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Addressing Advent Anti-Judaism

Two contemporary paintings side by side. The first is of Isaiah receiving a burning coal to his lips by an angel. The second is the angel appearing before Mary.
"Isaiah" by Richard McBee; "The Annunciation" by Daniel Bonnell

During the season of Advent, Christians traditionally read Luke’s and Matthew’s Nativity stories alongside the book of Isaiah. It makes sense to do so, as Matthew himself makes the connection:

22 Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:

23 Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son,
        And they will call him, Emmanuel. (Matthew 1:22-23)

– Matt 1:22-23, referencing Isaiah 7:14

But when we read Isaiah only in service to our Christian story, we do harm to our Jewish neighbors with whom we share these scriptures. To utilize the Hebrew Bible (= “Old Testament,” the Jewish Bible) solely as a promise fulfilled through Christ is to suggest that these scriptures are incomplete without and dependent upon Jesus — and therefore that Jews’ interpretation of their own Bible is incorrect and irrelevant.

So how do we simultaneously honor our Advent traditions, draw from Isaiah’s wisdom, and respect the vibrant, living faith of our Jewish neighbors?

Dr. Tyler Mayfield provides some excellent options in his 2020 book Unto Us a Son Is Born: Isaiah, Advent, and Our Jewish Neighbors.

The purpose of this post is to share some of the wisdom from Mayfield’s work, and to urge pastors, teachers, and others who help shape the Advent experience for their communities to check out the entire text for even more invaluable commentary.

A photo of Tyler Mayfield, a white man with short graying hair and short gray-brown beard smiling in the woods. To his right is the cover of his book

Contents of Unto Us a Child Is Born:

  • An introduction that, well, introduces the issues with current Christian uses of Isaiah and suggests a bifocal framework as remedy
  • Chapter 1: Using Our Near Vision During Advent
  • Chapter 2: Using Our Far Vision to Love Our Jewish Neighbors
  • The remainder of the chapters delve into each of the Isaiah passages offered by the Revised Common Lectionary for the Advent season.

This post will survey key points from the intro and first two chapters, and close with actionable ways to incorporate Mayfield’s message into Sunday worship and classes. Preachers and teachers will find it immensely helpful to read the rest of the book’s chapters as lesson/sermon preparation for each week of Advent.

The Bifocal Lens

Image of one side of a pair of bifocals, with the smaller, near lens fused in the larger, far lens. A line connects the larger lens to "Far Vision: Openness to our religious neighbors; paying attention to ways we may cause harm." A line drawn from the near lens leads to "Near Vision: Our sense of identity; e.g. worship rituals, cherished hymns"

In order to maintain our Christian traditions without monopolizing the Hebrew Bible, Mayfield recommends a bifocal view:

  • Our near vision focuses on our worship practices and liturgical celebrations, grounding us in our living religious tradition;
  • Our far view pays attention to the ways those practices affect those not in our communities and “compels us to critique and reject some aspects of this tradition, those that are hurtful, inaccurate, and derogatory toward our religious neighbors” (intro).

Using Isaiah and other Jewish scriptures responsibly during worship is not merely a scholarly endeavor; as Mayfield reminds us, reading and interpreting the Bible is a matter of ethics:

[…L]iturgy and ethics are not easily separated. In her excellent and provocative book on racism and sexism in Christian ethics, Traci West notes, “The rituals of Sunday worship enable Christians to publicly rehearse what it means to uphold the moral values they are supposed to bring to every aspect of their lives, from their attitudes about public policy to their intimate relations.” …We want our worship to spur us to live out our ethical claims. (Introduction)

Using Mayfield’s bifocal lens, we can ethically navigate “the tension between identity within a particular faith tradition and openness to the faith traditions of others.”

So what are some of the ways that traditional Advent worship can lead us to do harm to our Jewish neighbors?

Supersessionism

Supersessionism, also called replacement theology, claims that Christianity has replaced or supplanted Judaism; that our covenant through Christ cancels out Jews’ covenant through Abraham and Moses (hence the labeling of the two parts of the Christian Bible as the Old and New Testaments, from the Latin word for covenant).

Synagoga et Ecclasia, two statues on the Notre Dame cathedral representing the Jewish and Christian faiths. This juxtaposition of crowned Church standing strong next to the Synagogue who is “blind to Jesus,” the ten commandments almost falling from her hand, is unfortunately depicted in numerous artworks of Medieval Europe.

Mayfield brings in Susannah Heschel’s description of supersessionism as a “theological colonization of Judaism“; she defines it as:

“The appropriation by the New Testament and the early church of Judaism’s central theological teachings, including messiah, eschatology, apocalypticism, election, and Israel, as well as its scriptures, its prophets, and even its God, while denying the continued validity of those teachings and texts within Judaism as an independent path to salvation.” (Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, 2008)

The seeds that the early church planted have born violent fruit across the centuries. This attitude of judgment and/or pity has led both to ideological violence — “render[ing] Jews invisible or irrelevant or as incomplete Christians” (intro) — and immense physical violence through to the segregation, scapegoating, forced conversions, expelling, and flat-out murder of the Jewish people across multiple continents.1

Medieval painting of figures gathered around a fire on which a book is burning. One person presses a poker onto it, while another person holds up a book to throw it into the fire. There are piles of books around this figure
Detail from Pedro Berruguete’s “Saint Dominic and the Albigensians” (1490s), depicting a Medieval “trial by fire” in which potentially heretical texts were determined to be “false” if they burned.

There are multiple instances of the Talmud — the central text of rabbinical Judaism alongside the Jewish Bible — being likewise gathered and burned across Medieval Europe due to the anti-Jewish belief that the Talmud was the primary obstacle keeping Jews from converting to Christianity. In 1242, for instance, King Louis IX of France ordered the burning of “24 cartloads” — something like 12,000 volumes — of priceless, scribe-written copies of the Talmud. This event devastated France’s Jewish community, which had been one of the seats of Jewish scholarship. Louis also followed up the book burning with a decree to expel all Jews from France: violence against Jewish scripture goes hand-in-hand with violence against Jewish bodies.

All this to say, the views we shape through worship and elsewhere truly do have real-world implications.

Mayfield argues that it is possible — indeed, necessary — to share scriptures respectfully. After all, he says, Judaism and Christianity are siblings.

While Christianity is often envisioned as the “shoot” growing from the dead stump of Jesse in Isaiah 11:1, a child who has improved upon the parent, in reality Judaism and Christianity are more like two branches extending from the same tree. They “grew out of the same milieu,” developing from the religion depicted in the Hebrew Bible during the chaotic era of that first century CE:

While early Jesus followers were formulating an identity distinct from Christ’s Jewish origins, Rome’s 70 CE destruction of the Second Temple spurred on new iterations of Jews’ own religion; following the Pharisees,2 they recentered faith around local life rather than the temple. In this way, the two religions are around the same age, growing from the same foundations! We are sibling religions; and we are neighbors. The problem is that we Christians have frequently behaved as very poor neighbors indeed.

Why Jewish “Neighbors”?

In Isaiah, Advent, and Our Christian Neighbors, Mayfield has opted for the term neighbor to describe the Christian relationship to Jews in the present day. Why? For one thing, love of neighbor is a central tenet of both Jewish and Christian tradition, originating in Leviticus 19:18 and emphasized by Jesus in Mark 12:31 and Matthew 22:39. Reading scripture through the ethic of love thy neighbor, we must ask, “If a particular reading of Scripture leads us to think badly of Jews, then is this reading Christian?” (chapter 2).

Furthermore, Mayfield continues,

I also use the concept of neighbor because neighbors do not always agree. In fact, they sometimes disagree and have to take seriously one another’s perceptions, feelings, and opinions. Being neighborly is being attentive and listening well to the concerns of others. It is realizing that your actions affect those around you. Christians act neighborly when they take seriously Jewish critiques of Christianity and Christian teachings, just as Jews act neighborly when they offer these critiques. (Chapter 2)

In reconsidering how we read and teach scripture, we can imagine that scripture is the fence we share with our Jewish neighbors, even while we dwell in different “geographies.” But when we accept supersessionist theology, we deny Jews their side of the fence; we colonize it.

