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What If ?

25/9/2022

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 There are some events in life that are of such significance that we can’t help asking ‘what if that had not happened?’ How differently would things have turned out. Such an event was a 20-minute meeting that a Jewish historian, Jules Isaac, had with Pope John XXIII in June 1959 that changed forever the relationship of the Catholic Church to the Jewish community. This changing relationship is a story of hope and transformation spelled out last week for the Scottish Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Interreligious Dialogue at their annual seminar, entitled ‘A Tale of Two Sisters: Church and Synagogue’ which was led by Sister Maureen Cusick, a Sister of Our Lady of Sion, a religious congregation that is committed to witnessing to God’s continued and faithful love for the Jewish people through education and dialogue.  

We began by reflecting on a series of illustrations of statues found in many medieval cathedrals around Europe, sometimes carved standing side by side, sometimes standing on either side of the entrance They depict two women. One is weak and drooping, blindfolded and carrying a broken lance with Torah scrolls that are often seen slipping from her hand. The other is strong, often wearing a crown and looking to the future with confidence and open eyes.  The blind woman represents the Synagogue, blind to the truth and now lost to salvation because the Jews rejected and crucified Jesus. The confident woman represents the Christian Church upon whom God has bestowed the promises God originally made to Israel so that Christians now possess the truth of salvation and have become God’s chosen ones, the new People of God.  One particularly horrendous statue is found in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris where the blindfold over the ‘Synagoga’ statue is in fact a snake with the implications that has for Judaism being under the sway of the devil.
 
These statues reflect the attitude of the Christian Church to Jews in medieval Europe and are indicative of a theological approach called supersessionism or replacement theology which is a belief that God has rejected the Jews because they rejected and crucified Jesus. God has now bestowed the promises he made to Israel on the Church that now becomes the New People of God. This theology is very influential. It can affect the way the Christian scriptures are interpreted. For example, in stories such as the wise virgins – the ones who are alert to the coming of the bridegroom are taken as representative of Christianity and the ones who slept and missed his coming taken as representative of Judaism. It influenced the prayer in Catholic churches on Good Friday which prayed for the conversion of the perfidious Jews. It influenced the tradition in the Sisters of Sion who daily prayed that God would forgive the Jews for the death of Jesus for they knew not what they did. It influenced the various pogroms and sermons forced on the Jews over the ages. It influenced the whole history of Christian antisemitism which the Vatican acknowledged was the seed bed in which the hatred that resulted in the Holocaust was able to flourish. It influenced the belief of some Christians that the State of Israel doesn’t have the right to exist. It is, I suspect, something that is deep in the psyche of both Christians and Jews and influences some of our interactions and maybe needs to be addressed at some point. Is there perhaps an incipient suspicion of Christianity on the part of Jews and an incipient superiority on the part of Christians?

Thank God that this attitude to Judaism and this theological approach has been acknowledged, dismissed and disowned by the Catholic Church in the Vatican II document on the Churches Relationship with People of Other Faiths. And it all came about because of that 20-minute interview that Jules Isaac had with Pope John XXIII.  Jules Isaac was a historian and educationalist who sought to understand the roots of antisemitism when he experienced the Nazi occupation of his native France. He wrote a book on Jesus and Israel as well as one on The Teaching of Contempt in which he showed that antisemitic interpretations of the scripture were a wrong understanding of the Gospel. It was the meeting with Pope John XXIII that led the Pope to put the Churches relationship to Judaism on the agenda of the Vatican Council and eventually led to Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Churches Attitude to Non-Christian Religions which was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in October 1965, two years after the death of Jules Isaac. Section 4 of the document which declares,” in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone” brought about a profound change in the Church’s relations with Judaism. Indeed, Rabbi David Rosen says he knows of nothing else in history that has brought about such a profound change.  

And that brings us back to our original question. What if Jules Isaac had not visited Pope John XXIII? Would we still be promoting a replacement theology? What if Jules Isaac had not been for a walk when his wife and two children were taken by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz? Would the Church have reflected on its teaching of contempt and still be antisemitic? Who knows. But we can be sure that Jules Isaac’s escape from the Nazis and his visit to the Pope were of such significance that they have changed the history  of Catholic – Jewish relations, hopefully forever. 


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A Life Well Lived

11/9/2022

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Britain is caught up in mourning for the death of Queen Elizabeth and has almost forgotten that there could be news elsewhere in the world. The media is sated with news and reflections on both the life of the Queen and the future of the monarchy as King Charles III takes on the role for which he has waited a long, long time. The nation is in a state of shock, partly, I think, because of the suddenness of it. Last weekend the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was with the Queen in Balmoral and on Tuesday the Queen appointed her fifteenth prime minister. She was frail but still working so no thought of her death as imminent. Her death, in a sense, has added to the sense of insecurity that is around with war in Ukraine, global climate, economic recessions. What will the future hold?
 
