"Jesus and Judaism," the 2007 Harvey Lecture by Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School,
presented in Knapp Auditorium on April 12

Not for citation without permission.

I begin with my thanks Edwin Beckham , Stacy Stringer , Cyndi Howard, Greg Garrett , Bob Kinney , and the full Harvey Lecture Committee for arranging this program. Given the illustrious history of this series, it is both my honor and my privilege to participate in it.

This evening we’ll talk about Jesus in his Jewish context, and about how locating him there produces good news for church and synagogue alike. In other words, we’ll be looking at why the connection between Jesus and Judaism still matters, and we’ll explore how knowing about that connection removes some of the stumbling blocks that prevent us from having meaningful interfaith conversations.

Granted, it may seem a tad odd to have a member of an Orthodox synagogue speak about Jesus. Thus I thought it might helpful to share with you why I do what I do. You can determine if I am just biased or whether I am being a good historian (and I note: to be biased does not necessarily make one wrong). Following that, we’ll look at Jesus the Jew in terms of prayers, parables, piety, politics, and interfaith possibilities. And, G-d willing, we’ll do this in about fifty minutes.

In terms of my own background:

I was raised in a predominantly Roman Catholic area of Massachusetts. My sense of Christianity was, and remains, one of glorious wonder and intriguing mystery. I loved Christmas trees and Easter bunnies; I sang Christmas carols in the public school, and I still think that “Silent Night” is much prettier than “I had a Little Dreidle” (the one Hannukah song invariably on the program).

When I was seven, this early fascination came to a head with two events. First, all my friends were preparing to make First Communion. I wanted to do this too -- not for religious fervor, but for the bride dress. That my mother bought me a wedding gown for my Barbie doll was only small consolation. Barbie, in bride dress, took communion from Ken every morning before school.

Second, that year a girl on the school bus said to me, “You killed our Lord.” I did not, I responded with some indignation. Deicide would be the sort of thing I’d recall. “Yes you did,” the girl insisted. “Our priest said so.”

I was convinced that priests wore special collars to keep them from lying (I still think this is a good idea). Since the priest wasn’t dead, I must be guilty. When I returned home – and thank heaven these were the 60s when mommies met their kids at the bus-stop – I was in hysterics. I was convinced that I had killed G-d. Calming me down, my mother assured me that my friend had misspoken and her priest had been mistaken. Calls were made, and – to the enormous credit of the local diocese -- this hateful teaching was stopped.

But I had become obsessed. I initially concluded that the priest had made a translation error since, even in second grade, I knew from my Hebrew School experiences that translation errors were easy to make. So, I decided, I’d learn to read the Christian Bible (no one told me it was in Greek), find the problem, solve it, and then go on to do other things, like learn how to knit or to establish world peace.

I also asked my parents if I might attend catechism – church school -- with my friends. If someone was going to say nasty things about Jews, I wanted to hear these sayings for myself, and then, in my best seven-year-old way, defend all of Judaism. My parents agreed. So I went to catechism when I could, and I found the experience wonderful: the people were friendly, the milk and cookies just fine, and I never heard a word that struck me as anti-Jewish.

Even better, I’d hear a gospel story and think, “sounds familiar.” The stories resonated with me as the following seven (a good biblical number) quick example illustrate:

• Jesus meets a woman at a well and talks about marriage: like Abraham’s servant and Rebecca; Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah.
• Jesus is a good shepherd: like David (the coloring book renditions are exactly the same, except the David has shorter hair and a shorter dress; the sheep are in the same positions.
• Jesus debates with priests, like Jeremiah.
• Jesus tells parables: like the prophet Nathan and the rabbis whose tales comprise the Midrashim.
• Jesus produces food miraculously, heals, and raises the dead: so too the prophets Elijah and Elisha;
• Jesus survives when children around him are slaughtered, and we don’t have to read Matthew 2-7 to know that the rescued baby would take a trip to Egypt, cross water in a life-changing experience, face temptation in the wilderness, ascend a mountain, and deliver a law -- the pattern was established in Shemot, the Book of Exodus.
• Jesus even complains about those wanting the best seats in the synagogue -- so did my mother.

Nor was the cross strange: the story resembled the deaths of the Maccabean martyrs we recall at Hannukah. And here’s the irony – we Jews get the holiday, but the Church preserved the earliest records. The books of the Maccabees are found in Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Bibles, not Jewish ones.