Let’s look at how supersessionism manifests specifically in the ways we use Isaiah during Advent.

Resisting a Christian Isaiah

Mayfield describes how, over the past two millennia, Christians have disconnected Isaiah from his ancient Jewish context and Christianized him, even going so far as to call this eighth-century BCE prophet’s book the “fifth Gospel” alongside Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John (intro).

ID; ancient mural of Mary on a throne with a young Jesus in her lap. To her right is Peter holding a key. To her left is Isaiah holding a scroll on which the Latin for "Behold, a virgin will conceive and birth a son" is written
The Virgin Mary and Jesus, flanked by Isaiah (right) and Peter (left).

In lifting Isaiah from his seat among Jeremiah, Amos, and all the Hebrew Bible’s prophets, we sever him from his original ancient Jewish audience and deny his relevance to our Jewish neighbors today.

We hear Isaiah (and Handel in his Messiah) proclaim: “For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6) and everything in our tradition preps us to assume that the “us” in question is us Christians; that this child must be Jesus!

In our presumption that Isaiah’s prophecies are all about Jesus, we render this prophet irrelevant to our Jewish neighbors, denying the validity of their interpretations of this biblical book. But if we dig into the historical context, we can broaden our ways of understanding these texts and thus learn how to better share these scriptures.

A Christ-exclusive interpretation of Isaiah misunderstands what biblical prophets did.

We hear the word “prophecy” and think of foreseeing the future, often the distant future. But the prophets of the Bible, from Joel to John the Baptist, were largely focused on their own here-and-now:

The prophets of ancient Israel (and ancient Mesopotamia) did not see their sole activity as foretelling. They were also “forthtellers,” speaking to the religious and political issues of their day with courage and strength. As mediators between God and the people, prophets delivered messages, oracles, and visions to audiences that included kings and commoners. They interpreted the past, analyzed the present, and spoke of the future but were undoubtedly more concerned with events of the present than events several hundred years in the making. …

[T]he notion of prophecy as foretelling renders the prophet’s words irrelevant to, and uninspired for, the first hearers and readers of these messages. (Chapter 1)

There’s another historical issue with reading Isaiah’s prophecies as exclusively about Jesus as his people’s anticipated Messiah:

At the time of Isaiah in the 700s BCE, the concept of the eschatological Messiah had not yet been developed!

While the Hebrew Bible does describe figures like David and Cyrus as anointed ones (which is what the Hebrew word mashiach, “messiah,” means), the concept of The Messiah who would usher in an age of justice and peace was most likely a later development of Second Temple Judaism (516 BCE – 70 CE).

We only see The Messiah in Isaiah’s descriptions of a “Wonderful Counselor…Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6b) and a just judge on whom God’s spirit rests (Isaiah 11:1-10) because of our own bias: “We think we know what we will find before we look” (chapter 1).

Learning about a passage’s original context helps us interpret the text more faithfully as we seek its relevance today. What is more, we can and should consider its multiple historical contexts, the whole breadth of what it has meant for different groups in different eras:

Texts in Isaiah have an entire history of interpretation, which includes the “originating” context in ancient Israel, their reuse and interpretation in Second Temple Judaism perhaps, their Christian context in which some Isaiah texts became christological, the Jewish context in which some texts became messianic, and then later Christian context, that is, when these texts were attached to Advent.

The book of Isaiah was composed by ancient Israelites over several centuries, from the eighth to the fifth centuries BCE. These authors wrote for their ancient Israelite audiences with no comprehension of later events such as the life of Jesus and the growth of Christianity. Thus, the book of Isaiah does not predict the birth of Jesus. (Chapter 1)

Recognizing the long history of a piece of scripture helps reduce our sense of ownership over the text; we realize that its messages are not for Christians alone, but for faithful Jews and Christians (and Muslims, to an extent) across the millennia and today. This recognition is vital for unpacking biases and beliefs we often don’t even realize we carry deep in our psyches — and that some of the tools we use reinforce.

A Complicit Lectionary?

A key concern Mayfield explores throughout Unto Us a Child Is Born is how the lectionaries we use can guide us towards supersessionist readings during Advent. He focuses on the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) because of its popularity: Denominations ranging from the UCC to the Roman Catholic Church make use of it; overall, a huge portion of all sorts of Christians (largely in Canada and the USA) use it. 

Mayfield explains that for each Sunday, the ecumenical team that created the RCL selected the Gospel reading first, and then selected an “Old Testament” text (plus a psalm & Acts/epistles/Revelation passage) to complement that Gospel reading.

The theological ramifications of always prioritizing the Gospel in this way include an unbalanced dialogue: If we imagine the readings in conversation with each other, the Gospel always gets to choose the topic; the “Old Testament” only ever gets to respond.

Actionable Ways to Be Good Neighbors

After learning about Advent’s supersessionist pitfalls, you might be tempted simply to drop Isaiah in an effort to avoid the issue entirely. But Mayfield argues that that is a mistake:

We need Isaiah to celebrate Advent. The book’s treasures are too marvelous to set aside as ancient history or consign to another liturgical season. As we begin the liturgical year, we need to hear of swords beaten into plowshares and of barren lands blooming. …To use only the Gospel readings during Advent limits our theological reflections while also insinuating that only those four biblical books are worthy of public reading and proclamation. (Chapter 1)

Instead of ditching Isaiah, Mayfield offers practical suggestions for using the prophet responsibly:

First, we can open readings of Isaiah in church with an explicit statement: “Today we hear words from a book held sacred by both Jews and Christians.” As Mayfield explains, “This simple and accurate statement…compels us to recognize our religious neighbors even as we worship” (chapter 2).

Going further, a preacher can remind congregants that “As Christians, we understand Isaiah through our histories and theologies, but Jews do not read Isaiah this way.”

(My own thought: A pastor can even take time in an Advent sermon to acknowledge some of the history of misusing Jewish scriptures / debunking common presumptions about Isaiah’s role in the Nativity story. A Sunday School teacher has even more space to explore that history and context, and to invite attendees to imagine how Isaiah speaks to us today.)

Beyond simple statements and one-time mentions, Mayfield urges us to commit to always interpreting scriptures through a paradigm of “do no harm” — to “share as good neighbors.”

A key part of this paradigm is an intentional shift from “a more linear approach to the narrative of Scripture (in which we read the biblical books as a progression both in time and in theological depth) to a more back-and-forth conversational approach (in which we allow various texts to speak to one another).” This conversational framework creates space for the Bible’s many voices and refuses to let “New Testament” voices dominate.

An outdoor statue of two women sitting side by side. Both are robed and crowned. One holds a large torah scroll; the other an open Bible. They are smiling and looking at one another's texts.
A new representation of Synagoga et Ecclasia, mutually crowned and learning from each other. Statue by Joshua Koffman for St. Joseph’s University, commissioned in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Roman Catholic Church’s 1965 Nostra Aetate declaration, which repudiated past anti-Jewish doctrine and actions and called for more respectful relations.

Here’s a longer excerpt from Mayfield describing how to put this paradigm into practice while remaining true to ourselves:

So, how do we, as Christians, continue to affirm one of our central claims of Jesus as the Messiah while also allowing space for the dismissal of that claim? Perhaps we are helped by returning to the tension between identity and openness.

Christians maintain strong identities in the claim of Jesus as the Christ while also remaining open to other visions of the messianic kingdom, thus realizing that the full realm of God has not come. It is vital to our identity to claim Jesus as the Messiah, and we are also open to other formulations of messiah.

