One of the many things I appreciate about this congregation, is your openness to other religious and spiritual traditions. Many of you have knowledge and expertise decades beyond mine in the ways of Eastern Religions, Yoga, Tai Chi, aboriginal spirituality, European mysticism and the like, and it informs your faith lives in complex and varied ways. Furthermore, the extensive world travels of many of you have moved this relationship with other faiths and other peoples out of the theoretical realm, and into real-live person-to-person relationships. In a world where religious divisions have many parts of the world, including the middle east, in the grips of war and economic aggression, any effort we make to reach out to other religious or spiritual traditions is to be embraced as a force for good in the world.
And yet…
there are edges where our beliefs are opposed to those of others, and their
beliefs contradict ours. Today’s
reading from the book of Hebrews intentionally places itself right in the
middle of one of those zones, stating a point of theology that really is THE
dividing point between Judaism, and the Christian subgroup that emerged from
it.
We have so
much in common with our Jewish sisters and brothers. Virtually all of what is regarded as sacred
scripture in Judaism is also regarded as sacred in Christianity. Both of us embrace one God, whom we
experience as both the transcendent creator of the universe, and the life-force
that we experience with each breath. We both have foundational stories in which
God intervenes in the usual course of nature – the Hebrew people’s escape from
Egypt, and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Both Jews and Christians have a sense that God
expects much of us in our treatment of the poor and the marginalized, since the
welfare of the downtrodden is at the very heart of God (as heard this morning
in the Song of Hannah, 1 Samuel 2:1-10,
and later reflected in Mary’s Magnificat).
Culturally,
we as Christians have much to be ashamed of in the treatment of Jews, from the
ghettoes of the 13th century to the holocaust of the 20th
, of that there is no doubt. But from a
purely theological standpoint – how we understand ourselves in relationship
with God and the world – there is far more that we share, than separates us. We are truly one Judaeo-Christian
tradition.
So why are
our faiths so separate? Why do I see
lots of eastern tradition drifting into Christian practice, but very little
cross-pollination between these two faiths that have grown up in the same
plant? Perhaps this is a western
Canadian thing - I think there might be more Jewish influence on Christian
thought and practice in eastern Canada, but here in the west I see us admiring Jewish cultural traditions and
having some great personal friendships, but I don’t hear as much popular
migration of theological influences from Judaism to Christianity as I hear from
eastern or aboriginal religious traditions.
For a very articulate
description of the Jewish-Christian gap, I turn to one of my academic heroes,
professor John Bright. John Bright was a
biblical scholar par excellence. He
wrote a towering book called “A History of Israel” in 1959 and it remains one
of THE standard reference works for understanding the world of Hebrew
Scripture. At the end of his brilliant, fair-minded book, Professor Bright (pp.
463-464) asks the key question: once we reach the end of the Hebrew Scriptures,
what did they understand to be the destination of the Jewish faith from
there? He gives a two-fold answer, and
I’m going to leave it in the masculine language of the good professor’s day:
“The history of Israel would continue in the
history of the Jewish people, a people claimed by the God of Israel to live
under his law to the last generation of mankind. To the Jew, therefore, …the hope of the Old
Testament is to him a thing yet unfulfilled, indefinitely deferred, to be eagerly
awaited by some, given up by others (for Jews are probably no more of one mind
where eschatology is concerned than are Christians). Thus the Jewish answer [is that] Israel’s
history does continue as Judaism.
“But there is another answer, the one the
Christian gives, and must give. It is
likewise historically legitimate, for Christianity did in fact spring from [Judaism
at that time]. That answer is that the
destination of Old Testament history and theology is Christ and his
gospel. It declares that Christ is the
awaited and decisive intrusion of God’s redemptive power into human history and
the turning point of the ages, and that in him there is given both the
righteousness that fulfills the law and the sufficient fulfillment of Israel’s
hope.
I first read
that epilogue nearly 30 years ago, and the late professor’s question still
haunts me. How do we, as Christians, approach the completely different
Messianic understandings of Christianity and Judaism? How do we, as heirs of the Judaeo-Christian
tradition, dialogue with our Jewish sisters and brothers with honesty and
respect, given the divergence of our traditions from this very point?
Each Sunday,
the lectionary, or table of bible lessons, gives us four readings. Typically, I pick two of those for our Sunday
morning focus, sometimes just one. For the past six weeks, the folks at
lectionary central have felt compelled to give us preachers a series of nearly-identical
readings from the book of Hebrews which draw pointed distinctions between the
repetitive Jewish sacrificial practices, and the once-and-for-all sacrificial
death of Jesus Christ. Following the
direction of my seminary profs, when you see something in scripture that you’d
rather not deal with, that is precisely the point that needs to be explored - and
so my skirting-of-issue comes to an end this morning.
At least six times between chapters 7 and 10, Hebrews makes this
point about outmoded priestly practices being replaced by Jesus, and while
there are slight differences each time the point is made, it does get really
repetitive. Preaching these chapters as a sermon, it’s as if the author of
Hebrews is intentionally droning on, repeating his point until it irritates his
audience and then coyly asks the rhetorical question, “are you getting bored
yet? Are you? Well good! Because in the old
approach to sin, every sin needed to be paid for by a specific sacrifice, and
it did get terribly repetitive: you sin, you sacrifice, you sin, you sacrifice,
you sin, you sacrifice, you sin, you sacrifice. But for the author of Hebrews, Jesus
is the one and only sacrifice, offered once and for all. No additional sacrifices needed, the cycle is
broken.”
