August 3, 2008 — Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
“Jews and Jesus” — Pastor Lassman
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My fellow redeemed in Christ,
Do you know any Jewish people? Do you have any Jewish friends? There are a lot of Jews in northeast Seattle and several temples and synagogues including Beth Shalom just down the street. Jewish people are not all the same. Some Jews are very religious. And many Jews are not…some are even atheists. And what about Jews and Jesus? Some churches and some people believe that the Jews don’t need Jesus because they have their own special relationship with God and their own way to heaven. This view is call Dual Covenant Theology. I don’t know if you have any Jewish friends or not but Jews need Jesus as much as any body else. The Lutheran Church-Missouri synod is one of the few churches that has an evangelism program to Jewish people. And that’s good because that’s what Paul is talking about in our lesson for this morning: Jews and Jesus.
Of course the key question is “Does God want Jewish people to believe in Jesus?” It doesn’t matter what we think or what other people think. All that matters is what God thinks. In His first letter to Timothy the Apostle Paul says that God “Desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”(1 Tim. 2:4). That includes the Jews.
A. Jews are no different from other people. They too are sinners who have fallen short of God’s expectations. No one is righteous in God’s sight. No one can be saved from death and damnation by trying to be good--because no one can be good enough. All people are the same in God’s sight. So being Jewish or not being Jewish doesn’t matter to God. God treats all people the same. What matters is faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus died for all people. The sins of all people have been punished and paid for. And God wants all people to believe this and be saved from God’s wrath on the judgment day. The Apostle Paul, who was a Jew, was chosen by Jesus, who was a Jew, to go to non-Jewish people, the Gentiles, with the message of salvation from death and damnation. But, but…in his many journeys Paul always went to the Jews in the community first and then to the non-Jews. He did this because he had such deep love and compassion for his fellow Jews that they too would believe in Jesus. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart--for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” Clearly the Apostle Paul believed that without Jesus Christ his fellow Jews would be damned forever on the judgment day. And the great Apostle Peter, who was also a Jew, says in the books of Acts: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among
Men by which we must be saved”Acts 4:12. Peter said that to Jews. Both Paul and Peter knew what Jesus had said: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me”(John 14:1). And Jesus said that to Jewish people. Being a descendent of Abraham was not sufficient. Jews were to believe in Jesus too.
B. And humanly speaking the Jewish people have more of a right to hear about Jesus Christ than we Gentiles do. And Paul reminds us of this truth this morning: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” In the old testament God had adopted the people of Israel to be His people. He did this to keep His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs. He gave them His law, His presence in the temple, and the promised land--but most importantly He gave them the promise that the savior of the whole world would come from them. And Jesus fulfilled that promise. He is the promised Messiah. But Jesus is not just the savior of Jews...but of the whole world as Jesus told the Canaanite woman at the well: “…Salvation is from the Jews”(John 4:22). The Savior of the world would not come from one of the great ancient empires: the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians--not even the Greeks or the Romans. The savior of the world would not come from the more modern empires of great Britain or Spain or China or Russia….not even the United States of America. The savior of the whole world would come from the little nation of Israel. The man Jesus is a Jew…but more than that he is God, God in human form, the second person of the trinity who became one of us as Paul says: “And from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever.” And this Jesus Christ, the God man, died for sins for the sins of all to be the Savior of all people…including the Jews.
II.. About this time we can ask a good Lutheran question that we find in martin Luther’s small catechism: “What does this mean?”
A. Well, to begin with it is clear that anti-semitism is not only a sin but it makes it harder to tell Jews about God’s love in Jesus Christ. Tragically and sadly, there have been periods of anti-semitism in the Christian church. In the middle ages Jews were often persecuted and even driven out of countries. The communist did this during the Russian revolution of 1917. At the end of the wonderful musical “Fiddler on the Roof”Tevye and his family were forced to leave their Russian home of Anatevka. During world war II, anti-Semitism resulted in the holocaust by the Nazis. And here in America the Klu Klux Klan and white supremacy movement remind us that anti-semitism hasn’t gone away. But sometimes the charges of anti-semitism are not true. When Mel Gibson released his film “The Passion of Christ”in 2004 some Jews accused him of being anti-semitic and perhaps some Christians even agreed with them. And so some Jews and others would accuse our church and for being anti-semitic. Why? Because we want them to believe in Jesus. And so some Christian churches refuse to bring the gospel of Jesus to Jewish people. This would include the Presbyterian church (USA); the United Methodist Church; the United Church of Canada; and ever since Vatican two in the early 1960’s even the Roman Catholic Church has been reluctant to talk about Jewish evangelism.
B. But God wants all people to believe in his son. Without Jesus Christ people will be damned forever. To not bring the gospel of Jesus also to Jewish people would be the highest form of anti-semitism because it would mean that we don’t care about them. Jewish people are no different from you and me. Like us they too are sinners who have fallen short of God’s perfect expectations. Like us they will die. Like us they will face Jesus Christ on the judgment day. And like us, they too need Jesus. Being a physical descendant of Abraham is not enough. Believing in god is not enough. Only faith in Jesus Christ can save us and Jewish people. It is so simple. Either the God of the old testament sent Jesus to be the saviour of the world…or he didn’t. If he didn’t then we are wrong and the Jews are right and our whole Christian faith is a sham. And we are to be pitied for believing in Jesus Christ. But if the God of the old testament has sent Jesus then Jews need to believe in him too. Indeed, for the Jews to reject Jesus is to reject the very one is spoken about in our old testament lesson: Isaiah 55: 1-5. Jesus fulfilled the words of our old testament lesson. And so john says at the beginning of his gospel: “He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him”(John 1:11).
Conclusion: At the conclusion of the sacrament we sing the Nunc Dimittis, Latin words that mean “now dismissî, also known as the “The Song of Simeon because he spoke these words in Luke 2:29-32: “Lord, now lettest thou they servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.” Simeon spoke these words because he was holding the long promised Messiah in his arms--the baby Jesus. And now he could die in peace. That baby, says Simeon, was a light to lighten the gentiles. Through faith in Jesus we know this light and in the sacrament we have seen this salvation and so we too depart in peace. But this baby is also the glory of Israel--the saviour of the world, our saviour, is a Jew….how can we not tell other Jews about him? Amen.