One meaningful way forward along this challenging path is not to claim too much: to be careful, considerate, and humble with our messianic notions. For example, instead of holding to a messianic or christological reading of Isaiah as the only valid notion, Christians could admit openly and explicitly that these texts provide some of the necessary elements that will constitute notions of messiahship in first-century Judaism, notions Jesus and his biographers took up and used. However, these texts do not point immediately to Jesus; there is just not a straight line — historically or theologically — between Point A, Isaiah, and Point B, Jesus.

This sort of admission presents real possibilities for neighborly engagement since it ties the Christian claim about Jesus more closely to sacred texts that are used only by Christians. It does not predetermine the meaning of Isaiah for all traditions, but it allows Jews and Christians to interpret Isaiah’s prophecies based on their respective traditions, with neither tradition holding ultimate authority over the biblical text. …We could go even further to say that the Jewish reading is an important and necessary one from which Christians could learn. (Chapter 2)

More Benefits of Interpreting Responsibly!

Ultimately, a paradigm of respect and mutual conversation bears rich fruit not only in our relationship to our Jewish neighbors, but to our own faith. Letting Hebrew Bible texts stand on their own merit opens us to how a given passage speaks to us here and now, rather than limiting its prophecies to a closed loop of prophecy-fulfilled-in-Christ. Mayfield quotes Ellen Davis’ comment that

“We like to keep the frame of reference for prophecy within the ‘safe’ confines of the Bible, by reading prophecy solely as illuminating what has already happened—the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ—and not allowing it to meddle much in the current lives of Christians” [and Jews!]. (Chapter 1)

We are not called to play it safe; we are called to let scripture breathe, and to welcome in God’s mischievous spirit! Making room for many interpretations, for multiple messages from Isaiah for different times and contexts, liberates scripture to speak to us in new, challenging, relevant ways today.

Doing so also helps us live into the tension of Advent’s dual theological themes: Incarnation and eschatology. As Mayfield notes,

These two foci do not naturally cohere. The emotions invoked by Advent call us to “prepare joyfully for the first coming of the incarnate Lord and to prepare penitently for the second coming and God’s impending judgment.”3 Joy and penitence. …We are pulled in different emotional directions. (Chapter 1)

Churches tend to lean towards the joy — but we can’t ditch the solemnity, can’t “alleviate the tension,” without robbing ourselves of “the incredible richness and grace that result from the annual eschatological collision in the weeks before Christmas.”4

As someone who centers my ministry around breaking binaries, reveling in the in-betweens where God does Their best work, I appreciate this insistence on the “both/and” of penitence and joy — as well as of Isaiah and Matthew/Mark, and of a prophetic message for Isaiah’s time, and Jesus’s time, and for us and our Jewish neighbors today.

Two contemporary paintings side by side. The first is of Isaiah receiving a burning coal to his lips by an angel. The second is the angel appearing before Mary.
“Isaiah” by Richard McBee; “The Annunciation” by Daniel Bonnell

Closing

In Advent, past, present, and future queerly coalesce:

“We have hope in what the incarnation brings to our world each day, even as we hope for the setting right of things with the culmination of history.” (Chapter 1)

Though the details certainly differ, we can thus proclaim that “even though the Messiah has come, we wait with Jews for the ‘complete realization of the messianic age'” and that in this interim time, “it is the mission of the Church, as also that of the Jewish people, to proclaim and to work to prepare the world for the full flowering of God’s Reign, which is, but is ‘not yet’”5 (chapter 2).

This Advent claim “takes the unique identity of Christians seriously as ones who have seen in Jesus our Messiah yet remain open to the fullness of that claim in the future” (chapter 2).

It is possible to shape Advent into a season wherein we don’t perpetuate harm against our Jewish neighbors, but rather grow in our respect for and mutual relationship with them. The remainder of Unto Us a Child Is Born: Isaiah, Advent, and Our Christian Neighbors is overflowing with more knowledge and advice that further enables this aim. I highly recommend checking it out. If you need help obtaining a copy, hit me up.

Have a blessed, pensive, and joyful Advent.

  1. For a thorough history of antisemitism, and how to be in solidarity both with Jews and Palestinians, I highly recommend Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. ↩︎
  2. Pharisees were cool, y’all; go learn from the fabulous Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg about what Pharisees believed, how Jesus may have been a Pharisee himself, and the context around the Gospel writers’ negative depictions of them ↩︎
  3. Mayfield’s quoting Gail R. O’Day, “Back to the Future: The Eschatological Vision of Advent” (2008) ↩︎
  4. Mayfield’s quoting J. Neil Alexander, Waiting for the Coming (1993) ↩︎
  5. Mayfield is quoting Mary Boys, Has God Only One Blessing? (2000) ↩︎
Categories
bible study Current Events / Activism easter Holy Days LGBT/queer Queer Lectionary Reflections for worship services

Today is Easter Sunday. Today is Trans Day of Visibility. Today is day 176 of genocide.

This year the lectionary gives us Mark’s account of the Resurrection, with its fearful cliffhanger ending — an empty tomb, but Jesus’s body missing. And isn’t that unresolved note fitting?

In the face of so much suffering across the world, it feels right to be compelled to sit — even on this most jubilant of days — with the poor and disenfranchised in their continued suffering.

Mark’s account:

Just days before, the women closest to Jesus witnessed him slowly suffocate to death on a Roman cross. Now, now trudge to his tomb to anoint his corpse — and find the stone rolled away, his body gone. A strange figure inside tells them that Jesus is has risen, and will reunite with them in Galilee.

They respond not with joy, but trembling ekstasis — a sense of being beside yourself, taken out of your own mind with shock. They flee.

The women keep what they’ve seen and heard to themselves — because their beloved friend outliving execution is just too good to be true. When does fortune ever favor those who languish under Empire’s shadow?

A painting in a style resembling stained glass of three women standing over a coffin, which is empty except for strips of white and yellow linen. The women's hands are raised in confusion and shock.
“The Empty Tomb” by He Qi.

Love wins, yet hate still holds us captive.

I’m grateful that Mark’s resurrection story is the one many of us are hearing in church this year. His version emphasizes the “already but not yet” experience of God’s liberation of which theologians write: Christians believe that in Christ’s incarnation — his life, death, and resurrection — all of humanity, all of Creation is already redeemed… and yet, we still experience suffering. The Kin(g)dom is already incoming, but not yet fully manifested.

Like Mark’s Gospel with its Easter joy overshadowed by ongoing fear, Trans Day of Visibility is fraught with the tension of, on the one hand, needing to be seen, to be known, to move society from awareness into acceptance into celebration; and, on the other hand, grappling with the increased violence and bigotry that a larger spotlight brings.

The trans community intimately understands the intermingling of life and death, joy and pain.

When we manage to roll back the stones on our tombs of silence and shame, self-loathing and social death, and stride boldly into new, transforming and transformative life — into trans joy! — death still stalks us.

We are blessedly, audaciously free — and we are in constant danger. There are many who would shove us back into our tombs.

An art piece structured like a collage featuring an elegant figure wreathed in fire, with text around them reading "& like any goddexx you are scorned & become the fire anyway." The figure is pouring pitchers of water into a pool at their feet; green hills with various flowers stretch up around the pool.
Art by Amir Khadar, based off the poem “litany in which you are still here” by kiki nicole

And of course, the trans community is by no means alone in experiencing the not-yet-ness of God’s Kin(g)dom.

Empire’s violence continues to overshadow God’s liberation.

The women who came to tend to their beloved dead initially experienced the loss of his body as one more indignity heaped upon them by Empire. Was his torture, their terror, not enough, that even their grief must be trampled upon, his corpse stolen away from them?

The people of Gaza are undergoing such horrors now. Indignity is heaped on indignity as they are bombed, assaulted, terrorized, starved, mocked. They are not given a moment’s rest to tend to their dead. They are not permitted to celebrate Easter’s joy as they deserve. They are forced to break their Ramadan fasts with little more than grass.

