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Tuesday, 02 January 2007 13:38 |
 | | Marc Mullinax |
"With all due respect to those dear people, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew."
ÇƒÓ Bailey Smith
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MARS HILL ÇƒÓ With regret I open this column with the quote from the late Rev. Smith. He was one of my own, a Baptist, and a leader of the recent fundamentalist upsurge in Baptist-dom.
Smith thought he made a theologically sound statement, spoken as it was from a high Christ-centric view, whereby no prayer is thought efficacious unless it (superstitiously?) sounds out the name of Jesus with the title of "Christ" before the "Amen."
This
view lingers. Jesus the Jew ÇƒÓ who was absent when Christianity began ǃÓ
is appropriated by Christianity as the final and divine revelation to
humankind. His sacrifice in the Jewish mode (sacrificial lamb of God,
scapegoat, etc.) around 30 CE was an eternal, divine plan to unite
Heaven and Earth. In his name and through his life and death all enmity
with God is ended. This view is well-documented in earliest Christian
history.
The three
Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) each speak of a
messiah, a divinely-guided One coming in the fullness of time to bring
peace, righteousness and heavenës graces. However, Christians
misappropriate Jesus as the Christ ("Christ" is the Greek translation
of the Jewish term, "Messiah") in ways inimical to original
understandings of the concept.
A huge gap
presents itself to the thoughtful person between what Judaism and
Christianity mean when each utters the word "messiah." Careful readers
of Hebrew Scriptures, especially of the prophet Isaiah, will find a
catalog of changes and events the Messiah will bring. This is not an
exhaustive list, but includes:
ï The whole world will worship the One God of Israel
ï Evil and tyranny will not be able to stand
ï Knowledge of God will fill the world
ï He will include and attract people from all cultures and nations
ï All Israelites will be returned to their homeland
ï There will be no more hunger or illness, and death will cease
ï The dead will rise again
ï Weapons of war will be destroyed
Seen any of
this? If the Messiah has come, why are bad things still happening? From
Jewish points of view, the Messiah has not arrived, because so much
physical and spiritual pain persists. The conditions resolved by the
Messiahës arrival are not in evidence.
My own faith
quickly assumed the Jesus was Messiah, and I grew up without thinking
about the job-description of a Messiah. Instead of Jewish historical,
physical and real-time analyses for the coming of the Messiah (by the
people who own the concept), Christianity spiritualized,
de-historicized and imperially changed the idea. Both mean a person
"anointed by God." Yet what each faith implies is vastly different.
The Jewish term
in no way implies a person who is god-like. Jewish faith feels it is
offensive for the divine to be incarnated. Sensing the work of the
Messiah is more spiritual, Christians view him as God. The other
fundamental difference is the "when" of the Messiahës coming. Jews feel
he has yet to arrive; Christians say that he has come once, initiating
a spiritual house-cleaning, and will come a second time to complete
this revolution. Jews feel talk of a second-coming is a desperate
attempt to explain away Jesusë failure to be the Messiah 2000 years ago.
This Messiah
conundrum is a tough one for Christians to represent faithfully. We
should do better. Such is possible, but it will take much re-thinking
and more careful parsing of history, theology and vocabulary. Jesus is
the one person who could unite the Jewish and Christian traditions.
Instead, heës viewed as the one most holding them apart. I feel like
Iëm in a tradition thatës responsible for this sad state.
For more on this topic, see Rosemary Ruetherës "Faith and Fratricide," (Wipf & Stock, 294 pp. $29).
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Dr. Marc S.
Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion departments at Mars
Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
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