I was a child when Elizabeth became Queen. I remember coronation day because the street where I lived went on a trip to the seaside to celebrate. I remember too seeing her when she did a tour of Britain after her coronation, and I have met her a couple of times. For 70 years she has been Head of State and for some people she was a constant and a symbol of unity. Not everyone agreed with monarchy though.  Scotland has often had a mixed relationship with the monarchy even when there is a public appreciation of her personal commitment and devotion to duty. This is not helped by the fact that in all the news bulletins and statements of condolences from public bodies and charities have spoken of Queen Elizabeth II. But she was only Queen Elizabeth II of England. She is the first Queen in Scotland to be called Elizabeth and the first in the United Kingdom. She has been called Queen Elizabeth II of the nation, but Britain is made up of 3 nations and the United Kingdom of 4.
 
However, no-one can doubt the Queen’s personal faith which she professed openly; her great sense and devotion to duty; her fidelity to her vocation. To be Queen was hers to do and she embraced it and was faithful to it. Mary Oliver has a poem When Death Comes and she ends it by saying:
                When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
                 if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
                 I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
                 or full of argument. 
                                                        I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
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Could all of us not echo those words? Death is inevitable and all of us must face it. Do we not want to do so having lived life to the full, having embraced the good and the bad, the joyful and the sorrowful, having grown in human kindness and compassion, having contributed to the future good of humanity?   
 
Queen Elizabeth lived her life well in the glare of publicity, but many people live their life well within their own sphere of influence. It so happened that this summer four great women whom I have had the privilege to know also died. All of them were women of faith, committed to the work of justice and peace. Sally Beaumont was involved in racial justice and gave accommodation to over 20 refugees in her own home. Maureen Reid served young women in the Guide movement and was a Chief Commissioner for the movement in Scotland. She was a Street Pastor, going out on patrol in Glasgow’s West End from 10.00 pm to 2am on Friday and Saturday nights to help and support young people and anyone in difficulty. Cathy McCormick was a campaigner for justice particularly against the dampness in Glasgow’s housing stock which was causing her son to become ill. She talked at demonstrations and campaigned for solar-powered housing. She was invited to the Houses of Parliament to discuss the link between poor housing and health as well as the United Nations. The fourth great woman was Sr Ellen Gielty, a member of my own religious community. Ellen worked in Nigeria before her long years in teacher training in Glasgow. She was also the Superior General of my community which meant travelling the world, caring for the sisters, helping our community face the challenges of a changing world in  the countries in which we all lived.
 
All these great women, including Queen Elizabeth, were conditioned, and limited by the circumstances into which they were born. Within those constraints they lived well and did what was theirs to do. They responded to the opportunities to do the good that came their way with fidelity and dedication.  Who know what happens after death? But one thing, I think, we can be sure of is that, like ripples on a pond, their influence will live on. Their very act of living and being has made the world a better place and can be a source of comfort and strength to those of us who have not yet passed through death’s door. May they rest in peace and their memory be a blessing for us all.


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The Story of the Universe

30/8/2022

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It’s back to auld clothes and porridge for me after the holidays and my recent retreat (see previous blog) which turned out to be all that I expected. The retreat was organised by the Dominican Sisters who run An Tairseach, an ecological centre in Wicklow that explores spirituality in the context of an evolving universe and an endangered earth. Because of travel difficulties I had opted to link in with this through zoom while living by myself in a self-catering flat in a nearby Carmelite monastery. This gave me plenty of time for prayer and reflection with the opportunity to walk by the river Clyde and savour the beauties of nature.
 
At the outset we were introduced to and invited to reflect on the amazing journey of this universe that we inhabit. For those in An Tairseach there was the opportunity to do this physically in the form of a cosmic walk set into the ground in the shape of a large spiral with hand painted stones representing some events, arbitrarily chosen but designed to give a sense of the universe’s unfolding process.  Unlike a labyrinth the cosmic spiral begins at the centre from a point that represents the Flaring Forth of life and takes the pilgrim through significant moments in evolution, giving a sense of the unfolding universe story to the last and outer stone which brings him or her to the present day. Luckily, I had been able to experience this cosmic walk in an earlier visit to An Tairseach but on this retreat had to be content with reflecting on each of the stages set out for us in the cosmic walk booklet.

 This didn’t feel like a second-hand experience because if gave me time to reflect on each stage and stay with any one for as long as I wanted. The universe story is amazing and wondrous. Even more wondrous is that it is also the story of each one of us and is part of us.  At that moment of the flaring forth of light and energy when the universe came into being 13.7 billion years ago it held the potential for everything that would come to be, including me and you, the reader. The hydrogen and helium set forth at that moment is still with us, the universe is still expanding, evolution continues its journey. From that moment of flaring forth stars, galaxies and planets have been formed, our own planet earth forming an atmosphere that sustained life. From the formation of simple cells, the earth has developed in many diverse and complex ways resulting at this moment in time in conscious human beings who have been described as the universe conscious of itself.