Photo of a blanket set with bowls of grass soup and slices of lemon
A photo of a Palestinian family’s meal, taken in Gaza.

Those of us who reside in the imperial core — as I do as a white Christian in the United States — must not look away from the violence our leaders are funding, enabling, justifying.

We must not celebrate God’s all-encompassing redemption without also bearing witness to the ways that liberation is not yet experienced by so many across the world.

This Easter, I pray for a free Palestine. I pray for an end to Western Empire, the severing of all its toxic tendrils holding the whole earth in a death grip.

I pray that faith communities will commit and recommit themselves to helping roll the stones of hate and fear away — and to eroding those stones into nothing, so they cannot be used to crush us once we’ve stepped into new life.

I pray for joy so vibrant it washes fear away, disintegrates all hatred into awe.

In the meantime, I pray for the energy and courage to bear witness to suffering; for the wisdom for each of us to discern our part in easing pain; for God’s Spirit to reveal Xirself to and among the world’s despised, over and over — till God’s Kin(g)dom comes in full at last.

Painting of a woman playing a flute with several birds around her, as below her a line of Palestinians make their way up towards the city of Jerusalem. The colors are warm and bright.
Painting by Palestinian artist Fayez Al-Hasani
Categories
bible study Holy Days lent Reflections for worship services

Ash Wednesday, Isaiah 6, and the blessing in our limitations

Painting by Justin “JUST” Simmons.

The below reflection is cross-posted from Daily Ripple; see the end of this post for more information. Furthermore, if you prefer to listen instead of reading, you can listen to this piece in the latest episode of the Blessed Are the Binary Breakers podcast.

I said, “Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lord of heavenly forces!”

Then one of the winged creatures flew to me, holding a glowing coal that ze had taken from the altar with tongs. Ze touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has departed, and your sin is removed.”

– Isaiah 6:5-7

Did the glowing coal leave a mark? A smear of dark? A bright burn?

Reading this text on Ash Wednesday, I can’t help but connect Isaiah’s coal and our ashy crosses:

He confesses himself unclean — admits his limits, where he and his people have failed.

We profess ourselves dust — acknowledge our limits, the finite time we have here and now, and how often we’ve failed to cherish that time.

In the confession, we open ourselves to blessing. Accepting our limits, we fall into God’s limitless love.

Why these physical, ritual actions — coal to the lips, ashes to the brow — to mark these limits and the blessings they yield?

God knows, respects, loves our existence as embodied spirits, inspirited bodies. She pairs spiritual gifts with tangible signs to help us experience Her truths with our whole selves.

A glowing coal — dead plants packed deep, transformed over eons, unburied at last and set alight — touches truth-telling lips to set them free.

Ashes of palm branches once waved in worship, burned down to begin the cycle anew, mark us as individually finite, but gathered into an infinite love.

Take time to prayerfully consider your own limits. What blessings, what liberation can you imagine flowing from our individual finitude? How can you connect your limited time and gifts to a greater whole, in small ways with great love?

Photo of a bowl of black ashes, with a small dried palm leaf cross in the middle of the ashes. The bowl sits on a green palm branch.

About Daily Ripple!

I am delighted to have joined the creative team at Daily Ripple — starting with posts this week, including what you just read!

If you want to incorporate queer-affirming, justice-oriented snippets of biblical reflection written by a diverse range of Christians into your everyday life, Daily Ripple is a lovely option. It’s free, and every weekday, subscribers receive a short reflection, ending with a question meant to guide you towards action. 

I’ve been writing the daily posts for this week, incorporating queer and autistic theology into readings of Psalm 119, Mark 4, and Isaiah 6. Check them all out at the Daily Ripple.

Categories
advent bible study Holy Days My poetry Queer Lectionary Reflections for worship services

Christ is barred from Bethlehem

A photo from the separation wall around Bethlehem that shows red and green graffiti reading "Merry Christmas world from Bethlehem ghetto"

A voice cries out in the wilderness,
“Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight his paths.”

How do we do that in the present day?
We break down walls that block his family’s way.

As Mary and Joseph draw near Bethlehem
a fence looms over them, some eight yards high

and soldiers watch from towers as they trudge
not straight into the city, but around
to find the checkpoint — where they’re turned away:
“We’re only letting tourists in today.”

So Mary groans outside the barrier
no place to lay her newborn’s bloodied head

and John the Baptist paints in green and red
across that cold wall’s surface — shepherds, lo! —
“Merry Christmas world
from Bethlehem Ghetto”

You are welcome to make use of the above poem or below reflection in worship, in classrooms, on social media, etc. Please credit Avery Arden of binarybreakingworship.com.

_____

In a 2014 article, Medhi Hasan wonders how Mary and Joseph’s trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would go in the modern day:

“How would that carpenter and his pregnant wife have circumnavigated the Kafka­esque network of Israeli settlements, roadblocks and closed military zones in the occupied West Bank? Would Mary have had to experience labor or childbirth at a checkpoint, as one in 10 pregnant Palestinian women did between 2000 and 2007 – resulting in the death of at least 35 newborn babies, according to the Lancet?

‘If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed,’ declared Father Ibrahim Shomali, a Catholic priest of the city’s Beit Jala parish, in December 2011. ‘Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission – or to have been tourists.’ “

Meanwhile, a Reddit post claims they’d have to get through fifteen checkpoints on their journey. Chances are, they wouldn’t make it through — just get harassed and interrogated for their trouble.

As I reflect on these statements, I ponder also the opening of Mark’s Gospel. This text, which is read in many churches during the Advent season, recalls the prophetic cry of Isaiah 40:

A voice is crying out:
“Clear the Lord’s way in the desert!
    Make a level highway in the wilderness for our God!
Every valley will be raised up,
    and every mountain and hill will be flattened.
    Uneven ground will become level,
    and rough terrain a valley plain.
The Lord’s glory will appear,
    and all humanity will see it together;
    the Lord’s mouth has commanded it.”

What does such a prophetic leveling — a flattening of land so that all people, including children, elderly and pregnant persons, and people with mobility impairments can easily travel — look like today?

I envision the 440 miles of separation wall crumbling into the earth. Watchtowers topple. Barbed wire melts away. Snipers’ guns morph into ploughshares; bombs explode oh-so-gently into fertilizer to feed burned olive groves.

No more are humans caged in the world’s largest open-air prison. No more are children dragged away in the night to be tortured and tried as terrorists.

The land is free. The people are free. God’s liberating Spirit moves unhindered; God’s holy land becomes, as promised, a “house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).

Thanks be to God. May we be moved to help make it so.

  • A person wearing a keffiyeh secures tear gas canisters to a tree, with normal Christmas ornaments visible on trees behind him
  • A person secures tear gas canisters to a tree with Christmas lights on it
  • A spent tear gas grenade shell casing lies on the ground near Aida Refugee Camp following clashes between Palestinian youth and Israeli forces, Bethlehem, West Bank, November 29, 2013. The grenade cartridge, made by the U.S. company Combined Tactical Systems (CTS) contains labeling in English including full contact information and the company’s U.S. address in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.
  • Mandatory Credit: Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Shutterstock (13691022a) A graffiti of Jesus Christ wearing arafat scarf is seen near the Israeli separation West Bank Wall in Bethlehem, Palestine on December 28, 2022. Street Art And Banksy Hotel In Bethlehem, Palestine – 28 Dec 2022

Gallery images: a remake of a famous 1936 “Visit Palestine” poster to show the Holy Family and the separation wall; photos of Palestinians decorating a tree in Bethlehem with tear gas canisters in 2015, as well as a close-up of a canister showing it’s USA-made; and more photos from the separation wall, including the icon “Our Lady of the Wall,” where nuns and pilgrims pray rosaries to dismantle the wall.

