THE MESSIAH AND THE BIRTH OF THE CHURCH

Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah of Israel, fully accomplished Israel's mission by reproducing the story of his people in his own life - with the exception of their sins and unfaithfulness. We already see a prefiguration of the life of Christ and a typological relationship between Israel and Jesus in the life of Joseph the patriarch. Just as Israel, still in her infancy and counting only seventy people, left her land to settle in Egypt, so the Son of God had to flee to Egypt in his infancy (Mt. 2:13-14). In fact, the whole story of Joseph and his brothers is itself a type of the relationship between Jesus and his people Israel. The striking similarities between the two are presented in appendix A.

As Messiah of Israel, Jesus is a new Moses, the prophet and deliverer about whom Moses himself had spoken (Deut. 18:15). Christ will initiate a New Exodus that will redeem not only Israel this time, but all of mankind from the slavery of sin. Before He does this, however, He reproduces Israel's first Exodus in His own life. Like Israel, He begins his life by coming out of Egypt with the Holy Family (Mt. 2:15, 20-21). As Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea, so Jesus passes through the waters of the Jordan at the beginning of his public ministry and is baptized by John the Baptist (Mt. 3). Israel was tempted for forty years in the Sinai wilderness; Jesus goes into the desert for forty days where He is tempted by the devil, but unlike Israel, passes the test and remains faithful to God the Father (Mt. 4:1-11). Whereas Moses gave the Old Law to Israel at Mount Sinai, Jesus gives to Israel a New Law from the Mount of Beatitudes (Mt. 5-7). God the Father sustained his people in the desert by sending them manna, and so Jesus also provides bread for his people through the multiplication of the loaves (Mt. 14:15-21), which is itself a sign of the heavenly Eucharistic bread that would come later. Jesus also identifies Himself with the Davidic king, as we see in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday when He is acclaimed as king and "Son of David." Before His passion, Jesus institutes the New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah that the prophet Jeremiah had spoken of (Jer. 31:31). Like the Mosaic covenant, the New Covenant is sealed with blood (Ex. 24:8, Mt. 26:28). Yet, irony of ironies, Jesus is rejected by His own people - the very people who had been waiting for centuries in eager expectation for the coming of the Messiah. Forsaken, betrayed, beaten and spat upon, Jesus must take the way to the cross where He offers Himself as a pure, unblemished victim, the new Passover Lamb who is slain to take away the sins of the world.

Why, then, did Israel reject her own Messiah? At the time that Christ came, the Jews were longing for a political liberator who would come and free them from the Roman occupying power and restore the Davidic kingdom in all of its political and military strength. But contrary to these expectations, Jesus did not come to deliver the Jews from the Romans. He came, rather, to establish a spiritual, everlasting kingdom of which the Davidic kingdom at its peak was only a shadow and type. This kingdom would be founded by his death on the cross. He was the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, the innocent lamb led to the slaughter, stricken for the transgressions of his people, who came to save the "lost sheep of the tribes of Israel." Moreover, not only was he sent "to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel," he was also the one given as a light to the nations so that God's salvation may reach the ends of the earth (Isa. 49:6). Through Him, all people could now come to the knowledge of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and partake in the promises made to Israel. With the dividing wall now broken, Gentiles could be joined with the commonwealth of Israel to become One New Man, Jew and Gentile reconciled to each other and members of the new household of God, the Church (Eph. 2:11-22). They were to be united in the new spiritual kingdom that would give them access to the heavenly sanctuary of the New Jerusalem, present in the liturgy of the New Covenant and veiled under sacramental appearances.

But history shows a different picture. We are faced today with the troubling fact that the Jewish segment of the Church soon completely disappeared, leaving behind an exclusively Gentile Body of Christ. What happened? Why did the Church, Jewish in origin and whose very purpose was the unification of Jew and Gentile, end up completely divorced from Judaism?

Of course, a large part of Israel from the outset did not recognize the time of her visitation. We can only inadequately explain this mystery of why the Jews failed to recognize their own Messiah. First, as Stephen pointed out before his death, Israel was blinded by the same unbelief that prevented her from entering the Promised Land, made her reject the prophets, and led her into exile (Acts 7:51-53). Her hardness of heart, combined with her expectation of a national deliverer, kept her from recognizing the humble servant of the Lord who came to redeem her from her sins. She was neither expecting nor prepared for the radical transformation of the Old Covenant brought by the New which would involve the end of the Levitical priesthood and of the animal sacrifices. Second, from the perspective of the divine purpose, God permitted this blindness in order to bring salvation to the Gentiles and riches to the world. Yet this does not dispense us from asking ourselves whether the Church herself does not at least bear partial responsibility for Israel's unbelief and separation from her Messiah for 2,000 years.