A sermon preached in August 2023 at Hebron United and Putnam United Presbyterian Churches

Sermon Text: Romans 11:1–2, 25–36

Many of us probably noted in the news this summer the conclusion of the case involving the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October 2018. Robert Bowers was convicted in June and sentenced to death earlier this month for killing eleven people gathered for worship at the synagogue. The sentence itself is worthy of a sermon, but not today. Today it is enough for the resolution of that case to remind us that antisemitism remains an acute problem in the United States. More than 3,600 acts of antisemitic hatred were committed in 2022, the largest number for a single year since the Anti-Defamation League started tracking such activity in 1979. Antisemitism is no more a relic of history than racism is. It is not something that plagued us in the past but that we have gotten over, an argument you hear with naïve frequency about racism. Racism remains a national problem, and so does antisemitism. In fact, both of these deeply rooted national sins have been given new permission in the caustic political culture in which we find ourselves.

And—like racism—something that Christian Americans need to wrestle honestly with is the complicity of our religious tradition in this national sin. Truth be told, antisemitism is a problem in the US because Christianity is so dominant in this country, and whether we like to admit it or not, antisemitism goes way back in our religious tradition.

It has biblical roots—or at least, it is rooted in how Christians have read the Bible. The most problematic passages are in the Gospel of John, which repeatedly casts the ministry of Jesus as a conflict between him and “the Jews.” Now biblical scholars remind us that the Gospel of John was written at a time when Christians were Jews too, or at least they were still in the midst of a divorce from their roots in the Jewish community. The Gospel of John reflects the family conflict between those first-century Jews who believed this Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah predicted by Hebrew prophets and those Jews who believed that he was a pretender. So when the Gospel of John refers to “the Jews” as the antagonists of Jesus, it’s rhetorical shorthand for those in a shared Jewish tradition who would not update their understanding of Judaism to account for Jesus as Messiah. But without that knowledge of historical context, generations of Christians have read the Gospel of John as biblical justification for hostility toward Jews. The Jews rejected Jesus. The Jews killed Jesus.

Antisemitism is no more a relic of history than racism is.

If that weren’t fodder enough for Christian antisemitism, add to it the popular Christian belief that the church is God’s replacement for Israel. That theology is called supersessionism, and the argument goes something like this: God established a covenant with ancient Israel to be God’s chosen people, as illustrated in the Old Testament; but Israel failed to live up to its obligations to God, culminating in their rejection of God’s Messiah, Jesus. God, in turn, rejected Israel and called the Christian Church to be the new Israel. If that’s how you understand the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, that God rejected Israel and replaced the Jews with Christians as God’s new chosen people, then it doesn’t take much effort to turn that into theological justification for antisemitism. God rejected Jews—in the name of Christ, why shouldn’t we?

As a Christian historian, I want to emphasize how prevalent these biblical interpretations have been in the two millennia of our history, and therefore how common antisemitism—violent antisemitism—has been in Christianity. In the early centuries of the church, theologians were arguing that Christians shouldn’t even regard the Old Testament as authoritative because it depicted an old Jewish understanding of God, or another God entirely. That perspective didn’t win out, but it got traction in the era when Christians were defining themselves, which tells you how susceptible the church was to antisemitism. The medieval church in Europe took this concept of Jews as Christ-killers as permission for persecuting and murdering Jews; it was common practice in the Crusades for Christian soldiers to obliterate entire Jewish communities they encountered on the way to doing battle with Muslims in the Middle East. Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, was in many ways a medieval monk, and he reflected the antisemitism of his time. He went so far as to write a treatise titled On the Jews and Their Lies, and as an early father of German national identity he was significantly responsible for baking antisemitism into German culture. Of course, that synthesis of German identity and antisemitism came to tragic focus in the Nazi regime, and in the 1930s and 1940s the official German Protestant churches were right there, giving theological sanction to Hitler’s genocide of the Jews. And as many European Jews came to this country to escape persecution in the 19th and 20th centuries, good Anglo-Americans worried about the effect of these Jewish immigrants on Christian America. Way before we worried about Mexico allegedly sending all its criminals to the United States, we worried about Jewish immigrants taking over our economy.

My point is that Christian antisemitism goes way down deep in our religious tradition, and it has provided religious rationale for the antisemitism that has plagued Europe and the United States for centuries. And unless we Christians own that history, and repent of that history, we are in no position to change that history. Only when we acknowledge the reality of our antisemitic history are we in a position to discover that, as prevalent as it is, Christian antisemitism is not the DNA of our religion. It’s not the truth of our tradition. It is a grotesque misunderstanding of it. It may be our legacy, but it is not the heart of Christianity.

