. In John, all of chapter 6 is a long discourse on the feeding that keeps pushing the possibilities inherent to it until we ultimately hear Jesus say, “I am the bread of life,” and that people are to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Reading John 6 draws attention to some aspects that surprisingly are not in Matthew. In John, after the people are fed, they proclaim him to be “the prophet who is to come into the world” and intend “by force to make him king.” (John 6:14f.)

Jesus withdraws, but they come after him again the next day because, Jesus observes, they really just want more bread. Compare this to the end of Matthew’s account. All eat their fill, the abundant leftovers are gathered, the number of people is given and… nothing. If this were a typical miracle story, we would expect some kind of response from the people, but it’s almost as if nobody has noticed what has happened.

So what is going on here? It is an impressive miracle, but Matthew seems to be highlighting other aspects than simply the miraculous.

1) Jesus’ “compassion” provides the context for the event.
2) Jesus indicates that the disciples should give them something to eat, and they are in fact the ones who actually distribute the food to the crowds.
3) In the sequence of Jesus taking, blessing, and breaking the bread, there is a clear connection made with the last supper account in Matthew 26:26ff, but there, Jesus goes on to say, “This is my body… This is my blood…” (Matthew is not so far removed from John 6 as we perhaps first thought!)

A preacher should be able to work with those themes to proclaim God’s compassion, our participation in God’s work by helping to feed the world, and ultimately celebrate the real life-giving bread we experience in the Lord’s Supper. That’s all well and good, but…

I suspect most of you will be preaching to fairly well-fed congregations. Rejoice! God is good! But look at the statistics on hunger, globally and nationally. If Jesus can so easily feed the multitudes, why is there so much hunger in the world today? The quick answer is to point to #2 above and say it’s our problem, not God’s. However, the disciples’ inability didn’t stop Jesus then, so why should our inability or even delinquency stop God now? When we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us today our daily bread,” are we not expressing what God is indeed willing for us? So again, why is there so much hunger in the world? So much suffering? So little of daily bread?

Dostoevsky, in the magnificent “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter of The Brothers Karamazov, ties the matter of bread and hunger to the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4:1-11. You would do well to read the story,
but the point of the devil’s challenge to Jesus regarding the stones is explained: “Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient, though for ever trembling, lest Thou withdraw Thy hand and deny them Thy bread.” It is the Inquisitor’s contention that people will not think about virtue unless they are fed, and that for the sake of bread, people are willing to become slaves. (Remember Israel in the wilderness: Exodus 16:3.) So is bread the end all? The Inquisitor continues, “In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread, and man will worship thee, for nothing is more certain than bread. But if someone else gains possession of his conscience — Oh! then he will cast away Thy bread and follow after him who has ensnared his conscience.”

History repeatedly bears this out. People will riot when they can’t get enough daily bread to live. Yet history has also shown that those same people are willing to die to fight the perceived injustice. Jesus was right, therefore, in John 6 to fear that they just wanted to turn him into a bread king, and he was also right to move the discussion so that it became a matter of the “food that endures for eternal life.” (John 6:27)

Returning to the Matthew text at hand, it is now clearer why this isn’t a typical miracle story. It’s really not about the earthly bread and how many people were fed. That isn’t the Gospel anyway. We still want to highlight the compassion of Jesus. We still want to insist that as Jesus’ disciples we be faithful in seeking to provide daily bread to all in need. Most importantly, we want to make them hungry for something more. Ultimately, give them what they really need to live and for which they will also be willing to die. Preacher feed the people! Give them Jesus, the Bread of Life!

Like many other selections from the lectionary, Isaiah 55:1-5 is a small unit that, while relatively self-contained, has connections both to what precedes and what follows (preachers beware!).

Chapter 55 as a whole is the last chapter in a larger collection (chapters 40-55), typically called Second Isaiah and attributed to an anonymous prophet active during the Babylonian exile. Many see chapter 54 of Second Isaiah as the theological climax of Second Isaiah,¹ but chapter 55 is the final chapter that is typically included in the unit. 

