Removing the
Curse of the Cross
Towards a New
Relationship between Judaism and Christianity
By Andrew Wilson, Ph.D.
(Author of World Scripture: A
Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts)
Conference for Jewish-Christian Reconciliation and Harmony
Ladies and Gentlemen: I believe that interreligious
reconciliation is the key to the peace of
Genuine and lasting peace requires moving beyond secularism to build a society
in which people of different religions can talk together about God and affirm
common values about God. The major focus of my life’s work has been to seek
these universal values. I wrote World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of
Sacred Texts (Paragon House, 1991) attempting to identify values shared among
many faiths. In surveying the sacred writings of the world’s religions on more
than 150 topics, I found that they agree more than 80 percent of the time. Whether Christian, Muslim or Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Taoist,
ethics and attitudes towards life, death, and ultimate reality are surprisingly
similar. This will not be surprising to anyone who believes in the One
God who reveals aspects of himself through all true religion.
Recognition of the universality of religious and moral values can surely help
knit together the human family. Nevertheless, there remains the fact that
religions continue to deny and disparage each other’s treasured objects of
faith. Christians reject the salvific value of the Law. Jews deny Jesus. Their
central narratives recount stories of conflict and contests of competing
worldviews. Hence, while we can affirm common ground—a good first step—it does
not get to the nub of the problem.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam were each born in the fires of conflict and
rejection by the dominant religion of the age. The historical conflicts present
at their founding have congealed as permanent religious attitudes towards the
other religion, cast as the faithless infidel. Theological disagreements have
persisted, becoming core articles of faith. Nevertheless, whether we are Jew,
Christian or Muslim, we have one God as our Father. As any parent would, God
would want us to resolve these conflicts.
On this occasion, we Christians and Jews find ourselves sitting together like
two families at our children’s wedding. We want to get along with our new
in-laws, so we make pleasantries and stay on our best behavior. Yet underneath
there are thoughts left unspoken, of dirty linen and unpleasant memories. We
remember only a few generations ago when our families would not even speak to
one another, so deep was the pain and hurt. Today I invite us to take a daring
step and look squarely at the core of the Jewish-Christian divide. “Come now,
and let us reason together,” said the prophet (Isa. 1:18), and perhaps we can
break though to a new level of reconciliation and mutual respect.
I do not seek the conversion of anyone, Jew or Christian. On the contrary, I
seek the way by which Jews and Christians can give genuine respect to each
other’s faiths, respect that has been lacking until now. Given the sensitive
nature of this topic, I beg that you will forgive any offense these remarks may
cause.
The Jewish-Christian Divide
Christians readily affirm that their God is the same God as the God of the
Jews—the God of Abraham. Yet they have a different understanding of God, in
particular about the way God has acted in history centering on the person of
Jesus of Nazareth. From a Christian viewpoint, God’s purpose in establishing
the Jewish people was to have them receive the Messiah. Jesus of Nazareth came
as the Messiah, but the Jews did not receive him. As a result, Christianity was
born as new religion to carry on where Judaism left off.
Christians regard Jews as having a defective doctrine of God, since they deny
the truth that God made himself more accessible to
humanity by incarnating as Jesus Christ. Therefore—and I will be perfectly frank—while
in polite company they may praise Judaism as a great religion, in their heart
of hearts many Christians look down upon the Jews, as Rev. Billy Graham did
when he reportedly made disparaging remarks in an unguarded conversation with
President Nixon. New Testament teachings are quite definitive as to the
stubborn disbelief of the Jews. Moreover, a people who would cling so
tenaciously to the sin of denying Jesus Christ would surely also be prone to
base attitudes in other areas of life: hence the Jew’s supposed greed and
venality.
Jews, for their part, regard the religious path of Torah as entirely adequate.
