Shortly after our arrival in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, my family and I were in an automobile accident. Thankfully, none of us were critically injured. We did have some cuts and bruises and a few cracked ribs.

Advent was just around the corner, and among the many other activities that had to take place was the erecting and decorating of the Zanicky Christmas tree. We are fortunate to live in a large beautiful manse. This affords us the opportunity to have 10-foot Christmas trees...and we love every foot!

However, with our various injuries, we were not quite sure how the Zanicky tree, which was sitting on the back porch, was going to make it into our home, much less get placed into its holder and decorated. This was our first Christmas in our new home and with our new church. The tree was very important to us. Much to our joy, without our ever having to make a request, new friends volunteered to come to our home and to help us put up our Christmas tree. They more than volunteered-they insisted!

The day arrived and Jim helped me lift and stabilize the tree, while Karen assisted Shawn, my wife, and our children with the lights. We all joined in placing the ornaments in just the right places. Often we would pause to tell our friends about a special ornament, its history, and the person who gave it to us. Jim and Karen listened attentively and were very helpful and kind! They were also Jewish. Here we were-injured Christians-and Jewish friends came to our aid by helping put up a Christmas tree in the Presbyterian manse!

Jim was the new Rabbi at Temple Israel, several blocks away. He was also one of the first people I met upon my arrival in Wilkes-Barre. I was introduced to him at a community United Way dinner. He was extremely friendly and warm. His wife, Karen, is the same way. The conservative rabbi and his wife helped the Presbyterian minister's family prepare for Jesus. But if you have forgotten, or perhaps recently have not heard, we Christians are preparing ourselves for Jesus, the Jew.

Jim and Karen, our new friends, reached out and helped us. Their faith was large enough to do so. They exhibited respect for us and our faith. Should we not do the same?

Today there are prophets, like Isaiah and John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness to prepare for the coming of God's plan. They are endeavoring to straighten those crooked paths we have taken for so long. I include among today's prophets Irving Greenberg, who declared in an essay, Auschwitz: Beginning a New Era, "No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children." Christian scholar Johann-Baptist Metz further clarifies, "Ask yourselves if the theology you are learning is such that it could remain unchanged before and after Auschwitz. If this is the case, be on your guard."

Both of these statements are declarations-are wakeup calls to the Christian church.

The Holocaust has ripped a seemingly seamless cloth within Christian theology about the Jews and Judaism. I well know that millions of others died during those dreadful years. The devastation of the wars of the 20th century surpass any previous century in numerical terms and in technological terror.

But of primary importance for the Christian faith and its credibility is the coming to terms with our history of anti-Judaism. The longheld and taught "adversus Judaios"-The Teaching of Contempt in the church-no doubt contributed to the horror of the Holocaust.

Christian history, Western history, has caricatured and diminished Judaism. Only since the Holocaust have we really begun to recognize those negative teachings of our sibling faith-Judaism. Thankfully, more and more we are beginning to realize and recognize the value, integrity, and dignity of other faith traditions-especially one so close to us: Judaism.

Make no mistake! Words have power even in this soundbite age. Words form sentences that create thoughts, that build belief systems. We not only live in reality, we create reality.

Historically, the Christian Church has stripped Judaism of its life and inserted for Christian consumption a lifeless caricature. This animus toward Jews and Judaism runs very deep, and it is so much a part of our reality that most Christians fail to recognize its presence as destructive. Even those among us who are more secular than religious continue to carry negative attitudes toward Judaism. It is argued and argued well that the 19th-century development of anti-Semitism was a secularization of the church's age-old teaching of anti-Judaism. Anti-Semitism took on the aura of forward enlightenment thinking. Those intellectuals of the 19th century were embarrassed by the religious propositions against the Jews and Judaism. Their conclusions were based entirely on objective science, race, and biology.

The reason anti-Semitism caught on was because it merely changed clothes. The church's teaching of contempt for the Jews was continuing in a new guise, albeit with secular accouterments.

We have long been taught that Judaism is finished. It has been superseded by Christianity.
--Judaism is an old, sterile, lifeless shell of a religion. The old cloth is worn out. The old wineskin cannot bear the new.
--The Jews killed our Lord Jesus. They are guilty of Deicide.
--The Jewish leaders of Jesus' day were only concerned about legalisms, and to hell with those poor, needy, helpless people.
--They did not even know how to interpret their own scriptures. We Christians would show them how.

For centuries we have failed to recognize the powerful polemic at work in our New Testament and our ensuing Christian theology. We have failed to recognize the intra-Jewish quarrel taking place between the early Jesus movement and other Judaisms of the 1st Century of the Common Era.

No longer can we ignore this taint, this blight upon the Christian faith. How can we read of God's love and justice experienced through the Christ child, Jesus the Messiah, and yet adhere to anti-Jewish polemics? Judaism has an integrity of its own. We should rejoice and give thanks for this! But so many of the old ways continue with us.

The faith that I follow, the God that I love, the Christ child I embrace-all constrain me to address and expose this teaching of Jewish contempt.

--Monotheism-the child of early Judaism would expect no less.
--Yahweh-the God of Israel would expect no less.
--Jesus the Jew would expect no less.

From Christianity's earliest beginnings a battle of polemics raged. This new developing Jewish Jesus movement was struggling to define itself and it did so like all other new social groups, by using polemics-"an aggressive attack on or refutation of the principles of another."