Categories
advent Holy Days Hymns Other search markers Unpacking Antisemitism

“O Come Emmanuel” revised for Palestine’s plight

Painting depicts the wall that divides Bethlehem, with Joseph walking beside a donkey carrying Mary in the foreground, and a star shining above Bethlehem in the background.
Painting by Zaki Baboun, a Palestinian Christian who lives in a suburb of Bethlehem.

This Advent, some progressive Christians have discussed whether to table one of our religion’s most ancient hymns: “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” When we sing of God coming to “ransom captive Israel,”
will our congregations recognize we don’t mean the modern Israeli nation?

Honestly, a conversation around this song is long past due (and many have had it over the decades). The truth is, it’s always been laden with supersessionist implications. Depicting the Jewish people as living “in lonely exile here / Until the son of God appear” perpetuates the idea that Jews’ relationship with God is incomplete because they “didn’t accept” Jesus as their Messiah.

How do we resist both antisemitism and Zionism, while seeking to maintain a connection to Christians who came before us? One option may be to reimagine the songs we cherish so that, instead of perpetuating deep-seated hate and Christian supremacy, they challenge us towards joining God in solidarity with the world’s oppressed.

In that spirit, below is my reworking of “O Come Emmanuel” to center the plight of Palestinians (and that removes, I hope, the supersessionism — let me know if I missed any). May our worship songs plant in us a deep desire for justice, and spark our action towards a future where all peoples, all religions live in mutual relationship and respect.

Please feel free to use and share around — just credit Avery Arden of binarybreakingworship.com.

__

O come, o come compassionate Divine,
And ransom captive Palestine
That mourns with tears that will not be soothed
Till empires fall and nations’ hearts are moved.

Rejoice! Rejoice! God’s justice is at hand
To liberate the people and the land.

O come, o bright and ever-burning star;
Bring Gaza comfort from afar!
Dispel from her the shadow of death
That murders dignity and chokes out breath.

Rejoice! Rejoice! God’s justice is at hand
To liberate the people and the land.

O come, o Wisdom from on high,
Take up the outcast’s cause, the captive’s cry.
Guide us to build your kingdom on earth
Where all faiths flourish, and the last are first.

Rejoice! Rejoice! God’s justice is at hand
To liberate the people and the land.

O come, o King of Peace and Justice, break
All weapons down, and from them ploughshares make.
Let all tears dry, all peoples respond:
“We are each other’s magnitude and bond.”

Rejoice! Rejoice! God’s justice is at hand
To liberate the people and the land.

Categories
bible study LGBT/queer Queer Lectionary

Queering Hagar’s Story

A short reflection on this Sunday’s lectionary text, Genesis 21:8-21. Scroll to the end for further resources

a painting of a figure like Hagar who is smiling as water pours through her hands; above her is a giant eye.

Name changes occur throughout scripture, but there is only one instance in which a human being directly names God!

That person is Hagar — the woman enslaved and then cast off by God’s own chosen people, yet who recognizes God’s solidarity with her in a way that resonates with many marginalized folk, including queer & trans people of faith.

Back in Genesis 16, Hagar is forced to conceive a child with Abraham — her bodily autonomy denied — and then suffers abuse at Sarah’s hand so painful that she prefers almost-certain death in the wilderness. While waiting to die, God comes to her, nourishes her, encourages her with the promise of a better future. For a time, Hagar must return to her oppressors.

This is a hard message, but It may resonate with queer and trans people who make the hard choice to find what safety they can while in the closet, or who choose to remain in relationship with family or faith communities that have caused them harm.

It also isn’t the end of Hagar’s story: when the time is right, God leads her out — as told in this week’s text in Genesis 21.

Sarah continues to abuse Hagar, with Abraham as a passive bystander and enabler. In a society where only one of Abraham’s sons can inherit his wealth and blessing, Sarah sees Hagar’s son Ishmael as a threat to her son Isaac, simply by existing! In our own day and age, this myth of scarcity persists, causing us to hoard resources and compete needlessly.

Sarah cannot stand to see Hagar’s child playing with her own son — as if they were equals! As if a slave boy should be having a moment of fun! She reads something sinister into the play — not unlike how some people today read sinister things into queer play, into drag queens and gender expansive youth.

Having convinced herself that Hagar and her son are a threat, Sarah gets Abraham to cast them out.

But again, God is with the outcast; God comes again to Hagar, who in Genesis 16 had given God the name El Roi — “God sees me.” This God is the god of her oppressors, yet Hagar recognizes that this god is her God as well! This god is a God who sees the suffering of the lowest of society, and responds.

God sees queer and trans people, too. God is our God, too — those who hate us do not have a monopoly on the Divine!

And God walks with us through every struggle, fueling us to fight the good fight and promising blessings to come.

Questions for reflection:

  • When have you witnessed God coming to the Hagars in our midst?
  • When has your community behaved like Abraham & Sarah, hoarding God’s love as if there were not blessing enough to go around?
  • Can you imagine a world in which Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar meet again? What would Hagar need to feel safe to meet with her former abusers? What would Sarah & Abraham need to do to make things right?

Further Reading

Queer-specific resources:

Other resources:

a painting of two women with curly brown hair and brown skin embracing; the one being held has a blue shawl with “Sarah and Hagar” written in Hebrew on it, while the one embracing her has a bright blue dress. A dove with an olive branch hovers behind them
“Sarah and Hagar” by Jewish artist Hilary Sylvester, who says: “Sarah the mother of the Jewish People and Hagar the mother of the Arab people finally find reconciliation through Mashiach.”
Categories
bible study easter Holy Days Reflections for worship services

Waiting with Mary Magdalene — lament that wrestles God

A reflection that draws from John 20 and Isaiah 56. Happy Easter, all.

As Mary Magdalene sits alone in the predawn stillness, she weeps — but her tears are not only grief: they are tears of frustration. Tears with questions. Tears that demand something of Divinity.

Mary is not passive in her weeping: she is wrestling the divine.

Rev. Dr. Rachel Wrenn of the First Reading podcast calls what Mary is experiencing “exasperated hope.” She parallels Mary in the garden to God of Isaiah 65, who is “ready to be sought out” by Her people who “sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places” (vv. 1, 4a). Magdalene reverses the image of Divinity waiting exasperatedly for humanity — now the human awaits the Divine.

God of Isaiah 65 says, ‘I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that did not call on my name.’

Magdalene too is saying, “Here I am,” to a God who WILL call her name, soon — but not yet.

First, she must endure the excruciating in-between space.

And she endures that space alone. Peter and the Beloved Disciple enter it for a moment, as first light tentatively touches the tomb’s rolled-back stone.

They sprint into it — that pregnant space between question and answer, death and rebirth — past Mary weeping without a word to her.

They enter the empty tomb and they see the burial cloths that God has stripped off and left behind. They see and the beloved, at least, “believes” (John 20:8). Believes that Jesus is risen — does he also believe that Jesus will return? That they will all see Jesus again, and soon?

If he does, his action is not to hunker down with Mary into the waiting space. He and Peter “return to where they were staying” (v. 10).

They cannot bear the waiting space. Most of us can’t. Who would choose to settle down in hospital halls with figures hunched and haggard, to wait with them for whatever news there may be?

Most of us wouldn’t. Magdalene might.

We can’t skip past the waiting, though. So Mary waits — waits for whatever will come, whenever it comes — and as she waits, she weeps. Her tears are not despair — they are lament.

In This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley describes the power and purpose of lament:

“Lament is not anti-hope. It’s not even a stepping-stone to hope. Lament itself is a form of hope. It’s an innate awareness that what is should not be. As if something is written on our hearts that tells us exactly what we are meant for, and whenever confronted with something contrary to this, we experience a crumbling. And in the rubble, we say, God, you promised.”

Mary believes in the promises of her teacher, his proclamations of a world turned on its head, a new creation born where the poor are lifted from the ashes.