They are offended by Christian misrepresentations of their religion, which are
found scattered about the New Testament. They do not see any superiority in
Jesus’ ethics over that of the best rabbis. Jews don't believe that Jesus was
any kind of Messiah. After all, Jesus never accomplished what the Messiah is
supposed to do: liberate
Ask most Jews what they honestly think about Jesus, and you will find a deep
bitterness. Jesus was the starting-point for the painful history of Christian
anti-Semitism. Centuries of Christian violence against Jews: mob violence,
pillaging, rape, confinement to ghettos, forcible abduction of children to be
baptized as Christians, expulsions from many nations and finally the Holocaust,
have poisoned the minds of Jews from being able to appreciate the goodness of
Jesus Christ. Christian anti-Semitism, and the resulting Jewish resentment of
Christianity, remains a spiritual weight, the congealed pain of tens of millions
of people who lived and died through that persecution. It is a continuing
factor in hindering the Jewish-Christian relationship.
Christians ask Jews, “Do you really have to reject Jesus? Look at what a
wonderful man Jesus was.” Jews cannot even begin to answer this question
without feelings of rage: “How dare you Christians ask us to believe in Jesus!
You never stop trying to convert us! Leave us alone, and let us live our lives
in peace!” The 2,000-year history of conflict between Judaism and Christianity
has made rejection of Jesus the very essence of a Jew’s religious
identity.
Today, Christians are repenting for anti-Semitism. They see it as their own
failing to live up the teachings of Jesus, who preached forgiveness and love.
They recognize it is their problem, a horrible sin and a blot on Christian
history.
What about the Jewish rejection of Jesus, is that a problem for Judaism? For
2000 years Judaism has maintained its aloofness from Christian beliefs. But
like it or not, Christians and Jews are brother religions. They are fellow
children of Abraham. And usually when brothers try to get along, they try to
understand each other and they try to take each other’s views into account.
Christians cannot help but interpret Jewish aloofness as arrogance,
stubbornness, stiff-necked, and other adjectives from the Bible. How can
natural brothers maintain aloofness from each other without engendering
additional misunderstandings?
Repentance
Mere coexistence among religions is not a sure foundation for peace. Peace must
be based upon reconstituting the family of Abraham, with genuine love and
respect for one another. This will require repentance for the mistakes of the
past. We want to overcome the pain of the past and establish a heartfelt,
emotional bond of love, because in the
Repentance should be a mutual process, but in practice the relationship between
Jews and Christians is asymmetrical. Jews feel a deeper sense of victimization
and oppression than do Christians. As in the relationship between Blacks and
Whites, people don’t speak about Black racism in the same way that they speak
of White racism; racism by definition comes from the powerful. The victimized
group needs to experience the comfort of the more powerful side making amends
before it can move. Conversely, the side that feels more confident of its
blessings and of God's love has the emotional resources to initiate
reconciliation.
Christianity has begun the process of repenting for its anti-Semitic past. This
repentance is taking place on two levels. First there is repentance over
historical wrongs, such as the Holocaust. The second level is self-reflection
on doctrine, to determine what teachings, if any, led Christians to commit such
historical wrongs. Today this self-examination is penetrating even as far as
the New Testament itself.
The Shadow of the Cross
By any reckoning, the central New Testament doctrine containing a taint of
anti-Jewish animus is the crucifixion. In this regard, the Catholic writer
James Carroll’s best-selling textbook,
· The cross divides Christian from Jew, because it contains a shadow side. By
focusing Christian faith entirely on the death of Jesus, it points the finger
of condemnation at his killers. Christian mobs were always most likely to
rampage in Jewish neighborhoods around Easter.
· The cross is a symbol of judgment—one is either standing with Christians who
are ransomed by the blood of the cross or standing with the Jews and Romans who
mocked Jesus on the cross. It thus symbolizes the conflict out of which
Christianity began, when the church stood over against all other
religions.
· The cross is a symbol of hegemony. Under
· The cross was only elevated as the central Christian symbol in the days of
· Christian soteriology need not be dependent on the cross. Jesus’ life can be
seen as redemptive in itself. Jesus’ forgiveness and love of his enemies can be
seen as redemptive. The resurrection can be seen as the locus of redemption.
I would agree with Carroll, and ask Christians whether they are well served by
focusing on the cross as the central element of their faith. No one can deny
that the passion and crucifixion of Jesus was the
Yet Jesus came for everyone, especially the lost sheep. While on the cross, he
forgave his enemies who put him there. With his resurrection from the grave,
Jesus said “Yes,” overcoming all those who would say “No” to the will of God.
