BOASTING ABOUT BEING JEWISH, OR NOT BEING JEWISH

“By faith You justified the Forefathers, when through them You betrothed Yourself beforehand to the Church of the Gentiles. The saints boast in glory, that from their seed there is a glorious fruit: she who bore You without seed. By their prayers, O Christ God, save our souls.” (Troparion, Sunday of the Forefathers)

On the Sunday of the Forefathers, celebrated this weekend (NC), our church celebrates the Old Testament, Jewish “forefathers” of the Theotokos, who rightfully “boast in glory” that she came “from their seed.” But this makes me think about Romans 11, where St. Paul talks about a wrong kind of boasting on the part of some Gentile Christians, who boasted “against” the non-believing Jews in their midst.

St. Paul warns the Gentile Christians *not* to boast or feel superior to those Jewish people who rejected Christ, because they remain the “root” and the original “branches” that support the new Tree of Life, the incarnate Son of God, while Gentiles were “grafted in” from the “wild” later, after the “Tree” had been well-established: “And if some of the branches were broken off,” St. Paul writes to these Gentiles, “and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you.” (Rom 11: 17-18) In this chapter, St. Paul also talks about wanting to provoke his people, the Jewish people, to “jealousy,” by preaching the light of Christ to Gentiles, and expresses his faith that “all Israel will be saved” in the end, because “they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.” (Rom 11: 26,28)

As we pray for the intercessions of the Jewish ancestors of our Jewish Lord this weekend, I take pause and say, “Thank you, Jewish people!” for being our root. It’s not an easy thing to be, as we can see throughout history and today, when many of us continue somehow to resent you for it. Holy Forefathers, pray to God for the Jewish people and for all of us today, that we remember we are all “beloved”!