Two moments in this journey have stayed with me.  One happened 3.9 billion years ago - the process of photosynthesis when the earth learned to take nourishment from the sun, when plants and simple celled organisms learned to capture solar energy, convert it into chemical energy and store it for further use. This is a process that powers the planet’s living systems, this is what gives us the oxygen that sustains us, that set out the pattern for all future life forms where each receives and gives nourishment from and to the other. Giving and receiving is intrinsic to how we do live and should live in our daily interactions. What if it hadn’t happened? There would be no life as we know it, a refrain that could accompany each stage of evolution.  The second significant moment that has stayed with me is 1 billion years ago when life was drawn towards union and simple-celled organisms began to reproduce sexually, a process that meant they relinquished their immortality to facilitate the growth of multi-celled organisms. What if that hadn’t happened? Well sex but also death might not have become a condition for the creation of future life. For me this makes death meaningful. We cannot live forever even though some artificial intelligent experts talk as though it is one of the last barriers to be overcome. There would only then be stagnation. For life to continue and develop we must die, we must learn to let go when it is time for new and younger generation to contribute.  

Thomas Berry has said we, and he’s talking to Christians, need to know and live by the story of the universe. I also think we need a spiritual practice to help us realise that we are indeed children of the universe, part of this great evolutionary journey, interconnected with all life. One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness gathas could  help with this. The one I like is, “I have arrived, I am home in the here, in the now”. Often, I begin by reminding myself that I am a child of the universe, become aware of my family and religious ancestors, pray they may be well, may be happy, may be free from suffering.  Then as I breathe into ‘I have arrived I am home’, I am aware of how I hold that evolutionary journey and those ancestors within me to arrive at this present moment, aware of where I am both physically and mentally. As I breathe into ‘in the here and the now’ I am aware that the here and now in the world in which I live is both a loving and painful one with wars, conflicts, violence, greed, pollution, climate change etc and I pray for all sentient beings, our wounded planet, and its warring nations that they may be well, may be happy and free from suffering. This is a practice that works for me. It links me into the universe story, connects me with the rest of life and hopefully awakens my compassion and desire for the well-being of future generations. Perhaps it would work for others too.
 

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For the love of Gaia

16/8/2022

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 It has been rather a busy summer for me with the opportunity to visit friends and family and have a holiday in one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland.  This has been the first since the Covid restrictions came in two years ago.  Now I am about to go on retreat for six days. The retreat is being organised by the An Tairseach Ecology Centre in Wicklow which is run by a community of Dominican Sisters who practise sustainable living and are committed to educating people of the importance of care for creation and the link between ecology and spirituality, something which is growing in importance within religious and non-religious circles. Unfortunately travel arrangements became difficult so I’ve had to opt for the zoom version but the use of a flat in a local Carmelite monastery will give me the silence and separation from phone calls etc that I need. The retreat is entitled ‘Everything Ablaze, Encountering God’s Generative Love and Abiding Presence Within and Around Us’ and is advertised as reflecting on the work of people like Thomas Berry, Teilhard de Chardin and the poet of creation, Mary Oliver.
 
Central to it will be the universe story, recognising this great universe of ours, including our planet, as a self-organising system which has its own wisdom and laws from which we have evolved and whose future we now hold within our hands. In the light of climate change and the loss of biodiversity can we humans change our attitude from seeing the resources of our planet as infinite and there for our comfort to recognising our interdependence with all living things and that our future and way of life is intimately bound up with its future. It’s only with this change of perspective will we come to love the world we inhabit and act in ways that will sustain its life.
 
The idea of the universe as a single self-regulating system was developed by James Lovelock, a scientist and inventor who died on 26th July this year, on his 103rd birthday. It was his friend, the author William Golding who suggested using the metaphor Gaia for this hypothesis as a more imaginative way of describing it. In Greek mythology Gaia is the goddess of the earth and mother of all life and thinking of the universe in this more personal way helps us to see it as a living organism which regulates its environment to create the best conditions for the advancement of life.  It is to recognise that there is no distinct, separate identity for all are interrelated and depend on one another for life. So, we breathe in the oxygen expelled by trees who breathe in the carbon dioxide expelled by us. We need one another for survival. But so often human beings seem to forget this and the statistics for the destruction of rain forests that are the lungs of our planet are frightening. Surely Gaia must weep over the control some of us humans exert on the natural world and long for us to recover our rightful place in it so that we might work together for its well being and advancement. The welfare of our planet is in our hands.
 
The Gaia theory was ridiculed when James Lovelock first proposed it but it is now recognised by many as the foundation of much of climate science and movements such as The Work that Reconnects, established by Joanna Macey and the  Deep Transformation Network set up by Jeremy Lent as well as centres like An Tairseach. To link into these is to feel part of a movement which recognises the dire critical state of our planet but gives hope and a motivation for action. There are many people out there reflecting on our connectedness and interrelatedness with nature and trying to steer us away from greed, desire, and the belief that the resources of nature are inexhaustible and there for our benefit and comfort.
 
