“Excuse me,” one asked, “Are you Jewish?” In a hurry and startled by the question, I blurted out, “No. I’m sorry, I’m not.” “That’s OK,” the other said, “Have a good day.”
As I descended the steps to the subway, I thought to myself, That was a stupid answer! What do you mean you’re sorry. You should have said, “No, I’m not Jewish, but I would be honored if I were.” Perhaps I might have attempted to evangelize the evangelizers and said, “Actually, I’m sort of Jewish, and then told them that I follow Jeshua Meshiach, Jesus Christ. I might have noted that following Jesus was once a very Jewish thing to do and that it may be that every Christian is still a kind of Jew.
I’ll never forget a long lunch I had some years ago with the director of the Hillel Center, the Jewish student ministry next door to the congregation I served in Ann Arbor. We were talking about the origins of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity after the destruction of the temple and the relationship between the two faiths that separated so painfully in those years. He punctuated the conversation with an ironic, koan-like utterance that I have been musing over ever since. “Yes,” he said, “If Christianity hadn’t come along, it would have been necessary for us Jews to invent it.” Part of what he may have meant is simply that through Jesus, the embrace of God was widened as Gentiles were welcomed into relationship with the God of Abraham.
Perhaps the first great controversy to animate Christian history was between the mostly Jewish followers of Jesus and fellow Jews who did not follow Jesus. The pain of the controversy underlies several books of the New Testament, especially the Gospels of Matthew and John, the Book of Acts, and several of Paul’s letters. The earliest followers of Jesus were nearly all Jewish of course, but even as increasing numbers of Gentiles became followers, “Jewish Christians” were still a large and important part of the church, for decades perhaps the majority. Many of these Jewish Christians continued to obey purity laws and to attend synagogue on the Sabbath, even as they took part in Christian worship on Sunday.
The controversy was resolved by taking a middle way. On the one hand, Christians, Gentiles and most Jews, began to separate from their “traditional” Jewish brothers and sisters. Jewish Christians ceased to worship in their synagogues, and over time many or most of them no longer felt obliged to obey Jewish purity laws. In short, Christianity – conceived in the womb of Judaism and born Jewish – grew into a distinct religion. Most of Jesus’ followers were no longer understood to be a variety of Jew, but rather members of a new faith. But on the other hand, emerging Christianity committed itself to honor and retain its deep roots in Judaism. Christians would remember Jesus’ Jewishness. The church would retain the Hebrew Scriptures as an integral part of the Christian Bible, not as some mere extended preamble.
Before too long, our General Assembly will consider several matters hauntingly close to this venerable question of our relationship to Jews and Jewish faith. As we do so, we Presbyterians do well to remember that we are called to stand in solidarity not only with beleaguered Christians in the Middle East, a people with whom we share a faith. We are also called to stand in solidarity with Jews, a people often beleaguered as well, and a people not from just another “non-Christian religion,” but rather a people with whom we share history, Scripture, and God.
MICHAEL L. LINDVALL is pastor of Brick Church, New York City.