Even if it is not the climax, it is at the least the “epilogue” that corresponds to the “prologue” of chapter 40.² As for the relationship of our specific unit to what immediately precedes it, some scholars are of the opinion that Isaiah 55:1-5 is connected to and concludes the sentiments of chapter 54, while others mark these verses off from chapter 54 (note the change in address), and relate them instead to what follows in chapter 55. Whatever decision is made, the unit remains a discrete section and therefore capable (and worthy!) of being preached.

Verse 1 begins with an attention getting device: Hebrew hôy, which is often translated “Ho” (NRSV, NJPSV/Tanakh). This translation is now archaic and if it draws attention to itself, it is probably mostly because it sounds old if not altogether off-putting. NIV chooses not to represent hôy at all. A better contemporary idiom would probably be “Hey!” or “Listen up!” especially because what follows is a call to come and buy food to eat and wine and milk to drink, even if one lacks money. 

The first part of that call–to buy food and drink when one is hungry–makes good sense and may well be related to the actual practices of food and water-sellers in the markets of ancient Israel, hawking their wares with “Hey!” “Ho!” and “Hôy!”³ The second part of the call is odd, though: how does one buy without purchasing power (money)? And what seller would call for someone to (par)take of their goods without spending any money? And who is this seller anyway?

While the language of verse 1 may derive from the marketplace, it is also found on the lips of personified Woman Wisdom (e.g., Proverbs 9:1, 3-6; Sirach 24:19-22). But these two options are ultimately complementary: Woman Wisdom “is often described in the Old Testament in the idiom of an aggressive hawker.”⁴ Connections between Isaiah 55:1 and Woman Wisdom make the summons not just compelling (a la a pushy salesperson) but reasonable, shrewd, and wise. In Proverbs, after all, Wisdom sounds an awful lot like God (see Proverbs 1:20-33) and is said to be God’s right-hand woman as it were (Proverbs 8:22-36). It sounds like a good idea, then, on many levels to drink when thirsty and eat when hungry and to buy it up, especially when money is no object (required)!

Regardless of the traditions that lie behind or influence verse 1, the specific (and odd) content of the verse is crucial. The unspecified addressees (plural in Hebrew) are thirsty, evidently hungry too. They are summoned to the waters, commanded (the verbs here are imperatives) to buy and eat (presumably bread/grain, as connoted by the verb used for “buy”) and to drink wine and milk–a combination of the essential (water, bread/grain) with the “superfluous” (wine and milk).⁵–again, all without money and without price. Not only is that not a bad deal, it is also a signal that what we have in this unit is nothing less than a proclamation of salvation and good news.⁶

This good news is signaled, in turn, by the fact that things shift in verse 2. Suddenly we learn that those addressed have means after all (“your money” and “your labor”); they’ve just been spending it on the wrong things: things that aren’t bread and that cannot satisfy.  It’s high time that changed. If only the audience will “listen carefully” (an emphatic construction in Hebrew) to “me” they will “eat what is good, and delight…in rich food.” 

In light of what is said in this verse and the verses to follow, the “me” here is probably God.⁷ God’s speech (assuming this referent is correct), continues the food imagery, but the register shifts yet again. Eating what is good and delighting in rich food is conjoined with careful listening in verse 2; and in verse 3a we hear again of coming, but not of coming to the waters or of coming to purchase, but of coming to God (“me” again). Such coming depends on listening and such listening produces life (verse 3ab).⁸

In the middle of verse 3 things shift once more. The satisfaction of food gave way to listening to the divine voice, which led to life, which is now defined (at least by means of poetic juxtaposition) as the making of “an everlasting covenant” (bĕrît ʿōlām). That term occurs a number of times in the Old Testament (e.g., Genesis 9:16; Exodus 31:16; Leviticus 24:8; 2 Samuel 23:5; 1 Chronicles 16:17; Psalm 105:10; Isaiah 24:5; Jeremiah 32:40; 50:5; Ezekiel 16:60; 37:26) with different valences; here it is immediately modified–again by poetic juxtaposition–by “my steadfast, sure love for David.”⁹  The eternal covenant in question, then, is the Davidic one (see 2 Samuel 23:5; 1 Chronicles 16:17).

