In this world of many religions, we Christians have to work out our attitude to those of other faiths. But this attitude will differ according to the religion. A very particular case is how Christians should regard the Jewish people and modern Judaism. The words I’ve just read open Paul’s classic discussion of this question in chapters 9, 10 and 11 of his letter to the Romans. It wasn’t the first time such a discussion took place – the New Testament is full of it either directly or indirectly, and the discussion continues today. After all, Jesus was Jewish, and so too were the first Christians.

Sometimes the discussion has issued in attitudes and conclusions which were bloody. I’ve just come back from seven weeks in a Europe now largely empty of Jews – though full of the evidence of past Jewish presence. In Spain I stood in synagogues in Toledo and Cordova which were once full of Jewish worshippers, but now they’re museums. Today both Toledo and Cordova loudly claim a history of tolerant coexistence among Jews, Christians and Muslims – true to some extent, but only before the reunification of Spain under their most Catholic Majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella. But then there ensued the expulsion or forcible conversion of both Jews and Muslims by the crusading Christian state. Today there are only a handful of Jews in Spain. Other Christian states and principalities periodically purged themselves of some of their Jewish communities, though not I think as comprehensively as did Spain.

Throughout the centuries of medieval and Reformation Europe, Jews always stood on the margins of a Christian society, with few or no rights, used by Christians when it was in the latter’s interests, and often demonised and persecuted. Christian anti-Semitism was real – and still exists in some quarters, though officially repudiated by the Churches.

Later, in the age of European liberalism, Jews became more mainstream in many European countries, and made a rich contribution to their life and culture, and a new world seemed to be beckoning for the Jewish community. Then came the Nazi Holocaust, the horror of which we revisit again and again on our television screens. Hitler lost the war, but he largely achieved one objective: a European continent without Jews. In Szczecin in west Poland I stood in front of the site where the old synagogue once stood – obliterated by the Nazis, its congregation marched off to death.

There is a sense of guilt, huge guilt among many Europeans, over what happened in the Nazi years. In the Shanghai Museum of Modern Art on my way home I saw a poignant comment on this guilt: a display of photographs by an American artist which covered a whole wall. She had photographed street signs all over Germany, many of them post-Holocaust, signs which indicate an association with the Jews, signs like ‘Judenstrasse’ – Jew Street. Alongside these photographs was a map of Germany showing the towns and cities where the street signs are. But now there are no Jews living there. And in Lyon there was a museum which I didn’t have time to see, commemorating the deportation of French Jews – Lyon being a major departure point to the death camps.

Europe is in fact now full of Jewish memorials of one sort or another, seeking to keep the memory of Jewish presence alive. In Krakow in Poland the day after I arrived, a six week celebration began in what remains of the Jewish quarter, a celebration of the past richness of Jewish culture in a city a few kilometres from Auschwitz.

A late medieval Spain empty of Jews, an empty 20th and 21st century Europe - and now an empty Muslim Middle East. For in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews steadily fled from Muslim, especially Arab Muslim, lands. Yes, they wanted to go to their ancient homeland, but they also had to flee the anger of Arabs and Muslims outraged at the displacement of the Palestinians. In Cordova, in southern Spain, at the entrance to the street leading to the old synagogue, there was a little picture painted unobtrusively on the white wall at ground level, a picture of a sad-looking Arab, with the single word “Palestine”.

So - one Christian reaction to Jews and Judaism: Jewish rejection of their Messiah seen as justifying their being rejected and stigmatised by Christians, and by others. And with this goes ‘blood-guilt’ for the death of Christ, scapegoating and dehumanisation and persecution. Paul, himself a Jew, will have none of this: ‘they were made God’s sons; theirs is the splendour of the divine presence, theirs the covenants, the law, the temple worship, and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them, in natural descent, sprang the Messiah.’  And in the next three chapters he wrestles to understand how God is to continue His gracious purpose for His ancient People.

Another reaction to Jews and Judaism arises in part from European Gentile sense of guilt for historic anti-Semitism and for the 20th Century Holocaust (a guilt expressed, as I’ve already suggested, in the numerous memorials all around Europe to past Jewish presence). This second reaction I would describe as an unqualified Christian affirmation of Judaism. Now there are two ways of expressing this which often overlap. One is theological, the other political. Theologically, some Christians (and very liberal Jews) now advance the idea that there are two parallel Covenants, one for the Jews and one for the Gentiles, and that both Covenants still hold. And therefore, amongst other things, this means that God’s covenant promise about the Promised Land still holds good. So this offers a theological rationale for the unconditional political support which some European Gentiles feeling guilty about the Holocaust give to the modern state of Israel. A guilt, by the way, which Jews both in Israel and in the Diaspora systematically exploit.

I believe Paul would have had none of this second position either. He was in no doubt that Christ died for all humankind, Gentiles and Jews, and that the Old Testament and Old Covenant are fulfilled, completed in the New. For Paul, the Law of Moses had served its purpose. Paul also showed no interest in the idea of a Jewish homeland on earth; for him, the homeland of Christians, whether Jewish or Gentile, was heaven. Yet no doubt he would have grieved to see the Romans obliterate Judea in the decades after his death. And how could he not have grieved to contemplate Auschwitz, and how well he would have understood the desire for his fellow Jews to have a safe earthly homeland of their own.

A third position falls between these two extremes of hostile rejection and complete affirmation. The classic position which affirms the unity of God’s dealings with humankind, and places the history of Israel, the Old Covenant and the Old Testament as the unique preparation for Christ. It holds together the universality of Christ’s unique saving work, the dignity of all human beings, and the special honour due to the Jewish people. It was exemplified in Paul himself, who went on to agonise over how to reconcile God’s universal saving love and purpose in Christ with the apparently continuing rejection of that saving love, by most Jews. This third position was also exemplified for me in the person of a devout German Catholic in whose home I spent some time several weeks ago. She has some Jewish parentage, on her mother’s side. The Nazi death camps depleted their family; there are books about the Holocaust on her shelves. Like Paul, she openly acknowledges and honours her Jewish heritage. Thus, her only daughter’s name is Hannah. Like Paul, however, she has given herself to Christ, and has no doubt of the truth of the Christian faith for all human beings or of the obligation to live out Christ’s life of universal love. Her days are full of service to people, and she begins and ends them with worship at the local Cistercian monastery. (6 am Vigils, Lauds and Mass, 8 pm Compline). I leave her with you as the symbol of one form of continuing Jewish presence in Europe, and also of a balanced Christian attitude to Jewishness. I think  Paul would approve.

A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 3 August 2008, by the Revd Canon Peter Stuart.

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