Only later did I actually read the New Testament, and I found it painful – comments from John 8 about how the Jews are children of Satan, or from Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians about how the “Jews killed the Lord Jesus” or from the book of Revelation about the “synagogue of Satan.” We had an example of this charge this morning in the lectionary reading, where Peter accuses his audience, the “Israelites” – this is insider language for Jews – not only of having “rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to [them], but also of having “killed the Author of Life, whom G-d raised from the dead” (Acts 3:14-15).

Finally, I realized why that priest taught that the Jews killed Jesus. But, having been so intrigued by the Gospel stories – and having met numerous Christians who were not anti-Jewish -- I also realized that there are other ways of understanding the problematic texts. The gospels do not have to be heard as teachings of hate. The fact that members of this seminary invited me to speak, in chapel this morning, about that passage proves the point: it is not our role to erase the problems in our texts; it is our role rather to confront them, and to seek a liberating message of love rather than a constraining message of hate.

I also realized from those early introductions to New Testament study, and I continue to believe now 43 years later, that the best way to understand the gospels and to avoid the teaching of hate than easily accompany them, is to locate the texts, and Jesus, in the context of the Judaisms of the first century – the plural is intentional for then as now Jews had different view of worship, practice, and belief.

Further, I realized then, and firmly believe today, that Jews and Christians need to study together, and to listen with each others’ ears. Why? To discover both what we share and how we come to define ourselves against each other. Jews need to know that most Christians do not read the New Testament texts traditionally seen as anti-Jewish in an anti-Jewish manner. When Christians read in John’s Gospel that “the Jews” (oi ioudaoi) are children of the devil, they do not usually think of Yitzhak Pearlman, or Jerry Seinfeld, or, since this is Texas , Kinky Friedman, or me. Or, for a comparison: when we Jews celebrate the Passover, the holiday that ended just this Tuesday night, and we talk about enslavement by the Egyptians, we don’t think of present Egyptians, such as Omar Sharif. And it is always salutary to hear with each other’s ears.

There are also more parochial reasons for such study by Jews. The gospels tell us a great deal about first-century Jewish life in the Galilee and Judea, and the only Second Temple Pharisee from whom we have extant sources is Paul of Tarsus.

Ironically, I find that the more I study the documents of early Christianity, the better Jew I become: this study provides insight into Jewish history, it lets me know the various religious options available in antiquity and so helps me see how the Judaism that I celebrate today took shape. More: I see Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, about righteousness, about love of G-d and love of neighbor, as getting to the heart of the Jewish tradition. He’s a Jewish teacher, who has much to teach. One does not need to worship the messenger in order to appreciate, and be challenged by, much of the message.

Given these concerns, I turn now to the question: Why should we, both Jews and Christians, look at Jesus within his own context? Beyond recovering our mutual history and understanding how we came to separate, here are four reasons – among many – as to why it is increasingly essential that we locate Jesus within Judaism.

First: A few years ago I did a program at Kentucky Wesleyan University. The school had gotten a grant to present to the student body and the wider community talks on Judaism – there are not many Jews in Owensboro, KY, and this commendable effort was designed to introduce the local population to traditions other than that of the majority. I was the designated Jew for the evening. The sponsors requested a talk dealing with a Jewish response to the New Testament.

I noted before starting a youngish, bald man sitting in the front row, but off to the side, and I soon as I started talking about Jesus in his Jewish context, I saw that he had raised his hand. I said we’d do questions later, and his hand came down.

As I started to talk about what makes Jesus "Jewish" the young man began to speak again: “What about the Idumaeans, and the Khazars?”

My host then firmly asked the young man to leave; he stormed off while accusing me, loudly, of intellectual dishonesty. The vast majority of the audience had no idea what that young man was talking about – I did, And so, I told them.

I should note that I now have progressive lenses, but at the time I had to take the distance-glasses off when I lectured, because otherwise I couldn’t see my notes, and thus I didn’t get a close look at the fellow. But as he was leaving, I put my glasses on, and noticed not just a bald head, but a shaved one. Then I saw the swastika on his jacket. And it only then, because I’m sometimes slow, it occurred to me that he was not simply raising his hand, he was doing a Nazi salute. This young man is part of that new breed of racist associated with groups such as “The Church of Jesus Christ, Christian.” Like many German New Testament scholars of the Nazi Era, he believed that Jesus was Aryan. It is the Aryan who is heir to the biblical tradition; not the Jew (and heaven knows, certainly not any person of color). The Idumeans, for example, were a gentile population converted to Judaism a century prior to Jesus.