Her hope in that world has crumbled, but she doesn’t abandon the rubble: she settles into it. Makes her home there to wait and see what rises from the ruins.

Mary is crying, “God, you promised!” And she in turn promises God, “here I am — whenever you come, you will find me. I’m not going anywhere.”

In her describing of lament, Cole continues, “Our hope can be only as deep as our lament is. And our lament as deep as our hope.” Mary’s lament is long, because her hope is deep.

Mary Magdalene does not sit in the garden in despair. Her lament expects response — demands it. Like God of Isaiah 56, she is waiting to be sought — waiting for her call to be met with response…and it will be! Her God WILL call her name — “Mary!” — and she will know the joy of lament answered, of hope fulfilled.

Magdalene is actively waiting for what she KNOWS will come. And she’s not going anywhere till it does.

Thank God for those who wrestle blessing out of pain; who brave the liminal lament and don’t let go.

Mary, your waiting is not in vain. Joy comes with the morning. Hallelujah!

I originally posted this as a twitter thread, which you can see here.

Categories
bible study Holy Days lent Other search markers Unpacking Antisemitism

Jesus Flipping Tables: Unpacking antisemitic readings of the “Temple Cleansing”

Lent is one time of year we talk about Jesus marching into the Court of Gentiles, sitting down and braiding a whip, and proceeding to wreak havoc upon money-changers’ tables and sacrificial animal cages.

It’s a weird, fascinating, fun story (that you can read in Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, and John 2)! Progressive & leftist Christians like myself have a particular love for it, pointing to this story as evidence that sometimes our “meek and mild” Jesus used violence to combat injustice. If you hang around progressive Christian spaces online, I bet you’ve seen this meme more than once:

A portrait of Jesus wielding a whip in the teple, with tables overturned and people on the floor looking confused or afraid, with text overlaid that reads "If anyone ever asks you What Would Jesus Do? Remind him that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibility"
Image description in alt text.

He did indeed break out a whip, according to the Gospels! But why? What exactly was Jesus’s purpose for causing a ruckus in the Temple?

A common progressive interpretation of the story is exemplified by this Tweet by ELCA pastor Eric Clapp:

"Just a reminder that the only time Jesus flipped tables is when religious people put a bustling economy over the well-being of their neighbor."
ID in alt text. Click here for the original Tweet.

Hey, I’m all for a reminder that God calls us to care for human beings over economic gain — and that religious leaders often find ourselves in prime positions to make some money ourselves. But before embracing this interpretation, we need to pause and consider what assumptions about Temple goings-on are present within it. For starters, this reading assumes:

  • that the selling of animals for sacrifice right on the Temple premises was inappropriate and even unjust;
  • that Temple leaders did so in order to line their own pockets;
  • and that they charged exploitative prices to the detriment of the poor.

So what’s the problem here?

Well, according to Jewish scholar of the New Testament Amy-Jill Levine, these assumptions about Temple corruption have no historical backing to them. As this post will get to in a bit, both within the Gospel narratives and in extra-biblical sources, we don’t have any reason to believe that money changers were cheating anybody in the Temple, or that Jesus was protesting such a thing!

Even worse, such readings easily lead into antisemitism that impacts our Jewish neighbors even to this day. For example, I can easily imagine the above list of explicit assumptions yielding various implicit ones:

  • that Jewish leaders were greedy & money-obsessed — hmm, doesn’t that sound uncomfortably like an antisemitic stereotype that’s pervaded centuries?
  • that one of Jesus’s priorities in his ministry was to shut down the Temple system and institute a brand new religion that would replace the “legalism” and hypocrisy of Judaism with a “law of love” — a foundational concept of supersessionism, or the idea that Christianity supersedes (replaces) Judaism; click here for information on the pervasiveness of supersessionist views in our churches today & why such views actively harm our contemporary Jewish neighbors.
  • (And if you don’t think this Bible story promotes supersessionism, pause and ponder why we traditionally call it “The Cleansing of the Temple” — implying the Temple, which was at that time the hub of Jewish religious & political life, was unclean.)

I used to hold the same assumptions expressed in the above meme and tweet. Jesus flipping tables to protest exploitative economic and religious systems is a compelling story! It’s relatable to our own activism, it showcases a countercultural Jesus — but is it worth fueling anti-Jewish theologies?

Those of us who claim to care for the oppressed need to rethink our readings of this story, in order to prevent its misuse as a weapon against our Jewish neighbors.

Thus I am grateful to Dr. Amy-Jill Levine for sharing historical context that can help us with our re-readings, and for offering her own interpretation of why Jesus really decided to weave that whip and flip those tables.

The rest of this post is me sharing excerpts from Levine’s book Entering the Passion of Jesus at length (and then ending with further resources, for those interested).

The images I share below condense her argument into concise bits that you could easily share on a church Facebook page or website, or at a Bible study. They can stand on their own as helpful conversation material; but I’ve also interspersed them with longer excerpts from Levine that provide even more information. (If you want a post with just the images and not the lengthy excerpts, click here.)

If you do share these images, please simply credit back to this site! Also, each one has an image description in the alt text; if you share them online, I request that you keep that alt text to make them accessible to people who use screen readers.

Images show slides with text and illustrations based around the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus flipping tables and wielding a whip in the Temple. This first slide shows one such illustration, with Jesus as a middle eastern man with black hair and beard wearing yellow and blue robes with traditional tassels looking angry and wielding a whip, surrounded by frightened looking people and animals escaping their cages, with an overturned table by his side. Text reads “Jesus flipping tables: Dr. Amy-Jill Levine’s Interpretation” and “In Entering the Passion of Jesus, Levine unpacks traditional readings of the “cleansing of the Temple” and offers an alternative that resists antisemitism and applies biblical & historical context…”

The incident known as the ‘Cleansing of the Temple’ is described in all four Gospels. Most people have the idea–probably from Hollywood–that this is a huge disruption. When we see this scene depicted in movies, we find Jesus fuming with anger, and we inevitably see gold coins falling down in slow motion. Everything in the Temple comes to a standstill. …But we are not watching a movie: we are studying the Gospels. …

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
a detail from a painting of the Jesus MAFA series where Jesus is depicted as an African man in a traditional Cameroon marketplace; he’s got deep Brown skin and close-cropped hair, a red robe, and likewise wields a whip and looks angry as people run frightened around him. This image will repeat on every other slide from now on (all slides that include bullet points summarizing Levine’s points). This slide’s text reads, “What follows is a summary of the points Levine makes in her chapter on the “cleansing of the temple”: - Jesus’s whole table flipping, whip-wielding stunt is more symbolic than practical (echoing similar performances by his people’s prophets). - Jesus’s anger isn’t about gentiles being excluded from Temple life; they weren’t.”

Here’s what we know about the actual setting. We begin by noting that the Temple complex was enormous. It was the size of twelve soccer fields put end to end. So, if Jesus turns over a table or two in one part of the complex, it’s not going to make much of a difference given the size of the place.

The action therefore did not stop all business; it is symbolic rather than practical. Our responsibility is to determine what was symbolized. For that, we need to know how the Temple functioned.

The Jerusalem Temple, which King Herod the Great began to rebuild and which was still under construction at the time of Jesus, had several courts. The inner sanctum, known as the “Holy of Holies,” is where the high priest entered, only on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to ask for forgiveness for himself and for the people. Outside of that was the Court of the Priests, then the Court of Israel, the Court of the Women, and then the Court of the Gentiles, who were welcome to worship in the Temple. …

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
a detail from a painting, showing a flipped tables and a mess of coins and sheep and doves. There’s another quote from Levine reading, “Pilgrims…would not bring [sacrificial] animals with them from Galilee or Egypt or Damascus. They would not risk the animal becoming injured and so unfit for sacrifice. The animal might fly or wander away, be stolen, or die. …One bought one’s offering from the vendors. And…there is no indication that the vendors were overcharging or exploiting the population. The people would not have allowed that to happen. Thus, Jesus is not engaging in protest of cheating the poor.”

