by Ronald J. Allen and Clark M. Williamson. Louisville: WJKP, 2004. ISBN 0-664-22763-5. Hb, 261 pp., $24.95.
I welcome and celebrate this new commentary as a much-needed resource for my own preaching and teaching, and let me tell you why.
In recent years, the congregation where I serve (the Fifth Avenue Church in New York City) has entered into an ever-deepening relationship with a Reform Jewish synagogue (Central Synagogue), located just a few blocks east of us in midtown Manhattan. While the relationship initially grew out of a friendship shared between our senior pastor and the senior rabbi of the synagogue, it has significantly expanded in recent years to embrace a much larger congregation and staff. In 1998 when the synagogue tragically suffered a major fire, our congregation was among the first to offer our facilities to our Jewish brothers and sisters while their own house of worship was being rebuilt. In 2003-04, when our own building was undergoing major expansion and renovation, the synagogue reciprocated, and for 40 Sundays we Christians held our weekly worship services in the incredibly beautiful and holy space of Central Synagogue’s sanctuary.
This past spring, two of our pastors and two rabbis from the synagogue co-taught a course entitled “Difficult Texts of the Hebrew Scriptures,” Seventy people from both congregations gathered each week to engage in some of the most enlightening and boundary-breaking Bible study I have ever experienced. Currently our two ushers’ boards are meeting to discuss ways in which we might be supportive to one another during our high holy days and seasons (when it is often difficult for both congregations to find sufficient numbers of ushers).
All of this has heightened my own awareness of the ways in which we preachers frequently caricature the Jews or Judaism of Jesus’ time in our preaching and teaching and how, by so doing, we are causing additional harm to a relationship that is already seriously wounded. Who among us hasn’t painted the Pharisees as a hopeless sect of self-righteous religious professionals, or the law as some impossible burden from which Christians are thankfully liberated? Who among us hasn’t dichotomized differences between Jews and Christians in the early centuries, without fully acknowledging the Jewish nature of the early Christian community, or the diversity of theological perspectives that existed within Jewish tradition? The truth is: in this post-9/11 world of increased inter-religious dialogue, we desperately need new paradigms that will help us break out of our old patterns of caricature in preaching and teaching, and we also need to adopt a new language that is more reflective of the faith and kinship we share with Jews.
This commentary, written by Ronald Allen (Professor of Preaching and New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis) and Clark Williamson (Professor of Christian Thought Emeritus at CTC and a member of the church relations committee of the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Council), is an enormously helpful one-volume resource in this regard. In a clear and succinct way, these authors provide interpretation of each of the Gospel texts for the Sundays and holy days in the three-year Common Lectionary cycle, focusing primarily upon (1) “the ways in which the lections are continuous with the theology, values, and practices of Judaism,” and (2) “the points at which the lections caricature Jewish people, practices and institutions.” (p. xiii)
In the process we learn that John the Baptist was actually “keeping kosher” by eating locusts and wild honey in the wilderness; that Jesus was dressed as befits a pious Jew (wearing the tassels reminded him to love and keep the commandments) when the woman with the flow of blood reached out and grasped the border of his garment; and that when Jesus sat down to teach–whether in a boat, on a hillside, or in the synagogue– he was engaging in common Jewish rabbinic practice.
We also learn (in the commentary on the Mary and Martha text from Luke) that first-century Judaism, like first-century Christianity, was far more pluralistic in its teaching about women than we have sometimes been led to believe; that there were actually other first-century Jews who, like Jesus, prayed to God as “Abba“ (see commentary on Luke 11:1-13); and that Pentecost, as depicted in Acts, was an ingathering of the human family that many Jewish writers anticipated happening in the eschaton.
If you’re like me, and you need help in speaking of things Jewish in preaching and teaching, this book is for you. As the authors remind us in their preface, “Teaching Christian congregations to respect Judaism is no mere matter of political correctness. It is a theological necessity. The God of Israel is also the God of the church and loves both church and synagogue with unconditional love and wills for all people to live together in love.” (p. xiv.)
NORA TUBBS TISDALE is consulting theologian at Fifth Avenue Church, New York City.