You know these folks. They marched in Austin in November of 2005, with the Klu Klux Klan leader shouting out, “We recognize that only Jesus Christ is G-d.” You had this past November 11 the National Socialist Movement rallying on the South Steps of the Capitol Building.

My point that evening -- the need for the church to recover Jesus as a Jew -- was made in a way I neither anticipated nor desired. And I wonder: how much of this anti-Judaism did this young man learn in Church? What opportunities were missed in church to prevent this racist ideology? Did the priest speak of the Jews as “children of the devil” (so John 8)? Did his youth leader speak of how “the Jews” killed Jesus?

Side note: In order to prevent my students from spouting anything that would lead to this skin-head view, I take several step of which I here mention one. I mentioned it already in chapel this morning, but it’s one of the most effective techniques I know, and I think it bears repeating.

I used to bring my son to my “Introduction to New Testament” class (he’s sixteen now, so I’ll have to start borrowing other people’s children). I put a little boy from the day school, a boy in kippa and tzitizit, in front of my students and tell them, “don’t say anything that will hurt this child, and don’ t say anything that will cause a member of your congregation to hurt this child.” The move is theatrical and manipulating, but it’s also quite effective.

But education must take place in the synagogue as well. Here’s my second point on urgency. "Moment" magazine published a few years ago an article on what Jews need to know about Jesus ("Moment" is like “Time” or “Newsweek” for Jews). I know this piece was oriented toward positive interfaith relations: I wrote it. That the essay was picked up in the volume “best Jewish writing of 2003” does suggest that Jews are increasingly willing to understand Jesus and his followers. But here’s the problem.

The essay received a very negative response from one rabbi, incensed that the author—me—would suggest that Judaism and Christianity share much in common and that the early Jesus movement made sense in a first-century context. He was particularly concerned that by my tearing down the walls of ignorance, I was making it easier for Evangelicals to try to convert Jews to Christianity. I do not think that the way to stop Christian missionaries from making inroad among Jews is to attack Christianity. If we want our children to remain Jewish, we educate them about Judaism, we do not bash the Church.

My third example comes from the Middle East. Sadly, the details spring not only from radical Islamists, but from so-called mainline Christians and often from members of the Anglican Communion. For example, Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashwari announced at Vanderbilt a few years ago that the first Christians were… Arab. This is slippery, for the Book of Acts mentions that the word “Christian” was first applied to Jesus’ followers, both Jews and gentiles, in Syria. But Ashwari was hardly speaking of linguistic subtlety; her audiences heard her say that Jesus’ first followers weren’t Jews.

Such rhetoric is also a stable of Naim Ateek, who directs the Sabeal center for liberation theology. He speaks of the Israeli army as crucifying Palestinians (and so plays upon the image of “Jew as Christ-killer”). Who today should identify with the disciples of Jesus who according to the Gospel of John stay behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews”: obviously, for Ateek, the Palestinian. The fact that those original disciples were all Jews is erased.

The Christmas issue of “Chrstian Century” featured a cover story on my book, The Misunderstood Jew, and including in its excerpt my comments about Palestinian liberation theology. The flurry of letters from offended Christians was not surprising. Just as some Jews believe that any criticism of Israel is a sign of anti-Semitism, so some Christians believe that any criticism of Palestinians is a sign of a hyper-Zionist agenda that dismisses the concerns of the Palestinian population. The end – Palestinian statehood – does not justify the means, anti-Jewish rhetoric. I noticed that you have a forthcoming talk about peacemaking in the Middle East with the editor of a book containing what the website describes as “articles by 15 peacemakers who work toward a just peace in the Midddle East.” Rev. Ateek is, of course, included. I do not see how relying on anti-Jewish stereotypes is working for peace in a, well, Christ-like way.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim to be children of Abraham, and it’s about time we started being a blessing to each other.

