TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: God of all peoples, your arms reach out to embrace all those who call upon you. Teach us as disciples of your Son to love the world with compassion and constancy, that your name may be known throughout the earth, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” Romans 11:1.
This sentence is perhaps the most important for us followers of Jesus to elevate in this age of increasing antisemitism. Incidents of antisemitism, including assault, vandalism and harassment, increased by more than a third in just one year and reached nearly 3,700 cases in 2022. “Antisemitic incidents in the US are at the highest level recorded since the 1970s” By Krystina Shveda, CNN. Sadly, hostility toward Judaism and violence toward Jews have been prevalent throughout the history of the church. It continues to find expression in many sectors of Christianity today. Proponents of anti-Jewish sentiment often point to the New Testament and Saint Paul in particular in support of their hateful views. For this reason, I think it is essential that we understand Paul’s relationship to Judaism and the nature of his mission to the gentiles.
If you were to attempt striking up a conversation with Paul about Christianity, he would not have the foggiest notion what you are talking about. That is because Christianity did not exist during Paul’s lifetime and ministry. There was a “Jesus movement” within Judaism. Paul, though initially hostile toward the movement, ultimately became associated with it. Thus-and this is critically important-Paul was not a convert from Judaism to Christianity. He was a faithful Jew who found in Jesus’ faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection a deeper understanding of Israel’s covenant with its God. Paul never says “I was a Jew” or “I used to be Jewish before I saw the light.” To the contrary, he states clearly and proudly, “I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.” Asking Paul whether he was a Jew or a Christian would be like asking someone from New Jersey whether they are American or New Jersian.
Paul did not understand the church as an alternative to Israel. But he did believe that the God of Israel was also the God of all people, that is “the gentiles.” As he saw it, the salvation accomplished by Jesus opened up the covenant relationship God had with Israel to all nations. His vision was not for Jews to abandon their covenant relationship with God. Rather, his hope was for Jesus to be the open door through which the gentiles, formerly estranged from God, could enter into and become a part of the sacred covenant promises entrusted to Israel. As a corollary, Jesus was to be a porthole through which Israel would recognize God’s purpose of uniting people of all nations under a single covenant relationship. Paul never dreamed that he was starting a religion new and different from the one in which he grew up.
We learn much about Paul’s ministry from the Book of Acts, which was written decades after Paul’s death and at a time when relations between the Jesus movement and other strands within Judaism, particularly the Pharisees, was becoming increasingly adversarial. Nonetheless, it is clear that Paul saw his missionary journeys as an extension of his Judaism. Wherever his travels took him, Paul consistently went first to the synagogue or other Jewish worshiping communities in the area. Sometimes, he found a receptive audience. At times, he met opposition.
It is important to keep in mind that, outside of Palestine, the line of demarcation between Jew and gentile was more attenuated. Jews in Greece and Asia Minor typically spoke Greek and were heavily influenced by the surrounding Hellenistic culture where they lived among diverse peoples with whom they joined together in civic events and conducted business. Intermarriage between Jews and gentiles was common. Gentiles were frequently involved to various degrees in the life of the synagogue. Paul seems to have had a large degree of success with gentile audiences, probably those who had had some relationship with and knowledge of Judaism.
One might get the impression from reading Paul’s letters, particularly his epistles to the Romans and Galatians, that he had a deep antipathy to Torah (translated from our Greek New Testament as “law”). But that is not the case. Paul had no problem with Jews being observant of Torah and the traditional practices that grew out if it. Indeed, he appears to have been observant himself. But he had a big problem with the imposition of these many practices upon gentile converts to the Jesus movement. Paul insisted that God’s call, both to Israel and to the gentiles through the Jesus movement, must be answered by faith, not obedience to any code of behavior. In this, Paul was thoroughly consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures:
“It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 7:7-8.
“for not by their own sword did they win the land,
nor did their own arm give them victory;
but your right hand, and your arm,
and the light of your countenance,
for you delighted in them.” Psalm 44:3.
Paul also insisted that God’s mercy and forgiveness is not premised on perfect obedience. Again, this is entirely consistent with Israel’s faith. The understanding that Israel would fall short of what God commands was built into the fabric of the Torah which provided for sin offerings through which the community and individuals were given the opportunity to turn from their wrongdoing and find reconciliation with God and with one another. Torah was thus a redemptive and community building instrument of grace. However, when Torah ceases to be viewed as God’s gift to human beings and is understood instead as a requirement human beings must fulfill in order to qualify for God’s salvation, it becomes a curse. As Paul saw it, the insistence by some within the Jesus movement that gentiles received into the church by baptism needed to comply with all the religious and cultural norms governing Judaism, circumcision in particular, had precisely that effect. For some within the Jesus movement and other strands of Judaism as well, this was a bridge too far. Thus, the polemic we find in Paul’s letters does not reflect a dispute between Judaism and Christianity (which did not yet exist!), but a conflict within the Jesus movement between those who felt that gentile converts should observe all essential aspects of Torah, including circumcision, and Paul with his supporters who were convinced that baptism into Jesus Christ was sufficient.
Though the Jesus movement eventually parted company with the Jewish community, it is important to understand that this was a gradual process. We know that disciples of Jesus attended worship in synagogues well into the second century. It was not until the church became the official religion of the Roman Empire following the rise of Constantine the Great that the split became final. Armed with the might of empire, the church was now in a position to attack its opponents, Jews, heretics and pagans alike with more than theological arguments. Notwithstanding the specific affirmation in our creeds that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” the death of Jesus was increasingly placed squarely and solely on the shoulders of the Jews. In the centuries that followed, Jews experienced the full weight of Christian supremacy in the form of discrimination, pogroms, inquisitions culminating in the Holocaust.
