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Jesus, the Jew

30/11/2021

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This is the first week of Advent, the season when Christians prepare for Christmas and reflect on the significance of Jesus for themselves and the world. During these four weeks Christians will sing advent carols such as ‘O come, O come Emmanuel’ with lyrics that talk of “captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here. It calls on Jesus to “free thine own from Satan’s tyranny, from the depths of hell thy people save”. What would it be like to sing these words in the presence of Jews, how would they feel to hear themselves described as captive to Satan’s tyranny?

​Unfortunately, these words reflect Christianity’s attitude to Judaism over the centuries – Jews were seen as bound by a legalism that Christianity had been freed from, they were in the thrall of the devil because they had not accepted Jesus as their saviour, and this was because they were spiritually blind. Tragically this negative attitude led to violent and horrific anti-Semitism over the centuries. Jews were subject to pogroms, expulsion and violence, resulting in the murder of 6 million Jews in the Nazi death camps.

Thank goodness this attitude has changed and in the Catholic church there is a much more positive attitude towards the Jews and Judaism. One of the reasons for this change of heart has been the recognition that Jesus, his mother, his disciples were all Jews and that we Christians have a familial relationship with Judaism.

It’s sometimes difficult for Christians to truly take this on board but if we are to truly know Jesus, we must know something of his context. Jesus lived in Galilee, in what is now northern Israel. It was not a backwater. It was cosmopolitan, situated on the silk road route and people living there would have encountered other cultures and beliefs so that it is possible that Jesus spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The country was under Roman rule and the Jewish people longed for liberation. They looked forward to someone, a messiah, who would bring this about. Jesus is likely to have engaged in discussions and debates with other Jews, including Pharisees, as to how and when this might happen as he would have debated how best to live a good Jewish life. And he did all this as a faithful Jew. Jesus was born, lived and died a Jew. He never rejected or denied his religion though Christians have so underlined the importance of Jesus’ divinity and uniqueness that they have misunderstood the gospels and interpreted them as Jesus, and even God rejecting Judaism.

This is not accurate. Jesus loved his faith and lived it faithfully. He loved the Torah, which is the spiritual guidance at the heart of Judaism. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus tells his disciples that he had come, not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. At the time there was a lot of debate among the various groups and teachers about what it meant to be a good Jew and how to keep the Law in an occupied land. Questions, such as was it lawful for a Jew to pay taxes, were not a challenge to his authority or an attempt to undermine him but the kind of dilemma facing Jews at that time.

Jesus kept the law, he ate kosher food, he was circumcised like all Jewish boys, he went to the Temple in Jerusalem, he attended the synagogue, he read the Jewish scriptures and would have prayed and even sung the psalms. He would have prayed three times a day wearing phylacteries, he would have worn fringes on his outer cloak.

He kept the Sabbath. There is an incident in the gospels when Jesus’ disciples plucked corn on the Sabbath because they were hungry and when Jesus was challenged about this he said, “the Sabbath is made for man not man for the Sabbath”. Some biblical commentaries suggest that this is a sign that in Jesus the age of keeping the law had been replaced by the age of redemption. But Jesus was not encouraging a breaking of the law because we now know that such an approach was not unknown in the Jewish tradition and that the law was to enhance life. What Jesus was doing was offering one interpretation of the law.

We know that Jesus had a deeply personal relationship with his father, calling God Abba. This is often, maybe even always, interpreted as Jesus having a more intimate and personal relationship with God than the Jews of the time who would always address God in more formal terms. This is not so – there are many examples of Jews talking to God as Abba and once again Christians have tried to make Jesus more unique than he was.

What Jesus is doing in the gospels is teaching his disciples how to be good Jews, how to live by the spirit of the law and respond from the heart. It was one way of being Jewish among others. Often conflicts in the gospels are not reflecting the time of Jesus but the times when the gospels were written and reflect tensions between the synagogue and the growing Christian community, not between Jesus and his contemporaries, including the pharisees.

 Christians are followers of Jesus and live according to his understanding of faith and religion but how tragic if in doing this we interpret the scriptures in anti-Jewish ways and fail to respect the religion that Jesus loved and honour a people that Pope John Paul II described as our elder brothers and sisters in faith. 


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What  Next

14/11/2021

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Well, it’s now over. Cop 26 has produced its Glasgow Climate Pact and delegates are on their way home. They are exhausted and I can imagine there’s a sense of anti-climax. There were high expectations and hopes that this Cop would set the world on a journey of healing, so much energy around, clear stories of what climate change was doing to countries like the Marshall Islands that must, at some point soon, come to the decision as to which island to let sink and which one to save so that its remaining population, identity, and culture will be saved.

There’s been a lot of straight talking by political leaders, environmentalists, NGOs, indigenous people, all of them admitting to climate change and the critical and dangerous future that is ahead of us if nothing is done about it. The warnings have never been clearer, or the stories more powerfully told. And the answer to the problem is clear: stop the use of coal and other fossil fuels so that the planet will not warm 1.5 degrees more that pre-industrial times. If this is to happen developed nations, who have benefitted from industrial growth and contribute most to carbon emissions will have to financially support the developing world in their attempts at green environmental projects and prove this not just by words but by action.

For some people the resulting pact does not go far enough, for others it is a step on the way to future improvements around climate action and next year nations will have to report on their work in that direction. The disappointment has focussed on a last-minute change in what was the third version of the Cop Pact which substituted the commitment to phase out coal power to phasing down coal power. I’m sure this is important, and I wouldn’t want to downplay it in anyway, but I was struck my how amazing it is that 190 nations can spend two weeks in discussion and negotiations and work towards consensus.

