Why are the people of Israel, my own people, so deaf to the gospel, Paul asks in his Letter to the Romans read this week? ( Romans 11) It’s a question we might ask as we wonder about the present deafness of the western world, our own people, to the gospel today. Why do so many dismiss the Christian faith as meaningless? Why are so many leaving the Church?

”Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? Or who has given him anything that he may be repaid?For from him and through him and for him are all things.To God be glory forever. Amen.”

Paul doesn’t leave the question at that, however, but he sees Israel’s deafness preparing for the coming of the Gentiles into the church. As Paul sees it, Israel’s resistance to the gospel allowed the Gentiles to accept the Chrisian message. They wouldn’t enter a church that was too Jewish in its nature, a Jewish Christian church.

Is our deafness today preparing for the next stage of God’s plan of salvation, when other nations, from Africa and Asia, will be welcomed into the Christian church that no longer appears clothed in the colonialism of the western world?

The rest of Paul’s reflection also deserves to be heard. Just as Paul warns Gentile Christians against arrogantly abandoning the Jews, who are God’s work, so too God’s grace is still at work in our western church, in a plan that is inscrutable and unsearchable. The church we knew, remains holy in God’s eyes. We need to respect its traditions and its holiness.

We are not God’s advisors, but servants and discoverers of his plan.