The outer court, the Court of the Gentiles, is where the vendors sold their goods. The Temple at the time of Jesus was many things: it was a house of prayer for all nations; it was the site for the three pilgrimage festivals of Passover, Shavuot/Pentecost, and Sukkot/Booths; it was a symbol of Jewish tradition (we might think of it as comparable, for the Jewish people of the time, to how Americans might view the Statue of Liberty); it was the national bank, and it was the only place in the Jewish world where sacrifices could be offered. Therefore, there needed to be vendors on site.

Pilgrims who sought to offer doves (such as Mary and Joseph do, following the birth of Jesus, according to Luke 2:24) or a sheep for the Passover meal would not bring the animals with them from Galilee or Egypt or Damascus. They would not risk the animal becoming injured and so unfit for sacrifice. The animal might fly or wander away, be stolen, or die. And, as one of my students several years ago remarked, ‘The pilgrims might get hungry on the way.’ One bought one’s offering from the vendors. …

Despite Hollywood, and sermon after sermon, there is no indication that the vendors were overcharging or exploiting the population. The people would not have allowed that to happen. Thus, Jesus is not engaging in protest of cheating the poor.

Next, we need to think of the Temple as something other than what we think of churches. A church, usually, is a place of quiet and decorum. …The Temple was something much different: It was a tourist attraction, especially during the pilgrimage festivals. It was very crowded, and it was noisy. The noise was loud and boisterous, and because it was Passover, people were happy because they were celebrating the Feast of Freedom. …We might think of the setting as a type of vacation for the pilgrims: a chance to leave their homes, to catch up with friends and relatives, to see the “big city,” and to feel a special connection with their fellow Jews and with God. It is into this setting that Jesus comes. …”

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
more bullet points summarizing points from Levine’s chapter: - Jesus’s anger was not about animals being sold in the temple’s outer courts - There’s also no evidence of unjust prices, so he’s not angry about the poor being cheated here either. - Various Gospel stories show that Jesus did not reject the Temple or its laws & rituals (also – he has “zeal for his father’s house”)

Driving out the Vendors 

…It seems to me that Jesus, in the Temple, was angry. But what so angered him? I hear from a number of people, whether my students in class or congregations who have invited me to speak with them, that the Temple must have been a dreadful institution; that it exploited the poor; that it was in cahoots with Rome; that Caiaphas, the High Priest in charge of the Temple, was a terrible person; that it banned Gentiles from worship and so displayed hatred of foreigners; and so forth. …Some tell me that the Temple imposed oppressive purity laws that forbade people from entering, and so Jesus, who rejected those laws, rejected the temple as well. No wonder Jesus wants to destroy the institution.

But none of those views fits what we know about either Jesus or history.

First, Jesus did not hate the Temple, and he did not reject it. If he did, then it makes no sense that his followers continued to worship there. Jesus himself calls the Temple “my Father’s house” (Luke 7:49: John 2:16). …

Second, Jesus is not opposed to purity laws. To the contrary, he restores people to states of ritual purity. Even more, he tells a man whom he has cured of leprosy, “Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (Mark 1:44; see also Matthew 8:4; Luke 5:14). 

Third, Jesus says nothing about the Temple exploiting the population. As we’ll see in the next chapter, when we talk about the widow who makes an offering of her two coins, Jesus is concerned not with what the Temple charges, but with the generosity of the worshipers. 

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
a detail of an illustration of a courtyard in the Temple with large pillars and crowds of people, with a quote from Levine’s chapter reading, “…The Temple has an outer court, where Gentiles are welcome to worship. They were similarly welcome in the synagogues of antiquity, and today. They do not have the same rights and responsibilities as do Jews, and that makes sense as well. When I [a Jewish woman] visit a church, there are certain things I may not do. …”

Fourth, we’ve already seen that the Temple has an outer court, where Gentiles are welcome to worship. They were similarly welcome in the synagogues of antiquity, and today. They do not have the same rights and responsibilities as do Jews, and that makes sense as well. When I [a Jewish woman] visit a church, there are certain things I may not do. We might also think of how nations function: Canadians, for example, cannot do certain things in the USA, such as vote for president; nor can citizens of the USA vote in Canadian elections.

As for Caiaphas…Caiaphas is basically between a rock and a hard place. He is the nominal head of Judea, and he is supposed to keep the peace.Judea is occupied by Rome, and Roman soldiers are stationed there. Caiaphas needs to make sure that these soldiers do not go on the attack. He needs to placate Pilate, and he needs to placate Rome. 

At the same time, as the High Priest, he has a responsibility to the Jewish tradition. Rome wanted the Jews to offer sacrifices to the emperor…but Caiaphas and the other Jews refused to participate in this type of offering because they would not worship the emperor. The most they were willing to do was offer sacrifices on behalf of the emperor and the empire.

When Jesus comes into the city in the Triumphal Entry, when people are hailing him as son of David, Caiaphas recognizes the political danger. The Gospel of John tells us that the people wanted to make Jesus king (John 6:15). Caiaphas has to watch out for the mob. Caiaphas also has to watch out for all these Jewish pilgrims coming from all over the empire celebrating the Feast of Freedom, the end of slavery. When he sees Roman troops surrounding the Temple Mount, Caiaphas has to keep the peace. And Jesus is a threat to that peace. But none of this has to do directly with Jesus’ actions in the Temple. He is not at this point protesting Caiaphas’s role.

Sometimes I hear people say that Jesus drove the “money lenders” out of the Temple. That’s wrong, too. Money-lending was a business into which the medieval church forced Jews, because the church concluded that charging interest was unnatural (money should not beget money). Yet people needed, then and now, to take out loans. The issue for the Gospel is not money lending but money changing. These money changers exchanged the various currencies of the Roman Empire into Tyrian shekels, the type of silver coin that the Temple accepted. We experience the same process when we visit a foreign country and have to exchange our money for the local currency.

So, if Jesus is not condemning the Temple itself, or financial exploitation, or purity practices, what is he condemning? Let’s look at what the Gospels actually say. …

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
another bullet point summarizing points from Levine’s chapter: “What Jesus’s anger is about: in the versions in Matthew, Mark, & Luke, he quotes Jeremiah 7:11 in calling the Temple “a den of thieves” – it’s become a place where people who sin and oppress in their everyday life feel perfectly comfortable, instead of being called to repent and reform.”

According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, …the concern is not the Temple, but the attitude of the people who are coming to it.

In Mark’s account Jesus begins by saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations?” (11:17). Indeed, it is so written. Jesus is here condensing and then quoting Isaiah 56:6-7… Jesus’ rhetorical question should be answered with a resounding “Yes!” – for the Temple already was a house of prayer for all people. More, he is standing in the Court of the Gentiles when he makes his pronouncement. …Thus, the problem is not that the Temple excludes Gentiles. 

Already we find the challenge, and the risk. Are churches Today houses of prayer for all people, or are they just for people who look like us, walk like us, and talk like us?

How do we make other people feel welcome? Is the stranger greeted upon walking into the church? Is the first thing a stranger hears in the sanctuary, “You’re in my seat”? When we pray or sing hymns, do we think of what those words would sound like in a stranger’s ears? …

Matthew and Luke drop out “For all nations,” and appropriately so, for they knew it already was a house of prayer for all nations. Matthew and Luke thus change the focus to one of prayer. And prayer gets us closer to what is going on in the Synoptic tradition. …

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
another quote from Levine: “Some people in Jeremiah’s time, and at the time of Jesus, and today, take divine mercy for granted… The church member sins during the workweek, either by doing what is wrong or by failing to do what is right. Then on Sunday morning this same individual…heartily sings the hymns, happily shakes the hands of others, and generously puts a fifty-dollar bill in the collection plate. That makes the church a den of robbers… It becomes a safe place for those who are not truly repentant and who do not truly follow what Jesus asks.”