 I was privileged to be able to link into a conversation organised by the Deep Transformation Network between Ursula Goodenough and Andreas Weber. Both of them are lovers of life and nature, who see reality as oriented towards and yearning to give life. To be alive said Weber is to generate life and this desire comes from the inside of nature not from without. Individual subjects are driven by something within which craves for more existence, something the theologian Karl Rahner called ‘supernatural existentialism’ but related it to a christian understanding of salvation. Life itself is a miracle and, I suspect for Weber, needs no Creator who planned and set the whole process in motion – something I have some sympathy for.  This is not to reject a religious perspective, but it is to reinterpret it in the light of what we now know of the universe story – something that will be well reflected on during this week’s retreat. It is also to recognise that we humans must listen to that drive towards life and respond accordingly for, says Weber, “humans will be run over in the search for life” but what will bring about our salvation is love which he describes as “the impulse to establish connections, to intermingle, to weave our existence poetically together with that of other beings. The fact that we disregard this principle lies at the core of a global crisis of meaning that plays out in the avalanche of species loss and in our belief that the world is a dead mechanism controlled through economic efficiency”.
 
What better foundation for a retreat could there be than this. 

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The Lord's Prayer

9/7/2022

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 Recently I was asked to do a short podcast on the Lord’s Prayer. The Our Father or the Lord’s Prayer is the prayer that identifies the followers of Jesus, yet there is nothing Christian about it. There is no mention of Jesus, the Church, the sacraments or creeds and yet it is universally recognised as the distinctive Christian prayer.
This is not surprising because Jesus was a Jew, he lived as a Jew, he worshipped as a Jew, he prayed as a Jew so any prayer that he would have left to his disciples would have been a prayer that came from the heart of his faith, the Jewish faith but also expressed his own understanding of that faith.
The prayer is divided into 2 parts. The first part addresses God and honours His name
  • Our Father who art in heaven
  • hallowed be thy name thy name
  • thy kingdom come
  • thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
The second part is a prayer of petition
  • give us this day our daily bread
  • forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others
  • lead us not into temptation but
  • deliver us from evil
The two phrases I reflected on are in the first half of the prayer
Our Father who art in heaven and Thy kingdom come.

As 21st century Christians we understand this prayer differently from Jesus who was a 1st century Jew. For Jesus the world would be seen as a 3-tiered universe with heaven above, hell below and earth in between. We now know from modern cosmology that in fact we live in a vast universe made up of billions of galaxies which has evolved over time. So where is the  heaven where God dwells. It’s reported that in 1961 when the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin—the first human launched into space—returned to Earth he had a simple, Soviet-style message: “I looked and looked and looked, but I didn’t see God.” I don’t know if this story is true but if it is Yuri Gagarin was looking in the wrong place.

The catechism, that many of us were brought up on tells us where God is – everywhere. In the Acts of the Apostles St Paul in a debate with Greek philosophers tells us that “God is the reality in which we live and move and have our very being” and in the gospels Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God, the dwelling place of God is within and among us.
So, when we say Our Father who art in heaven, we are not suggesting that God is in some distant place but rather recognising God’s mystery and otherness, the source of life of all of us, the bond that unites us with one another, here amongst us.

 This is a prayer we that we never say as an isolated individual. For some people the ‘our’ represents the Christian community but if our God is the God and Source of all life then the ‘our’ applies to all beings. And today we know so much more about our interconnectedness and interdependency with the natural world so that the ‘our’ in fact includes all sentient beings, all of creation including the stars and the planets.  

From this prayer we know that for Jesus ‘Father’ was a favourite image of God. But it is only an image and shouldn’t be taken too literally. An image is like a finger pointing at the moon; if you look only at the finger, you will miss the moon. So too with the image of father. If we take it literally, it can obscure the mystery and greatness, the otherness and closeness of a God who does not reside in heaven but amongst us and within us.

Addressing God as father does not mean God is a big man, certainly not with a white beard, and yet that is a dominant image of God.  I only learned recently, when I went to see the Sistine Chapel exhibition, that Michelangelo’s depiction of God in the creation of Adam and Eve was the first time that the human form was used and, as in the depiction of the creation of Eve, the first time and perhaps the only time that God has been depicted  standing on the earth. But this male human image has come to dominate our imagination.

And so, we come to the second phrase, Thy Kingdom come. For me this is the heart of Jesus message. According to the Gospel of Mark Jesus begins his ministry with the words, repent, believe the good news for the Kingdom of God is among you. Scholars have debated what Mark meant by these words. Is he suggesting that the Kingdom has come in Jesus or with Jesus? Whatever, this kingdom is not to be found in another dimension such as heaven but amongst us. I once heard someone say that Christians should be Kingdom spotters; then cooperate wherever they find the Kingdom. Today we live in a world where everything seems to be falling apart and unravelling - climate change, wars, a global pandemic, the rising cost of living. How easy it is to be depressed.

But this is not the whole picture. There are many people working for justice and peace, struggling to live a good and honest life, desiring, praying for and working to make our world a better place for our children and succeeding generations, spreading goodness around them in all sorts of ways. The kingdom of God is all around us - if we have eyes to see it. And sometimes, it’s to be found in the most unexpected places - outside the church, outside religion. 