He visited and taught his despondent disciples, giving the faithless Peter
another chance. I believe that Jesus, who came to tear down all the walls
between peoples, has been pained to see new walls of religious intolerance
erected at his death—especially the wall between Christians and the Jews, his
own flesh and blood.
Christians are beginning to ask the question: did God truly intend that Jesus
be hung on the cross and killed? What if the Jews of 2,000 years ago had
believed in Jesus, would they have allowed him to be crucified? Surely God did
not prepare
As Rev. Moon teaches, God never intended for Jesus to face the circumstances of
the cross. His intention was for Jesus to build God's kingdom on the foundation
of acceptance and support by the people to whom he came. Rather, the cross
dashed God’s hopes, and frustrated Jesus’ desire to establish God’s kingdom on
earth during his lifetime. Only when his circumstances became intolerable did
Jesus determine to go the way of the cross. The salvation it brought was the
best that Jesus could salvage out of a bad situation.
Jesus’ life displayed God's saving and reconciling love. His love was so true
that he was willing to lay down his life for a people who didn't accept him,
who were ignorant of who he was or what he came to do. Yet on the way to the
cross he lamented, “Would that you knew the things that make for peace, but
they are hidden from your eyes.” (Luke 19:42) Jesus’ heart was to fulfill God’s
great will to establish one worldwide nation of God. He meant to accomplish
this by peaceful means. Thus, in asking Christians to take down the cross, Rev.
Moon is calling the churches to focus on Jesus’ original purpose and fulfill
the peace he came to bring.
The Christian clergy who are here today have taken down the cross from their
churches. Particularly the African-American clergy are beginning to recognize
the injustice in what Jesus suffered, oppression all
too familiar to their people who endured lynchings and the slave-master’s whip.
As they do, the conventional glorification of the cross rings hollow. They also
stand in solidarity with the Jews and their suffering. None of it is
justifiable; none of it was God’s will. These clergy are learning the true
heart of Jesus, who came to bring peace and not division. Today when religious
conflict threatens humanity’s survival, they are stepping forward as Christians
who follow Jesus’ example in loving their enemies, above all the Jews who are
of the Lord’s flesh and blood.
This is not some cheap compromise or cosmetic change. It is not an action taken
to appease Judaism. Rather, taking down the cross is to glimpse the living
Christ. It is like lifting a veil that has obscured the Spirit of God. (2 Cor.
3:16) When they take down the cross, these clergy discover a deeper
relationship with the living Christ than anything they had known by fixing
their faith on the crucified Lord. They are fixing their faith on God’s will
and God’s original purpose in sending the Messiah, which is to reconcile the
human family to God. This is the core of the Christian message: “For God so
loved the world, that he sent his only begotten son.” (John 3:16) God does not
love only Christians; he cares for all people. This message cries out
poignantly from the bloodstained stones of the
Jesus the Jewish Messiah
As mentioned above, the Jewish understanding of the Messiah is the one who
establishes the
Moreover, Christianity arose in the shadow of the cross, after Easter. As its
doctrines developed, they appealed not to Jews, but to pagans in the Roman
world who were looking for a relationship with God—in other words, for
salvation. (Jews already have a relationship with God through the covenant.)
Hence Christianity took shape as a separate religion, with such un-Jewish
doctrines as redemption by the blood of the cross, the divinity of Christ, and
the Trinity. The pages of the New Testament are full of misrepresentations of
Judaism as the apostles sought to foster faith in their distinctive community
and guard it from pressures to “Judaize.” Christianity prospered as it made the
transition into a Gentile world and jettisoned most of its Jewish roots.
Christianity evolved, separated from Judaism by the cross, to become something
non-Jewish.
Yet if we consider the possibility that Jesus’ original mission was not to die
on the cross, then a remarkable convergence becomes possible. Maybe Jesus came
to fulfill all the messianic promises that God made to the Jews, but only on
the condition that the people accepted him and worked with him to do so. A look
at the life of Moses and his travails in leading the people through the
wilderness to the Promised Land certainly confirms the notion that a divinely
appointed liberator needs the people’s support.
