God's compassion and love, even pity, for human beings is on display in all of the readings for the eleventh Sunday in ordinary time. Yet some readers might perceive a glitch in the program of universal love. Exodus speaks of the Israelites as "my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation" (Exodus 19: 5-6). Jesus himself, in the sending out of the Twelve, also asks that his apostles "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 10:5-6). Why this limitation on salvation? We might ask this especially in light of the fact that the Church did indeed go to the Gentiles and Samaritans, rapidly and often, soon after Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. We might also point out that Jesus himself had encounters with Gentiles and Samaritans that acknowledged both their need for salvation and their ability to receive it (Mark 7:24-30; John 4:1-42). This is one of the innumerable passages in Jesus' ministry where understanding Jesus as a Jew and understanding the Old Testament context are essential. In the early 8th century B.C. the Assyrians scattered and exiled the northern kingdom of Israel, consisting of 10 or 9 ½ tribes. (The Levites, the priestly tribe, did not have a bequest of land and so they, in truncated form, remained along with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin after the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom, so, 2 ½ tribes remained in the southern kingdom.) Yet, when the Jews imagined God's salvation of the Land and the People, they imagined a restoration of all the tribes. A key motif of the Post-Exilic prophets is that when God acts to save, to make all things new, the tribes will be gathered in. This ingathering is found in a number of prophetic books, such as Isaiah 56:8, Micah 4:6-7, Zephaniah 3:16-20, and Zechariah 10:8-12. The Zechariah passage is especially powerful:

I will signal for them and gather them in, for I have redeemed them, and they shall be as numerous as they were before. Though I scattered them among the nations, yet in far countries they shall remember me, and they shall rear their children and return. I will bring them home from the land of Egypt, and gather them from Assyria; I will bring them to the land of Gilead and to Lebanon, until there is no room for them. They shall pass through the sea of distress, and the waves of the sea shall be struck down, and all the depths of the Nile dried up. The pride of Assyria shall be laid low, and the scepter of Egypt shall depart. I will make them strong in the Lord, and they shall walk in his name, says the Lord

The choosing of the Twelve by Jesus is symbolic of the reality that God is acting now and that the tribes are now being gathered in, indeed, that the eschatological time of salvation is at hand. "There was never a saviour apart from a saved Israel, nor would there be a Messiah apart from a messianic Israel...Israel, in short, understood salvation in ecclesial terms. Where the salvation of the nations was promised or announced, this was conceived as assimilation to saved Israel" (Ben F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus, 134). So, when Jesus asks that the Twelve go nowhere amongst Gentiles or Samaritans, but "go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," he is not omitting the Gentiles and Samaritans, but setting in motion the conditions that will allow all people to come into the covenant, which will allow the world mission to take place. The Jews first and then the Gentiles. The prophets speak of this universal call as well. Isaiah 56:6-8 notes that all people will ultimately be welcomed to participate in the salvation of God:

And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant-- these 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; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.

Jesus' call that his apostles go nowhere amongst the Gentiles and Samaritans is not an attempt to limit salvation, but the necessary prerequisite that will allow all peoples to be welcomed into the covenant: "As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near'" (Matthew 10:7). That kingdom is for all people.

John W. Martens