Many wrestle with the question of whether non-Christians may be saved, and a peculiarly agonizing, yet promising case involves the Jews. The question is poignant: we have Jewish neighbors, schoolmates, and coworkers; and Christianity has a shamefully embarrassing history of cruelty toward the Jews, from torture during the Middle Ages to the Holocaust just a generation ago - and your Jewish friends can tell you anti-Semitism rears its head in our own place and time.
Christians yearn longingly for the salvation of everyone. To the world we want to say (with Thomas Merton), "I will have more joy in heaven if you are also there to share it with me; and the more of us there will be to share it, the greater will be the joy of all." And wouldn't our joy be most painfully incomplete without the Jews? Jesus was a Jew, and he never for one second renounced that faith. Jesus never said "I have come to overthrow Judaism," but rather, "I have come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 5:17). Jesus said, "Salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). Jesus regarded today's Jewish Bible as fully inspired; God the Father, to whom he prayed, was the God of the Old Testament.
But Jews and Christians splintered apart. Paul was heartbroken because Jews and Christians could not stay on the same page (Romans 9), and asked "Has God rejected the Jews?" His answer? "By no means" (Romans 11). Paul steadfastly believed that, at the end of time, the Jews will - by God's grace - be saved. God breaks no promises...
Mother Teresa once said, "I love all religions, but I am in love with my own." How can we love another religion, but be in love with our own? Partly we recognize we are not the same. Hanukkah does not equal Christmas; Passover does not equal Easter. We believe ultimate truth is unveiled in the Gospel stories about Jesus - but Jews do not, fixing instead on the story of God's deliverance in Exodus. Michael Goldberg mocked the idea that we are really the same, for then converts and martyrs would have made "a rather silly mistake they could easily have avoided if they had only attended enough 'interfaith gatherings.'"
We may - we must - be friends, but our friendship will free us up to argue, to debate, to discover where we differ, and why. This special friendship we cannot deny; it is our destiny. "The church does not go outside herself, but more deeply within herself, to engage Jews and Judaism" (Richard John Neuhaus).
Perhaps this is a subject that requires humility, irony, even humor. The Jewish writer Martin Buber once asked a group of Christian priests, "What is the difference between Jews and Christians? We all await the Messiah. You believe He has already come and gone, while we do not. I therefore propose that we await Him together. And when he appears, we can ask Him: 'Were you here before?' And I hope that at that moment I will be close enough to whisper in his ear, 'For the love of heaven, don't answer.'"
James
james@mpumc.org
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eBibleQuestions34 - When will Jesus return?
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