The Gentiles
When the "Chosen People" forget that this calling was meant to make them humble and an example for the world, God comes along and grafts in "those people."
My grandmother said this with a straight face and meant every word: “Honey, it isn’t true that we are better than most people. It just seems that way!”
She meant it. She was convinced that a true Southern family, Christian, and middle class possessed the qualities that made for a perfect life, and she passed that perspective on to her children and grandchildren.
But, she didn’t want it to go to our heads, at least not too much to our heads!
She truly believed that her people, white, Southern, Baptist, “salt-of-the-earth,” who were able to make their own bread, raise their own hogs, chickens, and cows, and grow their own vegetables, were Roosevelt Democrats. Everybody knew “their place,” and they were the best people there were.
The only problem was that the traits she thought were unique to her “tribe” were the same traits in other “tribes” that made them good people, too!
Prejudice, which my grandmother refused to believe she had, is often the result of not seeing in others the excellent values you see in yourself.
This isn’t new. It isn’t unusual, and it always needs to be healed in every tribe where it takes noxious root.
Look at our lesson today in Romans 15:7-16:
Brethren, welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, "Therefore I will praise thee among the Gentiles, and sing to thy name"; and again it is said, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people"; and again, "Praise the Lord, all Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him"; and further Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles hope." May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. I myself am satisfied about you, my brethren, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
St. Paul’s letter to the Romans is arguably his “magnum opus.” In 16 chapters, St. Paul lays out his theology and his defense of his ministry to the Gentiles.
This serious, orthodox Jew, a member of the Jewish High Court, a disciple of the great Jewish scholar Gamaliel, and early persecutor of this new sect called “Christians” who claimed the Jewish Messiah had been crucified and was raised from the dead, was now preaching that same message.
But, horror of horrors, he was preaching it to Gentiles and was teaching that the Gentiles had been “grafted into” the Chosen People!
He would tell the Romans, “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” (Romans 2:28-29)
The whole point of the People of the Torah was that God had chosen them out of all the tribes in the world to reveal His divine Law and to shape them into His Chosen People with all the worship and prophecies meant to set them apart from other people and make them God’s Chosen instruments in all of humanity.
The problem was they forgot WHY God had done this.
They forgot that they were chosen, not to make them “better” than anyone else, but to set an example for everyone else of what a society looks like, shaped and formed by the eternal wisdom of the Creator. They were chosen to serve, not gloat about their special status.
Now, St. Paul is coming along and teaching, using the very scriptures of the Prophets, the Psalms, and the teachings of Moses, that the Messiah has come, and He has now extended His salvation, His “chosen People” status, to the Gentiles.
These are the same outsiders that God had told His people to stay separate from, not to follow the false gods of the Gentiles, and not to live like the Gentiles.
Now, Paul is insisting the Gentiles are part of this New Covenant and God is saving them along with His Chosen People! And God is doing this because He has always intended to save the Gentiles. He is doing this in hopes of correcting the haughty arrogance that was the main reason His Chosen People missed the apparent reality that their expected Messiah had come, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on a cross, and rose again on the third day, bringing life to all the world!
Of course, this is always the result of prejudice. It blinds us to just how far God’s grace can go!
It happens to us today!
We can see this in the discomfort that many lifelong Orthodox are experiencing due to the influx of new converts entering our Church. They want the Church to belong only to their “tribe,” and these “outsiders” are messing everything up!
But what happened to the Jews will happen to us. These outsiders are meant to make us jealous and to wake us up to the precious treasure our Faith is to us.
When St. Peter was head of the Church in Antioch, he led a man named Pancratios to Christ. This man had his home in Antioch, but after his conversion, he moved to Sicily, where he became a great evangelist for the Faith and led many to Christ. He was made bishop of Sicily and was martyred for his Orthodox Faith in the 1st century. He was a Gentile convert to the Faith and was led to the Faith by the very pious Jewish Christian who was also the chief of the Apostles.
Today, let’s abandon the false notion that God’s people don’t include everyone. God loves us and calls us to be examples of His salvation to everyone. The truth is Orthodoxy belongs to everyone, or it will soon belong to no one. God does make us His People, but not for our glory. It’s so that everyone can see that they can be part of God’s chosen people as well. That’s what Normal Orthodoxy is all about!
P.S. As a sharer of the ways and a successor to the throne of the Apostles, O inspired of God, thou foundest discipline to be a means of ascent to divine vision. Wherefore, having rightly divided the word of truth, thou didst also contest for the Faith even unto blood, O Hieromartyr Pancratius. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls be saved.
Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. He is also the founder of Faith Encouraged Ministries and produces the Faith Encouraged Daily Devotional on Substack. Watch the Faith Encouraged YouTube Channel here - https://www.youtube.com/@FaithEncouraged
This cuts to the heart of what so many forget: that chosenness is not a crown, but a calling. A true vocation from God never sets us apart for comfort, but for witness, for bearing the weight of love on behalf of others.
How easily we turn the mystery of divine election into a mirror for our own pride. But God will not be co-opted by our boundaries. He grafts in the outsider, not to shame the insider, but to remind them of mercy’s scandalous reach.
In the end, Orthodoxy belongs to no tribe. It belongs to the fire that fell at Pentecost… uncontrolled, multi-lingual, and fiercely inclusive. Thank you for this reminder that the root of Jesse still flowers in unlikely soil.