Mention of the great king–one of the Old Testament’s (and God’s) favorites–leads into a three-fold description of him. God claims to have made David:

a witness (Hebrew ʿēd) to the peoples
a leader (Hebrew nāgîd) and
a commander (Hebrew mĕṣawwēh) for the peoples.

The problem here is that the David we know from Samuel and Chronicles doesn’t quite match up to this description, especially since the twice-repeated term for “peoples” is not one that is used for the people of Israel, but for the nations more broadly (Hebrew lĕʾūmmîm). The terms are also somewhat unspecific though they appear to share a common trait–namely, that they all “express communicative activities.”¹⁰ Communicative activities, it should be stressed, to the nations.

Perhaps this is an idealized “David,” perhaps it is even the portrait of David as known from the Psalms;¹¹ regardless, the point is not so much the pertinence of these descriptors for David but their application now to “you”¹²–the audience itself. Most commentators agree that this transfer is quite radical because it means that the promises to David are “taken out of the political sphere and the sphere of kingship” and promised to the people/nation as a whole.¹³

Many scholars refer to Psalm 89 at this point, which is a bleak psalm that laments God’s abandonment of the covenant with the Davidic monarch.¹⁴ Perhaps that psalm, too, is exilic in origin (or at least mood). Whatever the case, in comparison, Isaiah 55 can be seen as “a direct refutation” of such a lament.¹⁵ It may seem like God has broken the covenant with David, but that isn’t accurate. From God’s own lips Israel now learns that the Davidic covenant is not broken but newly re-made. This new version is for the people as much as–better: rather than for–kings. 

The end result will be the pilgrimage of the nations (here Hebrew gôy) to Israel (verse 5a). At this point, then, at the very end of Second Isaiah we see a notion found much earlier in the unit as well: that Israel is to be “a light to the nations” (42:6; 49:6). The “newness” business ought not be overdone homiletically, however: as in the case of the “new covenant” in Jeremiah 31:31-34, there is profound continuity and interrelationship with what has come before. This is, after all, the “steadfast, sure love for David,” we are talking about, and David was the monarch who also received an eternal covenant, and who is also said to have received nations while ruling in Jerusalem (see Psalm 72:8-11; note also the imagery in Isaiah 2:3-4; 11:10, 12; 49:22-23).

All well and good–and a beautiful ending (or at least promise) to the tragedy of exile and Second Isaiah’s complicated poetic response to all that¹⁶–but verse 5 is not yet done. All this isn’t happening, despite the continuities, because of David.  Neither is it happening because of exile or because God feels badly about that.  Neither because of Israel or its repentance. 

Verse 5b makes very clear that all this will happen “on account of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel”; that, yes, and one more thing: “because he has glorified you” (my translation).  This means, of course, that this newly re-fashioned eternal covenant is truly one of grace.  So, back to the beginning: “Hey, you! Come buy and eat!  No money necessary!”

