Two Views of Salvation

The liturgy for this Sunday strikes two quite different themes related to salvation. 

The day begins with the story of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem:

A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.  The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”  (Mt. 21:8-9)

That’s one way of looking at salvation.

There’s another way, the way of the cross.  We hear about it this Sunday, too. 

And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it.  And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him.  Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”  (Mt. 27:33-37)

One way to look at salvation is salvation is something like rescue, like the cavalry (or the king) showing up to save us from danger.  That’s the triumphal entry point of view.  It is salvation from.  We like that a lot, and we greet it with palm fronds and hosannas. 

The other way is less to our liking.  In it, the cavalry doesn’t swoop in and rescue us from anything.  Instead, the cavalry, or God in this case, does something quite unexpected, not saving us but standing with us.  God chooses not to rescue us from our situation but to redeem it by taking it on Godself.  It is more a redemption sense of salvation, salvation in rather than from.  As the Passion narrative reminds us, we respond rather less favorably to this approach.

I think we wish for rescue and instead are offered redemption.  God does not save us from but saves us in.  To be more specific, God does not save us from our mortality, but in our mortality. God does not save us from our humanity, but in our humanity.  God does not rescue.  God redeems.  We choose the triumphal entry.  God chooses the Passion.

Peace,

Salvation is from the Jews

During my first visit to the Land of the Holy One (as Bishop Suheil Dawani of Jerusalem refers to it, focusing our attention to God rather than real estate), I made a pilgrimage to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum.  I found it odd that it had not been included in the itinerary to begin with and odder still that the Christian institution where I was staying refused to give me directions.

While there I saw there a pen and ink drawing I will never forget.  It was of Jesus crucified.  In the background were SS soldiers taking away a group of Jews.  One of the soldiers had come back to take Jesus off the cross and herd him away with the others.  It is well for us Christians to remember that image.

It is something we so easily forget, if indeed we are ever taught it to begin with.  It does not fit with reality as we imagine it.  It is more than a little disquieting, and it ought to give us pause.  It is this.  Jesus was a Jew.

The separation of Jesus from Judaism is a great heresy.  In fact, it is worse than heresy.  It is the Old Testament sin of idolatry in that any image of Jesus other than a Jewish one remakes God into our image rather than accepting God as God actually has chosen to reveal Godself.  And the revelation is of a thoroughly Jewish savior.

Not only was Jesus Jewish, but during his lifetime, and beyond, Jesus demonstrated extraordinary devotion to his people and the Jewish faith of his day.  It is crucial for us to realize that, far from being antithetical or even overly critical of Judaism, the life and teaching of Jesus were well within the boundaries of his own faith tradition.  Certainly he did not intend to found a new religion but assert the meaning of his own in his day.

It is also well for Christians to keep in mind that Jesus loved his own people more than, or at least prior to, Gentiles.  (Lk. 13:34.)  The ministry of Jesus was itself almost entirely confined to Jews.  He showed, at best, only minor interest in Gentiles to whom he was not particularly receptive (Mt. 15:26).  It was the Gospel reading of only two Sundays ago in which Jesus is shown as a bit harsh and dismissive of Gentiles.  Speaking to a Gentile woman seeking healing for her daughter, he referred to non-Jews as dogs (Mk. 7:27).  We tend to overlook it.  In Matthew’s version of the same story, Jesus is quite explicit.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15:24).

Elsewhere Jesus sends the twelve to proclaim good news, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.  The apostolic mission, however, has a specific exclusion.  “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 10:5-6).  In the thinking of Jesus, at least prior to the resurrection, the salvation he represented seems to have been only for Israel (Mt. 19:28; Lk. 22:28-30).  After the resurrection is not all that different.  All the resurrection appearances, after all, were to Jews.  Jesus shows a much more favorable inclination to the universality of his teaching, commanding his disciples to teach and baptize all nations (Mt. 28:19) and suggesting something similar in saying, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.  I must bring them also” (Jn. 10:16).  Still, the priority for Jesus is on the Jews.  Everything begins in Jerusalem.  (Lk. 24:47.)

The relationship between Judaism and Christianity has puzzled scholars for centuries.  For Paul, there was little more to be said than that it was a mystery.  If we Christians take Jesus seriously, though, there is no doubt we must take Jews seriously, and much more than seriously.  We must take them respectfully, lovingly, admiringly, and gratefully.  Salvation, after all, according to Jesus, comes to us from the Jews.  (Jn. 4:22.)  Without Judaism and the Jewishness of Jesus, the cross is left empty from the start.

So, on this the observance of Rosh Hashanah, let us remember that our own roots are firmly set in Judaism and that we are inheritors of God’s kingdom not by right of birth but by grace, which I’m quite sure is how Jesus sees it.  Happy New Year.  Shabbat Shalom.

Peace,

+Stacy