Can we trust God or is God fickle? St. Paul tells us in today’s first reading that “… the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” In this section of Romans (chapters 9-11), Paul has been reflecting on the rejection of Jesus by most of his fellow Jews. This reflection leads him to the question: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people?” Paul’s answer is clear and resounding, “Of course not!” God has not rejected the Jewish people because God is not fickle and can always be trusted. Why? Because the “gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” God called Israel out of love:
“For you are a people holy to the LORD, your God; the LORD, your God, has chosen you from all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people specially his own. It was not because you are more numerous than all the peoples that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you; for you are really the smallest of all peoples. It was because the LORD loved you…” (Deuteronomy 7:6-8).
God had never withdrawn his love from the Jewish people. The Jewish people were and remain the people of God. Paul states explicitly, “God has not rejected his people.” Sadly, and sinfully down through history Christians have forgotten this teaching and persecuted, tortured, and killed our Jewish brothers and sisters in the name of God. Sadly, and sinfully even in our own day we see violence against our Jewish and Moslem sisters and brothers in the name of God. Antisemitism and Islamophobia are sins against Jesus’ teaching to “love our neighbor ourselves.” Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God. The holy books of each religion proclaim that God is merciful. Pope Francis has stated, “killing in the name of God is, therefore, a blasphemy.”
Paul humbly acknowledges in today’s reading that God’s ways are at times inscrutable: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!” Like Paul at the end of today’s reading, after we have questioned and even challenged God, we need to humbly trust God: “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
Image: “Jews praying at Western Wall” by cerniglia is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.