Fourth, on urgency in considering Jesus as a Jew, Anti-Jewish teaching is promulgated in parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where there are no Jews. The problem is not only the legacy of missionaries, but the nonsense that academics are writing. For just one example:

In a World Council of Churches' collection (the WCC is an occasional exporter of such drivel) we find: "Jesus died as a result of the clash between his God [capitalized] and the god [small "g"] of Pharisaic Judaism.... Jesus' crucifixion marked the temporal triumph of the patriarchal god of Judaism.” Here is that old canard, which is complete nonsense, that Jesus came to substitute a G-d of love for a G-d of wrath.

Apparently no one told this theologian, or the press, that the G-d of Genesis is the G-d of the Gospels; that the G-d of Judaism is no more and no less patriarchal than the G-d of the Church. I am happy to report that the WCC is slowly recognizing the problem of its publications and is taking steps to prevent it, including publishing in their own journal an article I wrote on their anti-Jewish publications. But, what’s already on the library shelves in Lagos and Lima remains fodder for Christian anti-Judaism. I know this to be true, because in the summer of 2004, when I was living in a Maryknoll convent in Manila, the Philippines, I found this material on the library shelves. Once it’s out, it’s very difficult to recall or correct.

So, we have four (actually more, but if we listed the rest we’d be here until Tisha b’av), reasons for recovering the connection between Jesus and Judaism: from Skin heads to narrow-minded rabbis, from anti-Jewish rhetoric in the Middle East, to anti-Jewish rhetoric from the World Council of Churches, Jesus’ connection to Judaism is under attack.

One way to avoid having anti-Jewish implications in texts and sermons, and to foster that needed conversation between Church and Synagogue is to recognize that Jesus was Jewish. It’s not that this fact has gone unrecognized: We find on bookshelves such titles as Jesus the Jew, The Jewishness of Jesus, Jesus in His Jewish Context, Jesus the Marginal Jew, Recovering the Jewishness of Jesus… Amazon.com offers many more, and I have contributed to this glut myself.

Yet when it comes to the pew, even when Christians acknowledge that Jesus was Jewish, they often have little content to the label. Nor are things much better on the Jewish side. Jesus is one of ours, both by practice and by halachah, Jewish law. Plus, his mother is Jewish [we’ll leave aside the question of his father]. Yet we Jews typically don’t acknowledge him as one of ours. Frankly, if we Jews are willing to acknowledge such ‘Jews’ as Freud, the Marxes (Karl and Groucho), Albert Einstein, and Adam Sandler, why not acknowledge Jesus – whose level of Jewish commitment is beyond dispute?

So let’s look at Jesus the Jew, and see what we find, and why we might care.

• He dresses like a Jew, even to the wearing of tzitzit fringes, for it is fringes that a woman with a 12-year hemorrhage reaches out to touch in hopes of a healing. These fringes are designed to remind the wearer of all the commandments. You might think of them as WWJD bracelets for Jews.
• To take this to a practical conclusion: Jesus does not dismiss the Torah; to use the modern idiom, he rather wore the Law and the Prophets on his sleeve. This point should help Christians recover the value of their Old Testament (a good term for a Christian to use).
• He eats like a Jew – that is, he keeps kosher. There is one verse, in Mark’s Gospel, that states Jesus declared all foods clean, but this is Mark’s editing and not something Jesus did. To the contrary, not only did he keep kosher, but all of his immediate followers did as well. In fact, one of the major debates in the early Church was not whether Jews who followed Jesus needed to keep kosher, but whether Christian gentiles needed to do so as well. The conclusion: they didn’t.
• To a practical conclusion: he was, as a Jew, committed to the idea of the sanctification of the body: He attended to what went into it and what came out of it. Perhaps greater attention to the body – and less division between body and spirit – would be a healthy shift.
• He also have participated in the Passover meal, the seder. But here’s a place where I think Jesus and Judaism remain separate from the Church today. American Churches are increasingly celebrating seders on Holy Thursday, the day before Good Friday. While the educational opportunity is a good one, there are substantial interfaith problems with this practice. You may want to come back to this point in the Q and A,
• However, the imagery of the Eucharist – or of the Communion celebration -- is peppered with Passover connections: it should remind those participating not only that people today lack daily bread, some are still enslaved, both spiritually and physically.
• Back to Jesus: teaches in synagogues and the Temple in Jerusalem.
• To teach in Judaism means to wrestle with the text (that is what “Israel” means – to wrestle with G-d). Jesus would have expected to be challenged; he did not live in a setting where no one voiced alternative opinions. His practice is not “fundamentalism’
• He shows enormous respect for the Mitzvot, the commandments, so much so that he debates with other Jews how they are best to be understood and enacted. For example – and this one chosen because it is something Jews and Christians still share -- he honors the Sabbath and keeps it holy.

