Exclusion and Embrace

One of my theology professors at Yale, Miroslav Volf, wrote a book entitled "Exclusion and Embrace." He talks about the genocide in Croatia (his homeland), and the place of both exclusion and embrace in Christian forgiveness and reconciliation. Especially where violence or oppression has been committed, that wrong must be acknowledged, and denounced, in order for there to even be hope of true reconcilation. Forgiveness is not acting as though sins were never committed, but rather calling them out for what they are and trying to rebuild relationship with the awareness of brokenness and past hurts.

I feel like this concept took on a whole new meaning in my own life yesterday. Perhaps for the first time, I felt seriously excluded from a people group to which I have belonged (if even de facto) my entire life---the Jews. I mean, being a Christian and a Jew is never an easy rope to walk (to use the phraseology of Richard Mouw). In fact, the vast majority of Jews consider those who have accepted Christ as their Messiah to be anathema. (On a sidenote, it's always struck me as odd when people introduce Jewish Christians as those who "used to be" Jewish. As far as I know, in most cases, those two identity markers can--and often do--exist simultaneously. It's only in our modern context that they are radically separated. Shall we look at the disciples? And most of the early church?) For me, an underlying and often ignored thread in my life has been and will continue to be the inner-reconciliation of these two identities. While for most of my Christian life, the fact that I am Jewish has slid into the background. But more recently (as in the past few years), there has been a stronger impulse to draw that part out, and see how it interacts with the me that has developed largely in its absence. Part of what spurred on this desire to reconcile these two identities was when, about two years ago, my cousin Rachel decided to convert to Orthodox Judaism. For the first time in my life, I saw the richness of modern Judaism in a way that resembled the people of the Hebrew Bible, if even vaguely. When Rachel talked about what Judaism meant to her, it was a completely different story than I had ever heard from any Jew in my entire life.

Growing up in Lake Tahoe, the Jewish population was scant at best. My only exposure to Judaism was my parents high school and college friends who lived in Los Angeles, and their brand of Judaism was, to my perception, largely cultural and secular. My own extended family falls into this same category. I always saw Judaism in these peoples' lives as more of a cultural (and often even a status/class) marker than a religious identity. It was like being white-collar vs. those who were blue-collar, or like having the generations-old secret recipes for family-cherished meals. I hardly ever heard these people talk about God, except perhaps in the occasional expletive.

So for the first part of my life, that was Judaism. And then of course there was my mother, who was assigned the loving title of "The Hanukkah Lady" in my elementary school, where every year she would bake 350 sugar cookies in the shape of a Jewish star and frost them with blue icing and go into all the elementary school classrooms teaching about the miracle of Hanukkah. (Would this EVER fly today with the church and state stuff that's going on??). But even that seemed to be speaking of this distant God who happened to intervene at a specific point in time, and therefore still radically different from the God who I would come to know through Christ some years later.

But I digress....back to what happened yesterday. There is an organization called Birthright Israel which seeks to raise awareness about the situation of the Jewish people and the modern state of Israel. They sponsor trips for young Jews, offering them a free trip to Israel in order to educate them about the Jewish homeland and story. I have had a few friends attend these trips in the past, and they've had fantastic experiences. I talked with Rachel about participating in such a trip together two years ago, but her life took a different turn that did lead her to Israel, though not with Birthright, and not with me. She met and married an Orthodox Jewish man, a law professor at George Washington University and the University of Chicago, and is now expecting her first child any day.

I have recently felt the tug to go to Israel once again, in part spurred on my watching the movie Munich and having a renewed sense of sadness and burden for the Jewish people, the political situation in the Middle East, and the rift that exists between Jews and Christians worldwide. I began looking into the various trips offered by Birthright and came across the trip that seemed to be perfect for me---the dates worked with my schedule, and one of the perks of this particular trip is, besides getting to see the historic landmarks of Israel, there is an emphasis on Israel's political situation and the trip participants get the opportunity to meet with Israeli political leaders.

Well, to make a long story short(er), I had a conversation with a woman from this organization who was wonderfully helpful, and answered all variety of questions regarding the trip. Having debated about whether or not to even bring up the Christian factor, I carefully hedged the question by circumlocuting and finally getting around to ask whether any Jewish Christians ever attended Birthright trips. This nice woman's entire demeanor changed, and she bluntly responded, "No." Sensing the sudden awkwardness in the conversation and not quite knowing how to handle it, I quickly shifted the conversation back to other trip details, like the registration process. She proceeded to bring it back around to "that thing you mentioned about Christians." We had an uncomfortable interchange about what it means to identify as a Jew and whether or not I had "converted." She ended the conversation rather abruptly by saying, "I'll have to check up on this and get back to you." Well, she did. And she called me this morning to inform me that I am not eligible to go on the trip. Her manner was curt, and she bid me a good weekend and we hung up. And that was that.

So here I sit, a bit baffled at how, despite my generations-old Jewish roots and acute interest in Israel and especially the political situation there (which is indelibly tied to its religious and theological situation), I am ineligible to participate in a trip that is designated for young Jews who care about Israel. Jesus said, 34"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn
" 'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -
36a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'"

I didn't quite realize that He was referring to HIS OWN FAMILY--the people of God. Jesus is the stumbling block, the dividing line. And for Birthright Israel, Jesus' words in Matthew 10 appear to be wholly accurate. Apparently, Jesus is enough of a difference between myself and other potential Birthright travelers to provoke exclusion, not embrace.

Later in Matthew, Jesus laments the obstinacy and hard-heartedness of His beloved people. He cries out "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." When I read Jesus talking about Israel killing her prophets, I can't help but to see in my mind the Cross. Matthew 27 reads, "When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, 'Surely he was the Son of God!'"

Will there ever be an "earthquake" large enough to cause the Jewish people to come to the same conclusion as the centurion? And how do we live in the meantime? Can the atrocities that have been committed against the Jewish people ever be forgiven? Must exclusion endure forever? Will there come a time when embrace is even a possibility? Oh, that we might even see seeds of this shift in our lifetime.

In the meantime, I invoke the words of the Psalmist:

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
'May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.'
For the sake of my brothers and friends,
I will say, 'Peace be within you.'
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your prosperity."