Blessed are you, O Lord God, King of the Universe, for you shine upon us the light and warmth of your gracious love. Amen.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” That is the Ninth Commandment and an ethnical norm for both Jews and Christians. As we so often profess, Jesus is the Truth of God in the flesh, and so to lie is to violate the Godly characteristic of truthfulness. In particular, the directive is not about untruthfulness in general, but specifically is about not spreading falsities about our neighbors.
While we’re pretty good at violating all of the commandments, we violate the Ninth Commandment often when it comes to interfaith dialogue, particularly when we consider our words and deeds towards our Jewish brothers and sisters. We transgress this commandment every time anti-Semitism rears its sinful and ugly head.
On Tuesday, January 27, the world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day because it was on January 27, 1945 that Auschwitz was liberated. In 2005, the United Nations designed this annual commemoration of the Holocaust as an opportunity for remembrance, lament, and education. This is a remembrance the Church should always keep, but deserves special attention this year as the Anti-Defamation League reports that anti-Semitic incidents in the US have increased 360% in the last year. It was barely six months ago that 15 people were injured in anti-Semitic attack in Boulder. And just last month, during Hanukkah, 15 people were killed during an attack in Sydney, Australia during the Jewish Festival of Lights.
There are three movements in this sermon: remembrance, repenting of anti-Semitism, and moving forward together.
We begin with remembrance. A central tenet of Judaism, and therefore Christianity as well, is remembrance. Remembering is what connects us to our ancestors, preserves our identity, and shapes our actions. One Jewish scholar has said that “memory is the lifeblood of Jewish being.” It is vital to remember the catastrophe. Six million Jews were killed in the horrors of the Holocaust. That’s equivalent to the current popular of Colorado. And so we remember and we lament this grave evil and injustice.
The Holocaust though did not just happen. It grew in the soil of nationalism, scapegoating, and a complicit church. I recently read a book about some preaching lectures that the theologian Karl Barth gave in the 1930s. The book also offered an analysis of the political background to these lectures. The author notes, “Finally, discourse in the church deteriorated by the end of the Weimar Republic because there was little common ground on which the right and left wings of Protestantism could test political spirits together. They could no longer articulate a shared Christian identity that transcended political commitments.” Nearly a century later, those same divisions undermine our witness as the Body of Christ.
When the Church is too busy fighting itself to have a prophetic voice, not only do we neglect our sacred vocation, but our society suffers. Jesus tells us that we are to be the light of the world, but so often we weaponize our light into lasers to blast one another. It was true in Germany in the 1930s and it is true of the American Church in the 2020s.
We know from our shared sacred Scripture that God created by a word; in saying “Let there be.” Whoever first said “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” was not only wrong, but they were dealing with some serious issues of repression. Words are far more powerful than any stick, stone, or missile. Not to come off as prudish – but I do fear we’ve dismissed the power of words and we tolerate far too much violence, lying, and slander in our public speech.
One German writer noted that “Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic. They are swallowed unnoticed and can appear to have no effect, then after a little time, the toxic reaction sets in after all.” Many of us know the words of a German pastor in the 1930s: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”
This is how the Holocaust happened. Racialized speech was tolerated, not challenged. Threats of violence were dismissed as hyperbole. Acts of evil were ignored because those in power did not feel threatened. And so, we must remember the Holocaust – both the lives that were lost and the ignorance, prejudice, and apathy that led to it.
I’ve visited both the US Holocaust Museum in DC and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Both are incredibly moving experiences, and both conclude with the prayer and admonition – may this never happen again. Sadly, it has happened many times before and since then: Darfur, Cambodia, the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Yazidi in Iraq, the indigenous peoples on the Trail of Tears, the victims of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s, and though it can be contentious to say so, the recent war in Gaza fits every definition for genocide. The point is not “this counts as a genocide” or “that does not,” the point is that it seems that the death of 6 million Jews, in addition to Slavs, Roma, political prisoners, homosexuals, and those with disabilities was not sufficient for us to realize that vilifying and attacking entire groups of people is a horrendous evil to be avoided at all costs. We have not learned how quickly hateful words turn into State-sanctioned and justified murder.
On a personal note, I’ve often wondered how my family has been impacted by the Holocaust. My maternal grandfather was a Romanian Jew who immigrated to the US when he was a very young child. About 300,000 Jews were killed in Romania, whether or not any of them were my cousins, aunts, or uncles, I don’t know. That Jewish part of my family tree has certainly known the evils of ant-Semitism, and I lament that.
The way we talk about migrants, refugees, and those who vote differently than we do deeply matters, and what passes for acceptable speech today is concerning. The truth of the matter is that every single person is a child of God who we profess has an inherent dignity. And so when we speak about anyone as less-than and allow our political leaders to do the same, we are breaking the Ninth Commandment, we are bearing false witness against their dignity. Today, we remember the dignity of all and pledge to bear witness to the light of God that shines in all of us as we lament those lights that were snuffed out in the Holocaust.