Den of Thieves

Jesus continues, ‘But you are making it a den of robbers’ (Matthew 21:13). Here he is quoting Jeremiah 7:11: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?”

A “den of robbers” (sometimes translated a “den of thieves”) is not where robbers rob. “Den” really means “cave,” and a cave of robbers is where robbers go after they have taken what does not belong to them, and count up their loot. The context of Jeremiah’s quotation – and remember, it always helps to look up the context of citations to the Old Testament – tells us this.

Jeremiah 7:9-10 depicts the ancient prophet as condemning the people of his own time, the time right before Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple over five hundred years earlier: “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’ – only to go on doing all these abominations?“ 

Some people in Jeremiah’s time, and at the time of Jesus, and today, take divine mercy for granted and see worship as an opportunity to show off new clothes rather than recommit to clothing the naked. The present-day comparison to what Jeremiah, and Jesus, condemned is easy to make: The church member sins during the workweek, either by doing what is wrong or by failing to do what is right. Then on Sunday morning this same individual, perhaps convinced of personal righteousness, heartily sings the hymns, happily shakes the hands of others, and generously puts a fifty-collar bill in the collection plate. That makes the church a den of robbers – a cave of sinners. It becomes a safe place for those who are not truly repentant and who do not truly follow what Jesus asks. The church becomes a place of showboating, not of fishing for people. 

Jeremiah and Jesus indicted people then, and now. The ancient Temple, and the present-day church, should be places where people not only find community, welcome the stranger, and repent of their sins. They should be places where people promise to live a godly life, and then keep their promises…

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
one last bullet point: “Finally, in John’s version, Jesus foretells a time when the Temple is no longer needed, for all places will be sacred & God will speak directly to everyone of every nation – a future that prophets like Zechariah also foretold. (A key difference: Jesus identifies a “new temple,” his body.)”

Stop Making My Father’s House a Marketplace

John’s Gospel says nothing about the house of prayer or den of robbers. In John’s Gospel, Jesus starts not simply by overturning the tables, but also by using a “whip of cords” (since weapons were not permitted in the Temple, he may have fashioned the whip from straw at hand), and driving out the vendors. Jesus when says to the dove sellers, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:16). He is alluding to Zechariah 14:21, the last verse from this prophet, “and every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and use them to boil the flesh of the sacrifice. And there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.”

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
one last quote from Levine: “…Jesus anticipates the time when there willno longer be a need for vendors, for every house not only in Jerusalem but in all of Judea shall be like the Temple itself. The sacred nature of the Temple will spread through all the people. He sounds somewhat like the Pharisees here, since the Pharisees were interested in extending the holiness of the Temple to every household.The message is a profound one: Can our homes be as sanctified, as filled with Worship, as the local church?”

In John’s version of the Temple incident, Jesus anticipates the time when there will no longer be a need for vendors, for every house not only in Jerusalem but in all of Judea shall be like the Temple itself. The sacred nature of the Temple will spread through all the people. He sounds somewhat like the Pharisees here, since the Pharisees were interested in extending the holiness of the Temple to every household.

The message is a profound one: Can our homes be as sanctified, as filled with Worship, as the local church?

Do we “do our best” on Sunday From 11 a.m. to 12 noon, but just engage in business is usual during the workweek? Do we pray only in church, or is prayer part of our daily practice? Do we celebrate the gifts of God only when it is time to do so in the worship service, or do we celebrate these gifts morning to night? Is the church just a building, or is the church the community who gathers in Jesus’ name, who acts as Jesus taught, who lives the good news? 

Jesus’ words, citing Zechariah, do even more. They anticipate a time when all peoples, all nations, can worship in peace, and in love. There is no separation between home and house of worship, because the entire land lives in a sanctified state. Perhaps we can even hear a hint of Jeremiah’s teaching of the “new covenant,” when “no longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ For they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). Can we envision this? Can we work toward it? …

Excerpt from Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus
questions for reflection: 1. Do you struggle to let go of the way you’ve always read a Bible story? What helps you embrace new readings? 2. How do we find balance between welcoming people as they are, sins and all, and resisting being a comfortable, unchallenging space for oppressors? Moreover, how do we protect vulnerable persons from their oppressors?

Closing Thoughts: Re-interpreting Jesus not as superseding, but tapping into his faith’s beliefs

Recognizing how much antisemitism is embedded in our theologies, especially the stories or ideas we treasure most, can cause defensiveness, guilt, even a sense of being overwhelmed about what we can keep amid the mess. I’ve felt all those things and more in the past several years as I’ve explored how to weed out antisemitism in my own faith life and help fellow Christians do likewise.

One big thing I’ve been digesting all this time is AJ Levine’s constant reminder that we don’t have to make Judaism bad to make Jesus look good — and that includes the Judaism of Jesus’s own time, even though that Judaism looked very different from the Judaism of today. We don’t have to accuse the Temple or teachers of Jesus’s time with corruption and hypocrisy in order to find meaning within any of the Gospels stories.

A rule of thumb that I’ve brought into my Bible reading of late (especially after reading Levine’s book on Gospel parables, Short Stories by Jesus):

  • Anything that suggests that Jesus was The Very First Jew to suggest that God is loving and merciful — that Jews before him believed in a violent and vengeful God — is inaccurate & harmful.

We might implicitly suggest such a thing without even meaning to do so, so learning examples of supersessionist readings can help us catch new ones when they crop up. Short Stories by Jesus is one fabulous place to learn some of those examples. If you’re interested in Levine’s points on various parables but don’t have time for her whole book, I’ve been posting excerpts on my tumblr blog. For excerpts specifically about the antisemitic interpretations of parables, click here.

Another prime example of supersessionist readings involves the “antitheses” of Matthew 5 — “You have heard it said, but I say to you…” Levine has a sermon you can read or watch here that discusses how these antitheses are misunderstood by Christians as Jesus superseding the Torah with new ideas, when they don’t have to be read that way at all!

Moreover, the progressive desire to depict Jesus is countercultural and, well, progressive definitely fuels a lot of these readings. As Levine explains,

The message of Jesus and the meaning of the parables need to be heard in their original context, and that context cannot serve as an artificial and negative foil to make Jesus look original or countercultural in cases where he is not.

Yes, today we like what is “countercultural” or “radical” or “unique”—but those are our values and are not necessarily what the parables are conveying. Instead, the parables more often tease us into recognizing what we’ve already always known, and they do so by reframing our vision.

The point is less that they reveal something new than that they tap into our memories, our values, and our deepest longings, and so they resurrect what is very old, and very wise, and very precious. And often, very unsettling. …”

Short Stories by Jesus

Letting go of the “Jesus chock-full of completely new ideas” can be hard. But I’ve come to love the “Jesus who knew and cherished his people’s traditions” — who saw the goodness within them and worked to make that goodness reality.

Now, to help you adjust to a Jesus whose theology wasn’t all Completely Fresh, there is one teaching Levine says Jesus was original in: the love of the enemy. The Torah commands love of neighbor and stranger, but not of enemy:

In Jewish thought, one could not mistreat the enemy, but love was not mandated. Proverbs 25.21 insists, “If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink” (Paul cites Prov. 25.21–22 in Rom. 12.20).

Only Jesus insists on loving the enemy: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” He may be the only person in antiquity to have given this instruction.

Short Stories by Jesus

Further Reading

So that was a lot! I’ll leave you with some great places to go in the work of unpacking antisemitism.

Lent specific stuff:

More Stuff on Supersessionism, & Concrete Consequences of Christian Antisemitism:

Context around Pharisees, Temple, Torah:

If you have resources you want to share; or have questions, thoughts, etc. please let me know!