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Home Saturday, February 28, 2004
I am honored and humbled to be included in this Interfaith Sabbath. I am grateful to the Sisterhood of Temple Beth El and Rabbi Block for inviting me to talk about a topic dear to my heart and important for today.
To be fairly obvious, the first thing Christians can learn from Judaism is what Judaism is. That is, we Christians generally don't know that there has been a two-thousand year development of the Jewish tradition since the New Testament was written. While we wouldn't usually make the mistake of thinking that the church today is the same as the church of the New Testament, we do generally think that Judaism is simply the form of religion we see in Scripture. So, we have an ongoing need to learn about Judaism, about the depth of faith you share, about the worship and ethics that shape your lives, about the prayer and Scripture reading that sustain you, about the traditions and customs that you cherish and pass on to your children. So I appreciate your generosity and hospitality in sharing this Sabbath day with us, as we continue to learn about your faith tradition.
Perhaps a bit more boldly now, I would say that Christians can learn from Judaism who God is. In spite of the tension there may be because of Christian claims to revelation, we still know and trust that God lives and breathes through the Jewish people, and in living out your covenanted faith, you help us know God in a way that no one else can show us.
Perhaps as a subset of that point, Christians can learn from Judaism how to read Scripture. It is said that the United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language. Well, Judaism and Christianity are two faith traditions separated by a common Scripture. We do not read texts the same way, although we often may agree. Judaism, by its faithfulness to its own tradition of reading Scripture, has much to offer for Christian ears willing to listen. Too often, we Christians have closed off our reading of the sacred texts. We have settled them even though they did not always wish to be settled. You bring us the gift of another voice and another tradition for reading our shared texts. In particular, you bring us a rabbinical tradition of reading that won't let texts lie there settled and dead. Instead, the texts are constantly engaged and wrestled with and debated and reread. We need to keep hearing that way of faithful reading.
What has caught my attention over the last few years is how Judaism has something vital and timely to offer Christians today unlike any time before. The church has for 1700 years been in a position of power and prominence in the Western world. We have developed much of our tradition from the perspective of those in control and those who dominate. But many of us see that the era of Christendom is over, and we are not all sad to see it gone. The oppression and violence done in the name of God and Jesus by the church is a tragic part of our history, particularly in relationship to Judaism.
Even though there is still a dominant cultural kind of Christianity, the church that seeks to live a faithful witness today must recognize what Jews have long lived with: We are in exile. We are on the fringe. We cannot take our faithfulness and our costly decision making for granted anymore. We must tend to our faithful living with great care and attention.
Judaism, of course, has developed as a tradition that lives on the fringe of the dominant culture, as a minority often within an overshadowing empire. And now, we in the church who want to stay more faithful to God than we are to the empire must learn how to live on the fringe, too. Thankfully, Jewish tradition can teach us a lot about doing this.
For example, we are only beginning to rediscover how to practice our faith in the home. We have few rituals, prayers, and blessings that we do in Christian homes. We have somehow given it all over to the clergy and the institution. But now we are learning again that the table and the family are the centerpiece of a faith lived, shared, celebrated, and passed on. So the rich Jewish traditions of Sabbath and holy days celebrated in the home are important for us to learn from.
Chief among those is the keeping of Sabbath. In my long study of the tradition of Sabbath and why it is that Christians lost it along the way, I have come to see it is one of our unfortunate mistakes. There's something wonderful and blessed about the way that Judaism has kept the Sabbath for so many centuries, and as Ahad Ha'am wrote, the way the Sabbath has kept the Jews. It is perhaps time for Christians to learn again that the regular, rhythmic living in Sabbath rest and celebration can keep us as well.
Perhaps most challenging and urgent for us Christians is to learn how to keep alive a distinctive identity within a culture that won't make it easy for us to be distinctive. Judaism has long learned how to keep alive a distinctive identity in a hostile or indifferent world. Judaism has long learned how to be engaged in the world, making it more just and righteous, while still being uniquely Jewish. We Christians are getting lost in the tides of the culture too easily. We are losing our children to a different vision and a different god than the God of Israel and of Jesus. Judaism has wisdom for us to hear.
One way that a distinctive identity is given is through a meaningful rite of passage for youth. We have a long tradition in Lutheranism of confirmation. When children in the church get to be around 13, we have a celebration of their faith formation and growing maturity, even though, really, in a 13 year old, maturity is more a matter of hopefulness. But, we have all come to see that our tradition of confirmation is not working very well, that we don't immerse our youth well into a sustainable Christian identity.
Now at this point I have to say, I am a bit jealous of your bar mitzvah traditions. To think that we could ever sit down our Lutheran youth to learn Hebrew is just beyond my wildest dreams. Not to mention learning New Testament Greek. And yet, Judaism has understood that there is something worth the great effort and commitment and struggles and arguments over schedules and car pools and television to take youth through a vital rite of passage. I hope we can find that kind of commitment in ourselves and restore the much needed rite of passage into an adulthood of faith.
Finally, in light of the controversy of the Passion movie released this week, let me say that there is something vital Judaism can continue to do for Christians. You can continue to challenge and help us to reread our own history with more honesty and critical reflection. As Christians have praised the Gibson film and minimized the question of anti-Semitism, it has occurred to me once again that we tend to be largely non-historical in how we think about our faith and life. We Protestants in particular, although I'll give Lutherans a few bonus points on this one, we tend to jump from Jesus to today, without considering all that has happened for good and for evil in the ensuing 2,000 years. Christian commentators have largely ignored the tragic events over many centuries, and evaluated the Passion film as if it had no historical precedent with frightful impact. Judaism has the history and sacred memory to remind us about that history and to keep us discerning and thoughtful.
Thank you again for this opportunity to be with you on this Interfaith Sabbath day.
E-mail Rev. Michael Coffey
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