¹See, e.g., Isaiah 54:7-10; and, more extensively, Katie M. Heffelfinger, I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes: Lyric Cohesion and Conflict in Second Isaiah (Biblical Interpretation Series 105; Leiden: Brill, 2011). 
²So Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40-55 (translated by Margaret Kohl; edited by Peter Machinist; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 465.
³See Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40-66: A Commentary (translated by D. M. G. Stalker; Old Testament Library; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969 [German original: 1966]), 282. 
⁴Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah (Old Testament Library; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 433; cf. Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 467. 
⁵Westermann, Isaiah 40-66, 282. 
⁶Ibid., 281. 
⁷Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 466, is only certain that God speaks verses 3b-4.  He ultimately decides that personified Jerusalem/Zion speaks verses 1-3a (ibid., 467-68) and an unidentified speaker utters verse 5 (ibid., 473). 
⁸Childs rightly warns against false dichotomization between the material and spiritual in the opening verses.  For Israel both kinds of gifts “are closely fused and cannot be torn apart” (Isaiah, 434).
⁹The genitive phrase in Hebrew (ḥasdê dāwīd hanneʾĕmānîm) could be either subjective (“David’s steadfast, sure love” [adapting NRSV]) or objective (“steadfast, sure love for David”).  Most translations and commentators prefer the latter (see Childs, Isaiah, 434).  Regardless, note that the pronominal suffix “my” used in NRSV and NIV is not present in Hebrew. 
¹⁰Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 471.
¹¹See Childs on the David in verse 4 as “a prophetic construct used to depict David’s true vocation according to the original, theological purpose of God for his anointed one” (Isaiah, 435; further, 436-37).  See Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 471 on the David here being that of “the psalms of David” (he is following the earlier work of F. Delitzsch). 
¹²Here the grammar is masculine singular, apparently referring to the people of Israel.  The restored city would presumably be designated by the feminine singular. Baltzer thinks the final suffix in verse 5 (“glorified you“) is probably feminine (Deutero-Isaiah, 468). 
¹³Westermann, Isaiah 40-66, 286; see further ibid., 281, 284-85; Childs, Isaiah, 435-37. Baltzer speaks of the “democratization” of the David tradition at this point (Deutero-Isaiah, 470-71). 
¹⁴Westermann, Isaiah 40-66, 284; Childs, Isaiah, 435. 
¹⁵Westermann, Isaiah 40-66, 284. 
¹⁶Again, see Heffelfinger, I Am Large. 
 
 

In Genesis 32, Jacob and his family have finally left the homestead of his father-in-law Laban who is responsible for much of Jacob’s present circumstances:

Laban had deceived him into marrying sisters, Leah and Rachel whose conflict and competition with each other resulted in dozens of children with them and with their slaves whom he dutifully impregnated upon command. (For estimates of the total number of children fathered by Jacob see Genesis 46:15 and 46:26.) Laban is also responsible for Jacob’s wealth, indirectly, he agreed to give Jacob all of his spotted and speckled livestock not knowing that Jacob would use magical means to multiply them while suppressing the fertility of the solidly colored stock (Genesis 30:32ff).

As Jacob leaves his father-in-law he crosses paths with his brother Esau. Jacob is terrified and for good reason, the last words of Esau reported to him by their mother Rebekah was that Esau intended to kill for taking his birthright. (See Genesis 27:41-45.) First Jacob sends word to his brother that he is coming, that he is quite wealthy, and that he wishes to find favor in his brother’s sight in Genesis 32:3-5. The response is swift; Esau approaches with four hundred men. Jacob is terrified, he prays for divine assistance and then takes matters into his own hands by setting aside a significant portion of his holdings and sending them ahead as a gift to appease Esau (Genesis 32:7-21).

All of this happens before our lesson begins. It is with a very real fear that Esau will kill him for taking his birthright that we encounter Jacob in Genesis 32:22-31. He has not heard back from his messengers; he does not know if Esau has accepted his gifts. He does not know if his servants are even still alive. And yet he sends his wives and children into the path of Esau and his riders — without him in verse 23. (NB: there is a discrepancy between the Hebrew and English verse numbers; I am using the English versification in the NRSV.)

Jacob has evaded his greatest fear up to that point. The danger is across the water from him. He is safe, for a while; so he thinks. A person or personage he does not know (or does not recognize) grapples him to the ground. There is a pun in verse 24: the verb “wrestle” has the same letters as a word for dust, (abaq, in Exodus 9:9; Deuteronomy 28:24; Is 5:24, etc.). Jacob gave as good as he got. There was a stalemate. And then, the person did something to Jacob’s hip and put it out of joint. Because the same verb means “touch,” “strike,” or “plague,” it is not clear if it was a great violent blow or a gentle touch with more-than-human strength and/or abilities behind it.

Jacob the Heel whose name in Hebrew, (Yaaqov), is a reminder that he came into this world with his chubby baby fist wrapped around his brother’s heel, (aqev), now finds his own heels under assault. He can no longer balance on them quite so easily. His injury and its imposition are revelatory. Jacob knows he wrestles with one whose blessing matters. The one with whom he wrestles knows that even wounded Jacob is tenacious. The mysterious wrestler reveals a concern for the coming dawn. Is the wrestler concerned about what the sunlight will reveal? Does it matter whether or not Jacob can see his assailant’s face? The wrestler demands freedom.