Our problem is that us disciples of Jesus, the Jew from Nazareth, have forgotten how we were once outsiders who received a gracious invitation to Israel’s covenant home. We forgot that we are guests and began acting as though we own the whole house. We would do well to heed Saint Paul’s warning that we “wild olive branches,” who have been grafted into the cultivated olive tree that is Israel, can as easily be cut away if we start putting on airs. Romans 11:19-21. We, the invited guests, have even gone so far as to evict our hosts! For centuries, the doctrine of superssessionism, the notion that Judaism has been displaced by the superior religion of Christianity, has been elevated to the level of orthodoxy. As a result, Jews in America have been targeted for conversion, pressured to “assimilate” and subjected to discrimination, defamation and scapegoating.
That this vicious and irrational hatred of Jews continues to be a powerful and dangerous force in American culture is undeniable. This calls for, among other things, a strong theological reassessment of the church’s teachings concerning Judaism. We need to emphasize the church’s symbiotic relationship with the people of Israel, the community that gave birth to our faith. I must confess that I do not fully understand the arguments made by Saint Paul in the nineth through eleventh chapters of Romans. I do not understand what Paul means by “a hardening coming on a part of Israel” (Romans 11:25) or how Paul’s “magnifying” his ministry to the gentiles is supposed to make his fellow Jews “jealous” or what he expected that to accomplish. Romans 11:14. What I do know is that, in the midst of these arguments, Paul still refers to all Israel as his “fellow Jews.” Romans 11:14. I do know that he was convinced that the “full inclusion” of Israel in God’s design meant life for the world. Romans 11:15. I do know that Paul is convinced that “all Israel will be saved.” Romans 11:26. Thus, according to the New Testament witness generally and that of Saint Paul in particular, the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus is the one proclaimed by the ancestors and the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures for the people of Israel. By God’s sheer act of grace in Jesus Christ, the gentiles have been invited to participate in that glorious, mysterious and hopeful promise.
I believe Saint Paul would be horrified if he could see what has become of the church he worked so hard make a witness of reconciliation and unity for Jews, gentiles, slaves, free, men and women of every nation. I believe that if we take seriously what Saint Paul actually taught and what the New Testament proclaims concerning Jesus and his mission, we will share that outrage and recognize not only our complicity in the historic violence against Jews, but our obligation to struggle against the vestiges of that sad legacy as it continues to rear its ugly head in acts of violence today. We need to state with clarity that it is not the mission of the church to make Jews into Christians, assimilate them into our nominally Christian culture or denigrate their faith in order to legitimize our own. When we can finally look respectfully and gratefully to our Jewish neighbors with gratitude for the spiritual legacy from which our own faith was born, acknowledge that the covenant God made with them is as valid as it ever was and recognize that the hope of the Jewish people expressed in their faithful obedience to Torah and the hope expressed in our discipleship to Jesus are one in the same, perhaps we will one day see the realization of Paul’s vision.
Here is a poem by Eve Merriam that gives us a snapshot of what it is like for a Jewish child growing up in America.
Jew
Babies have no special history.
Born, you were rosy and round, gurgled like any other,
horizon was mother’s breast and father’s chucking finger;
peeped from your bunting, saw only the friendly sky.
Crawling, the world enlarged to father’s watch
fat as a golden moon in the fairy tale;
innocent blocks spelt out no tattling word,
and even raised to high-chair the scene was cheery:
nursery walls in pink or charming blue,
Jack and Jill the only handwriting there.
While you were yet young, however, the swag was stolen.
You were blamed.
At school the children stumbled over your name;
you were never the Prince in games. Always your nose
made you Rumpelstiltzkin or the Dwarf.
Your father’s cap was queer. (But freckles are queer,
too, and red hair, and your father drinks too much!)
No matter. The money was never found, let’s call him Ike the
Thief.
Ike, modern clubmember of the Lost Tribes of Israel:
lost, yes, but not your ancestry.
It was glittering swag: never found,
All those million years: and you’re to blame of course.
Oh I grant
they could have blamed the snake in Eden, the apple,
or even the dirty goat grazing on the garbage;
rain might have been the victim, earthquake, or suspect fire,
indigestion, dreams, roses, or constipation.
But they chose the Jew. Surely your rabbi
read you the Hebrews where God’s anointed race?
Now how would you like to take yours: mixed or straight?
We are sorry to inform you our enrollment is complete.
No Dogs or Jews Allowed.
Someday when the swag is found, you can cancel kike
and nigger, wop, hunky, chink, and okie.
But just now the chances look very slim;
the swag is either underground too deep
to drill, or too high for the heavenliest plane.
Maybe, quite sensibly, it was never even lost,
but they myth continues, a colossal Judge Crater,
Kidd’s map, the virgin birth, life on the moon.
Source: Poetry, (September 1941) Eve Merriam (1916-1992) was an American poet and writer. Born in Philadelphia, she was one of four children of Russian Jewish immigrants. She graduated with an A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1937 and then moved to New York to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University. Merriam’s first book, Family Circle was published in 1946. For this work she won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Her book, The Inner City Mother Goose, written in the aftermath of the urban uprisings of 1968-69, was one of the most frequently banned books of all time. It was the inspiration for the Broadway musical, Inner City. The play was revived in 1982 under the title Street Dreams. Merriam published over thirty books over her career and taught at both City College and New York University. You can read more about Eve Merrian and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 