Israel’s manna and Jesus’ manner
A reflection for Lent on Exodus 16 2-7a.
By Roger Salter, VirtueOnline.
As a servant people Israel received the vocation to make the Lord known to the nations of the earth through obedience to his will that would produce in the chosen race a moral and spiritual likeness to his holy and gracious character. Through word, worship, and the well being of a community blessed by God, the Hebrews were to create an attraction that would draw the Gentiles to Yahweh. Zion was to be a light to the world commending universal knowledge of its Lord. The record shows that the chosen people as a whole reneged on their calling, choosing to depart from the way of their God. Jesus in his incarnate life upon earth retraced the history of Israel in order to correct its deviancy and fulfill its assignment. The events of his life were to match the occurrences of Israel’s past, his righteous obedience countering the errors of Abraham’s ethnic descendants.
This is Jesus’ ultimate role in the purpose of God – to fashion a righteousness on behalf of those who are consciously and contritely moral failures and into which righteousness we can enter by the portal of faith and receive the favor of the Lord. If we accurately discern the trends of Israel’s story, and what its religious experience was meant to be – through events, signs, symbol, etc – we can gain a good idea as to the route through life the Messiah was to follow and dutifully adopt (e.g. sojourn in and emergence from Egypt, divine instruction from the mount as the new Moses, miraculous provision of bread for the masses, matching the twelve to the number of tribes).
Jesus sums up and embodies the mission of Israel, therefore it is not the church itself, so much, that is the new Israel, but it is rather that through faith in Christ believers are incorporated within the true Israel, Jesus himself, an Israel now accessible to every believing Gentile and Jew. In Christ we are admitted to the covenant community, which is now termed the Body of Christ, which he inhabits, enlivens, thus coordinating every part as an instrument or organ of divine devotion and service, the entity that Israel was intended to be.
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