Jacob demands a blessing. Jacob has decided that he will not let go of the wrestler whose power he knows is more than his own and, the wrestler who wounds with a touch has neither destroyed nor rejected him. He may just get his blessings if he holds on long enough. The wrestler asks Jacob’s name and Jacob answers with no ancestors, clan or people. He wrestles alone, stands alone and names only one name, “Yaaqov — Jacob — a Heel.”

Then the wrestler grants him with a new name: “God-wrestler — Israel.” Once again Jacob asks the name of the wrestler. Once again the wrestler refuses to answer. Now the wrestler (formally) blesses him in the text. In the literary context of the scriptures, the blessing would have been spoken. Yet the whole struggling, questioning, name-changing encounter can be read as a blessing, albeit a bruising one.

The reader, like Jacob, seeks to unfold the mystery of the wrestler whose departure before the dawn breaks is not described. There are tantalizing hints with which the reader must wrestle: The text says “a person/a man” in verse 24 and the wrestler tells Jacob that he has wrestled with God in verse 28 to which Jacob assents in verse 30. Jacob says that he saw God “face to face” in verse 30. Was he granted a glimpse of the wrestler’s face in the pre-dawn light in the space between verses 29 and 30, between the blessing and the parting?

By following these clues and assembling them into a coherent picture the reader like Jacob comes to the conclusion that the wrestler is God. The injunction of Exodus 33:19, that “no one can see God and live” is either unknown or non-binding to the authors and editors of this text. God appears on earth (sometimes disguised as a messenger called “the angel of the Lord” in many translations who speaks as God in the first person and perhaps as Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18ff) frequently in Genesis. See Genesis 3:8; 11:5; 16:10-13; 17:1; 18:1; Genesis 26:2, 24. In the rest of the Torah, God will hide from the people in smoke and fire, but God will later appear to Solomon in 1 Kings 3:5 and 9:2.

In the closing verse of the lesson, Jacob limps away from site of his transformation. He will never be the same again. Each step he takes is marked by the divine touch.

Thomas Merton once stated “Praise is cheap,” and it seems as though these words remain true today.

We give homage to so many things that our praise is cheap. Is it also accurate to say that our praise to God is cheap? Or, that it has at least been cheapened? Perhaps. 

Sometimes we praise God by talking so much that our words become hollow. Other times, we praise God as our heavenly Santa Claus who gives gifts we want. We also treat God as a street vendor with whom we can bargain: “I’ll give you praise if you will do (fill-in-the-blank)…” As the bargainer, we may even decide to keep shopping until something better comes along. Praise is cheap and at times we cheapen our praise to God.  How then, do we begin to claim Psalm 145 as our own when it commits us to voice our praise to God?

Psalm 145: Function and Structure
In the Psalter, Psalm 145 serves two structural functions. It is the final David psalm (Psalms 138-145), and it is the first psalm of praise in a series that ends the Psalter (Psalms 145-150). While Psalm 145 belongs to David and expresses David’s personal commitment to worship Yahweh, the psalm is not primarily about one individual’s praise.  It has a universal scope that calls the whole of creation to “praise God’s name forever and ever” (verse 2). 

Two elements implicitly hint at Psalm 145’s intended universality. The first of these is its acrostic structure. With the exception of a nûn line, each line is arranged sequentially by a letter of the alphabet. Thus, the entire alphabet is “marshalled in praise of God.”¹ 

In addition to its acrostic structure, the psalmist indicates the broad scope of intended praise through four commitments to worship. The first commitment, made in verses 1-2, is individual (“I will extol you, my God and King”). Verse 4 expresses an intergenerational commitment to praise (“one generation … to another”), and verse 10 expresses two corporate commitments to praise. The first is from creation (“all your works”) and the second from Yahweh’s followers (“all your faithful”). In the final verse (20), both individual (“my mouth”) and corporate (“all flesh”) commitments are made with the assurance they will endure through time (“forever and ever”).

