Hilton Head Island, SC – May 15, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Romans 9:1-12; Romans 11:25-36
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God, for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. – Romans 11:28-29 (RSV)
Almost forty years ago I was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Morristown, New Jersey. The church was located on the Morristown Green, and a few thousand people walked or drove past it each day. In front of the church was a sign board, which was changed each Monday to list the preacher and the title of the upcoming sermon for the next Sunday.
One day I got a call from my friend Sheldon Weltman, who was the rabbi at the Conservative synagogue in town. We also had a Reform synagogue and an ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher seminary. Sheldon called about the sermon title for the next Sunday, which was the same one for the sermon this morning, although this is a different sermon from that one. “’Jews Can’t Lose,’” he said. “I always knew it, but I’m glad you Christians finally figured it out!” I am convinced Christians need to affirm this concept, found throughout the Hebrew scriptures, which Christians universally if also unfortunately call the Old Testament, and also in the Greek scriptures, the New Testament. No less an authority than the apostle Paul devoted three entire chapters in support of our theme for today in his letter to the Romans, chapters 9 through 11.
Let me begin our exploration of this notion by stating that a horrible historical disaster happened late in the first century of the Common Era. By the way, the terms “Before the Common Era” and “Common Era” are a relatively new way of expressing what Christians used to call BC, “Before Christ,” and AD, Anno Domini, “The Year of Our Lord.” The new terms are intended to show respect for Jews regarding the traditional means of determining years in what by common agreement has become “the Common Era” and “Before the Common Era.”
Anyway, the terrible thing that happened is that by the end of the first century CE, Christianity had almost completely separated itself from Judaism. I am absolutely convinced that neither God nor Jesus ever intended for that to happen. I said as much in a book I wrote years ago called The Irony of Christianity: A Pastor’s Appeal for a Higher Theology and a Lower Christology. Nor did God intend for Islam to separate itself from either Judaism or Christianity. I think it would have been far better had the three great western religions evolved into one enormous universal Judaism, rather than a separate Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, that shall almost certainly never come to fruition, sadly. Were all Christians and Muslims to have become one with the Jews, there would have been no Arab Conquest, no Crusades, no 9/11, and the world would ever so much more peaceful. But alas, it is what it is, and ever since the first century, there has been religious animosity between Jews and Christians, and from the seventh century on among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.
Almost all of the very first Christians were Jews. The most influential of them all, Saul of Tarsus, was also a Jew. The separation of Christianity from Judaism did not occur instantly. It took decades, and even two or three centuries for the tragically irreparable split to develop.
No doubt Jesus of Nazareth intended to be a reformer of Judaism. The kind of Judaism which was gaining supremacy by Jesus’ time was religiously akin to Islamist or Salafist Islam, or like the most extreme forms of Christianity, such as Hardshell Baptists or the various kinds of Amish or other such fundamentalist sects. Within Judaism today, and especially in Israel, ultra-Orthodox haredi Judaism is very similar to the kind of Judaism which Jesus so strongly opposed. He wanted a return to prophetic Judaism such as was represented by Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and Jeremiah, rather than the stringent legalism of the scribal Judaism of the first century.
For the first part of his life, Paul was a Pharisaic Jew. That is, he believed proper life required a very strict observance of all the biblical laws. He never knew Jesus, but had he met him, Paul would have opposed everything Jesus stood for with every fiber of his being. It was perhaps ten to fifteen years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus that Paul had his “Damascus-road experience.” Then, in my opinion, he who had been an extremist legalist became an extremist “crucifixionist.” That is, Paul came to believe that the cross of Jesus represented the one and only sacrifice which could save humanity from death and hell. In First Corinthians Paul wrote, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (I Cor. 1:23). (In Greek the word for “stumbling-block” is skandalon, from which comes our English word “scandal.”) Paul believed that Jesus is the Savior much more than God is the Savior. But Paul didn’t believe that Jesus was the Second Person of the Trinity, to use traditional 4th-century Christian terminology; Paul’s thinking had not evolved nearly that far.
