Rabbi Robbery
[Jesus said,] “Salvation is from the Jews.” – John 4:22 (NRSV)
My friend’s father survived Auschwitz.
His father once said of Jesus: “That man has caused more trouble for the Jews than anyone else. Including Hitler.”
I was stunned.
According to my faith, Jesus was the incarnation of God, resolutely peaceful, compassionate and nonviolent. Also Jewish. He could not be more distinct from Hitler.
However, my friend’s father was not talking about Rabbi Yeshua, a fellow Jew. He was talking about the Jesus that Christianity used to justify pogroms, the Holocaust, and countless other acts of aggression toward Jews.
He was talking about the Christian obsession with portraying Judaism as legalistic, xenophobic, barbaric, backed by a wrathful God, unlike Jesus who (according to many Christians) invented grace and a loving God.
He was talking about the consequences of a stolen and tragically misrepresented rabbi.
Christianity is rooted in Jewish scripture, focused on a Jewish man, animated by Jewish hopes, adopted by non-Jews who then spent centuries explaining to Jews what their sacred story meant and persecuting them for disagreeing.
Who does that?
Our faith tradition.
I wish this were a footnote, a nuance to be weighed against Christianity’s more redeeming qualities. It is not a footnote. It is a central fact and its consequences are deep. Acknowledgment is the minimum level of justice required.
On the other side of that reckoning, something wonderful awaits. Someone, actually. The Jewish teacher at the center of the story, who is more alive and more intriguing than anything built or proclaimed in his name.
Prayer
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: forgive us for telling the story wrong and give us the courage to reckon with the cost.
About the AuthorMatt Laney is Co-Pastor of Virginia Highland Church UCC in Atlanta, GA, and the author of Pride Wars, a fantasy series for young readers. You can find original children’s stories by Rev. Laney on his YouTube channel, LaneyLit.