The Sabbath is something Jews and Christians share, although we celebrate on different days and for different reasons. Judaism celebrates Shabbos (Yiddish) or Shabbat (modern Hebrew) both because it is the day blessed by the divine at the conclusion of creation, and because we were slaves in Egypt , and Shabbos guarantees that we will never be enslaved again. The Gospel story was told originally by Jews, and they insisted on retaining the Sabbath. Why not? It’s the only holiday mentioned in the ten commandments. The Church eventually shifted from celebrating on the last day of the week to the first, both to commemorate Jesus’ resurrection and to distinguish itself from Judaism.

Now, I can’t number the students I’ve had who think that Judaism is a straight-jacket with myriads of picky injunctions, and if we Jews, then or now, break one of them, we fear the wrath of an angry G-d. I suspect they get this picture because they’ve heard lots of sermons on Pharisees who are depicted as caring about externals but not the heart, or about ritual and not compassion. Of course, this view of Judaism makes all Jews hopelessly sanctimonious, obsessive, and neurotic. Save for Jesus, who declares, "The Sabbath was made for people not people for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Wrong.

Sabbath observance, then and now, was a hotly debated issue. The Ten Commandments don’t come with instruction manuals. How do we “honor the Sabbath and keep it holy”?

Rabbinic texts make the same points Jesus made. Commenting on Exod 31.14, "For the Sabbath is holy to you," The Talmud (Yoma 85b) interprets, "The Sabbath is given to you; you are not to be delivered to the Sabbath." Sounds pretty much like Jesus’ comment: “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.”

Jesus was not telling his fellow Jews, something they didn’t already know. He was awakening them to the best of their tradition, and he did so in arresting ways. Further, he did this through a range of single statements, to parables to prayers… A few examples should make the case.

In terms of epitomizing, summarizing, the teaching of his faith, he’s right on track.

Legend has it that Rabbi Hillel – one of Judaism's greatest teachers -- was asked by a potential follower, “Teach me the Torah -- teach me all of your traditions, your values, your practices, and your theology -- while standing on one foot.” Hillel wisely responded: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. All the rest is commentary, go and learn.” A few decades later, Jesus instructed, "In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets" (Matt. 7:12).

In the synagogue, we recite daily a prayer called the V'ahavta, from its first word, "and you shall love." This reading, from Deuteronomy 6:5, states, "You shall love the lord your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." We read from the Torah, in Leviticus 19:18, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." So too, when defining which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” Jesus states: “V’ahavta… You shall love the lord your G-d with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37-40; quoting the LXX).

As far as his other teaching is concerned: Jesus evokes the prophets and the rabbis in his parables, genres well known to his fellow Jews. How do we read the parables: they should help us see the world anew, challenge our presuppositions, or, in the modern idiom, take us out of our comfort zone.

We’ve noted Jesus’ evocation of Leviticus, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The context in which it appears in Luke’s Gospel provides one of the best-known parables. Luke tells of how a lawyer (Luke does not like lawyers) asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” The question is of course loaded: to ask “who is my neighbor?” is simply the polite way of asking “who is not my neighbor?” Jesus refuses to answer this question. Instead, he responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan: a short story of how a man is waylaid by bandits and left for dead in a ditch. A priest (a Cohen) walks by without helping, as does a Levite, but a Samaritan – and at the time, Samaritan were known for attacking Jewish pilgrims coming from the Galilee to worship in the Jewish temple – a Samaritan helps him out. The problem, however, is that unless we see the parable as a Jewish story, we’ll miss the point.

