Who Are “My People”?

It has now been nearly six weeks since the horrific rocket attacks by Hamas on the nation of Israel and then the beginning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza. There has been extensive death and destruction already, and there is no telling how long it will be before the violence comes to an end.

I have been grieving over this “war” from the beginning and finally decided to write this article, reflecting on the words “my people” and considering who are often, and who should be, designated by those words. 

Are contemporary Israelis God’s people? I have serious concerns about the primary stance of the U.S. government in relation to the current deadly conflict in Israel/Gaza, but I am dealing here primarily with religious rather than political aspects of this grave situation.

Online posts by conservative evangelical Christians, including some of my Facebook “friends,” indicate overwhelming support for the current nation of Israel, whose citizens are perceived to be God’s people just as the Israelites in Old Testament times were.

It is true that in the Old Testament God calls the Israelites “my people” over 200 times, and the words “my people Israel” appear over 30 times.

In Exodus 19:5-6, God says that the Israelites, who are being led to the “promised land” by Moses, “will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples” and that they “will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.”

Drawing from those words, I Peter 2:9 in the New Testament declares that now it is the Jesus-followers who “are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession” (CEB).

Partly on the basis of this highly significant verse, I believe God’s people today are not only, or primarily, the Jewish citizens of the modern nation of Israel or the Jews as an ethnic group.

And I am quite certain that the citizens of the nation of Israel today are not by any means the same as the Israelites whom God called “my people” in the Old Testament.

What does it mean for a Jewish rabbi to stand with “my people”? Recently, I had the opportunity to hear a local Jewish rabbi speak about the challenge that he and his congregation are facing at the present time.

There was, naturally, some reference made to the deplorable antisemitism that has increased in the U.S. since 10/7, which now has a very negative meaning to so many Jewish people as does 9/11 to most USAmericans.

At the end of his talk, the rabbi said, and repeated, “As for now, I stand with my people.” I took those words to mean that he was going to stand with (=support) the Israel Defense Forces in their retaliatory attacks on Gaza.

But a Christian pastor who knows the rabbi quite well took it differently. She thought he meant that he was going to stand with the people of his Jewish congregation who are incensed because of the Hamas attacks on Israel and perhaps grieving the death or injury of friends and/or family members there.

Certainly, a Jewish rabbi as well as a Christian pastor—and perhaps a Muslim imam—should be expected to stand by his or her congregants in times of stress, anxiety, and even anger.

Who should you and I consider to be “my people”? “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it (Psalm 24:1, NIV) is another single verse from the Bible that is crucially significant.

God may have called some people to a special task and referred to them as “my people.” But most broadly, shouldn’t all the inhabitants of the world be recognized as God’s people?

As Creator of “the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), God surely sees all ethnic groups, adherents of all religions, and even all segments of society who have no religious faith of any kind as “my people.”

If we are God-believers, shouldn’t we be able to see that all eight billion people in this world are “my people”—God’s and ours—and seek to work tirelessly for the welfare of all, including the peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians? 

“For Such a Time as This”

Today, March 10, is an important Jewish holiday. Purim, which began at sunset last night, celebrates the fifth century B.C.E. victory of the Jewish people in Persia thanks to the boldness of Queen Esther. Purim has been celebrated by Jews around the world from that time until the present. 

Who Was Esther?

Hadassah was a Jewish girl living with many other exiled Jews still residing in Persia. When she was a teenager, Xerxes (known in the Bible as Ahasuerus; reigned 486~465) was the king of Persia and resided in Susa, the capital located in the southwest part of the nation we now know as Iran.

After Hadassah’s parents died, she was adopted by her cousin Mordecai, who had an important position inside the king’s palace.

After King Xerxes flippantly sent his wife, Queen Vashti, away, he then called for the most beautiful virgins in the land to be gathered for his pleasure. Hadassah was one of those chosen for the king’s harem. Mordecai advised his beautiful teen-aged daughter to hide her Jewish identity by taking the Persian name Esther.

