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Texts: Isaiah 61:1-3; Isaiah 11:1-9

61:1-3:   The Spirit of the Holy One is upon me, because Adonai has anointed me.  God has sent me to bring good news to those who are poor; to heal broken hearts; to proclaim release to those held captive and liberation to those in prison; to announce a year of favour from Adonai, and the day of God's vindication; to comfort all who mourn, to provide for those who griev in Zion - to give them a wreath of flowers instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of tears, a cloak of praise insstead of despair.  They will be known as trees of integrity, planted by Adonai to display God's glory.  (The Inclusive Bible translation.)

Prayer:     Day by day, dear God, help us to see you more clearly, follow you more nearly, and love you more dearly. Day by day. AMEN

My brothers and sisters in the one family of God!

It is a great pleasure and a privilege for me to be here among you as representative of a neighbouring community of faith. I must admit that I come among you with both joy and some anxiety. I come with gratitude but also a sense of guilt. So I stand before you with mixed feelings.

The pleasure and sense of privilege is real in that we are neighbourly enough to be able to encounter each other as children of the same God. We are sisters and brothers in faith and that truly is reason to celebrate and to rejoice.

The joy is that we live in a time when we can actually act like good neighbours, like sisters and brothers. That has not always been the case and I thank God that ours is an era when we can appreciate each other.

My anxiety is around why - given our history of relating - why you would even want to welcome me as a Christian minister. Given how Christians over the centuries have treated Jews, we, as Christians, have much guilt to acknowledge and sin to be forgiven.

But there is also gratitude in my heart that we share faith in a forgiving and gracious God, who forgives us first and invites us to live forgivingly with our neighbour. I am also very grateful for the possibilities of solidarity and cooperation that are opening up before us.

I come to you as a neighbouring pilgrim.  

My own background roots me in The Netherlands – Holland – in the heritage of Calvinist Reformed Christianity. Calvinists have a reputation for being fun-loving, light-hearted, slothful gluttons - NOT!

If you don’t know John “is-everybody-happy?” Calvin, who held sway in Geneva some time before I did my doctoral studies there in the late 70s, then let me read how one rather sleepy seminarian waxed eloquent about this 16th century fore-parent of the Presbyterian and Reformed (noticeably different from Reform Judaism) branches of Christian faith.

This is what the sleepy seminarian wrote:

“Calvin established heavy fines and penalties for such ghastly and immoral crimes as: being absent from or critiquing sermon; for laugh during church worship services; for wearing bright colours; for being unable to recite prayers, for playing cards, for marrying your son or daughter to a Catholic, and for saying that the Pope was a good man. In spite of such progressive reforms, Calvin spent his last years in Geneva being insulted in the streets, threatened by thugs who wished to throw him in the River Rhone, sung to by large crowds gathered outside his home chanting obscene lyrics, and shouted at during the night. He died on May 27, 1564 – a Genevan high holiday.” (from Willimon, Wm. [compiler]. Last Laugh, p.45, alt.)

So much for our sleepy seminarian. That was just to give you a clue to my personal faith heritage! I do hope you won’t extrapolate too much from it however.

I read from Isaiah 61 this evening because a long time ago it spoke movingly to another of the children of Abraham and Sarah. I am talking about Yeshua Ben Joseph and Mary. Jesus was a son of Torah, who by his faithfulness affirmed Shabbat, the Hebrew scriptures, and the synagogue – not only attending regularly, but also participating by studying the scriptures and commenting on them. Jesus was very much at home in the synagogue and templO.

Many Christians have unfortunately never learned this. In fact, for far too many Christians it is still a surprise to hear that Jesus was a Jew. That’s the extent to which many Christians have been alienated from the One they claim as friend and companion on the Way.

But the alienation is much deeper than that. How Christians have viewed Jesus and what has been taught about Jesus in Christian churches have laid tragic foundations for our sorry history of anti-Jewish attitudes. The culmination of this false learning was, of course, the evil of the Holocaust.

Let me try to explain:

When Easter rolls around, many Christians will sing a powerful hymn based on Handel’s Oratorio “Maccabaeus”. The hymn is entitled “Thine is the glory,” and it includes the line: “risen, conquering Son” referring to Christ.

To me, increasingly this phrase has become a symptom of a false understanding which has pervaded the Christian Church. Originally intending to celebrate Christ’s victory over death, history has demonstrated that when Christians have attributed imperial language and dominant ways to Christ, then things go badly off the track.  

We see quests for power in the name of Christ. It became the church’s agenda to get close to the centres of decision-making and political control – as in the royal court of Emperor Constantine or in the Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages. In Europe, when the Roman Empire’s power came into contact with the Saxon peoples they were given the option:    be baptized and therefore subjugated to the dominion of this imperial Christ and his imperial political counterpart, or die by the sword.

With missionary zeal, this conquering Christ was transported to North and Latin America by conquistadores and by colonial settlers blessed by “Christian majesties” on thrones in Europe to claim the lands and wealth as if no one was living there. In Canada we are still working through the tangles of injustice and death resulting from such superior assumptions. The bearers of the cross stole the land, pillaged the villages, spread disease, and showered utter contempt on the wisdom garnered by indigenous peoples as over the ages they had worshiped the Creator.