• The story about a Priest and a Levite (Levites are Temple workers) who fail to help and the Samaritan who shows mercy is not – contrary to one popular Christian interpretation - about religious personnel who are required by their religion to keep from coming into contact with a corpse (rather, Jewish Law insists that not only the saving of a life but the burying of an unclaimed corpse is incumbent upon everyone, high priest included; cf. the Book of Tobit). The Mishnah (Nazir 7) insists that even a high priest must bury an unattended corpse.
• It is not designed to show that Christians have a broader view of “neighbor” than Jews. The great Rabbi Akiva, another Jewish teacher killed by the Roman empire a century after Jesus, stated, “Love your neighbor as yourself – this is the major principle of the Torah” (y. Ned. 9:4).
• The parable is also not some banal platitude that tells us we should be nice.
• No, the story is about an ethnic other. The one thing the priest and the Levite share is a genealogical connection. The priest is a priest only because his father is one; the job is inherited rather than vocational. The priest and Levite are thus ultimate insiders, as the Samaritan is (from the Jewish perspective), the ultimate outsider. He is descended from the inhabitants of the Northern kingdom of Israel, the remnants of the Ten Lost Tribes, who intermarried with the local population. Jews and Samaritans were, for the most part, enemies -- both fighting over the same legacy (in this case, the Pentateuch).

And so Jesus reframes the question: we are not to ask “who is my neighbor? But “who proved neighbor?” and, ideally, “how might I prove neighbor?”

Here’s how to hear this parable today: Ask “Where is Samaria ”? the answer: the West Bank . So what does the parable say: “I am a Jew, waylaid by robbers, beaten, stripped, and left to die. But while a sabra from Eilat and an Israeli Arab from Jerusalem walk by, the one who has compassion is a member of Hamas, the Palestinian party dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish state. If we can picture this, there is hope for the Middle East.

When we extend Jesus’ teachings from single lines to prayer, we again find complete continuity with Judaism.

The problem with the Lord’s prayer is that it – like the Good Samaritan -- has become domesticated. It’s too familiar. In public schools in Massachusetts in the early 1960s we recited "The Lord's Prayer" every morning right before the ‘pledge of allegiance’. It never occurred to me that this was a “Christian” prayer –

a. Let’s start with “our father, who is in heaven....”

Jews typically called Gd “Father”. Malachi 2:10, “Have we not all one father?”

Yes, it has been argued that Jesus’ use of the term “Abba” (only in Mark 14:36, see also Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15) is an intimate address, meaning “daddy,” that no other Jew would use for the Deity. The argument was made by German scholar Joachim Jeremias. Yet he retracted the view and called it “a piece of inadmissible naiveté.”

The following is my favorite of the rabbinic uses of Abba; it comes from the Babylonian Talmud (Taanit 23b), but the figures are from the first century B.C.E.

“Honi the Circle-maker’s daughter had a son called Hanan ha-Nehba. When the world was in need of rain, the sages would send schoolchildren to him; they would take hold of the hem of his garment and say to him, ‘Father, father [Abba, Abba], give us rain.’ Then he would plead with the holy one: ‘Master of the universe, do it for the sake of these who do not know the difference between an Abba who can give rain and an Abba who cannot.”

The prayer offers more than piety. It also concerns politics. The Caesars were called “father” along with titles such as god, son of god, and savior. By speaking of the ‘father in heaven,’’ Jesus insists that Rome is not the ‘true’ father.

More, by stating we should not no one father, he evokes the prophetic insistence that we not rest assured on lineage. The point about lineage surfaces also in the proclamations of a fellow named Yochanan whom many Jews saw as inspired. Yochanan insisted that one should not rely on ancestral privilege, for Gd can raise up children to Abraham from stones. In Hebrew the phrase is a pun: Gd raises children (banim) from stones (evanim). This Yochanan is also known as John the Baptist.

b. “Hallowed by your name”

The making sacred of G-d’s name is a component of most Jewish prayers, esp. the “Kaddish” prayer, which begins, “Magnified and sanctified be [G-d’s] great name.” Even more: the prayer is not in Hebrew, but in the language Jesus spoke, Aramaic.

c. Your kingdom come

Traditional Judaism speaks of “ha-olam ha-bah,” the world to come, a time marked by universal peace. Further, we do have an idea also of heaven, but contrary to what some Christians think, we do not seek to earn our way into it; it is part of the covenant.

d. Your will be done?

Jesus does this by doing what Jews have always done: building a fence about the law.