The commitments in verses 1-2, 4, 10, and 20 are interspersed with specifics of Yahweh’s greatness and goodness.  Verses 3-6 and 11-13b illustrate the praise of Yahweh’s greatness using bold language: might, glory, great, fame, and power.  In contrast, verses 7-9 and 13c-20 capture the praise of Yahweh’s goodness, depicted through tender language: gracious, merciful, compassionate, faithful, just, and kind.  The cumulative picture presented in Psalm 145 is “a many-sided though overlapping account of the nature of worship, of Yahweh’s greatness, goodness, and concrete positive involvement with humanity.”²

The Goodness of God (verses 8-9)
The passages in this week’s Lectionary text are embedded in Psalm 145’s emphasis on the goodness of Yahweh as a touchstone for praise. Like Psalm 103 and others, Psalm 145:8 borrows language from Yahweh’s self-revelation in Exodus 34:6. Yahweh is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and full of steadfast love. Repeated use of Yahweh in verses 8 and 9 ensures that all of these attributes point to the Lord, the curator of creation. 

Verse 9 emphasizes Yahweh’s goodness and compassion to all people. Here, the word “all” seems to be uniquely inclusive. Rather than expressing a defined totality such as the nation of Israel, this passage seems to indicate that the Psalm refers to all of humanity and all of creation. Moreover, verse 9 echoes verse 1 and captures Yahweh as THE king “over all he has made,” not one king among many different kings. Walter Brueggemann suggests the rest of Psalm 145 is “best understood as an extrapolation from these verses to see how God’s characteristic self-giving is experienced in the daily blessings of creation.”³

God’s Active Care (verses 14-21)
Although the second portion of the lectionary text begins with verse 14, it may be helpful to begin reading the Psalm at verse 13c. This phrase transitions from Yahweh’s dominion and rule to Yahweh’s nurture and care for those who are frail and needy. In other words, the transcendent and powerful God is also the immanent and strengthening God. 

This transition in verse 13c may seem shocking because the powerful often ignore the weak. Yet, this is an abuse of power. “As wealth is granted in order to be shared, so power is granted in order to be exercised on behalf of the needy.”⁴ Hence, we should not be taken aback by Yahweh’s attention to the powerless and downtrodden.

In verse 14, the psalmist gives a picture of a pro-active God who both upholds the falling and raises those who have been bowed down. It is logical to wonder why a God who keeps people from falling would allow some to become “bowed down,” but this term may be synonymous with being knocked over by someone or something. In such an instance, it is Yahweh who will give rescue to all people. Therefore, the eyes of all will look to Yahweh who provides in due time (verse 15).

Verses 15-16 portray Yahweh as the God who gives to all living things through an open hand rather than a clenched fist. Yahweh is ready to show rather than withhold favor (verse 16), and in all things Yahweh does, Yahweh is just and kind (verse 17).

In 18b, the psalmist moves the otherwise inclusive nature of the Psalm to more specific terms. Anyone can call upon Yahweh, no matter their state, as long as they call upon Yahweh “in truth.” Verse 19 continues the specificity of 18, acknowledging that Yahweh fulfills desires for all – so long as they fear Yahweh. Verse 20a follows 19, claiming Yahweh will watch over those who love Yahweh. After twenty verses affirming the greatness and goodness of Yahweh, verse 20b provides a reality check that God will “destroy the faithless to stop them from acting oppressively.”⁵

The final verse of Psalm 145 expresses the commitment of the psalmist and the universe to continue in praise of God. More importantly, it suggests this praise will have an everlasting, permanent quality.

Implications for Preaching
Psalm 145 is a robust doxological assertion: the individual, the community, and the whole creation is to praise God for God’s goodness and God’s greatness. We are to participate in this praise, yet we know our praise is cheap and at times cheapens God. 

Within this tension, this week’s Psalm passages provide a glimpse of hope. They move us from generalized, hollow praise of God to recall specific and meaningful accounts of God’s goodness in our lives. They remind us of God’s ongoing tenderness towards us, the weak and needy, and they remind us that God’s goodness – just like God’s creation – is universal in scope (this week’s Old and New Testament narratives are perfect examples of God’s goodness). We are then called to invest in and proclaim the ongoing praise of our God the King whose selfless giving is manifest daily in each blessing of creation. 