The triumphant Christ was translated into the vanquishing, triumphant Lord over people presumed to previously having been held captive by “pagan” and “idolatrous beliefs”.   

In South Africa where I visited last summer (1997), I frequently heard the sardonic plaint:  When the Europeans came to our land they brought the Bible and invited us to pray.  And when we opened our eyes, we had the Bible and they had the land.

Christian Baptism became an important sign of the imperial culture. In the Holy Roman Empire not to be baptized meant that you could not be a citizen. The unbaptized, non-citizens therefore live in defensive enclaves on the margins, always vulnerable to being demonized and experiencing the aggression of the baptized citizens and authorities.

I don’t have to tell you about this! The history of Jewish persecution in Europe is replete with stories of Jewish communities being attacked by people bearing the name of Christ – Christians – culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust conceived and implemented in the heartland of Christendom – Germany.

Large segments of the Christian family have not outgrown this conquering Christ syndrome. There are still fundamentalists and fanatics and many misguided, uninformed folks, who cannot rest until all the world is subjected to their understanding of Christ.

Linda Petracelli, a Protestant Christian minister, tells the story about growing up in a strict Roman Catholic school. One day, Sister Mary Roberts Cecellia preached to the children of the school, telling them that everyone, everyone including and especially Lutherans and Anglicans who were not Catholic, were going to hell. That afternoon, when Linda returned home, her mother asked her a usual question: “what are you thankful for today, dear?” Linda answered: “Today I am thankful that Sister Mary Roberts Cecellia is not God.”

Amen.  Frankly, from my perspective, this arrogant, presumptuous way is an embarrassment, a deep stain, and a sin, which compromises any Christian witness to the One who is love and taints the Christian branch of God’s one family.

The reason I say that is because this imperial, superior approach so starkly contradicts the Way Jesus models in the Gospel accounts.  What I read in the Gospel is the portrait of one who responds to the burdens and needs of people, who calls people friends, who reaches out to those without status garnered disrespect.

The Gospel stories picture One who was ready to sit down at table – be a companion – with those who held different beliefs and values, and whose righteous anger was reserved for those who would impose their way upon vulnerable and powerless people.

I read of one who wanted to live in the Spirit of Isaiah 61 – to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.

I need to acknowledge that throughout the millennia there have been friends and companions of Christ who have lived that good news. We are inspired by the stories of greater and lesser saints who transcended ethnic and religious boundaries to embrace the great human family of God for God’s sake.

I think of some of the “Quiet Heroes” described in Andre Stein’s moving book (by that name) about  Dutch Christians giving themselves to rescue Jewish compatriots during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. I believe they were led by this same Spirit described in Isaiah.

Surely this is the same Spirit of the one God motivating your work with Foodpath for food security and children’s nurture in this city, with Pathways for decent affordable housing here, and, our Erin Mills UC work with those persons grieving loss, and with young people who are searching for meaningful activities and purpose. 

The same Spirit also inspires all work that seeks to help people draw closer toward the Eternal One – creating, redeeming, cherishing creation, and blessing all people with loving power to become children of the one God.

Happily in the United Church of Canada there is a recent (1994) report entitled “Bearing Faithful Witness, United Church – Jewish Relations Today.”   In a formal way, it invites United Church people to re-think what they have learned about their faith in relation to the Jewish community. I think it is a wonderfully promising sign.

I hope this report will lead to tearing down some of the barriers of ignorance that have blocked our way to healthier relationship. It could become a helpful tool for learning more about each other and we might even discover that we are closer to one another than we realized.

I would hope that it might lead us, as United Church Christians, to formally repent of the evil which has been part of our history – old and recent - with the Jewish people.   For our own healing we need this, because unacknowledged guilt easily becomes an inexhaustible wellspring of hatred toward those who were victimized by our ideas and action. It might also help us to have “cleaner” conversations, not to say arguments, about matters we need to discuss but cannot yet come to agreement on.

 

On the point of fostering closeness:  when I hear your Rabbi Englander talking about his profound understanding of Torah, then I keep hearing echoes in my heart and mind of things I say about the Spirit of Christ. It often feels like we are talking about something fundamentally similar.   Perhaps that shouldn't  be a total surprise when we remember that in Torah and in Christ each community, from their own distinctive perspective, is affirming the one God’s ways and the one God’s truth for living.

I want to conclude with a comment about vision:

In a world where the quest for power through money and violence keeps springing up, people of faith need to keep before all who will listen and all who are willing to see a vision of what we believe God intends our world to become.

I can think of no more helpful vision than that painted in Isaiah 11 where danger is overcome by play, and power over is replaced by sharing, and predators live in harmony with the vulnerable, and God’s way, God’s truth, God’s light, and God’s SHALOM fill the earth. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could continue to grow to be faith communities in respectful partnership investing our energies and resources for the fulfillment of God’s SHALOM where:

That’s a vision I hope you and I and all people of faith and eventually, the entire human family could affirm and commit themselves to welcome.

May the living God continue to bless you in your pilgrimage of faithfulness here in Mississauga, and may the next twenty-five years of your life together be even richer and fuller and be driven by the vision of God’s SHALOM reign for all people.

Thanks be to God!