Do we sense a bit of superiority in the way this is
presented? Yes, we do. But I do need to raise three points that help
us frame what Hebrews is saying.
First, the writer is not standing at a street corner in Jerusalem,
looking at the priests offering sacrifices and wagging a judgmental finger at
them. No, by the time Hebrews was
written it’s almost a certainty that the Temple had been destroyed. He was looking back, perhaps 1800-1900 years
back at the days when the sacrificial rules were being set. His argument was not so much, “look at these
silly Jewish people and their useless sacrifices” – it was more a fundamental
statement about any system in which people think they are alienated from God
unless they perform a specific ritual action.
He would probably have been as critical of high Christian understandings
of communion or baptism. The writer of
Hebrews looked at Jesus and said, no matter what payment you think God needs
when you stumble and fall, it’s already been looked after. Do not live in the past, live fully in the
present and move into God’s wonderful future for you.
Second, while he uses the ancient Jewish sacrificial system as his
workbench for making his point, the author of Hebrews would have to have been
aware that many of the early Jesus people did not fully understand the
forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus. This
was a common theological issue, for Jews and Christians! Hear these words from
the apostle Paul, in the 5th and 6th chapters of Romans:
“God’s kindness now rules, and God has accepted us because of Jesus Christ our
Lord. This means that we will have
eternal life. What then should we say?
Should we keep on sinning, so that God’s wonderful kindness will show up even
better? No, we should not! ... In the
same way, you must think of yourselves as dead to the power of sin. But Christ Jesus has given life to you, and
you live for God”. (Rom 5:21 – 6:11, CEV)
This is one of the great biblical statements about God’s gracious
forgiveness: as Christians, however we believe what was done on the cross, we
are to live with the assurance that we cannot save ourselves from the dirty
little corners of our lives, or the big regrettable actions of our
society. We come in humility to
Christ Jesus, say “thank you”, and that is enough. It is the power of God working in us, and not
some self-generated force of goodness, that brings us new life in Christ.
And third, especially from a United Church pulpit, I have to
acknowledge that not all Christ-followers have any relationship with this
salvation theology. For many liberal
Christians, Jesus is a great teacher, a powerful reformer, a mystical presence
in times of trouble, but the equations of sin and forgiveness, cross and
resurrection, and “entry requirements” for heaven, are less certain or less
central. Similarly, while the idea of a Messiah coming to restore the nation of
Israel was quite widespread in the days of Christ, it wasn’t followed by
everyone, and over the centuries this messianic thinking has diminished
substantially within Jewish thought. We
need to remember that the writer of Hebrews only knew what he knew: he could
not foretell what would happen between Jews and Christians and their respective
Messianic beliefs in the generations to follow.
Generally, I try to have a specific tie-in between the scripture
reading, and life as it unfolds in our time and place. Today, I’m afraid that the topic at hand has
needed a more purely doctrinal approach so the daily implications are not quite
so practical. But I will say this: in
our relations with sisters and brothers of other faiths, there are places where
we differ. Sometimes it’s just the
details on which we disagree; other times, the disagreements are big, even
life-and-death. As northern hemisphere
Christians, we are fortunate, very fortunate: we are generally able to deal
with these differences with a shrug of the shoulders and a vocalized, “live and
let live”. But I do encourage you (1) to
be clear on what Christ Jesus means to you, (2) to have a means of articulating
the divine mystery of a God who is intensely personal and wonderfully ethereal,
(3) to know what ethical behaviours are inspired within you by the power of the
Holy Spirit. Three decades of
interacting with people of other faiths has taught me that only when I am clear about what I believe as a Christian, am I truly
able to listen respectfully to the beliefs of people of other faiths. The book of Hebrews details a fork in the
road that appeared nearly 2000 years ago, between those who were still awaiting
the Messiah, and those who believed he had already come and would be coming
again. That is a big, and perhaps
irreconcilable difference in our basic theologies, no matter how we frame it.
We must accept that difference in our beliefs, and move on in our
relationships. Sometimes, as this
summer when the United Church of Canada joined many large American
denominations in calling for an end to specific actions of the State of Israel
in the West Bank, we have said some blunt things that may have been taken
personally by our Jewish friends. But
even having said these things, we can honestly say that the formal relationship
between Jewish and Christian entities in Canada is one of friendship, and that
is a good thing.
In closing, the last word goes to professor John Bright:
“So it is that Old Testament history ultimately places one before a
decisive question. And that question is
[the question from Jesus to his disciples]: “Who do you say that I am?... It is
on this question, fundamentally, that the Christian and his Jewish friend divide. Let us pray that they do so in love and
mutual concern, as heirs of the same heritage of faith who worship the same
God, who is [Creator and ] Father of us all.”
Reference cited:
Bright, John. A History of Israel. Philadelphia:
Westminster. 3rd ed, 1981.
Also, see an excellent article by Susan Eastman, an assistant prof at Duke
Seminary:
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=11/8/2009
For more regarding North American Church statements about Israel’s
activity in the West Bank, see http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/church-appeal-on-israel-angers-jewish-groups.html?_r=0
and www.gc41.ca
© 2012 Rev Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, Canmore AB
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