Thanks be to God!

¹Adele Berlin, “The Rhetoric of Psalm 145,” in Biblical and Related Studies Presented to Samuel Iwry, ed. Ann Kort and Scott Morschauser (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1985), 18.
²John Goldingay, “Psalm 145,” in Psalms, Volume 3: 90-150, ed. Tremper Longman, III, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 697.
³Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 29
⁴Goldingay, 702.
⁵Goldingay, 704.

People these days ask God to damn lots of things.

I have, too; but I’ve never had the nerve to include myself on the list. Paul did, offering to surrender his own salvation in Christ if it could make a difference.

For whose sake did Paul volunteer to be “accursed and cut off from Christ”? For “Israelites,” as he calls them: for the Jewish people, for Paul’s own people. Yet he anachronistically calls them “Israelites” in 9:4, rooting their identity in more than a vague notion of ethnicity, kinship, or nationality. He’s speaking about people with a long, deep legacy: one established by God and intertwined with the life and history of God.

We must note, then, that Paul’s concerns about his people stem from more than casual curiosity or compassionate piety. These concerns arise out of theological questions–questions about God, God’s intentions, and God’s reliability. Does God’s history (past promises) matter for God’s future (pledges about what lies ahead)?

When Paul offers to be made anathema, his motivations extend beyond the fact that he loves his people so dearly. Paul also has an unyielding commitment to an understanding of God’s utter faithfulness. That’s what Romans 9-11 is ultimately about, as Paul attempts to make sense of a confounding situation. Even though circumstances could have led him to conclude otherwise, Paul still insists God remains faithful to promises.

Is that a theological foundation we too should consider utterly nonnegotiable? Yes, because if it’s not true then we’re about as good as damned ourselves.

Romans 9-11: The Big Picture

Unique within Paul’s writings, Romans 9-11 is provoked by the question of what the gospel means for Jewish people who do not embrace Jesus as Christ. When we read Paul’s ruminations on this issue, we need to consider a few things, including:

• As Paul wrote Romans, between the years 55-58, it was becoming more and more apparent that the Christian gospel would not receive a positive response from the majority of Jews who heard it. These do not appear to be circumstances the church had anticipated, and so they begged for answers.
• This situation caused great anguish to Paul and other Christians. There is no smugness or sense of “good riddance” in his words as he considers the issue in these chapters.
• Paul did not write Romans 9-11 as a “Christian” passing judgment on “Judaism,” as much as he wrote as a Jew trying, like the prophets of old, to make theological sense of the dynamics of disobedience and restoration among Abraham’s descendants.
• The question driving this section of Romans is “What’s God doing?” It’s not “What’s wrong with these unbelievers?” The situation threatened to ignite a theological crisis in Paul’s day, if it could be supposed that the gospel meant the expiration of God’s promises to those God had already chosen.

This is not a tangential issue for Paul. If you recall last week’s lection from Romans, Paul has just finished making strong claims about God’s reliability: “all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (8:28), and nothing in creation “will be able to separate us from the love of God” (8:39).

We would have good reason to doubt these grand claims, if it’s the case that God has given up on the Jewish people.

And so Paul devotes three chapters to probing the mysteries of where things stand with “Israel.” These are important passages for all Christians to consider, because they contend with crucial questions about God’s character.

They are also, of course, crucial passages to consider for the sake of Jewish-Christian understanding. Although for the most part in Romans 9-11 Paul stops short of offering confident explanations of God’s intentions, he does propose that maybe God means to make Jews jealous by blessing gentiles through the gospel, presumably to provoke their eventual repentance (Romans 10:11; 11:11-14). I think the last 1,950 years have not given much evidence to support this claim; indeed, they have revealed it as offensive. I suggest we distance ourselves from such an idea. I like to think Paul would try a different explanation if he knew what we know today. Whether you’re of the same mind as me on this or not, I hope we agree that working with these texts demands great care and sensitivity.¹

The lectionary bypasses most of the parts of Romans 9-11 capable of creating the greatest controversy, so that’s a slight relief. The good thing about the lectionary’s assignments for this week and the next two is that they guide preachers to focus their attention on the main points of these chapters: claims about God and how God has promised to act.

