wfn.org | Speaker says Christians must repent of their age-old mistreatment of

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Note #6417 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Jews
8-March-2001
01089

Speaker says Christians must repent of their age-old mistreatment of Jews 

March says church must change in this age of religious pluralism

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE -- While calling on Christians to repent of their mistreatment
and misrepresentation of Jews, the A.B. Rhodes Professor of Old Testament at
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (LPTS) suggested a few of the
first steps toward change -- not the least of which is adopting a new
attitude toward other religions, just beginning with Judaism.

	The Rev. W. Eugene March, who has taught Hebrew Bible at LPTS since 1982,
delivered a series of three addresses during this year's annual Caldwell
Lectures, part of the seminary's "Festival of Theology." The series was
titled, "Joining With Jews in Repairing the World:  A Next Step for
Christians in Repentance."

	March urged Christians -- specifically, Presbyterian Christians -- to
articulate a God-centered theology that is not rooted in divine exclusivity,
and to look for ways to join with Jews to form a better relationship and a
better world.

	In Hebrew, the term, Tikkum Olam, meaning "the repair of the world," sums
it up aptly, March said, drawing on a concept from Jewish mystical tradition
that aims at gathering together sparks of the divine light that was
shattered in creation and scattered throughout the world.

	"God calls us to the task of spreading good news of love, healing, shalom.
In carrying out our mission, we must see that we are not the only ones God
has called to such tasks.  Jews have been at work at the task far longer
than we.  Perhaps now we have a new opportunity to challenge old ways, to
indicate our sincere desire to work alongside of Jews (and others) whom God
has made our sisters and brothers," March told a semi-full chapel of
seminary faculty and alumni.

	The way to begin?

	For Christians, repentance is essential, March said.

	Also, the Bible must be read with fresh eyes, contextualizing the sections
that have "poisoned" Christians' understanding of and relationships with
Jews, he said. And third, he went on, Christians need to jettison the belief
that the church has replaced, or superseded, God's covenant with Jews, and
begin to rethink theology from a non-exclusivist, non-triumphalistic
position.

	Finally, March said, Christians need to engage in dialogue and common
action with Jews, and with people of other faiths, so that so that each
community may reach deeper self-understandings and a new grasp of how God
works redemption.

	March couldn't have chosen a more timely topic.

	Since last summer, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been mired in a
controversy about whether non-followers of Jesus may or may not be saved.

	The debate began after a Presbyterian clergyman, the keynote speaker at the
denomination’s peacemaking conference, suggested that God may reach
non-Christians in other ways. Eventually, 21 church sessions and one
presbytery called for one of the church’s top governing bodies to discipline
the Rev. Dirk Ficca, who is director of the Chicago-based Parliament of the
World's Religions -- an action that the General Assembly Council has said it
has no authority to do.

	At least two conservative churches have threatened judicial action against
the council itself for allowing the speaker's remarks to go unchecked --
because Ficca's remarks drew fire from some evangelicals within the
denomination who believe that giving credibility to other religions
denigrates the Lordship of Christ.

	March, however, said the whole question is being wrongly framed.

	"Certainly all the commotion testifies to the climate of uncertainty and
defensiveness that pervades the PC(USA) today," he said. "The question folk
should be asking is not whether humans have more than one way to God.  It is
rather, 'Does God have more than one way to humans?' Good Reformed
Christians can only answer the latter question by saying, 'The sovereign God
may do whatsoever the sovereign God desires,'" he said.

	March emphasized that Ficca didn't say anything new.

	"We are in a context now of religious pluralism, and our theology needs to
be reconsidered in that light," said March, who added that, if it is
heretical to give God such leeway, then that makes the famous German
theologian Karl Barth a heretic too.

	Insisting that Scripture portrays God as one who has made commitments to
both Christians and Jews, March said, it doesn’t say much about other
people.

	"What hints we do get suggest that God both cares for and has the ability
to work with people quite removed from Jews or Christians," March said,
adding that God works repentance among the Ninevites; relates to Job, who is
an Edomite; and even speaks through the donkey belonging to a non-Israelite
called Balaam.

	"God does require of us exclusive allegiance, but that does not
automatically define or limit God’s relationship to others," he 'said. "We
simply do not know how God relates to that theoretical person all alone on
an island who has never had any opportunity to learn of God.

	"But why should we think for a minute that God does not redemptively love
such a person, hypothetical or real?"

	Affirming that, for Christians, Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior and that
fact is central to faith and practice, March said Christology needs to be
refashioned by a reconsideration of the nature and character of God.  After
all, he said, Jesus taught little, if anything, not already found in the
Jewish tradition; he was very much a Jew, reflecting the thought and
practice of his community during his lifetime.

	Where March wants pastors, religious educators and pew-sitters to begin
that reconsideration is with the Bible -- specifically the texts that have
been read historically as anti-Jewish, including parts of Luke, John and
Hebrews.

	Jews, too, he said, have some accounting to do for antagonistic teachings.

	"The church does stand in a saving relation to the covenanting God, but not
as the only covenant partner. The church must recognize with humility its
particular mission without denigrating or denying the reality of other
'missions' given to other people in other places, or the validity of their
relationship with God," March said, describing the sobering and saddening
reality of Christian intolerance and evangelistic zeal, most particularly in
relation to Jews.

	"It is not ours to do the work of the Jew, but it is ours to participate as
part of the larger human family in doing in our share. ... It is time for us
to turn to the positive task of Tikkun Olam, to work in every way possible
to assist in the work of restoring God's world to its proper order in
anticipation of the Messianic era when all will be accomplished."

	Simple changes?

