The story of the evening of the first Easter begins in a horrifying way. John writes, “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them” (Jn. 20:19). At the time what was probably ought to have been so horrifying is that Jesus, whom they had betrayed and denied and abandoned, stood among them undeterred by locked doors. What ought to be horrifying to us now, I believe, is the reference to the fear of the Jews. Much evil has been wrought over those words, and others like them, in the Gospels, particularly in the Gospel of John. It is important that we pause and say something about them from time to time.
For one thing, they do not mean what they may appear at first to mean. They have a context, and context, as it always does, influences meaning. For another, they do not give Christians license, as they may appear at first to do, for intolerance, bigotry, and hate-filled violence. It is a serious scandal to us that we have often taken them so.
The context has to do with a very painful reality that was playing itself out at the end of the first century when John wrote these words, a reality that is not unfamiliar to us today. It is the reality of communities separating. In John’s day it was the separation of the church and synagogue. We lose sight of the fact that Jesus was a Jew, an observant and devoted Jew. He held his people in the deepest part of his heart throughout his life. The Gospels would lead us to conclude, in fact, that he holds them there still.
We also lose sight of the fact that the early Christian movement was thoroughly within the tradition of Judaism, and not remotely opposed to it. We must never forget that the meaning of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus is revealed in its own context, the context of Passover, the feast of liberation. The feast of liberation for whom? The feast of liberation for the Jews.
Indeed, in those first years after the resurrection, the church grew up in and was indeed nurtured by the synagogue. It was one among many acceptable expressions of Jewish faith. Over time, however, that began to change as Christian teaching began to diverge, or at least appear to diverge, from standard Judaism. Certainly it diverged from standard Jewish expressions of the tradition. And as it did, a time for separation came when the divergence proved impossible to reconcile. It is possible to point to hateful things going in both directions.
And though the time came, the pain of it was intense. What is being expressed in John especially is this sense of pain at separation from Judaism, which must be considered the mother of Christianity. When John writes about animosity toward Jews, he is writing for himself and not for Jesus, and he is writing as a creature of his context. When John writes about the fear of the Jews, he is speaking of his own fear more than he is speaking of the disciples’. The polemic against Jews grows out of this pain. That doesn’t mean it is excusable, but it does help us understand where it comes from and that it is limited to a particular context and not something to be universalized.
Nevertheless, we Christians have done just that over the years. Even that might have been harmless if we did not, over those same years, become so powerful and so identified with secular, including military, power. Untold evil has resulted. The Holocaust is a direct result. The things we Christians feel permitted to do when we get caught up in being the instruments of God’s judgment are a horrifying reality. Intolerance, bigotry, and violence are not the way of Christ. Ever. And that is, religiously speaking, especially true about our attitude toward Jews, among whom our Lord is to be counted.
I once saw a woodcut at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum and memorial in Jerusalem. It shows a group of Jews being marched off by a squadron of SS soldiers toward a waiting train bound for the death camps. In the foreground is the crucified Christ. One of the soldiers has come back to remove Jesus from the cross. He must go with the other Jews. It is a very powerful image none of us should ever forget.
In fact, the only way the things John wrote about Jews make any sense to me is to understand that when John says “Jews,” what he means when taking the context into account is “the people.” He is using the expression “Jews” as another way of saying “us.” The only way the polemic makes any sense to those of us who read it 2,000 years later is to hear those words about the “Jews” and look into the mirror and realize that John is talking about us.
Peace,
+Stacy 
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