Sunday's first reading (Gen. 15:5-12,17-18) is
essential for understanding why we Gentiles can be Christians without first
becoming Jews.
In the first years of our faith, all who
decided to imitate Jesus' dying and rising were Jews. If a Gentile, seeing
the value of acquiring Jesus' faith, wanted to join one of His communities,
he or she first converted to Judaism, then eventually was taught about Jesus
and baptized.
Paul and some of his co-missionaries thought
they could skip that first step. Amid much "turmoil," they began
to baptize Gentiles as Gentiles.
Biblical basis
They didn't take such a drastic step because of
their "liberal agenda." They had a biblical basis for their
actions; it revolved around one verse in the first reading: "Abraham
put his faith in Yahweh, who credited it to him as an act of
righteousness."
To understand why Paul employs this verse in
Romans 4, we must understand a little about Jewish history.
When conservative Jewish-Christians insisted
that Gentiles first convert to Judaism, they presumed that followers of
Jesus had to be part of the Sinai covenant, which Yahweh made with the
Chosen People during their exodus from Egypt. They had to keep the 613 laws
the Israelites agreed to keep as part of their contract with Yahweh. For
them, those regulations were at the heart of Judaism, the religion Jesus
practiced.
But Paul reminds his readers that the Exodus
happened around 1,200 before Jesus, while Abraham lived around 600 years
before that. That means Judaism's founder knew nothing about the 613 laws.
Yet, as Sunday's reading tells us, Yahweh still regarded him as righteous --
doing what Yahweh wanted him to do.
Paul argues that keeping the laws of Moses
can't be essential to Judaism because the first Jew, Abraham, was doing
Yahweh's will six centuries before those laws came into existence.
Faith in God is the only essential. Gentiles
could imitate Abraham's giving of himself to Yahweh without formally
converting to Judaism and keeping the 613 laws.
Though we presume Jesus did keep them, Paul
contends that it was Jesus' Abraham-like faith in God that His disciples
were to imitate, not His adherence to the Sinai covenant. Gentiles were
attracted to Jesus because of how He related to God and others, not because
He kept the Mosaic Law.
As Paul says in the second reading (Philippians
3:17-4:1), the Jewish law doesn't bring righteousness. We accomplish that
only by becoming one with Jesus, imitating His faith: Jesus "will
change our lowly body to conform with His glorified body by the power that
enables Him also to bring all things into subjection to Himself....In this
way, stand firm in the Lord."
Transfigured
We read about some of the implications of
conforming to Jesus' glorified body in Luke's transfiguration narrative
(Luke 9:28b-36). Jesus' face changes its appearance and His clothes turn a
dazzling white, but Moses and Elijah also play an important role in the
scene.
We must remember that the Bible is never called
"the Bible" in the Bible. It's simply referred to as the "Law
and the Prophets." By having Moses, the great law-giver, and Elijah,
the great prophet, conversing with Jesus, Luke is telling his readers that
whatever Jesus of Nazareth is about, He's rooted firmly in the very
Scriptures that give meaning to their faith.
By having the pair speak with Him about
"His exodus that He was going to accomplish in Jerusalem," Luke
reminds us that we can be transformed with Jesus only if we die with Him. By
practicing such an active, giving faith, we're fulfilling all biblical laws
and prophetic teachings.
Instead of relating to a book or a set of laws,
we, like Abraham, relate to a person, someone who demands more than can be
squeezed into one book -- or even 613 laws.
(3/1/07)