Few Jews feel it is emotionally safe to consider the possibility that Jesus
came as the Messiah to the Jews. As a Jew myself, I know that the internal
source of the fury behind the Jewish “No” to Jesus lies in the deep resentment
Jews feel against Christianity for its centuries of anti-Semitism. Yet today,
with Christian repentance easing the sting of anti-Semitism, it may be possible
for Jews to reconsider the life of the greatest Jew who ever lived. Maimonides
recognized Jesus of Nazareth as the greatest son of Judaism, the world teacher
who brought light and a great civilizing and spiritual influence to the entire
world. Not many Jews would say that today, but I believe the Jewish
establishment ought to go there.
The Jewish “No” to Jesus is the obverse of the Christian cross. It is the
perpetuation of a vulgar human conflict from the first century C.E. involving
people of dubious merit. Those who condemned Jesus were not the great lights of
Judaism, not Hillel or Akiba, but quislings like the high priest Caiaphas, who
sought to maintain the peace of Roman rule and who said, “It is expedient for
us that one man should die for the people.” (John 11:50) Yet their unconsidered
judgment became hardened and fixed as a perpetual religious attitude. Most
Christians today recognize that it is illegitimate to hold all Jews responsible
for the actions of a few self-interested and corrupt leaders 2,000 years ago
who condemned Jesus and handed him over to the Romans. By the same token, Jews
today need not feel bound to follow those same leaders in their condemnation.
Harmony among the Abrahamic faiths, who all assert the same God, requires that
each religion view the core revelations of the others in good faith. God, who
is the source of all religion, does not give contradictory messages. Therefore,
in the interests of peace, I believe Jews should be open to considering the
possibility that God chose Jesus of Nazareth to undertake a messianic mission.
This is the step not yet taken in interreligious dialogue. Today I challenge
the Jewish community to make that step.
For a Jew to take seriously the messianic claim for Jesus of Nazareth does not
mean converting to Christianity. After all, Muslims call Jesus “Messiah”—in
their own terms. This proposal hinges on letting each religion work within its
particular understandings of the meaning of the word “Messiah.” The clergy here
today are decoupling a Christian understanding of Jesus’ messianic mission from
the particular circumstances of the cross. They are approaching Jesus from the
point of view of his life and teachings as recorded in the Gospels. Likewise, Jews
can appropriate Jesus utilizing the resources of Jewish tradition. A number of
Jewish scholars are already declaring that Jews might begin to appreciate
“Rabbi Jesus,” a teacher with a profound understanding of Torah and a
practitioner of tikkun.
Lifting the Curse of the Cross
When Jesus was nailed to the cross 2,000 years ago on
Judaism and Christianity each has a road to travel if it is to arrive at a
place beyond the cross where it can embrace its brother, where they can be
reconciled from the bottom of their hearts. Today, as Christians are taking
down the cross, they can begin to see a new image of Jesus of Nazareth as he
lived on earth. He was a Jew! Can Jews likewise recognize him as one of their
own?
Can there come a time when Jews appreciate Jesus as a righteous Jew, as a
teacher and rabbi whose words recorded in the Sermon on the Mount are in accord
with the best teachings of the sages?
Can there come a time when Jews regard the crucifixion of Jesus as a tragic
event in the history of their people, similar to the persecution of the
prophets and their deaths at the hands of unrighteous kings?
Can there come a time when Jews and Christians look upon the death of Jesus
with a heart of sorrow, seeing in his tragic death the frustration of God’s
hopes and the beginning of two millennia of painful separation and mistrust
among God’s children?
Can there come a time when Jews and Christians together mourn Jesus’ death on
the cross, mourn that a man sent by God on a divine errand could not fully
complete the messianic mission to build the Kingdom of Heaven in his day? Can
they observe those events with repentance, considering whether they would have
had the wisdom to recognize him had he appeared in their midst?
When that day of repentance and reconciliation arrives, it will heal of the
historical rift between Judaism and Christianity, and lift the curse of the
cross.