Jesus and the Jews

The angel Gabriel declared unto Mary and she conceived of the Holy Spirit, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word," and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Being a Jew and growing up in the Jewish religious tradition was the desire and goal the Lord God our Father. From the beginning of all time He wanted to redeem His people, His family. This was deduced by the fact that Christ was the first born of all creation. The Jewish people were chosen by God from the beginning. This is plainly obvious to me because of how God relates to time. Because all things are instantaneously present to the Lord, He has the choice of all things for all time at the instant of creation.

St. Augustine developed "Replacement Theology" which asserts the promises made to the Jews which were unfulfilled were inherited by Christians and lost to the Jews by their unbelief. Let me quote the great Pope Benedict XVI. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature." This quote has been taken out of context, he was speaking about using the force of arms as an instrument of evangelizing, but the argument applies to this discussion none the less. If not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature, then that is true in every aspect of His creation. Is it reasonable to choose a people out of the world to be your own, to favor them more than any other people, to manifest yourself among them, then to reject them when you know from before any single one of them was created the exact way you will be treated by them? Absolutely not! Is it reasonable to lie to someone by promising them something when you know before hand they will not keep faith then refuse them the promise? No, that is malicious. God is not capable of giving a promise to someone that will not be fulfilled because He sees the parade in its entirety at a single instant. He is continuously present to all time. He is outside of time. That is why St. Augustine was mistaken in his theology of Christian replacement. He was on the right track though, just one lane over.

Gentile Christians will share in the promises of the Jews. Scripture is very clear on this matter. Where St. Augustine went wrong is not keeping up with the times. When the New Testament writings were written Christianity was considered a Jewish sect. It was a schismatic denomination of Judaism. By the time St. Augustine lived the Church population had radically changed. It was now mostly Gentile. Looking into a discussion between Jews and knowing the truth was being spoken one to another, St. Augustine mistakenly included himself in the class of Jewish Christians. He was a Gentile, not a Jew! "For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more shall these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?" In this passage the olive tree represents God's promises to the Jews, the Gentiles are the branches of the wild olive tree and the Jews are the branches of the cultivated tree, so the Church as She exists today is obviously not a Jewish Church but a Gentile Church. The cultivated tree has been populated with "wild branches" but the ownership of the promises remains in the hands of the Jews. By grace we are included and are able to receive "the crumbs which have fallen from the children's plates."

The main point of it all is that Jesus is a Jew. He went to the Temple and to the synagogues, He was a rabbi, He celebrated the Jewish feasts, He spoke Hebrew and read the Torah. To the best of my understanding He never read The Acts of the Apostles, or the Epistle to the Romans, or an Epistle of St. Peter, or the Revelation to St. John. When He spoke to the gathered crowds He never quoted St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Hilary, Pope Leo, St. Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, or any other great saint of ours. That all belongs to our Christian tradition. He quoted Moses, Isaiah and Elijah. The Jews are still His people, His family and the rightful heirs of the kingdom, because where He is His family belongs, and He will draw them unto Himself and the natural branches shall be grafted back into their own cultivated olive tree.