This post first appeared as an article in the March edition of the Croydon Parish Magazine
In every age, it seems, Antisemitism raises its ugly head.
It manifests itself in different forms but is always malevolent when it does
so. As we have learnt recently Antisemitism is an issue politically for the Left
as well as the Right.
Following Holocaust Memorial Day in January I read Deborah
Lippstadt’s book Antisemitism Here and
Now. In it she convincingly demonstrates how the pernicious undercurrents
of antisemitism still beset our culture.
But Christians should never be so smug as to think that
anti-Semites are either skinheaded thugs or bearded opponents of the State of Israel.
It is of the deepest regret that many antisemitic tropes and images have their
origins in the lamentable history of Christian attitudes to Jewish people
dating back centuries. The rhetoric of preaching against the Jews has fostered
some ugly and murderous behaviour.
Good Friday became a focus of this. It relates to the texts
that had been taken to imply Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus, a guilt
that would be ‘on us and on our children’ (Matthew
27.25).
This is reflected in the Latin Liturgy of Good Friday that
referred to the ‘perfidious Jews’ or in a Book
of Common Prayer Collect for Good Friday, which is still in the text,
though I trust never used, that refers to Jews and their ‘ignorance [and]
hardness of heart’. It is no comfort that ‘Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks’ are
listed with them too.
For Jewish people the Cross of Christ became a sign of
hatred, oppression and coercion and not the sign of unconditional love,
forgiveness and hope.
A good deal of theological work has been done to unravel
the Christian roots of antisemitism. The Roman Catholic Church has been
particularly impressive in in acknowledgment of the grim history of the
Christian roots of antisemitism. It was a great thing that in 1965 the Second
Vatican Council promulgated the document Nostra
Aetate which re-evaluated Church teaching on the Jewish people. It
acknowledged that Judaism is already a response to God’s revelation and that
the Jews ‘belong to the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the
law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their
race, according to the flesh, is the Christ’; ‘for the gifts and call of God
are irrevocable’ (Nostra Aetate, 4 ).
The Anglican Communion awaits such a thorough articulation of its understanding
of Judaism.
Later Popes have continued the work of Nostra Aetate in word and deed. At the Millennium Pope John Paul II
repented of the sins of Christians towards the Jews, memorably placing a prayer
asking forgiveness in the remaining, western, wall of the Temple of Jerusalem
(to call it the ‘Wailing Wall’ plays to the idea that Jewish worship is somehow
impenetrable or silly). Pope Benedict XVI writes of the ‘blood guilt’ passage
of Matthew and inverts its classic interpretation:
When
in Matthew’s account the ‘whole people’ say: ‘His blood be on us and on our
children’ ((27.25), the Christian will remember that Jesus’ blood speaks a
different language from the blood of Abel (Heb 12.24): it does not cry out for
vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all…read in the light of
faith it means that we all stand in need of the purifying power of love which
is [Christ’s] blood.[1]
Those are powerful words that should engender both humility
and generosity when we think of Jewish people.
The Christian fostering of antisemitism is perpetuated when
we characterise Judaism as an oppressive religion of rules and nit–picking
minutiae; when we forget that Judaism is diverse and not monolithic and has
itself changed and developed over the centuries; and when we do not have
dialogue in humility and generosity.
The growing awareness of Christian complicity in
antisemitism enables us now to use a prayer on Good Friday that gives us a
generous and expansive understanding of the relationship of the Church to Jewish
people. It helps us understand that the Jewish people, known biblically as ‘Israel’,
are God’s first-called people, and are in Covenant with Him. It helps us
remember that the Blessed Virgin Mary, a daughter of Israel, a daughter of
Sion, gave birth to the Redeemer and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who was born under
the Law, which he never repudiated but came to fulfil. It helps us to remember
that the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ is the God of Abraham, Isaac and of
Jacob, of Miriam, Deborah and Esther.
That is not to shy away from our theological differences
and our Christian conviction that Jesus Christ is the Incarnate, Crucified and
Risen Son of God, a conviction a Jewish person cannot hold. It is time for
Christians to foster the end of antisemitism and hatred of those who are
different or ‘other’, whosoever they may be.
Let
us pray for God’s ancient people, the Jews, the first to hear his word:
For
greater understanding between Christian and Jew,
for
the removal of our blindness and hardness of heart,
That
God will grant us grace to be faithful to his covenant
and
to grow in the love of his name. (Common
Worship: Liturgy of Good Friday)
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