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Saturday, December 15, 2007 The root of Jesse shall come, Paul was a Jew. He affirmed this many times, referring to his knowledge of and adherence to the Law and the Prophets. But Paul was a Jew who acknowledged Jesus to be the messiah, the Christ. Was Paul then also a Christian? Can you be both at the same time? To whom is this important? Paul uses his Jewish credentials to argue for inclusion of Gentiles in this early community of Christ-affirming Jews. In this section of his letter to the church in Rome, Paul cites four different Scriptural passages to give Jewish authority to the inclusion of Gentiles, one of which being the passage from Isaiah about the root of Jesse. It was important to Paul to bring Jew and Gentile together in this religious community centering on the Christ. Paul does not talk about the birth of Jesus. He may not have even known the birth stories. But he talks about the coming of Jesus as fulfilling the promises given to the patriarchs. So did Mary when she referred to her pregnancy as “according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham, and his descendants. (Luke 1: 55) Mary was a Jew, a young girl who presented herself as a handmaid of the Lord. In the Gospel of Luke, after Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel, she was given a song to sing. That song is “The Magnificat” in which Mary understands her role in the history of salvation and in God’s concern for the poor. A beautifully framed icon of Mary hangs above my desk. She is looking down, perhaps receiving Gabriel’s message. This icon, a five-color block print, required much skill. It is, actually, a detail of the head of Mary from a famous icon in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery. This print was a gift to Ginny and me from the artist, a young Russian illustrator named Anton Kumankov. Russia was then a part of the Soviet Union. Anton’s print was officially valued for its skillful execution without regard to its content. I value the icon, and I believe that the artist did also, because of its sympathetic representation of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary’s is a wonderful story. It is a vivid part of the sprouting of the root of Jesse to bring forth a Messiah as promised to Abraham. It is a wonderful Jewish story, and we are blessed as we become aware of our faith’s Jewish roots.
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