Inter-Religious Emergers?

Some very interesting conversation going on in regards to this release from Emergent-US.  Basically, emergent Christian leaders meeting with post-modern Jewish leaders in an attempt to talk about building sacred communities in our cultural context.

You can read some of the debate here and here.

The main area of concern seems to be that McClaren's words may indicate that Jewish-Christian cooperation will advance the Kingdom of God. 

Hmmm.  What does this mean?

First of all, any honest, serious, humble, loving Jewish-Christian dialogue is a good thing.  Any way in which Christians can repent of our corporate past of anti-Semitism is a needful act.  Ways that we can more deeply understand the people of Israel are important, especially as they can help us appreciate the fundamental Jewishness of Christian Scripture.  Ways that we can love our neighbor in concrete expressions are vital.

Second: acts of mercy and charity are knit into Christian identity, through both OT and NT witness.  (Quick aside - when it is used by Jews, I refer to the OT as the Hebrew Bible.  When the Hebrew Bible is juxtaposed with the New Testament, even though the writings stay the same, the book becomes fundamentally different, hence in Christian usage, I believe it is necessary to refer to it as the Old Testament.)  Any labors of love for the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, or more generically "the alien, the fatherless, and the widow," can be undertaken with anyone: Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist, pagan. 

If handing out food to the hungry alongside a Muslim dilutes our witness to the uniqueness and supremacy of Christ, then there are some fatal deficiencies elsewhere in that witness.  If sheltering the homeless with a pagan's help makes it look like we don't take Jesus seriously, then our life needs serious re-ordering.  The problem's with us, not our choice of partners.

Third: how we interact with people of other faiths is different when it comes to Judaism.  Christians claim that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Our stance towards Israel is different than our stance towards Muslims, Hindus, atheists, pagans.  This doesn't mean evangelism is off the table.  It just means that things are different.  We need to take seriously the fact that we are ingrafted branches.

Fourth: the New Testament is ambivalent, or perhaps polyvalent, when taken as a whole, about the spiritual standing of the Jewish faith.  All who are saved, are saved by the work of Jesus Christ.  How that work of Christ relates to Jews is not univocally addressed in the New Testament.  Paul's intensive and agonized working through of this in Romans 9-11 seems to come out to "all Israel will be saved... as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gift and his call are irrevocable" (Ro 11:26-29).  The Gospels seem to come out to a different stance.  Careful, attentive study to these documents, within their original polemical contexts, is important.  I believe that such study would bring one to the position that evangelism to Jews is not necessary, and while also not forbidden, given the millenia of Christians' attempts to exterminate Jews, may in fact be more spiritually harmful than helpful.  (I do not evangelize to my Jewish friends; my reasons are theological, not social.)

Having said all of that, while Christians are "ingrafted branches," we have fundamental theological loci that are not in common with the Jewish faith, specifically the Trinity and the person and work of Christ.  While we can learn a great deal about the one true God via interaction with Jewish believers, and while parternship with them can bear fruitful witness to the living God, there are limits, at which point we have to mournfully acknowledge "we can go no further along the same road."  There, we can bless each other, and encourage each other to move forward.

What the press release initially made me think was "Hey, this is a post-modern Alban Institute!"  Alban puts out some great resources for congregations and synagogues.  But a lot of their material is also problematic.  Yes, there are great similarities in the lives of synagogues, Christian congregations, and Unitarian assemblies.  But there are also vital differences.  Alban publications don't always get the line drawn right.  That doesn't mean I reject all that they do.  I'm careful, though.

So I guess that would be my spirit towards this Emergent-US / Synagogue3k endeavor.  I believe much good could come of it, much mutual benefit and fruitful witness.  But for either group to neglect that which makes it distinctive from the other would be unfaithful to themselves, each other, and the God who called both Israel and the Church into being.

Technorati tags:

Emergent, Christian, Jewish.

Comments

[bob hyatt]

Eric- thanks for your comment/participation!
I think most of us who are showing concern over this statement would see Paul's statements about Israel being saved in some kind of eschatalogical sense and dealing with the nation/people... and would look more to his statements earlier in Rom 11 to describe the status of individual jewish persons. What he says here makes me believe that it's very imperative that there contune to be "apostles to the Jews" :

"It is the same today, for not all the Jews have turned away from God. A few are being saved as a result of God's kindness in choosing them. 6And if they are saved by God's kindness, then it is not by their good works. For in that case, God's wonderful kindness would not be what it really is--free and undeserved.
7So this is the situation: Most of the Jews have not found the favor of God they are looking for so earnestly. A few have--the ones God has chosen--but the rest were made unresponsive. 8As the Scriptures say,
"God has put them into a deep sleep.
To this very day he has shut their eyes so they do not see,
and closed their ears so they do not hear."
9David spoke of this same thing when he said,
"Let their bountiful table become a snare,
a trap that makes them think all is well.
Let their blessings cause them to stumble.
10
Let their eyes go blind so they cannot see,
and let their backs grow weaker and weaker."
11Did God's people stumble and fall beyond recovery? Of course not! His purpose was to make his salvation available to the Gentiles, and then the Jews would be jealous and want it for themselves.