There's more to be said and perhaps there will be a later blog on that but this reflection shows that there are many ways of understanding the Lord's Prayer and further study on a familiar prayer could be a good thing. 
 

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First Seelisberg Prize

26/6/2022

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Today, 26th June, Professor Amy-Jill Levine will be awarded the first ever Seelisberg Prize set up by the International Council of Christians and Jews and the Centre for Intercultural Theology and the Study of Religion at the University of Salzburg. It is to be given annually to “a person who has contributed to Jewish-Christian understanding through their academic excellence and the outstanding communication of their research and insights to a wide audience.” The establishment of the prize marks the 75th anniversary of a conference that took place in the small Swiss village of Seelisberg in 1947 to consider the roots of an antisemitism that had led to the Holocaust but still survived in Europe. The conference faced the 1900 years of Christian antisemitism, and its famous 10 points laid the foundation for future Christian – Jewish relations and saw the beginning of the International Council of Christians and Jews.

The ten points of Seelisberg were in fact a distillation of eighteen points put forward by the Jewish historian Jules Isaac whose conversation with Pope John XXIII fifteen years or so led eventually to the Vatican II document ‘Nostra Aetate’ which while focussed on the church’s relations with non- Christians had begun its life as a statement on the Church’s relationship with the Jews. The ten statements stress that it is the same God that speaks in the Old and New Testaments; that Jesus, his mother and the first disciples as well as the first martyrs and members of the Church were all Jews; that the fundamental command to love God and neighbour, found in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, is binding on all Christians and Jews;  that Jews are not responsible for the death of Jesus and the Passion of Jesus should not be presented as though they were; that language which  uses the word Jews in an exclusive sense of the enemies of Jesus or any suggestion that the Jewish people are reprobate or accursed should be avoided. These are elements that eventually did find their way in to Nostra Aetate and further catholic teaching such as the document based on Rom. 11: 28 – 30:  They are beloved for the fathers' sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.

Professor Amy-Jill Levine is a worthy recipient of the prize. She is Jewish and a recognised scholar of the Christian New Testament. Her CV is impressive. She is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies, and Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Graduate Department of Religion, and Department of Jewish Studies; she is also Affiliated Professor, Woolf Institute, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge UK. In 2019 she was the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. Her list of publications is also impressive including the co-editorship of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, the editorship of the 13-volume Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings. She is also the New Testament editor of the new Oxford Biblical Commentary Series and sits on the editorial board of the Encyclopaedia of Christian-Jewish Relations.

 I have read some of her books and been privileged to hear her speak on several occasions, all made possible because of zoom. I have learned such a lot about the Jewishness of Jesus, how the Gospels could be seen as a kind of midrash, that is a reflection in the light of the early disciples’ experience of Jesus on traditional Jewish teaching and stories.  I have learned that Jesus lived as a faithful Jew. He 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. And like other Jews of his time, he would have debated what it meant to be a good Jew. In fact, if Jesus set out any guidance it was how to be a good Jew, rather than a good Christian.

Professor Levi loves the New Testament and is fascinated by it. She also loves Jesus. I have heard her say this often while admitting that she doesn’t have faith in him in the way Christians do. For Professor Levine Jesus is a faithful Jew and nothing in the New Testament would contradict this. And she wants both Christians and Jews to recognise it. Speaking of Prof. Levine’s nomination for the prize Prof. Gregor Maria Hoff of the University of Salzburg said, “Her astonishing productivity stems from her lifelong commitment to bringing the fruits of her scholarship to the general public and to promoting positive interactions between Jews and Christians.”
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As she receives the first Seelisberg prize at a ceremony in Frankfurt today Prof. Levine will deliver an address entitled, “Learning about Jews by Reading the New Testament,” reflecting her conviction that in studying the New Testament she enriched her own Jewish identity. I look forward to reading it.

here to edit.

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Law and Spirit

7/6/2022

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Seven weeks ago, the Jewish and Christian faiths celebrated Passover and Easter and so fifty days later they have celebrated the festivals of Shavuot and Pentecost.  Originally a harvest festival, Shavuot focuses on the Torah and remembers the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt Sinai. Religious Jews will spend the night studying Torah, the synagogue will be decorated with flowers and there might even be a marriage canopy built around the Bimah as a symbol of the marriage between God and the People that took place when they accepted to live in a covenantal relationship with God. For Jews the Torah and the Torah Scrolls are the symbol of God’s presence among them, the most sacred object of their faith and to live according to the Torah is to keep alive God’s presence among them.

The Christian festival of Pentecost also celebrates God’s presence among His people. This time the gift is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, that same Spirit which animated Jesus. It was the gift given to the disciples of Jesus after his death and resurrection. It gave them the courage to continue his mission and live according to his way.  It turned fearful men and women into courageous witnesses to the life and message of Jesus. The Holy Spirit was the continuing presence of Jesus in his community, not in a physical way but in a spiritual way. And to live according to the Spirit is to keep alive God’s presence and influence in the world today – in a sense to do for Christianity what the Torah does for Judaism. 