“To Them Belong…”

Our passage does not take us far into Paul’s argument as much as it reveals his anguish (as I’ve discussed) and the basis for seeing this as an essential issue for all Christians to consider.

Again, Paul is not talking about a “chosen people” as an abstract concept. He means the flesh-and-blood people who, throughout history, have possessed and continue to possess God’s favor. (The translation rightly reads “To them belong…” and not “To them belonged…”)

Why do Jews possess this favor? Because God gave it to them. The “Israelites” are who they are because of God’s gift, God’s free choice.

What do they possess? Paul says they possess a number of things–all of which receive attention elsewhere in Romans, as well. They possess God’s “adoption,” making them children in God’s family. God has shared “glory” with them and made “covenants” by which to bless them. They received and possess God’s “law,” God’s own words (torah : “instruction”) for holiness and justice. They “worship” or serve the one true God, who made concrete “promises” with them via their “patriarchs.”

Remember, too: Jesus didn’t just come in the flesh. He came in Jewish flesh. God became incarnate as a Jew, as a covenantal heir in the long lineage of a people who have known God’s presence and contended with God through thick and thin.

How a (mostly) gentile church could have neglected all this and provided a safe harbor for anti-Semitic ideology and action for so many generations is perhaps our greatest failing.

Paul might say, “To hell with any notion of Christianity that has become estranged from its connection to the people of ancient Israel and their modern offspring.”

The Church and the People of Israel: Both Established by God’s Grace

The lectionary’s three weeks on Romans 9-11 do not allow sufficient time to plumb these chapters’ depths, but enough to begin the essential work of reconnecting us to our religious ancestry. Paul asks big questions that must be at the foundation of any theological claim emanating from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Again, what makes Paul so impassioned that he talks about his own possible damnation? Not only does he love the people of God, but he will not have a part in any religious understanding that paints God as unfaithful to promises God has made.

As subsequent parts of Romans 9-11 will explain, God must honor all those prerogatives God has lavished upon the Jewish people, as named in 9:4-5. If not, then how will gentile Christians be able to trust that God won’t cancel promises made to us?

I usually discourage working with multiple biblical texts in a single sermon, but this week I’m making an exception. The so-called alternate first reading in the lectionary tells the wonderful story of Jacob wrestling God, prevailing, and then receiving the name “Israel” (“The One Who Strives with God”). Jacob’s hip-smacking opponent tells him, in explaining the name, “You have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28).

God and Israel have quite a history together, as rocky as any passionate relationship. But it’s a relationship established by divine promises–promises made, iterated, and reiterated throughout scripture.

Later in Romans (in a passage skipped by the lectionary), Paul will use the image of grafting to describe gentile Christians. They, as “wild olive shoots” have been grafted “to share the rich root” of a cultivated olive tree (11:17). Prodded along by that image of the Jewish people’s rich theological heritage, sermons can both instruct about God’s history with Israel and proclaim the identity Christ forges for us. Knowing Israel’s theological history and the benefits it confers, as epitomized in Jacob’s story, is essential. The history demonstrates God’s longstanding graciousness. It becomes a history in which Christians share, a history (and future) defined by God.

Throughout Romans 9-11, Paul never says that the existence of the church does away with Israel. Christians need to grasp, then, the dangers inherent in talking about the church as a new Israel. The church shares the root, a root of God’s gracious faithfulness. We do not appropriate Israel’s rich heritage of adoption, covenants, and promises. We participate in it, in a derivative but nevertheless real way, through Christ.

¹In her excellent book, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), Amy-Jill Levine offers this advice to Christian preachers who want to make positive strides in Jewish-Christian relations: “At Vanderbilt [Divinity School], I have been known to bring my son to my class. I introduce him to my students, and then I say: ‘When you speak of Jews, picture this kid in the front pew. Don’t say anything that will hurt this child, and don’t say anything that will cause a member of your congregation to hurt this child.’ I grant that the move is theatrical and manipulative; it’s also remarkably effective” (page 226).