For Christianity was actually birthed as a decidedly pro-semitic religion, and the proof of that pro-semitism is right here in today’s reading from Romans. The Apostle Paul was part of the same first-century church that gave us the Gospel of John, of course. He too experienced the tension between practitioners of traditional Judaism and this new Jesus movement. As an accomplished Jewish teacher, Paul was once on the other side of this conflict, but he eventually converted to the Way of Jesus. He subsequently became an ambassador for this offshoot Jewish movement, in particular to the non-Jews, or Gentiles, who were flocking to the Way of Jesus.

Paul spent his entire career justifying the legitimacy of Gentile converts to Christianity, but in this letter to the Christians in Rome, he wants to make clear what he is not saying. He is not saying that Judaism is now unimportant or irrelevant. He is definitely not saying that Jews are to be despised, rejected, shunned, or persecuted. Did Paul, this Jewish convert to the Christian Gospel, think that Jews who have not accepted Jesus as Messiah were wrong? You bet. He thought they are wrong, so much so that he called them “disobedient” to God’s desires and “enemies” of God’s gift of a Messiah. With this provocative language, Paul made clear that he believed that Jews who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah were wrong; they misunderstood the prophets of their (and his) religion.

And yet, Paul says, this does not mean that God has rejected them. Paul is adamant about this point. Jews are still God’s chosen people. They have not been replaced by the church. They are not to be persecuted. God’s covenant with Israel stands. (Of course, when he uses the term “Israel,” Paul means the Jewish community, not the modern state of Israel.) God made a promise to Israel to be their God, and they would be God’s people. And God stands by that promise, even if Israel (to Paul’s mind) has gotten things wrong. Israel is still God’s chosen people.

To Paul’s mind, if Israel has failed to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, then its error has opened the doors wider for non-Jews to share in God’s salvation. Through its successes and its failures, then, Israel serves as a vehicle by which God graces the world, precisely because Israel remains the chosen people of God, God’s elect. The church doesn’t supersede or replace Israel as God’s chosen people. The church just rides the coattails of Israel’s blessing as God’s people. Judaism gave birth to Christianity, and God’s covenant with Israel is the foundation on which the Gospel of Christ is built. For that reason, the Jewish tradition is essential to Christianity; it is to be revered. The Jewish community is special to Christianity; they are theological kin. Christianity cannot be antisemitic without, in a sense, being anti-Christian, because we are inextricably wed to the well-being of Judaism and the Jewish community. Christianity in its soul, in its origin, is not antisemitic—it is very much pro-semitic!

Why is it so important that we get this right? Well, first of all, it would be nice if we Christians understood our own religion accurately, and it is a profound distortion of the Christian Gospel to think that to be Christian requires that we be against Judaism. Authentic Christianity is a pro-Jewish religion with a Jewish messiah at its core.

More importantly, we need to get this right if we want to do something about antisemitism in our culture, for which misunderstandings of Christianity are often to blame. In fact, sometimes Christianity is openly invoked in this prejudice against Jews. We’re all aware that Christian Nationalism has found new life and power in our moment. Christian Nationalism begins with a historically dubious belief that the US was intended to be a Christian nation, and then combines that belief in a Christian America with a fixation on a racially, ethnically, and religiously purified American race. For Christian Nationalists, America won’t be great again until it is rid of its imperfections, including Jews. And Christian Nationalists tap into the long legacy of antisemitism in Christianity to justify their hatred of Jews as a righteous, religious, and patriotic cause.

Antisemitism is anti-Christian. It is opposed to everything our Jewish Savior taught us about life, love, and the God of Israel.

In the face of this hostility toward Jews, particularly from groups that claim to speak for our religion, we Christians need to stand up and say, “Enough!” An attack on the Jewish community is attack on us, for Jews and Christians are theological cousins. The Jewish community is the special people of the God we worship, and we will not stand by while they are persecuted or harmed. And we will not tolerate the perverted use of our religion to justify harm against Jews.

Embracing our solidarity with and indebtedness to the Jewish community doesn’t mean we have to water down our distinctive Christian convictions. We still believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah of God and the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy. It doesn’t require that we believe this any less. In fact, our commitment to Christ is why we oppose antisemitism so energetically. We reject prejudice and violence against Jews not just because it is unfair and mean but because it offends the foundations of our religion too.

Antisemitism is a Christian heresy, even if it has been a tragic and embarrassingly common one. It’s well past time for Christians to recognize that this is not who we are, and this is not what our religion requires. Antisemitism is anti-Christian. It is opposed to everything our Jewish Savior taught us about life, love, and the God of Israel. It is important for us to get this right because this is our opportunity to stand for our Jewish siblings, to stand for what is just and right, and to stand as an alternative to the devils of hate who imperil our society in this moment. Amen.