1. To those who hard, “You shall not murder,” Jesus says, “if you are angry with a brothers or sister, you shall be liable to judgment.”
2. To those who heard, you shall not swear falsely, Jesus says, ‘don’t swear at all’ (which by the way confuses me in that today we speak of “swearing on a stack of bibles” or “swear in” with a Bible politicians who claim to be Christians…”

This is not making things easier; it’s not a liberal view. Jesus is taking the law so seriously that he extends prohibitions regarding action to prohibition regarding thought.

d. The concern for “daily bread,”

“Give us this day our daily bread,” which sounds redundant, takes on new meaning when heard in its Jewish context. Jewish texts portray heaven as a banquet (what do we do in the world to come -- ha-olam ha-ba -- we eat, for this is a time when no one goes hungry, when Adam’s troubles end). At the synagogue on Shabbat, we serve food. Why? Because the Sabbath is a foretaste – literally – of the world to come. We see the same idea on the lips of Jesus, who speaks, for example of the day that “many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”

Daily bread probably meant, in its originally Aramaic, “tomorrow’s bread”-- bring about your rule, when we can eat at the messianic banquet.” This is the prophetic hope.

And it also meant, “dear Father, please give us enough food to get us through the day, so that we and our children will not starve.” And thus, we are all reminded that not everyone gets the daily bread.

As for “forgive us our trespasses” -- the original was “forgive us our debts” (as the Sermon on the Mount puts it). The call is for economic justice, for the Jubilee year when all debts are forgiven. It says, “don’t hold debts. If someone needs, you give.” As Habbakuk puts it, “Alas for you who heap up what Is not your own! How long will you load yourselves with goods taken in pledge” (2:6).

And yet, I don’t want to let that forgiving of trespasses go. Two years ago, I taught a course on the Gospel of Matthew not at Vanderbilt’s divinity school, but at Riverbend Maximum security prison, the men’s prison in Tennessee where death row is located. One of my Riverbend students talked about going through a restorative justice program, and what it meant to him when the family of the people he killed stated that they had forgiven him. He made it abundantly clear how precious the gift of forgiveness is. “Lady,” he said, “You don’t know what sin is, and so you have no clue what forgiveness means.” And he was right.

“Lead us not into Temptation” –perhaps better translated, “Do not bring us to the test.” If we put these two accounts – of prayer and of testing – together, what do we see: do not tempt me to use my resources just for myself; do not tempt me to seek power that I might lord it over others; do not place me in a situation where I would worship the world’s splendors and not attend to its needs. But we can go farther, for Judaism does talk about tests given to humans. G-d decided to ‘test’ Abraham, as the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 begins. And G-d allowed the Satan to test Job. The last thing we’d want, or among the last things, is for G-d to bring us to the test. We saw earlier another test, for the lawyer who asked Jesus “who is my neighbor” began his conversation by “seeking to test Jesus.” The question he asked was not one of benevolence.

The prayer ends, “And deliver us from evil” or, better, “the evil one” who is, of course, Satan.

Does this mean that Jews and Christians should be reciting the Lord’s prayer together? Probably not; there’s too much baggage between us to do so. Nevertheless, perhaps this very Jewish prayer is something that grandparents and grandchildren in intermarried families could say together.

So, we’ve got a Jesus who looks like a Jew, prays like a Jew, instructs other Jews on how to follow halachah, Jewish practice, teaches like a Jew… By the way, the church actually picks up on the idea of halachah: the word comes from the Hebrew root for ‘to walk’ – is it is way one walks. The early church called itself not ‘Christians’ but “the way”: the Greek is hodos, as in odometer.

If we teach how Jesus lived and died a Jew, we'll at the very least make life difficult for skin-heads. At the same time, we'll do a lot of good in fostering Jewish-Christian relations: Christians will come to appreciate the depth of Jesus' life within its Jewish context, and Jews, I hope, will come to recognize Jesus as one of ours.

To summarize these goals, I've come up with an image. Christians and Jews might imagine ourselves as trains on parallel tracks, of halachah and hodos, each moving in the same direction. When we look only with narrow vision, at what is immediately ahead of us or behind us, we see only parallel lines. But when we look to the horizons on each end, we see with what might be considered divine eyes, and the vision is different. For at the horizon – if you look closely – those parallel tracks meet. We don’t ride on the same train, but am confident that if we follow our respective paths, if we don’t get derailed, we eventually will pull into the same station.

Footnotes

http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=4076622

The prayer may have even had special meaning to the disciples whom Jesus sent out, without staff or purse or food – they didn’t know where their daily bread would be found either.

Not for citation without permission.