In light of these statements, I think imploring Jewish people to accept Jesus as the Messiah is completely appropriate.

[Taylor Burton-Edwards]

I grew up as a very evangelistic Southern Baptist in a predominantly Jewish community-- as in, on Yom Kippur and Passover, there were two students left in class, myself included. Yes, I was overzealous-- heck, I was like 8-10 years old when I was doing this "evangelism" at my schoolmates. So I cannot draw a whole lot of conclusions from that experience-- except that I can remember very clearly that telling folks they could be saved if they believed in Jesus else they'd fry in hell was not exactly received as good news.

I knew nothing of the holocaust experience at that time (I was 11 when I first heard of it). I really knew nothing to speak of of the long history of suffering of these people. The basic experiences I knew of them from my church were about the Ten Commandments (which "they" didn't follow well) and their "inexplicable" rejection of Jesus.

What I also knew though was that these people loved God and each other, and they even reached out to me-- despite my "dysangelism." Not to convert me-- but to include me where they could.

Fast forward 30 years, lots more learning, and, I hope, a clearer understanding of both the biblical and the historical witness. Here's what I see now:

1) Judaism today really represents the experience of the collapse of the temple, the triumph of the synagogue (with its Torah and Prayer for everyone everywhere rather than sacrifices offered in an exclusive place by an exclusive caste), strong systems of care for each other to help keep folks from falling through the cracks, and in many circles, strong social engagement and commitment to civic improvement. In these ways the witness of Judaism today looks a lot like the work of the kingdom of God Jesus described.

2) Paul really is ambivalent about this whole thing in the first century among Jewish people in diaspora. His missionary pattern was regularly to start in the synagogues-- and then to find other opportunities, especially when he'd managed to offend and alienate at least some of the leadership there. I think his "open struggle" on these issues in Romans 9-11 is really important for us-- and so should give us pause about our approach as "grafted branches." He wasn't going to let go of proclaiming the kingdom and teaching Jesus whereever and to whomever he was sent.

But that was long before the tables had turned, Christians became the dominant force in society, and began to find more and more reasons to restrict, exclude, segregate, and justify the persecution, torture and death of Jewish people for centuries.

I have to take the Holocaust experience seriously-- not simply on its own terms, but in line with the very long history of anti-Semitism these folks have experienced. And when I do that, I have to say that for me as a Gentile to be "imploring" them to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah comes off a little bit like a genuninely "good" police officer in a department known for ignoring domestic violence claims and a court system known for dismissing them telling an abuse victim to trust the system to do what's right. We've got a lot of bridges of trust to build first.

3) What I see in Acts as a description of how Paul worked in Rome is an important statement-- he would proclaim the kingdom of God (apparently the public proclamation work), and teach Jesus (apparently to those who were beginning to respond to the public proclamation?). To be sure, that's not the only pattern-- there are plenty of places where what's proclaimed is the Messiahship of Jesus, or forgiveness of sins in his name, or resurrection through him. But still there appears to be something at least as normative about this pattern. In many ways I tend to see churches today doing quite the reverse-- trying to proclaim Jesus and then, maybe, trying to teach about the kingdom of God. I think this may be because so much of the writings we have in the NT are writings to Christians that focus on the teaching to Christians, and so in our "preaching" in worship we tend to "preach" publicly what was intended and used originally as "insider teaching."

4) So... if we put proclaiming the kingdom first, as Jesus clearly did, and as Paul apparently did (at least in Rome, if we believe Luke on this point-- and I do), and if we see the kingdom as really being God's initiative for bringing salvation/deliverance of all sorts into the world (as Jesus' ministry made clear), and if we see Judaism today as being living witnesses in some ways both to our God's covenant faithfulness (despite centuries of anti-Semitism from many, many quarters, including our own), then finding ways to link up, learn from, and work on finding ways to live out kingdom initiatives together makes a lot of sense to me. Perhaps we would all find better ways to experience the fullness of God's salvation announced and embodied and made available through Jesus in the process...

Peace in Christ...