In Romans, Chapters 9 through 11, Paul addressed an issue which greatly troubled him personally. He had observed that many if not most Jews in his time rejected Jesus as both the Messiah and the Savior. So what did that say about the Jews? If they rejected Jesus, would God reject them? In Romans 11:1, Paul wrote, “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” Then he went on to say something which he could not fully appreciate when he wrote this letter about 50 CE or so. And remember, Paul became, by his own designation, “the apostle to the Gentiles.” Probably that’s because the Jewish Christians of the Mediterranean world wanted nothing to do with him, which should surprise no one. To them he was a turncoat. “I want you to understand this mystery, brethren,” said Paul to the Gentile Christians in Rome: “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of Gentiles come in” (11:25). Then he said an even more astounding thing. “As regards the gospel they (the Jews) are enemies of God, for your sake [my emphasis]; but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (11:28-29).
What does this mean? It means that once chosen, always chosen. It means Jews can’t lose; that’s what it means! It means that because the Jews were the Chosen People of God, the Jews are and always will be the Chosen People of God. That doesn’t mean they are the only chosen people; all people are chosen by God for salvation, whatever the word “salvation” might mean. No one shall ever be excluded by God; none. But because the Jews were the first of all the peoples of the earth to choose God, God in response also chose the Jews as his primus inter pares, His First Among Equals of all the peoples of the earth. Jews were to be, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “a light to the Gentiles,” and that they most assuredly have been.
When I was at Trinity College of Glasgow University in Scotland, James D. G. Dunn was the smartest student in the whole college. He was brilliant. At the time, he also was a flaming fundamentalist. Sometime between then and getting a Ph.D. in New Testament studies and becoming a professor at Durham University in England, he became a theological moderate, even something of a liberal. He wrote many books, but to me his most influential is the one he called The Partings of the Ways. Its subtitle continues, The Partings of the Ways Between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity.
Jimmy Dunn’s thesis is what Paul was talking about in Romans 9-11, and especially in the 11th chapter. Christianity intentionally split away from Judaism. At the time it was an unmitigated tragedy, but perhaps in the providence of God, it has worked out incredibly well. Had the message of Jesus been addressed only to Jews, there would be about sixteen million Christians today, which is how many Jews there are in the world. And they (which means “we”) would have names like Goldberg or Rabinowitz or Einstein. In my opinion, the greatest mistake of Judaism is that it never became (to use a Christian term) evangelical. Jews have never seriously tried to convert new recruits among Gentiles; they have never widely proselytized. The early Jewish Christians did that, and as a result, there are two billion Christians in the world. In addition, there are 1.3 or so billion Muslim so-to-speak “evangelicals.” Half the world’s people believe what they believe because both Christians and Muslims got their start within Judaism, and then hard-headedly rejected much of the best that is in Judaism. It is a skandalon, a scandal.
I thought of putting a quote from Jimmy Dunn’s book on the bulletin cover this morning. I decided instead to inscribe that famous old bit of theological doggerel, “How odd/ Of God/ To choose/ The Jews.” When you think about it, it really was odd. God could have made ever so much more headway with the entire human race had the Chinese or Indians or Babylonians or Egyptians responded to His call. There were so many more of them, and they would probably have spread the news about God ever so much more widely, not assuming that the knowledge of God should be limited only to ethnic Chinese or Indians or whatever. But the only ones who opened the door when God had been knocking for a couple of millennia were a small ethnic group who called themselves Hebrews. Yet what an historical blessing that has been for all of us!
The addendum to “How odd of God to choose the Jews” is a more telling observation about human perversity. “But odder still/ Are those who choose/ The Jewish God/ And spurn the Jews.” For two thousand years the Jews have been shunned, attacked, and murdered by the far, far larger communities of Christians and Muslims in many places where Jews lived among them.
Why have Jews been so persecuted by their spiritual progeny, the Muslims and the Christians? Have we mistreated them because we thought they should have joined us? Is jealousy the motive? Do we resent it that they are called and see themselves in some unique way as the Chosen People? But they are unique; who can deny that?
