The Dream of Isaiah: A Sacramental Vision of Divine Continuity

In my first essay, focusing on supersessionism, I did nothing new. If anything, I was trying to use my Jewish voice to echo the traditional teaching of the church on the question and to give some comfort to those of us challenged by modern antisemitism and our reading of the Scriptures. Long story short: a version of supersessionism is true, but we must be careful how we think of it. Supersessionism — of a kind — is a founding premise of Christianity, to a point. We should affirm the Scriptures and eschew antisemitism.

A reader asked after the first piece: should we include not only the question of how one can be saved, but the “medium” through which God now pursues his mission? Does the church supersede “blood” Israel as the spearhead of God’s redemptive activity as the witness-bearer to the inbreaking of the kingdom?

I think that the answer is yes and no. Yes, the church is now the medium through which God pursues his plan of salvation in the world and is the witness-bearer of that plan of salvation. It’s hard to see how Christians could claim otherwise. Christ is the full revelation of the Father (John 1:14-18; 12:45; 14:9; Heb. 1:1-4; 2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15). Christ is the one who atones for our sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Isa. 52:4-12; Rom. 5:6-8; 1 Cor. 15:3), Christ is the one who will come again in great power and glory (Matt. 24:26-27; Matt. 25:13; Luke 21:25-28; Rev. 1:7). So, yes, the church is the medium for God’s plan of salvation, but the plan of salvation is thoroughly Jewish, because of who and even what Jesus is. Salvation is Jewish, the medium is the mostly Gentile church. This connotes some sort of mysterious cooperation between Israel and the nations.

There is a mystical union, one prophesied in Isaiah 2:2, between the nations and Israel: that “in the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.” Or further in Isaiah 56:7: “even them [the sons of the foreigners] I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar.”

There is no Levite mentioned, there is no priest of Holy Israel, there are only the Gentile and the eunuch who will perform the rites and ceremonies of Israel. And this was always the plan. Israel was a people set apart for a purpose: to be a light to the nations, to be a city on a hill, to be a witness of God to the nations. The point of Israel was both evangelistic and sacrificial — to witness and to make sacrifice, and this was to be done through obedience. The eyes of the Gentiles would behold the glory of Israel, the splendor of her temple, and the richness of her land, and would see that all that great spiritual and material wealth flowed from the God of Israel. Israel was to be a sign to the nations that their false idols, their Baals, had failed them, and only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could truly provide.

The one Israelite “in whom there was no guile” was Jesus, and Jesus fulfilled all the promises of Israel, for Israel, for God. This is all elementary, but it is important for understanding what exactly God is doing now.

God has not cast off “blood” Israel. He has not forgotten his promise to Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. He will not be proved faithless, even amid faithlessness (Rom 11:1-2). But the promise made to Abraham has been fulfilled in Jesus and his children, who are as many as the stars (Gen. 15:5; 22:17; 26:4), are both Jew and Greek (Rom. 4:17-18).

Scripture by no means points to Israel as a husk that will be cast off, out of which Christianity sprung and needs no longer. The Scriptures point to a mysterious cooperation. The church points to this cooperation. The very center of the church, the nexus, the star around which should orbit everything in our spiritual lives, is the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. The Body and Blood of our Lord, presented weekly to the faithful flock of Christ, is the center of our lives, whether priest or lay. That sacrament, the host and the cup, are Jewish.

Lifted from hundreds of thousands of altars around the world, our Jewish Lord’s body is offered. Elevated in the anointed hands of (mostly) Gentile priests is the sacrament of Jewish flesh. The Eucharist is the body of Christ who was born of a Jewish mother. It is the body of Christ who defeated death. It is the body of Christ who rose from a grave which could not be fully prepared on Friday because of the Jewish sabbath. That risen body, that ascended and glorified body, is Jewish. The same body that received circumcision, the same body presented by his most blessed mother in the Temple, the same body that did miracles and celebrated Passover, is that body elevated and reserved and distributed in our churches.

So then how could God’s plan of salvation be anything other than cooperative, at least in this mystical and sacramental sense? Yes, it is true that the church is the witness-bearer; it is we who have seen “what no eye has seen” through Jesus Christ, but we do not deal in typologies only; we deal in sacramental realities. At the altar is the consummation of Israel and the nations, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world, and a salvation that comes to us of the House of David.

I was ordained deacon and priest by a Gentile from Massachusetts, my Jewish hands anointed by a man with a “goyish” last name. I was baptized, confirmed, and fed by Gentiles, all in the name of our Jewish God. There is something fitting about this fact, the divine cooperation between Jew and Greek coming to its fulfillment in the Church Catholic. Types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here, and the newer rite is a more perfect rite than the old. I can think of no more Jewish an act that I can do than to stand and make an offering to the God of Israel at his altar on behalf of the nations.

Surely it is much to be preferred that “blood” Israel herself would accept the risen Lord, would accept her messiah, and ours. Until that time, probably to be seen in the eschaton, this mystical union, made manifest at our altars, is the pinnacle of the soteriological cooperation that was foretold to us by the prophets. It is beautiful, yet we must have eyes to see it.

In this age of antisemitism ascendant, the recentering of our focus, the remembrance of the Jewishness of our salvation, even amid the Gentilic medium, must find its way back into our hearts. Our salvation flows from Abraham, and Jew and Gentile alike share a common father through the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist. There is bris and there is baptism. There is seder and there is Eucharist. There is the Law of Sinai and the Law of the Beatitudes. All of these are given by the same Holy One of God. This is not to equate these acts with one another: circumcision always pointed to baptism, Passover always pointed to the Cross, the Law of Sinai always pointed to Jesus. Those typological acts always pointed to the sacramental: the Incarnation was always part of the plan. It is to say that for Jews and Christians, something is shared that is deeper than an unfulfilled teleology. We share in the promises of the Father, we share in our being covenanted to him, though differently. Through the body and blood of Jesus, we share in blood as well.

Types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here, yet due to the historic sin of the church, the pogroms and oppression inflicted by the church on Jews, it seems that types and shadows will persist until the earth is remade. We do not deal with types and shadows. We deal with sacramental realities, we deal with God condescended, we deal with Jesus Christ, and our witness of the sole sufficiency of Christ must be at the fore of our work. Though mysterious cooperation is our current reality, we look toward the holy hope of visible unity — not only between Jew and Greek, but between all peoples, for all people are under the kingship of Christ. Despite their rebellion, they cannot deny his sovereignty.

“Blood” Israel has not been cast off, but like the Gentiles has been transfigured, with the eyes of all of us looking toward the eschaton, toward a fuller consummation. This does not mean we cease our work of witness to all nations. Our mission is visible unity. Yet, until that day, we hold onto our hope that our unity is knit together through and by Christ.

Gentiles have, as foretold in Zechariah 8:23, grabbed hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and said, “Let us go with you because we have heard that God is with you.” Christians, whether Jew or Greek, do the same. We recognize our salvation as coming from the root of Jesse. Our salvation is from Israel, our salvation is Jewish, yet the medium for that salvation is now almost fully Gentilic. It is a mystical cooperation, a union, that will exist until the eschaton, when cooperation will be visible, and God’s people will fully be made one.

Therefore we, before him bending, this great sacrament revere: types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here; faith, our outward sense befriending, makes our inward vision clear.