Rev. Paul Tellstrom

Irvine United Congregational Church                                                 

“Who Do We Say We Are, Part Three”                                                    

October 1, 2006

Hebrew Testament: Song of Solomon 7:1-9

                                    Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

                                    Proverbs 22:17-18, 15:16, 19:21

The Instruction of Amen-em-opet: chapters 1, 6, and 18.               word count: 2,171

            I attended a conference on Religious Pluralism in Illinois, where we were reminded that there are always groups of people who see the world very differently, and who must learn trust and tolerance at the very least, in order to co-exist.

            This was made apparent when we checked into the hotel. 

            The hotel had booked two events.  One third of their guests were there for a conference called “Many Voices, One God” sponsored by The Center for Progressive Christianity, while the other two-thirds (an extremely distinctive group) were there for the “The Annual Tattoo and Body-Piercing Arts Trade Show.”

            What was interesting was that the folks at the religious pluralism conference were delighted; even beginning the conference by displaying their own tattoos (real or temporary) before introducing our keynote speaker, Dr. Suzanna Heschel.

            But the people at the tattoo and body piercing conference were suspicious of us.  I tried to get in to see their displays filled with the latest implements and techniques of their trade, as well as the literally very colorful people inside.  I was stopped at the door.  A few people from our conference got in and were able to look around.  I suspect that my starched white shirt, Dockers, and matching belt and shoes screamed “Does Not Belong” and so I was barred. 

            One morning, all of the pool furniture was found at the bottom of the hotel pool.  Someone from our conference inferred that the tattoo convention must have had a big night. 

            There were smirks from folks at the other convention.  It was as if they thought “that bunch of repressed Christians” had done it.  I later found out that a disgruntled hotel employee had quit his job in a big way, jettisoning the pool furniture along with his hopes of future employment into the bottom of the pool on his way out. 

Naturally, without opening dialogue, each group had assumed that the other was responsible for the vandalism, through preconceived notions that come from prejudice.

For me, this was a great metaphor for the conference.  We are always separated from each other for some reason; dialogue has to be constant, and people have to be willing to engage in it.  Even in this place where we were coming together to understand more about accepting and understanding other faiths in light of our own, we were in the presence of still other people who were so different from us that it made them assume they were not welcome with us (or us with them).  Our work as people who recognize the right of all to enjoy respect has really just begun.

            Dr. Suzanna Heschel, author, professor, and daughter of the famous Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was our speaker.  I want to share with you three things that she had to say: Jewish views of Christianity, contemporary American Jewish problems, and how Christian-Jewish dialogue needs to happen.

            The invitation to a Jewish scholar to stand in front of a group of liberal Protestants and say whatever she felt she needed to convey was as illuminating at times as it was hard to hear.              First, what are Jewish views of Christianity?  You don’t need to agree or disagree, but listen.

Jewish Views of Christianity (based on notes from Heschel’s speech)

            Jesus belongs to Judaism.  Christianity is a mistake.  Jesus was a pious Jew to the end.  On the last night he held a Seder meal with his disciples. 

Christianity was considered idolatrous.  There is one God, not three.  The making of the Trinity is the making of separate idols out of the one God we know.

Jews who followed Jesus were encouraged by rabbis to move on into the Greco-Roman world, and therefore, Jews might say that they were responsible for the growth of Christianity, as the impact it had on the world beyond the temple was astounding. 

Christianity then colonized Judaism by conquering without destroying—using the Hebrew Scriptures and controlling the economy.

Jews responded with jealousy, rebellion, and a refusal to do business with Christians.  They even took and interpreted Christian symbols into their own traditions.  The Yahzreit candle, for instance, came from the Christian use of candles in worship.

Jesus was either a pious Jew who had been co-opted by this new religion, or else he was a complete fraud.  A popular book circulated among Jews in the 6^th-7^th century stated that Jesus was a pretender who learned healing techniques from a time in his early life when he was in Egypt.  According to this book, Jesus was taken down from the cross alive, and continued to live.

 Whatever the suffering of Jesus on the cross means in the Jewish mind, Jews understand the suffering of crucifixion.    

The Holocaust was a crucifixion, and this crucifixion was mass-murder.  In Elie Weisel’s, “The Death of God in the Suffering Soul of a Child,” he told a true story about hangings in a concentration camp, and about a particular gallows that held three ropes.  A small child was brought out with two other people, and was hung in the middle.  Because he was so light, he did not die quickly.  Weisel writes that one Jew looked to another and said, “Where is God now?” and the other said, “On the cross with that child.”

Earlier in the development of our faith, we blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus.  Did the Jews ever blame Christians for the Holocaust?  Is there a parallel to draw, and if so, who showed the greater grace?

Contemporary Issues

Most Jews lived under Islam.  And yet, Jews have never had the fascination with Islam as they have had with Christianity.  It is so close, and yet so different. 

In terms of relationship, Jewish and Catholic relations share very much, and yet the Jewish-Protestant relationship has always been difficult.  According to Rabbi Rachlis, many in his own congregation were nervous about knowing Protestants, and being here was eye-opening to them.  You, IUCC, dispelled many ideas they had formed from what they read or saw in the news.  Here is an example of a place that offers to engage in a pluralistic dialogue, and has been enriched by it.  If I can make one good point in asking “Who Do We Say We Are?,”  this makes it.  This is a strength.

In terms of what our faith is, a Jewish viewpoint is that Christianity was meant to be a minority religion, like theirs.  And that is an interesting point.  It began as a minority religion, and its language is about striking out against the status-quo.