The two festivals are connected but it’s possible to understand the difference as one faith being focussed on the Law with the other on Spirit, giving rise to the anti-Jewish tropes which suggest that Judaism is legalistic as is the God of the Old Testament while the God of the New Testament is loving and merciful. This is to misunderstand the Old Testament which has some of the most beautiful and moving passages on the love of God in the whole of the Christian bible. It is also to misunderstand the Law which for the Jews is more like a contract within the context of a covenantal relationship in which both sides bind themselves to one another to live together in a loving relationship. 
 
I was able to witness just how much the physical representation of the Law in the Torah Scrolls is a symbol of the loving and joyful presence of God amongst his people a few years ago. I so happened to be in the town of St Andrews and the Scrolls of the Law were being transferred from a synagogue in Dundee to a specially designed Ark or resting place in the university chaplaincy. The joy and delight with which the Scrolls were received, passed from one to the other in an atmosphere of song and dance showed how significant the law is to the Jewish community. Within the Orthodox community the Scrolls are only held and passed on by the men of the community though in the Reform community both men and women can handle them. Because it was a mixed congregation, I was handed the Scrolls and able to embrace and dance with them. It was a sacred moment for me, and I felt very privileged to share these moments of intimacy. The sacredness of the moment was brought home to me when a woman from the Orthodox community told me that it was like sacrilege for her to touch and carry the Scrolls. She wouldn’t presume to do so because they were so  sacred. I wonder if she was shocked that I had had the temerity to carry them and whether in any way that seemed to devalue them.
 
This awe and wonder inspired by the Torah is something we Christians must learn and appreciate. Only then will they have an insight into the heart and beauty of Judaism. But many Christians see Judaism as narrowly legalistic. This is to forget that Jesus lived by the Law, never suggested doing away with. Rather he saw himself as fulfilling it. It is to forget that the gift of the Spirit was given to Jesus’ followers as they gathered to celebrate Shavuot.  In the recent newsletter of the Christians and Jews Prof. John Barton, emeritus professor at Oxford University is quoted:
 
'The 'law' that some Christians since Paul have opposed is not the Torah as Jews affirm it. It is a Christian construct, found in over-scrupulous and legalistic branches of Christianity that need the liberation that Paul proclaimed. Christians projected this legalism on to Judaism, but there are many varieties of Christianity that affirm, with the Psalmist, that 'your law is a lantern for my feet and a light upon my path'. Even Paul did not preach 'freedom from the law', if 'law' is understood like this, as a joyful vocation rather than as a set of forbidding demands.'
 
Understanding Pentecost from the perspective of Shavuot allows Christians to appreciate the significance of Law for their Jewish brothers and sisters. It can also help them deepen their understanding of the gift of the Holy Spirit  and rejoice in the presence of God in both Law and Spirit, something that surely unites  rather than divides us. 


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Helpful Conversations

23/5/2022

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Ever since the Second Vatican Council Catholic Bishops have met regularly to discuss issues of common concern. These meetings are called Synods and next year there is to be one on the very notion of synodality, on how to make the Church more inclusive and responsive to the needs of the present world. It’s basically a listening exercise, focussing on three questions: what do you value, what causes you pain and difficulty and how might the Church respond to present needs and concerns? It’s part of Pope Francis’ genius that he doesn’t want to limit these discussions to practising catholics but has encouraged parishes to listen to those outside the Church, have left it or feel isolated and alienated from it. I was privileged enough to be part of two conversations with interfaith friends and consider these questions together.

It was heartening to hear that there was much they valued about the Church, not least Pope Francis himself whom they saw as an inspiration and someone who showed a real love for the whole of humanity. They appreciated his witness to the importance of good interfaith relations which has built bridges between communities and allowed them to move forward in friendship. The signing of the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together by the Pope and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in 2019 was seen as significant. The annual letters of greetings from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue which are accompanied here in Scotland by a letter from the Scottish Bishops had helped strengthen and deepen good relations. These Scottish letters showed respect for and knowledge of the other faith as well as relating the festival to catholic belief and practice. The work of the Bishops’ Committee for Interreligious Dialogue, such as our annual reception for faith communities, was mentioned as was the involvement of the Bishops’ Secretary for Interreligious Dialogue who for over thirty years has supported the development of interfaith at local and national level. If there had not been this involvement and participation, it was suggested, interfaith relations would not have developed in Scotland.

When it came to hearing about concerns and issues it was obvious that we were all facing similar problems. One of these was the decline in numbers attending places of worship and the number of young people who no longer found religion relevant, though there was also the phenomenon of some young people becoming more traditional and right wing – something that could be a good topic for dialogue. There was a recognition that all our faiths are facing the same moral issues and in one of the conversations homosexuality was mentioned. Our religions should not be judgemental about people’s life stances, it was suggested, and it is because of this many are walking away from religion. So too interfaith marriages are still not accepted. In the past Jewish parents considered children who married outside the faith as dead and catholic parents often refused to go to the weddings of their children who married outside the Church. The control clergy have over certain elements of religion – eg. admitting people to the sacraments, refusing blessings or whatever is a common concern as is the role of women though, interestingly, women tend to predominate in interfaith relations and in this case the concern is how to get men involved.