I watched the last general session on television when the third version of the document was presented to the floor. While the President of the Assembly, Alok Sharma, obviously hoped that the report would be accepted, he was respectful to all those who wished to make interventions and thanked them for their contributions. Each one was listened to with great respect and patience. Many of the developing countries acknowledged disappointment with some of the wording, feeling recommendations were not strong enough, but they were willing to go with the report as it stood rather than obstruct its acceptance. All except India and China who were unhappy with phasing out coal, saying they had to mine their coal resource for the sake of an industrialisation that would lead to economic growth and the reduction of poverty. After all the western industrial nations, who were now calling for changes to carbon emissions, had already made use of fossil fuels for their own growth and development and had contributed more to the dangerous levels of carbon dioxide than developing nations. And so, there was further small group discussion to avoid India and China opting out altogether and bringing the whole process down. In the end there was a reluctant  acceptance of the phrase ‘phase down’ coal rather than ‘phase out’ for the sake of the whole and the good of what else was in the report.  
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It is this watering down that has caused great disappointment and criticism but as Alok Sharma says, India and China will have to explain themselves to developing nations and Boris Johnston says it is the death knell for coal power. I do feel that the whole question of climate change will not go away. There is such a swell of public opinion, governments admit to its reality. We know we must all take it seriously and do our bit - and encourage one another in doing that. But I am left with a great respect for the United Nations. Again, I know it has its critics and no doubt there will be need for reforms but what an amazing organisation to bring together 193 nations to listen to one another, to work together for a common purpose. The world needs more of this. The European Union is also an attempt to get nations working together and while this means working slowly and sometimes compromise it is important that we hear and understand one another’s stories and share in caring for our common future and our common home. Thank God for an organisation such as the United Nations.  

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Facing the Future Together

1/11/2021

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CCOP 26 has started, and thousands of people have landed on Glasgow. Today is the day for world leaders and significant individuals to address the conference. Listening to them they all seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet. Environmentalists and young people from developing countries face the conference participants with the reality of climate change and its consequence for the world and their generation with strong, honest and challenging words. ‘You do not need to see my tears or pain to know what is at stake’, said one of them. Thousands of protesters have proved their commitment by walking in pilgrimage to Glasgow, demonstrating across the River Clyde from the conference venue to remind negotiators of what is at stake and how the world is depending on them for a just and constructive agreement. 

A lot of their concerns and hopes for the future were echoed by the world leaders themselves. There is no need to doubt that presidents and prime ministers are unaware of the urgency of the climate crisis, of the greed and selfishness that needs to be challenged, of the solution that is in their hands. But will the worlds translate into action? – that’s the rub.

In ‘The Home We Build Together’ Lord Jonathan Sacks maintained that people will only work together for the common good if they are faced with the same problem, a problem that requires cooperation for a solution. Now we have such a problem. It’s hard to think of any other issue that affects every human being, rich or poor and, beyond humanity, all sentient beings, and the very planet itself. We are in danger of making this beautiful blue planet of ours inhospitable and uninhabitable. And many of us know it and feel the pain of it.

This was very obvious yesterday at an interfaith vigil to pray for the success of this COP. It was simple and showed a great unity of purpose. It began with the reading of what has come to be known as the Glasgow Multifaith Declaration by a Catholic and Episcopalian Bishop, an Imam and a representative from the Sikh faith. The declaration follows on from the 2015 interfaith Lambeth Declaration and the Scottish Religious Leaders' Forum’s Statement of Commitment of 2020. It has been signed by religious leaders in Scotland and the UK and acknowledges the unity among faith communities ‘in caring for human life and the natural world’ and how people of faith ‘share a belief in a hopeful future, as well as an obligation to be responsible in caring for our common home, the Earth’. It includes the commitment to reflect deeply in prayer and meditation to discern how to care for the earth and one other, to make transformational change personally and communally through individual and collective action and to be advocates for justice for the earth and the poor who suffer most from climate change.

The other element in the vigil was a prayer for the environment from each of nine faiths - Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Brahma Kumari, Sikh, Hindu, Baha’i, Pagan and Muslim. What struck so many of the attendees was how similar the sentiments of the prayer were even if expressed differently. For some people new to interfaith this was a revelation but others like me, who have been involved for some time, know there is a unity among people of faith and some of us feel closer to people of other faiths than we do to people in our own. One of the joys for me was to meet friends whom I have known and worked with over the years but have not seen for some time. One of them mentioned that it was her visit to the International Flat in Glasgow and meeting Stella Reekie that started her on her interfaith journey, which is my story too. Stella began the first interfaith group in Scotland, and I consider her the pioneer of interfaith in Scotland which now has a national interfaith body and twenty local interfaith groups. My friend said, ‘you can feel her presence here’ and so you could.
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It is wonderful to know so many people who share a love and concern for the planet and it can be easy to forget that others might feel differently. Some people have too many survival concerns to be thinking of climate change, others are just not interested and don’t recognise the problem, but others are quite cynical about conferences such as COP. This is COP 26 – why, if the other COPS did not produce a result, will this one?  Climate change has always been with us, human beings will eventually become extinct just as the dinosaurs did, how can politicians speak about climate change and fly all over the world to these meetings, the suggestion for combatting climate change are just not possible – all arguments put to me in a recent conversation. There’s no answering these statements. A desire to care for our planet cannot be developed through argument, I suspect, but only by a new vision that appreciates the interconnectedness of all life and our place in the great story of the universe – a story that we don’t hear enough of but one which might help us see with new eyes.  

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    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

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