Our New Testament contains not only high and lofty principles of love, compassion, forgiveness, and justice, but also woven into the stories are polemics against its sibling faith-Judaism-as developed in the late lst century. May God open our eyes and minds to see the difference between the truth of the gospel of love and justice and the stain of polemics against a related faith-Judaism.

One of the many blessings I have received since assuming the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is the pulpit exchange with Temple Israel. What a tremendous example this exchange is! A Jew in a Christian pulpit! A Christian in a Jewish pulpit!

If you know even a little about church history and Western civilization-historically most contact between Jews and Christians has been adversarial-with the Christians calling the shots. It has only been of recent date that Christians and Jews have begun to talk and dialogue about their faith traditions. Sadly, sadly, the impetus for this developing dialogue was the Holocaust.

After seeing the results of the hatred of the Jews, Christians have begun to look deeply into our past, and much of what we see is disturbing. For intricate and multiple reasons, Jews and Judaism have been vilified, caricatured, and violated over the centuries by Christendom, the reigning political power. All this has been done in the name of Jesus, the Jew!

I would argue that the essential Christian message is not the instigator of such harm toward Jews and Judaism, but much of what followed in our tradition is suspect in its indictment. What most Christians know about Judaism, they know from what the church has taught them, and this is far from objective history. I would venture to guess that most of us actually know very little about Judaism. What we think we know is a caricature of the Judaism of the lst century, the century that welcomed the Christ child.

What we failed to realize is that from the very beginning of our developing faith, Jesus was a Jew. His original followers were Jews. His audiences were primarily Jews. Know this: In Advent we are preparing for Jesus, the Jew. There was and is an intimacy between Christianity and Judaism.

It used to be thought and taught throughout the centuries that the Judaism of Jesus' time was of one piece. Since the discoveries of the Dead Sea scrolls and writings from Nag Hammadi in the 20th century, we have come to realize that there were many Judaisms vying for the people's attention at the time of Jesus. We have also discovered-to no great surprise-that there were many different Christian groups seeking adherents in the early generations of our developing faith. Winners write history.

Recall that the Romans were occupying their land. The Jews were servants to foreign occupation. They wanted freedom. They wanted restoration.

The Sadducees were one form of Judaism. They were the elite. They ran the temple. They were the movers and shakers in Jewish society. They were traditionalists, conservatives. They were at odds with many of the other Jewish movements, especially the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the ones who most related to the common people. They were actually progressive.

This may come as a surprise, but Jesus' teachings and actions reflected this Pharisaic tradition. It could be argued that Jesus was a liberal Pharisee. So when you read, "You brood of vipers," hear that invective as a polemical attack, not the gospel truth.

Then, there were the Essenes and the Baptist movement. All were reform and apocalyptic movements of varying degrees. All of this is to set the stage for the recognition of multiple Judaisms which were not sterile and lifeless as we have been taught over the centuries. Jesus was born into a vibrant, living, searching, and diverse faith tradition. He himself became a primary catalyst in the directions being taken. Thank God! For Christians, Jesus became our Messiah, our reflection of God!

This originally Jewish movement, over a few generations, became a Gentile church. It had a Jewish vocabulary-with more and more Hellenistic philosophy interpreting the vocabulary.

Now, all of this is complicated, but bear in mind as the early Jewish followers of Jesus began to interpret his life, teaching, death, and resurrection, they were competing with other Judaisms. Originally, they thought of themselves as Jews, only now with the Messiah. Those who disagreed were castigated.

The Pharisees were the primary group that received sustained criticism. This is understandable-both historically and sociologically. The Pharisaic movement became the primary form of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in year 70 of the Common Era. They were the group competing with the Jesus movement. This in-house quarreling often got pretty nasty.

To illustrate the power of all this criticism: When you hear Pharisee, what do you immediately think of? Hypocrite is probably your answer. Look up "Pharisaical" in the dictionary-it refers to one being a hypocrite. How deeply this all runs!

But did you know that the Pharisaic movement that taught and informed Jesus saved Judaism? Today's Rabinnic Judaism is the offspring of Pharisaic Judaism. Their interest in the common people, their development of the synagogue, and their creative use of the oral law have blessed the world with today's Rabbinic Judaism.

And yet, we, without even thinking, attribute "hypocrite," "blind leaders of the blind" to this group of reformers. When we read Scriptures for words of life and hope, we must also read them for cultural and political positions.

Today we must read our sacred texts with open eyes. The God of the Christ child expects no less. When you read of "the Jews," "the Pharisees," "the synagogue of Satan," "the Jewish authorities," realize that our own early developing faith was in a polemical battle. Do not take these phrases at face value, for the Gospel of love and justice will never be realized if we fail to sift through the polemical material in our sacred texts.

We are in the midst of one of our most precious and meaningful seasons-Advent. It is a time of waiting expectantly for the arrival of the Christ child. Let's add to our hope and joy the realization of the integrity of our sibling faith-Judaism.

Once again, consider Metz's warning, "Ask yourselves if the theology you are learning is such that it could remain unchanged before and after Auschwitz. If this is the case, be on your guard."

Remember--we await the arrival of Jesus, the Jew!

Let us pray.

Our God of the Christ child: During the Advent season, we are expectant; we are excited about the arrival of our hope, the infant Jesus. Help us to prepare for Jesus by recognizing the value and integrity of his birth family-the Jews. Through this great tradition, we non-Jews have been given the wonderful gift of Christmas, Jesus Christ. Amen.