(To learn more about Esther, I recently read the 2019 historical novel Hadassah: Queen Esther of Persia by Diana Wallis Taylor. It was a good read depicting what Esther’s story might well have been. For a well-done nine-minute summary of the book of Esther, I recommend this YouTube video produced by Bible Project.)

What Did Esther Do?

Haman, the scheming high official and Jew-hater in King Xerxes’ court finagled a plan that would have killed all the Jews in the Persian kingdom. By that time, Esther had been chosen by the king to be his new wife—but she still had not revealed her Jewish identity to him.

Soon after the edict to exterminate the Jews had been signed, Mordecai pleaded with Esther to go to the king and beseech him to spare her people—even though it might mean she would be killed for her boldness in going to the king without his bidding.

Mordecai then speaks the best-known words in the book of Esther: “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (4:14, RSV).

Esther determines to do as Mordecai suggested, and declares, “I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish” (4:16).

King Xerxes not only received Esther into his royal presence, he also acceded to her pleas for the Jewish people in the kingdom. On the day when the Jews were supposed to be killed, they were victorious over their attackers—and Haman and his ten sons were all killed.

Because of Esther, the Jews in fifth-century B.C.E. Persia were saved from destruction, and Jews around the world are joyfully celebrating that deliverance today.

Why Is Esther Important Now?

I understand why the Jews celebrate what Esther did and why the book that bears her name is in the Jewish Bible. I have more trouble understanding why the Christian Bible contains the book of Esther—other than that Jesus was a Jew and read the Jewish Bible.

Neither do I understand how some people last year likened DJT and his daughter Ivanka to Queen Esther.

During Purim last year, the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CBN News (see here) it is very possible that President Trump is a modern-day Esther poised to defend Israel and save the Jewish people. And a headline in a January 2020 article in The Times of Israel proclaimed, “Ivanka Trump is the New Queen Esther.”

Given the state of Israel’s military strength and their ongoing mistreatment of the Palestinian people of the region, though, it seems farfetched to see Israel desperately needing the kind of assistance Esther gave to the Jewish people of her day.  

In thinking about Israel or the United States, it is highly unlikely  that Yahweh/God chose DJT and his daughter “for such a time as this”!

However, it may well be that we, and people around the world, are living in such a time as this to work together to protect the lives of millions of people from the growing danger of global warming, the great challenge of this decade, the topic of my first blog post of 2020.

Reflections on Vatican II

The first chapter of American Catholics in Transition is titled “The Legacy of Pre-Vatican II Catholics” and the authors refer to Catholics born in 1940 and earlier as “the pre-Vatican II generation.”

 They go on to say, “Prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Catholics were known for their willingness "to kneel, pray, pay, and obey.”

 Although I was not a Catholic, that is the age bracket I am in and that was the Catholic Church I grew up knowing only a little bit about.

 I finished my undergraduate theology degree in 1962. Since it was a Baptist seminary I attended, there was not a lot of study about Catholics. But of course there was some—and much of what I learned was very soon out of date.

As indicated above, the Second Vatican Council, often called Vatican II, began in 1962 and ended fifty years ago this week, on December 8, 1965.

Many significant changes were made in the Catholic Church at that Council. Consequently, much of what I had learned by 1962 about contemporary Catholic faith and practice was out of date by 1965.

Vatican II was the 21^st so-called Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church, and the first one since Vatican I in 1869-70. It was called by John XXIII, the remarkable Pope who was canonized in April of last year. Already 76 years old when he was elected Pope in October 1958, he surprised most people, who expected him to be nothing more than a “caretaker pope.”

One of the most significant changes made at Vatican II was the position of the Catholic Church’s relationship to non-Catholic Christians as well as its relationships with other religious faiths. The “Decree on Ecumenism” was passed in late 1964, more than a year after Pope John had died (in June 1963), but it was very much in keeping with his stated desire.

