Nineteenth Sunday

Lectionary: 115

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ

for the sake of my own people,

my kindred according to the flesh.

They are Israelites; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;

theirs the patriarchs, and from them,

according to the flesh, is the Christ,

who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

R. Kendall Soulen, in his book The God of Israel and Christian Theology, laments the sad loss of reverence for Jewish people and Jewish tradition in our Christian tradition. 

Religion, at least among Abraham's children, is very often opinionated and quarrelsome. Anyone remotely familiar with the four gospels knows the feuding between Jesus and the Pharisees, Sadducees, Levites, scribes, and Herodians. Historians tell us of their differences but in the gospels they're just "the opposition." Persistent, ubiquitous, and finally victorious opposition -- except for the part where he rises from the dead. 

The gospel probably reflect the resistance that Jesus met, and they certainly describe the opposition Christian missionaries met wherever they went throughout the Roman empire. The synagogues were often large, well-financed, and well-connected. If, in some cases, they welcomed the missionaries at first, they soon realized that this was an entirely new teaching. Most Jews and their rabbis were not prepared to reconsider everything they knew about God and their history in the light of Jesus's resurrection. Their gentile friends and neighbors, for the most part, agreed. They did not want a new religion in an already complicated world. 

So there was bad blood between Jews and Christian from the outset. But the Jewish religion was in decline, especially after Jerusalem was leveled; and Christianity was ascendant despite the persecutions. Within a generation, most Christians were not Jewish converts; they were gentiles with no affection or loyalty to the Jewish religion. When they read the Hebrew scriptures, they read it as Christians, combing its pages for predictions of Jesus. By the fourth century they were finding proof texts of the Trinity. They ignored or dismissed the doctrine of the Jews as God's Chosen People, preferring to believe that Baptism made them the new chosen people. 

Reading the New Testament, they often sided with Jesus against his opponents, intruding in a quarrel to which they had not been invited. I think of the line from an old western movie, "Is this a family fight or can anybody join?" No, you cannot join this quarrel among Jews. 

Christians completely forgot the extraordinary Jewish reverence for the name of God. They regarded the Tetragrammaton as a Jewish thing. They did not notice its silent presence in the New Testament writings; they did not detect Jesus's scrupulous adherence to the Jewish practice of never enunciating the Name of God. 

Those who didn't actually pore over the New Testament -- most of us -- did not feel Saint Paul's grief, as he describes it in today's second reading. 

This neglect and occasional contempt for our Jewish roots led to the unimaginable horror of the Shoah. The tradition of abuse, violence, and pogroms inspired the Nazi's "final solution." 

Called up short by what we have done, we walk back to discover where our religion went so wrong. And how we might set it right. 

Black Lives Matter has revealed to Americans the depths of our racism. Some observers remind us that institutionalized hate always revives Antisemitism. Whether it is harassing African-Americans, Native Americans, or Catholics it adds Jews to the list of pariahs. 

Antisemitism is the Original Sin of the Christian Church. It is not necessary; it is certainly not the message of Jesus; but it has insinuated itself into much of our thinking and many of our songs, teachings, and doctrines. 

I grew up singing the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas: 

Over ancient forms of worship

Newer rites of grace prevail. 

Only recently did I wonder why did the Saint insert this slam against Jewish rituals. There were no mass conversions in thirteenth century Spain from Christianity to Judaism. Why have Catholics sang these words since the thirteenth century? 

The fallacy that the "Old Testament God" is punitive and arbitrary while "Jesus" is only approachable and forgiving also insults the people who wrote the Hebrew Scriptures. 

After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.

When he heard this,

Elijah hid his face in his cloak

and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.

Today's readings from First Kings and Matthew urge us to pay attention to God's holiness, whether we see it in a gentle breeze, the Kaaba, or a man walking on water. The Lord has given Christians, Jews, and Muslims a gift that should saturate our being, permeate our conversation, and radiate in our presence. There can be peace neither in our hearts nor in our world so long as we ignore God's presence among his Elect.