Fixing the Texts that are Broken

 

Introduction

A detour

The liturgical cycle is divided into years A, B and C. The evangelist Matthew is the basic mentor for cycle A, Mark for B and Luke for C.  This year we’re in cycle B, and Mark (we were told at the beginning of the year) was going to be our basic mentor. Then suddenly the missalette’s introduction to this 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time tells us that, apparently for no special reason, we are now going to make a kind of detour from the Gospel of Saint Mark that has been our steady fodder during this liturgical year. Today the gospel, for no apparent reason, is from St. John.  

 

There are twenty-four Sundays in Ordinary Time, and is it possible that on this 19th Sunday we have run out of anything worthwhile that Mark has to tell? It’s hard to figure out those ivory tower liturgists in Rome who work this all out for us. Many of them, I suspect, don’t celebrate a Sunday Mass and preach a Sunday homily in an honest-to-God parish with people who have real problems. Many of them, I suspect, are simply chaplains to Motherhouses of nuns in the Eternal City.

 

If you detect a speck of impatience in me, you’re right. Today we are supposed to depart from Mark and lapse again into the gospel of St. John. I say again because John’s gospel is sprinkled periodically in all three cycles. And I say lapse into his gospel because for a number of reasons I am never at ease and comfortable when reading John to the Sunday assembly.

 

The conflict peppered all over

His gospel is constantly electrified with conflict between Jesus and the Jews.  I feel uneasy reading to you the very first line of today’s gospel taken from the 6th chapter of John: “The Jews began to murmur against Jesus because he said, `I am the bread that came down from heaven’” (Jn 6:41). They knew he came from Joseph and Mary, his father and mother, so how could he say he came from heaven? Imagine if you brought a Jewish friend along with you to Mass today, and I were to blatantly proclaim that “The Jews began to murmur against Jesus because he said, `I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” Your friend might feel uneasy and embarrassed.

 

That conflict between Jesus and the Jews is peppered all over John’s gospel. In the 7th chapter we read, “Afterwards, Jesus stayed in Galilee and avoided Judea because the Jews were out to kill him” (Jn 7:1).  In the 8th chapter of John we read, “The Jews said to Jesus, `Now we know for sure you are possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never die. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are” (Jn 8:52)?  Then in the 10th chapter we read, “Again there was a division among the Jews because of what he said. Many of them were saying, `He has a demon! He is crazy’” (Jn 10:20)! In the 20th chapter we read, "On the first day of the week, the doors were locked out of fear of the Jews" (Jn 20:19). How do you think your Jewish guest would feel listening to John? See what I mean when I say that I am never at ease and comfortable when reading John to the Sunday assembly?

 

The lurking mischief

Imagine all the subliminal mischief, imagine all the seeds of anti-Semitism that were and are sown by the church’s careless reading of the scriptures (especially of John) and her careless preaching to the Sunday assembly down through the centuries!  Imagine how that contributed to turning Jews into a handy scapegoat for people of all times who needed a scapegoat. Back when I was a little boy in a small little town like Manitowoc we, who needed a scapegoat, would always call the local synagogue “the church of the Christ-killers.” That made us feel good. After World War I the German Nazis needed a scapegoat. They found one in the Jews. Their psychotic hatred of Jews stoked up the crematories of the Holocaust consuming six million of them. That made the Nazis feel good. Today Hamas, Hezbollah and all the other Islamic fascists need and find a scapegoat in the Jews.  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an Islamic fascist of the first water, maintains the Holocaust never happened, and he wants Israel wiped off the map, and that will make him feel good.

 

 

My sinful church

The church yearly lapses into the gospel of  St. John  especially for the last few weeks of Lent. The closer Good Friday approaches the more heated becomes the conflict between Jesus and the Jews. And  I, who have to celebrate  Mass everyday in late Lent, become weary and a bit depressed by that endless conflict between Jesus and the Jews. I’m even embarrassed by it because it has the feel of a harangue coming from both sides. My Jesus is not a haranguer.

 

Those late  Lenten readings are supposed to  help us understand why Jesus came to die “at the hands of the Jews.”  They’re supposed to put us in a mood for Good Friday. And they did, indeed, put us in a Good Friday mood. For centuries at the prayers of petition on Good Friday the church throughout the whole world prayed, “Oremus pro perfidis Iudaeis.” “Let us pray for the treacherous Jews.” From the year of my ordination in 1951 until Vatican II in 1962, I prayed that way on Good Friday on behalf of the Christian community, and I didn’t bat an eyelash. Imagine all the subliminal mischief and seeds of anti-Semitism that were sown by such Good Friday praying by the universal church down through the centuries!

 

Good Pope John XXIII, precisely because he was good, imagined the mischief worked by such praying, and he did something about it. On his first Good Friday  as pope in 1960 at the prayers of petition he struck out the ancient nefarious prayer that prayed for “treacherous Jews,” and in its place he commanded the universal church to pray this way: “Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant.” What I like about my sinful church is that she has the power of the Holy Spirit to amend her life.

