April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
HOMILY
We forget that Jesus was Jewish
"(Let) his blood be upon us and upon our children" (Mt 27:25): For centuries, this cry from the Gospel of Matthew was used to justify the condemnation of the Jews as a people. How could it be otherwise, with the Gospel's sharp critique of the Pharisees, the Jewish lay leadership?
This critique is so imbedded in our culture that the word "pharisaic" continues today as a slur identifying a person as hypocritical. How many people, often under the guise of humor, still characterize Jews as scheming and greedy? Anti-Judaism continues beyond Shakespeare's Shylock and Charles Dickens' Fagan.
The Jewish critique sharpens in contrast to the Gospel's overly favorable portrayal of Gentiles: Pilate's, "I am innocent of this man's blood" (Mt 27:24), is responded to by those chilling words of the crowd, "His blood be upon us and upon our children" (Mt 27:25).
Holy Week may be marked by the blood of Christ as our Passover, but it has also been marked by the blood of Jews at the hands of Christians.
The Jews have had to live in a world that tells them that they are wrong about one of their own: Jesus of Nazareth; or, more accurately, Joshua of Nazareth. They have been told that they wrongly interpret their own sacred writings, even as they have had to watch Christianity, a rival religion sprung from their own spiritual loins, reinterpret those writings. No other religion in the world has had to experience this.
How did Christians ever forget that Jesus is Jewish?
We kneel before an image of a Jew and revere that Jew as God. We pray to a Jewess, Miriam of Nazareth, known by us as Mary; and her husband, Yosef (Joseph), whose father was named after the patriarch Jacob. Joshua's (Jesus') followers were all Jews: the Apostles, the disciples, Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, Joanna, Susanna, the Gospel writer, Matthew and the preacher and letter writer Paul (formerly called Saul after the first king of Israel).
Our sacred writing, the Bible, is fundamentally Jewish from cover to cover. The Catholic Mass is a combination of the synagogue service and the Passover seder. How many of us bear the name Michael, Mary, James, David, Suzanne, Joseph, Deborah, Judy, John, Elizabeth, Zachary, Matthew or Daniel? Those are all Hebrew names.
Jesus/Joshua was named after the successor of Moses, who led Israel into the Promised Land. Mary/Miriam was named after the sister of Moses, who led Israel in singing a great song of praise after they safely crossed the Red Sea.
Judaism permeates and reverberates through Christianity like the shockwaves of the Big Bang still reverberate through the universe.
So, why did the Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah and their descendants come to repudiate and persecute their spiritual predecessors? Why were the Gospels, particularly the Passion, used as weapons of violence against the Jewish people?
The late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris - who was born Aaron Lustiger, the son of Ashkenazi Jews - often said the essential distinction between Jews and Christians lay between those Jews who do not recognize Jesus as Messiah and those Christians who do not recognize the Jewish roots of their faith. Jewish theologian Eugene Borowitz insisted that, however difficult and tortured the history of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism has been, the real problem is the question of the Christian claim about Jesus.
In the wake of Vatican II, the Gospel of Matthew has come to be understood in a way that underscores the Jewish roots of Jesus: Jesus is descended from the royal House of David; the holy family's flight into Egypt evokes Israel's suffering under Pharaoh; at His baptism in the Jordan, God's own voice uses Psalm 2 in reference to Jesus: "You are my Son" (Psalm 2:7).
The words of the Book of Deuteronomy are most often quoted by Jesus/Joshua; the Jewish prayer, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One" (Deut 6:4), is the daily prayer of Jesus. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares that He has come "not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them" (Mt 5:17).
His final meal celebrates the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian slavery in the Passover. Even in His dying, Psalms 22 and 31 are upon His lips: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me," and, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."
In our relationship with the Jewish people, the 1960s' Second Vatican Council and subsequent papal teachings are a defining moment. Catholics repudiated our former teaching that the Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus and are rejected and cursed by God. We recognize Judaism as a valid and enduring religion and believe God's covenant with the Jewish people is irrevocable.
It is another issue, though, for Christians to embrace and encounter Judaism on its own terms, and to begin with recognizing, in Jesus the Jew, our brothers and sisters and ourselves.
Who is Jesus/Joshua? What is the meaning of this Jew's life for you?[[In-content Ad]]
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