Lent III

The Third Sunday of Lent

Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; John 4:5-42

What are your thoughts about the following statements in regard to Jewish people?

Jews stick together more than other Americans. In business, Jews go out of their way to hire other Jews. Jews do not share my values. Jews have too much power in the business world.

Do you believe these statements to be mostly or somewhat true or mostly or somewhat false?

Reported Friday from Jacksonville, Florida, the white nationalist group, National Socialist Florida, uses laser projections to display anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ images on the side of high rise buildings in the city.

Last month, The National Socialist Movement stood outside the Broadway revival of “Parade,” the Tony award winning musical about the 1915 anti-Semitic lynching of Leo Frank. The Neo-Nazi literature said the Anti-Defamation League protected pedophiles and that their activism was about child safety, saying: “The enemies of our society and our people are busy at work….”

A week ago, white supremacist and Neo-Nazi groups organized a “national Day of Hate,” in which members were encouraged to target and harass Jewish people.

In mid-February, two Jewish men were shot coming out of synagogues in Los Angeles.

While this might sound like the work of a small group of racist extremists, in January, the Anti- Defamation League reported that 85 percent of Americans today believe at least one of many anti-Jewish statements that linger in society, as opposed to 61 percent in 2019; a jump of 24 percent from just four years ago. Twenty percent of Americans believe six or more such anti-Jewish statements.  We Christians should rightly be alarmed.

Christianity has had a tumultuous relationship with our ‘elder brother’ Judaism from the beginning. Anti-Semitic views are embedded in our Scriptures. This Palm Sunday we will listen to Matthew’s Passion in which the chief priests and elders encourage the people to cry, “Let his blood be on us and on our children.” In the past, priests riffed in their homilies on this declaration which often led to violence against Jewish people. Until 1962, Good Friday’s liturgy prayed for the “perfidious” – the treacherous, dishonest and lying – Jews.” John’s Passion, always proclaimed on Good Friday, speaks only of “the Jews” acting as one voice and body against Jesus.

The Gospels continue to remain problematic. Written as they were from the experience of early Christians who were in conflict with the Jewish community, they reflect that clash down to our own time, feeding in reverse the Christian persecution of Jews throughout the centuries.

Saint Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in Nostra aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions began to turn the tide on 2000 years of Christian anti-Semitism.

In November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs issued a statement denouncing the rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. “In unequivocal terms, we condemn any and all violence directed at the Jewish people, whether motivated by religious, racial, or political grievances,” the statement says.

They also reiterated the teaching of the church “that the Jewish people cannot be held responsible for the death of Christ or be depicted as rejected or accursed in theological discourse. It must always be remembered that Jesus, Mary, and his apostles were all Jewish.”

The bishops called us to remember Pope Francis’ 2013 words to the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations: “A true Christian cannot be an anti-Semite.”

I began with four statements about the Jews, what was your response to them? Eighty-five percent of Americans today believe at least one of many such anti-Jewish statements.

Declarations, teachings, and righteous condemnations do not change people’s hearts and attitudes – only experience changes us. So how might we Christians reflect on our individual attitudes, repent where necessary and respond to the rise of anti-Semitism in our country and the world?

1. Attend a Friday night Shabbat [Sabbath] service.

Every Friday night at sundown, Jewish people gather at their synagogues for their weekly prayer. These services involve prayer, song and a sermon, like our Liturgy of the Word.

Visitors are welcome to attend services in many synagogues. Check out their websites. A call can clarify customs, dress and behavior. Tell them you are a Christian and why you want to attend: to learn, to experience, to stand in solidarity with the Jewish community against anti-Semitism, to… what is your reason?

You will be attending the same weekly service that Jesus and his family would have attended. As Pope Pius XI reminded us, we are spiritually Semites.

2. Attend a Passover Seder.

Passover celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. We proclaim and listen to the instructions for the first Passover in Egypt from the Book of Exodus on the evening of Holy Thursday. This year, the first night of Passover is Wednesday, 5 April 2023, that is, Wednesday of Holy Week. Inquire about the possibility of attending a Passover Seder at a synagogue or better yet the possibility of being connected with a Jewish family to celebrate in their home. You will participate in the same yearly ritual meal that Jesus did with his family and presided over the night before he died in what we call the Last Supper. Remember we are spiritually Jewish.

3. Volunteer at a Jewish-sponsored organization.

Usually, we look to our own parishes or local Catholic organizations for volunteer opportunities, but there are plenty of Jewish-sponsored soup kitchens, shelters and other charities out there. The advantage of doing volunteer work is that you get to interact with people. Prejudices such as anti-Semitism creep into our lives through ignorance. In such an environment of friendship and shared service stereotypes are broken down.

And what might it be like for you to be mistaken for a Jewish person and experience the real sting of anti-Semitism?

4. Listen to the Gospels and Letters with a discerning and sensitive ear.

If our sacred Christian writings reflect a bias against the Jewish community can we begin to listen with a discerning ear being aware of both the inherent negative images of Jews in the Gospels but for positive images as well?

Consider, in the Gospel of the Transfiguration we heard last week, two of the Jewish people’s most important figures, Moses and Elijah, appear with Jesus, their presence indicating to Christians who Jesus is. In today’s Gospel of the woman of Samaria, Jesus ignores the Jewish practice of shunning Samaritans but does not dismiss Judaism. In fact, he tells the woman, “Salvation is from the Jews.” Next week’s Gospel of the man born blind, repeatedly uses the phrase, “the Jews.". Refusing over and over to believe the blind man’s account of his healing “the Jews” eventually drive him from the Temple. This is by far the most unsympathetic portrayal of the Jewish people that we hear in Lent. Outside of the Passion of John which we will hear on Good Friday, it’s the clearest example of just how problematic the term, “the Jews” is.

We all have a responsibility to talk about the harm that some Gospel passages have done to the Jewish people for millennia, and provided justifications for expulsions, pogroms and the Holocaust. Even as we look upon the crucifixion of Jesus as an act of gross injustice and scapegoating, too often in our history we have been guilty of exactly the same behavior to the Jewish community. In this Lenten season where we are called both to a self-critical repentance and conversion of heart, can we cast our eyes toward the Jewish members of our communities and let them be our teachers, people of faith and friends; standing with them against the ignorance and hate of anti-Semitism?

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_{Anti-Defamation League – http://www.adl.org}

_{ADL Report on Anti-Semitic attitude: www.adl.org/resources/report/antisemitic-attitudes-america-topline-findings}

_{See: 1 March 2023 AMERICA article: For Catholics, Lent 2023 is a time to act against antisemitism by Jim McDermott}