These attitudes needed to change as does ignorance of the faith of others. Older views of one another’s faith and the legacy of the past are a barrier to understanding and have led to it being taboo for some Jews to visit a church or even mention Jesus or a suspicion of visiting places of worship. and engaging in dialogue for fear of conversion. While interfaith friendships are expanding and have grown over the years there is still a lot of mistrust of the other and a fear of being converted or encouraged to do so. What is needed is more dialogue and friendship, particularly at a local and neighbourhood level. A christmas card from the local church would be appreciated as would carol singing at Christmas and perhaps a card to recognize the festivals of the faiths in the neighbourhood and a visit to a local place of worship.  Even when a church is situated, for example, in an area with a large Jewish population, no mention is ever made of that in sermons or the life of the Church.

Many found it difficult to get local parish priests involved in interfaith events or respond to invitations. Clergy in all faiths need to be encouraged and told about the importance of interfaith relations and dialogue as these are important and necessary if communities are to be healthy. At present it tends to be the same faces at interfaith meetings, and this is a sign of weakness. How are we to encourage others – by having young people shadow experienced dialoguers, by good interreligious education? A grounding in world faiths should be given in faith education and clergy training. Too often the leaders and clergy in our faiths are inclined to be inward looking with no comments or statement on issues facing society and the community. This too should change.
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There was a real sense of unity in the conversations and many of the concerns, as is obvious from this account, were shared by the different faiths. It was a valuable experience for all of us. We recognized one another, not just as friends but as citizens of the world and of Scotland. It was felt therefore that it is important that we are seen to be acting together for the common good, that we witness to friendships that extend beyond the boundaries of race and religion and hopefully contribute to peaceful co-existence among nations.


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Dialogue on Mary

10/5/2022

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 We had an interesting interfaith dialogues this last weekend focussed on Mary the mother of Jesus from both a Catholic and a Shia Muslim perspective. The input was intense and full so that there wasn’t much time for dialogue or questions but I hope for future dialogues when it might be possible to bring the four women who participated together simply to respond to one another and reflect on the questions posed by their talks. The meeting was on zoom which had the great advantage of including women from Argentina, Michigan, Catalonia as well as Scotland and allowed attendees to put questions into chat. But zoom also has disadvantages in that it’s more difficult to regulate the time and allow for more personal responses.
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The format of the event was that two speakers from each religion would talk about what we learn of Mary from their tradition and what Mary has meant to them as a woman of faith.  Sr Teresa Forcades, described by the BBC as Europe’s most radical nun, gave the more academic contribution. She is very busy, and it has been said that she always seems to be in two places at once. This was borne out by the fact that she spoke to us from a hotel lounge where she was in the middle of a conference that she was organising. It was enlightening. For Teresa Mary is a model of Christian discipleship for both men and women. A surprise to me was the knowledge that in the New Testament Mary speaks more than any other disciple. In fact, suggests Teresa she is the most active and talkative of the disciples, not a traditional view of the Virgin Mary. The first word that Mary speaks in the Gospel of Luke is “how will this be?” in response to the announcement that she has found favour with God and will bear a child. For Sr Teresa this is not a sign of disbelief as happened with Zachariah when he heard that his wife was pregnant but rather showed her as a dialogue partner with God. Throughout the gospels Mary’s words confirm her as a confident woman who takes responsibility for her faith, is a channel of grace, has taken a radical option for life, shouts out with joy, complains and suffers.

Sr Teresa’s contribution was well supported and illustrated by Mary Cullen, well known in Catholic circles in Scotland, in her reflection on the place of Mary in her own life of faith using a picture, a poem, a prayer and a book. Fra Angelica’s painting of the Annunciation was the picture which, for Mary, showed an idealised, submissive and silent Mary, an image that she had grown up with. Experience, however, has taught her that this was the unrealistic, fanciful and even romanticised vision of patriarchy. Throughout her life and through her friendship with other women of faith she came to know Mary as a woman of strength, illustrated well in the poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe” and the work of Anne Johnson in her book “Myriam of Nazareth, Women of Strength and Wisdom” as well as the work of theologian Elizabeth Johnson who in her book “Truly Our Sister”  ‘… invites Mary to come down from the pedestal where she has been honoured for centuries and rejoin us in the community of grace and struggle in history’.