 

My sinful church again

The church’s careless reading of scripture together with careless preaching and praying sowed the seeds of anti-Semitism especially in Catholic Rome down through the centuries. The Fourth Lateran Council, 1215 A.D., ordered Jews in the Eternal City to wear a distinctive garb from their twelfth year on, to pay taxes to the church on their homes and property, and forbade them to appear in public during Easter Week. Catholic anti-Semitism wrote such ugly pages of church history, especially in papal Rome, that Pope John Paul II in April of 1986 entered Rome’s chief synagogue and before the chief rabbi of Rome and his congregation confessed the sins of his church and asked for forgiveness.  John Paul II was the very first pope in 2000 years to enter a synagogue.

 

Pope Benedict XVI was the second. During the night of the 9th of November, 1938, the Nazis went rampaging through all of Germany and in one night destroyed 7000 Jewish businesses and burned down 191 synagogues. That night is called the Krystallnacht, the Night of the Shattered Glass. It marks the beginning in earnest of the Holocaust. On the occasion of  World Youth Day 2005, the German Pope Benedict XVI entered the synagogue in Cologne, Germany. Before the chief rabbis and the Jewish community Benedict confessed the sins of Gentiles and especially of the Nazis who burned down their Cologne synagogue on the Krystallnacht.  What I like about my sinful church is that she has the power of the Holy Spirit to confess her sins, to ask for forgiveness and to amend her life.

 

My sinful church again

Much of Vatican II was precisely that. It was my sinful church making one big general confession of sins, asking for forgiveness and promising to amend her  life. In council my church confessed her sin of clericalism by declaring the church is not the hierarchy; it is the People of God (Lumen Gentium). That has been called the Copernican revolution of Vatican II. In council my church also confessed her sin of triumphalism by declaring that she had no monopoly on God, and that God had the power to be present in other Christian communities and other religions (Unitatis Redintegratio). Would that Islam had the same power! And yes, in council my church confessed her sin of anti-Semitism. In her document concerning non-Christian religions she writes, “The church deplores the hatred, persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and from any sources” (Nostra Aetate, No. 4).  Here the church was pointing especially to herself. In fact, a footnote here (no. 28)  refers to those anti-Semitic laws of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215 A.D. which ordered Jews in the Eternal City to wear distinctive garbs, pay taxes to her and get lost during Easter Week. What I like about my sinful church is that she has the power of the Holy Spirit to confess her sins, to ask for forgiveness and to amend her life.

 

Careful reading and preaching

What is careful reading and preaching of scripture? It is keeping in mind that John’s gospel was written down at the beginning or in the middle of the second century, decades after the life and death of Jesus. What is reflected in John’s gospel is not so much a conflict between Jesus and the Jews but between two religious communities: the budding church and the synagogue. It is a conflict about turf and membership.  In John’s gospel that conflict is placed into the mouth of Jesus. It is not exactly his.

 

Careful reading and preaching of scripture, especially of John’s gospel, is my alerting you to that very important fact every year during late Lent and Holy Week and at any other time of the year, when we read words like those that open today’s gospel, “The Jews murmured against Jesus because he said, `I’m the bread that came down from heaven.’”

 

Yes, indeed, Jesus did engage in conflict. But it was not with all the Jews. It was with the Jewish religious authorities.  The conflict was not only about turf and membership. It was also about bad religion—the religion of his day which often harped on picky religious observances (just like our own religion often does) instead of harping on justice, compassion and mercy (Mt 23:23).

 

 

Fixing texts not broken

Just recently our church harped on some picky stuff. US Catholic bishops met and voted to fix liturgical texts. They voted to change the wording of many of the prayers we’ve been using at Mass for more than 35 years. It is said that the Vatican (whoever that might be) wanted those prayers brought into greater conformity with the original Latin.  For example, the “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you” in the prayer before Communion will now be fixed to say, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.”  And the bishops voted upon many other such fixes.

 

Conclusion

Fixing the texts that are broken

Dr. Eva Fleischner is a pioneer Catholic theologian in Christian-Jewish relations, Christian anti--Semitism and Holocaust studies. Her father converted to Catholicism from Judaism. When she was thirteen she fled Austria as the Nazis marched into Vienna. She has been teaching and writing about the Holocaust and Christian anti-Semitism for 40 years. Because she detected anti-Semitism in one of my homilies she recently wrote, “We have made much progress, thanks to the green light given by Nostra Aetate. Yet much work remains to be done, particularly in our liturgical texts.” Then she cites as an example the opening line from the first reading for the liturgy of Easter Tuesday from Acts. “Peter said to the Jews: `Let the whole house of Israel know beyond any doubt that God has made both Lord and Messiah this Jesus whom you crucified’” (Acts 2:36). That’s an in-your-face text, and, she says, it has to be fixed.  

 

The opening line of today’s gospel says, “The Jews murmured against Jesus because he said, `I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” That and all such texts, Dr. Fleischner would say, also have to be fixed.  But the “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you” in the prayer before Communion doesn’t need to be fixed. It has no subliminal power to stoke up the crematories of Holocaust.

 

In this age of the Holocaust and Hamas and Hezollah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust ever happened and wants the Jews wiped off the map, it is important for us to fix our anti-Semitic liturgical texts.  Yes, indeed, let the bishops of the church fix the liturgical texts for us, but in God’s name, let them fix the ones that are really broken. Once fixed we won’t be ashamed or embarrassed to bring our Jewish friends to Mass. Once fixed I won’t be depressed anymore when I together with the universal church launch off into late Lent and Holy Week.