	March said that calling the Bible of the Jews the Old Testament is
offensive to some Jews and misleading to Christians, because the word "old"
culturally often signifies something at the end of its usefulness.  He
suggests calling it the First Testament or the Primary Testament or the
Earlier Testament.  Jews themselves use the acronym, Tanakh, to refer to the
Torah, Prophets and Writings.

	"We stand under the authority and cherish Scriptures which emerged before
Jesus and after Jesus," he said. "It is incumbent upon us to find proper
language that acknowledges this fact without directly or indirectly
suggesting that our claim on the Scriptures supersedes or denies the
legitimacy of the claim Jews rightly make." said March.

	March also proposed using the terms C.E. or B.C.E., for Common Era and
Before the Common Era to refer to time after and before Jesus. It signals to
Jews, he said, that we do live in a Common Era with them, and that there was
a time -- before the Christian faith community existed -- that is important
in the story of God.

	March said, too, that failing to change the order of Scripture readings
sends parishioners an unexpressed message that the value of the texts is
implicit in the ordering in which it is presented -- and the New Testament
is often read last.

	On a more complicated level, March said there are ways in which Scriptures
can be properly put in context.

	For instance, not all Jews wanted a militaristic Messiah, which is what
ministers often preach, particularly at Easter. Only some did; so it is
appropriate to use qualifiers. Often, when Scripture mentions "the Jews," he
said, the term "Judeans" would be better because it recognizes the contrast
between Jews from Judea and those from Galilee, who were divided on their
support of Jesus.  Other texts simply represent the antagonism that
developed between the synagogue and the church by the end of the first
century -- and that simply needs to be said.

	March came down hard on the Christian tendency to absolutize certain texts
as doctrinal statements of Jesus, while contextualizing others.  John 14, he
said, "is one of the most blatantly misused texts," in which Jesus tells His
disciples, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me."

	"The context in which these words were spoken does not suggest that Jesus
was making a declaration about or against people of other faiths," March
said. "People of other religious traditions were not on the horizon. In the
context of John, Jesus was talking with some of his Jewish followers about
discipleship and what it would mean to be a follower of Jesus."

	March lamented that the text is often used as a test for orthodoxy, and
that misplaced zeal around it has been the cause of deep damage inflicted by
Christians upon Muslims and Jews.

	"It should be noted," he said, "that we have not felt it equally necessary
to absolutize or universalize other words of Jesus. For instance, all the
Presbyterians I know definitely want to contextualize Jesus' word to the
rich, young ruler:  'Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor.' This
word certainly cannot apply to everyone in all times and places!

	"Why, then, do we not contextualize John 14?"

	Wrapping up his series, March urged congregations to get involved with
Jewish congregations -- or, if that isn't possible, to study Judaism itself.
 March said it is up to pastors to make the first overture, because rabbis
may be uncertain as to motives and to "hidden agendas."

	He said seminaries, too, need to hire non-Christian faculty in order to
broaden the conversation.

	"Each group holds stereotypes and is generally quite misinformed. Few
people have had the opportunity to sit with a person of another faith and
really talk about belief and practice," said March, remarking that topics
for dialogue are limitless: What is Sukkoth, the Feast of Booths, really
about? Why do you call "Good Friday" good? Why do Jews get disturbed about
the doctrine of the Trinity?  How can Christians possibly claim to truly
worship only one God? How can Christians be so sympathetic toward
Palestinian terrorists? How can Jews justify the harsh treatment of
Palestinians by the Israeli military?

	"Once you know a person of a different faith well enough to get beyond the
superficial and sentimental level," March said, "profound changes in
perception about oneself as well as the other begin to take place." He said
the Presbyterian document, "A Theological Understanding of the Relationship
Between Christians and Jews," adopted by the 1987 General Assembly, may be a
good place to start.

	Relationship, he said, must not stop with dialogue, but move into action --
in projects advocating peace and justice within a community or in tackling
more controversial issues, such as the death penalty, or religion in the
public schools.

	Christians may need to demonstrate respect, for example, by not scheduling
a school Homecoming dance on a major Jewish holiday.

	"Dialogue and common action provide a major path along which we may travel
together. With Jews, if they are willing, we may seek to refashion our
understanding of ourselves and those of other faiths," he said, adding that
it is an opportunity to better define common commitments and to reach new
understandings of how God works in redemption "for others as well as
ourselves.  Tikkun Olam is a profoundly important task with far reaching
implications."

	March, one of the authors of the 1987 General Assembly paper, concluded
with a reading of its final paragraphs.

	"Both Christians and Jews are called to wait and to hope in God. While we
wait, Jews and Christians are called to the service of God in the world.
However that service may differ, the vocation of each shares at least these
common elements:  striving to realize the word of the prophets, an attempt
to remain sensitive to the dimension of the holy, an effort to encourage the
life of the mind, and a ceaseless activity in the cause of justice and
peace. These are far more than ordinary requirements of our common humanity;
they are elements of our common election by the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, and Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah," he read.

	"Precisely because our election is not to privilege but to service,
Christians and Jews are obligated to act together in these things. By so
doing, we faithfully live out our partnership in waiting. By so doing, we
believe that God is glorified."

	March's individual lectures were titled, "Refashioning Our Understanding
and Use of the Bible," "Moving Beyond Supersessionism: Let's Sing a New
Song," and "Educating Through Dialog and Common Action."

	March, who is widely known for his adult Bible lessons published in The
Presbyterian Outlook, has long been involved in interfaith dialogue. He is
the author of Israel and the Politics of Land, published by Westminster/John
Knox Press in 1994; the commentary on Haggai in the New Interpreter's Bible,
1996; and the just-released revision of A. B. Rhodes’ 1964 book, The Mighty
Acts of God, from Geneva Press.

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