That Decree declared that other Christians were “separated brethren,” a remarkable shift from prior church teaching that regarded them (us Protestants) as “heretics.”

Vatican II also greatly changed the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews. The “Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions” was passed in October 1965, about six weeks before the close of Vatican II.

The fourth part of that Declaration speaks of the bond that ties the people of the “New Covenant”' (Christians) to Abraham’s stock (Jews).

It states that even though some Jewish authorities and those who followed them called for Jesus’s death, the blame for this cannot be laid at the door of all those Jews present at that time, nor can the Jews in our time be held as guilty.

Accordingly, the Jews “should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God.”

The Declaration also decries all displays of antisemitism made at any time by anyone. This repudiated the abuse heaped on Jewish people through the years because they were considered “Christ killers.”

There were also many changes in Catholic worship and practice. For example, there was a new emphasis on lay people reading the Bible. Also, Mass began to be conducted with the priest facing the congregation, and the language spoken by the congregants was used in worship rather than Latin.

Of course some things didn’t change, to the disappointment of some of the more progressive clergy and lay people: priests still couldn’t marry, women still couldn’t become priests, and contraceptives continued to be banned.

Some Catholics are now hoping Pope Francis will call for “Vatican III,” but that is not likely to happen.

But thank God for Vatican II!

Israel and Palestine: Is Peaceful Coexistence Possible?

May is a time of celebration in the modern nation of Israel. Next week on May 15, Israel will celebrate its 64th birthday, as the establishment of the State of Israel took place on that day in 1948. Less than a year later, on May 11, 1949, Israel was accepted by majority vote as a member of the United Nations. 

Previously, in October 1946, President Truman issued a statement indicating America’s support for the creation of a “viable Jewish state.” In November of the following year the United Nations voted for the Jewish people to be given a “homeland” in the territory their ancestors had inhabited nearly two thousand years, or more, before. The United States was one of 33 countries who voted for the new Jewish state.

In passing, it is worth nothing that the modern nation of Israel was established by the United Nations, an organization now much (and hypocritically?) maligned by many people in this country who tend to be staunch supporters of Israel. There was, and continues to be, a problem with the new state of Israel, however. 

Palestine, the land that was partitioned and given to the Jewish people as a homeland, was already occupied. It was inhabited largely by Arabs who were mostly Muslims (although about 10% of them were Christians). Since the ethnic Jews from other countries began moving in and occupying the land, Palestinian Arabs have been squeezed into smaller and smaller portions of the territory. 

Not surprisingly, there was immediate negative Arab reaction to the creation of Israel in May 1948. In support of the Palestinian Arabs, the surrounding Arab states attacked the independent State of Israel on the very first day of its existence. Thus began the first Arab-Israeli War. Even though there have been numerous cease-fires, negotiations, and peace talks, tensions and sporadic hostilities between Israel and Palestine have continued to the present. 

It is not difficult to be sympathetic with Israel’s desire for a homeland. The holocaust in Europe resulted in the extermination of around 6,000,000 Jews. That was an unmitigated human tragedy. And through the centuries Jewish people have been grossly mistreated by many Christians who considered all Jews to be “Christ killers.”

But it is also hard not to be sympathetic with the Palestinian Arabs. Even though about 1/3 of the population of the country was Jewish at the time of the 1947 partition, still, for many of the Arabs who made up the majority, land on which their ancestors had lived for centuries, in some cases, was taken from them and given to people with a different language, different customs, and a different religion. 

It is true that since 1948 there have been many terrorist attacks on the Israelis and other acts of violence committed by Palestinian Arabs. But if there is not provision for a peaceful, and just, settlement of disputes, injustice and oppression usually spawns violent reaction. 
So as Israel celebrates its 64th national birthday in a few days, the burning question remains: will Israel and Palestine ever be able to coexist peacefully?