Do you know your ancestors?

We are a fluid people. We move from town to town, state to state, region to region. Some of us have roots. But a great many of us have wings. For those of us “on the fly,” it is even more important to know our ancestors, to know who we are, if we don’t always know where we are.

It was much the same for the first century Jewish audience Paul was addressing in today’s Roman’s text. There had been no Jewish state, no Israel or Judah, for hundreds of years. Throughout the centuries the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, indeed almost all of Israel’s middle eastern neighbors, had over-run the “promised land” and put God’s “chosen people” under their rule. By the first century the undisputed power of Rome crushed any hope of restoration of a Jewish national identit…