When I was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church here on the island, Congregation Beth Yam worshipped for the first ten years of their existence in that church. Probably The Chapel Without Walls has been welcomed to worship here at Beth Yam, in part, because of that history. It was one of the greatest honors of my life to be asked to preach the sermon at the dedication of this building when it first opened. Furthermore I want you to know I was made an honorary Jew in that service. If you wonder why my thoughts so often sound so Jewish, that’s why; I have never taken that tribute lightly. Last week I was told by a Unitarian that I am really a Unitarian who doesn’t know he is one. However, I consider myself a Jew much more than a Unitarian.
Our opening hymn on this Sunday after Easter was “Thine is the glory,” whose tune was composed by George Frederick Handel, who originally was named Georg Friedrich Handel (Handel with an umlaut). The tune is called Judas Maccabeus, after the oratorio of that same title. Judas Maccabeus was one of the great heroes of Jewish history. He led a victorious army against the Greco-Syrian occupiers of Judea in the 2nd century BCE. Translated, the lyrics of the oratorio say, “Hail conquering hero” in praise of Judah the Hammerer rather than “Thine is the glory” in praise of Jesus the resurrected one. Handel had a strong affinity for the Jews and their history.
Our closing hymn is “The God of Abraham praise,” which has been a mainstay in Jewish hymnody for seven centuries. The God of Abraham is the God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He is the only God there is. Although there is much that separates us into three religions, there is also much that should unite us.
Probably more than any other single individual in history, the apostle Paul did more to separate Christianity from Judaism, despite everything he said in Romans 9 through 11. Likely at the time he did not intend to do that, but that was the result anyway. When Paul put his primary emphasis on Jesus at the expense of God, he was bound to cause a split with the Jews. And the greatest irony is that Jesus himself surely would have strongly disapproved of Paul’s very deliberate choice. Jesus always focused on God; Paul usually focused on Jesus.
Like many others through the centuries, when Paul converted, he went from being an extremist, a legalist Jew, to being another kind of extremist, a “crucifixionist” Christian. The cross, not God, was at the very center of Paul’s concept of salvation. Thus for better or worse, the cross became the central symbol of Christianity.
Amy-Jill Levine is a Jewish professor who teaches New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School. At a conference Lois and I attended years ago, she told about growing up in a Christian neighborhood in Boston. In the third grade on the school bus, some of her classmates said to her, “You killed our Lord.” This accusation both stunned and shocked her. She killed Jesus? How could she kill Jesus? Jesus had died almost two thousand years earlier. Nevertheless, as a result of that experience, the young girl resolved to study Christianity to understand why anyone would ever make such an accusation. Those who know Amy-Jill Levine knows her to be very resolute. She brings a perspective to the Christian scriptures which is refreshing, informative, and unique.
Millions of misinformed Christians through the years have claimed that “the Jews” conspired to crucify Jesus, including the writer of the Fourth Gospel. To say that is like saying “the Muslims” killed Malcolm X or “the Christians” killed Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a very small group of fanatical and misguided Muslims who assassinated Malcolm X, and it was an even smaller group of fanatical and misguided Christians who conspired to assassinate Martin Luther King. Similarly, a small, vocal group of extremist Jews sought the death of Jesus of Nazareth. But it is imperative to note that in the Roman Empire, only the Romans had the authority to execute anyone. Technically no Jews could order a crucifixion, although they could influence the Roman governor of Judea to do so. But it was not “the Jews” who convinced Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus; it was Pilate himself, fearing an insurrection by the followers of Jesus, and influenced by that small contingent of legalist extremists, who condemned Jesus to death.
I suspect God considers all Christians essentially as either Jewish Christians or Christian Jews. No Jews would agree with that, and very few Christians, but that’s really who we are.
Jews do not have a creed, per se. If they did, it would be Deuteronomy 6:4, which is called the Shema. In Hebrew it says, Shema Yisroel, Adonoy Elohenu, Adonoy echod. Translated, it says, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In The Partings of the Ways, James D.G. Dunn writes, “The fundamental question put to Christianity by rabbinic Judaism was simple: Is God one? Is Christianity (still) monotheistic? It remains the central issue between Christianity on the one hand and both Judaism and Islam on the other” (p. 244). God is and always has been radically One. He is not three-in-one or one-in-three; He is One. Because that is preeminently true, whatever may be the status of Christians and Muslims, Jews can’t lose.