Is a minority religion that strikes out through its own theological language against the status quo, showing as it does that it is more inclusive in its outreach, the same thing as a religion that actually is the status-quo?  Haven’t we seen in this country, how we have at times used its influence to exclude people from other faiths, indeed, even for a long time using our Protestant influence in this country to exclude Catholics?

The question is, once a minority religion that railed at authority becomes “authority,” does absolute power begin to corrupt, as we have heard it does?

            Heschel talks about being a Jew today.  She says, “Jewishness has become a way of being.  What is it?  Jews don’t even know anymore.  There are rituals, but no dogmas.  Therefore, Jews may be more adapted to the modern world.”

What do Jews Want?

            As a Jew given the opportunity to tell Christians what Jews would like to have from them, Heschel stated the following:

            --Affirm Christ without denigrating Judaism,

            --Treasure the Hebrew texts,

            --Be faithful to Jewish traditions,

            --Call an end to dialogue where Israel cannot be criticized, and

            --Stop all efforts to convert.

            She concluded with a statement about how Christians can teach Jews by quoting a rabbi who once said, “For seven years I went to rabbinical school and we never once discussed God.”  Dr. Heschel then said admiringly, “Help us to gain faith language such as you have.”

            Listening to a Jewish scholar have free reign to talk about Jewish perspectives on Christianity, I realized that our tradition has been guilty of not treasuring the Hebrew texts.

            There is a word, “supersession.”  For us, this means that the “New” Testament supersedes the “Old.”  What we often do in worship is to read from the Hebrew Scriptures, making them merely heralds of our Christian scriptures. 

While it is true that we believe that Jesus came to bring us something radically new, and such comparisons between scriptures help us to attain that understanding, their use in this manner makes us forget that there is great wisdom there to be learned.

The first thing we can do is to stop referring to the holy scriptures of a living faith as the “Old Testament” and respect them for what they are—the Hebrew Scriptures.

So, let’s highlight some of the reasons why these scriptures are important to us.  The readings you have heard today are from the books of Wisdom in the Hebrew Testament.  They are all attributed to wise King Solomon.  Hear the words of love in the sensual description of a young woman by the young man who physically longs for her in Song of Solomon (SOS).  Listen again to the words of Ecclesiastes, a book that is openly skeptical of faith, and the famous words about how there is ultimately a time for everything.  And then, you also heard words from Proverbs juxtaposed between corresponding words from an Egyptian text.

The legend is that Solomon wrote the Song of Solomon when he was a lusty youth, the Book of Proverbs in his mature middle years, and Ecclesiastes as an old and wise man.

But there is more to the wisdom and the fullness of life that is here.  The wisdom in these books is a trove of our collective wisdom as a species.  As you heard a proverb and its parallel Egyptian equivalent, there was even a Babylonian equivalent from further back, and a Sumerian proverb from even further, at least three thousand years B.C.  

Amen-em-opet and Proverbs are both written in the same style—a father passing on wisdom to a child, with a little sermon in every proverb, but both come from a much older source. 

Listen to the ancient Babylonian poem, “I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom”:

“If I walk the street, fingers are pointed at me,

“My own town looks on me as an enemy,

My friend has become a stranger,

In his rage my comrade denounces me.”  ANET 596

This is the forerunner to the Book of Job, beginning the discussion of theodicy, the problem of God’s relation to the innocent person who suffers evil.

Today’s reading from the Song of Solomon mirrors the words to an older Syrian Wedding Song.  Ecclesiastes shares bits and pieces with other ancient texts, but has the message that we should trust and surrender to God’s loving care even if we do not know where it will lead us.

            We need to know that we are part of a tradition that deserves to be honored, because it is our own tradition—the place from which we come.  It needs to be honored because it is the tradition of a faith with whom we share very much.  But it needs to be honored because it represents many traditions and cultures that go back further than we can ever know, and denotes the collective wisdom of a species, not just one religion.

If the international sharing of wisdom helps explain why Israel’s wise people gave so little attention to dogmas and joined the larger and more universal search for the meaning of human life, then, if we are open enough as Christians, we can open the circle wider and join that universal search for meaning as well.

“There is a breath of god in every person, a force lying deeper than the stratum of the will, which may be stirred to become an aspiration strong enough to give direction, and even run counter to all winds.”             Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

If we are ready to try and recognize each other and the connection we have, the time is here and now on this plane.

“It is the dimension of time wherein we meet God, wherein we become aware that every instant is an act of creation, a Beginning, opening up new roads for ultimate realizations.  Time is the presence of God in the world of space, and it is within time that we are able to sense the unity of all things.”   Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

So…

“This is It

and I am It

and you are It

and so is

That

and he is it

and she is It

and it is It

and That is That.

O, It is This

and it is Thus

and it is Them

and it is Us

and it is Now

and here It is

and here we are

                                               and This is It.”                  James Broughton

Sermon Resource:

            Today’s sermon is based largely on Dr. Heschel’s keynote address, and subsequent conversations.  From “Many Voices, One God,” a three day seminar on religious pluralism sponsored by the Center for Progressive Christianity, and held in Champaign, Illinois, June 8-10, 2001.  Dr. Heschel is the author of several books, including “Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus.”

Scripture for Sunday, July 22, 2001

“Many Voices, One God—Part Three”

Song of Solomon 7:1-9   Revised Standard Version

How graceful are your feet in sandals, O queenly maiden!  Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand.  Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine.  Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.  Your neck is like an ivory tower.  Your eyes are pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rab'bim.  Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, overlooking Damascus.

Your head crowns you like Carmel, and your flowing locks are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses.  How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden!  You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters.  I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches.  Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8   King James Version

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.