The two Muslim women, Sameia Younes and Israa Safieddine took a different approach, basing their contributions on the text of the Qur’an where Myriam is mentioned 34 times and the only one to be addressed by her personal name, even having a chapter devoted to her and her life. According to the Prophet Mohammed Mary is one of the best women of the world, standing alongside Asiyah, the wife of Pharaoh who rescued Moses from death in the Nile; Khadijah, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad who supported him in his call to be a prophet, and Fatimah, the daughter of Khadijah and the Prophet who was greatly loved by him and seen as an example of an outstanding woman. The details of the life of Mary, particularly the virginal conception and birth of Jesus are very different from that found in the Gospels. Mary, as a young child, lives a life of seclusion and dedication to God, looked after by her uncle Zechariah, when she is visited by an angel who tells her of God’s choice that she should be the mother of the Messiah, Jesus. Jesus is born in the desert where Mary is miraculously sustained by a date tree and spring of water. Afraid of what will be said about her having given birth to a son, “carrying him she brought him to her people. They said, ‘O Mary, you have certainly come up with an odd thing! ….Thereat she pointed to him. They said, ‘How can we speak to one who is yet a baby in the cradle?”  But Jesus does speak to confirm that he is of God.
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It's easy in a dialogue such as this one to focus on the differences in the accounts but despite these there was a lot in common. In both traditions it was obvious that Mary is seen as an example of a faithful and discerning servant of God for both men and women. She is not mild and meek but strong and courageous and for us engaged in interfaith work she is above all a partner in dialogue.

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The Story of the Universe

25/4/2022

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Recently I was invited to take the Sunday morning service at the Unitarian Church. It’s both a privilege and a challenge for there is no lectionary or pattern of readings to help with designing the service and the theme is left open for the leader to do what he or she wishes. What helped my focus and became the main reading during the service was an article by Thomas Berry, a Passionist priest who called himself a geologian, entitled ‘The Story of the Universe’.

For Thomas Berry it’s all a question of story. For him there are two basic stories – the religious story and the story of the universe. Most of us in the west have been brought up on the religious story – a transcendent creator God with human beings being the highpoint of creation; the first human beings disobeying God’s commands and being expelled from a beautiful and fruitful garden; this original sin affecting all human beings born into the world, leaving them in a state of alienation from God; Jesus, God’s Son offering a way of salvation  through baptism; the final destiny of life being heaven or hell. Thomas Berry believes that this story no longer works. It belongs to a three – fold universe with God in his heaven, the destiny of those who have lived a good life; with the earth stable and unchanging at the centre and the underworld for those who are not saved.

We now know that the universe isn’t like this. Cosmology teaches us about the flaring forth of energy that we call the Big Bang, about the evolution of the stars, the planets, including our own, about the evolution of life on earth of which we humans are a part. We humans are for the moment the high point of evolution, but evolution will go on beyond us. We are the expression of life, given form at this moment but constrained by the moment and the time in which we live both physically and intellectually.

  So, what do we do with the religious story? Many people, of course, just dismiss it and reject it.  Others cling to it and try to reconcile it with what we know of modern science, and often believers will debate with scientists or atheists, trying to prove that belief in a creator God is rational. These discussions are nearly always confrontational and polarised. But there is another approach which is growing within my own church – that of listening to/ reading the story of the universe and reflecting on what it means for our Christian faith. Over the years the Catholic church has dialogued with prevailing philosophies and current, knowledge as it has tried to articulate its teaching and make it relevant, something known as the development of doctrine. Now that dialogue is taking place with cosmology and ecology. There’s a recognition that we need to heed the story of the universe. We are part of an evolutionary process, on a journey – perhaps to die out like the Neanderthals to give life to some beings more evolved than we are, perhaps to learn how to live well together as a global community.

Where does this leave religion? I’ve come to believe that religion, all religions, have an intuition into the Reality of existence which they’ve expressed in beliefs or doctrines that have, over time, become ossified and divorced from their initial insights.  It’s the old image of the finger pointing at the moon – look at the finger and you miss the moon. So much of religious teaching obscures rather than reveals the Reality it has encountered.  Eastern religions do this better than western ones, even Christianity. But now instead of looking at religious teaching to help us understand the universe, we now look at the story of the universe to help us understand the insights of religion. For example, it’s a tradition to have ashes put on the forehead on Ash Wednesday accompanied by the words “remember you are dust and into dust you shall return”. This was taken as a sign of our need for repentance but it could also be a reminder that we are earthlings, worldlings who come from a common source – the dust of the earth – or as we now know the very dust of the stars. 

One of the challenges in considering the universe story is having to rethink our understanding of God and eternal life. Often God is depicted as what you might call a Sky God, somewhere in heaven, emerging from his isolation and silence to create the world and reveal something of himself. And at the end of life, if we have been good, God or maybe Jesus, will take us to live happily with him in heaven. In the Acts of Apostles Paul, in a conversation with Greek philosophers on the Areopagus, speaks of God as the One in whom we live and move and have our very being. In the letter of John, chapter 4, it says God is love and whoever lives in love, lives in God – perhaps better insights into Reality than a interventionist God. Even the Trinity which seems so incomprehensible when theologians try to explain it could be an insight that relationships are at the heart of life – a reality we know from the Universe story.

 Christianity is at an interesting stage. The story of the universe has the potential to transform it and make it more relevant to the modern age. It also has the potential to transform us and our relationships with nature and one another. We are at a critical point in our evolutionary journey and perhaps the very future of our race  and, of religion, depends on the story we tell ourselves – a story that must be relevant to the modern age and not belong to a medieval one.

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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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