Of course, the Nazis did not invent anti-Semitism. It has existed for centuries, which means 1930s Germany was not an aberration, but rather an instance of anti-Semitism. The Church bears nearly all of the responsibility for anti-Semitism, and so we have much repenting to do. The word “repent,” in Hebrew, means “to turn back.” Through no direct fault of our own other than unexamined ignorance and lazy assumptions, we perpetuate anti-Semitism today. I am forever grateful for a class I took during my doctoral studies taught by the Jewish New Testament scholar, Amy-Jill Levine. If there’s one line from her that encapsulates the lesson it is “Christians don’t need to make Jews look bad in order to make Jesus look good.”
But we do just that and horrendously bear false witness against Judaism. Anti-Jewish stereotypes and assumptions are everywhere, particularly in the field of Biblical studies. Jesus came to address a problem with humanity, not with Judaism. Jesus was born, lived, died, and was Resurrected as Israel’s Messiah. To deny this is to bear false witness against Jesus himself.
One of the most enduring and pernicious heresies in Christianity goes all the way back to the 100s. Marcion taught things that many of us have heard – the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and capricious, and the God of the New Testament is loving and peaceful. In no uncertain terms, that is heresy and it is inaccurate. Marcionism was condemned as a heresy in 144 AD, but that has not stopped its cancerous legacy from spreading and infecting our theology and relationships.
The way we read the New Testament is largely biased by anti-Semitism and it takes a lot of intentional work to read these texts in a fresh and honest way. Jesus himself says that he came not to abolish but fulfill the Torah. So any reading we have of a parable or epistle that makes Judaism look badntells us that we’ve misread the text and are bearing a false witness. The way we describe someone who is legalistic as a “Pharisee” is just one of many examples how we read Scripture through an anti-Semitic lens.
The distinctions between Judaism and Christianity are not along the lines of law and grace, anger and love, violence and peace. To be sure, Jews and Christians do have differences in theology and practice, but the differences do not fall into categories of “good” or “bad.” These sorts of dualisms and comparisons are not helpful or accurate and are to be avoided. Consider today’s texts from Isaiah and Matthew. If Christianity was meant to supersede Judaism, then why would Matthew quote Isaiah to introduce the identity and mission of Jesus?
Jesus’ mission was not to fix Judaism, worship a new God, or establish a new religion; it was to extend the light of Israel to the entire world and fulfill God’s promises given to the Jewish people. By grace, we have been grafted into the promises and the faith of Israel. And just like an older brother or sister, we don’t have to think the same things that they do in order to be a part of the family who live in the love of a common Father. Again, as Dr. Levine teaches – “for Jesus to look good, we don’t need to make Jews look bad” because to do so is to bear false witness against not only our Jewish siblings, but against the witness of Matthew, the apostles, and even Jesus.
We remember the horrors of the Holocaust, we repent of the anti-Semitism that infects our words and deeds, and then we move forward together, with the emphasis being on “together.” Being with one another is the antidote to ignorance, injustice, and prejudice. It’s much harder to bear false witness against our neighbors when we know and love our neighbors. In December, I had a lovely conversation over coffee with the Rabbi of Temple Beit Torah and I pray that there might be ways for our congregations to get to know one another more fully.
And it’s not only in Jewish-Christian dialogue that being together can make a tremendous impact, but in all of our differences and divisions – personal, religious, and political. Spending time with one another to listen, laugh, and lament does not necessarily dissolve our disagreements or differences, but it does allow us to see the dignity and light of God in one another. Being with and knowing one another helps us to avoid bearing false witness against our neighbors quite so often.
I’ll close with a prayer that is based on both the Jewish prayer of remembrance for the Holocaust and a prayer for unity co-written in 2020 by the chief Rabbi of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury:
Creator of all, source and shelter, grant a perfect rest under your tabernacle of peace to the six million Jewish souls murdered during the Holocaust.
In the horrors of that history, when Jews, and others as well, were targeted because of their identity, and in genocides which followed, we recognize destructive prejudices that drive people apart.
Forgive and correct us when we give space to fear, negativity, and hatred of others, simply because they are different from us.
In the light of God, we see everyone as equally precious manifestations of the Divine and ask for the courage to face our ignorance and indifference.
Through our prayers and actions, help us to stand together with those who are suffering, so that light may banish darkness, love will prevail over hate, and good will triumph over evil.
May the memories of all who faced these horrors be sanctified with joy and love. May their souls be bound up in the bond of life, a living blessing in our midst. Amen.
