The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2023, Dr. Tamilio

Antisemitism is on the rise in the United States.  According to Mary Markos, it is up 42% in New England, particularly in our own state: good ol’ Massachusetts.[1]  About a week ago, a swastika was painted on a sidewalk in Swampscott.  Recently, the musician (if you want to call him that) Kayne West has been criticized in the news for spouting antisemitic remarks.  Unfortunately, there is a lengthy history when it comes to such hate.  I never understood such thinking, especially when it comes from Christian circles.  Jesus was a Jew who followed the Hebrew Bible and never rejected his religion or ethnicity.  Being a Christian and being antisemitic seems to be one of the strangest contradictions in religion.

There are numerous roots that fuel anti-Jewish ideology.  One of them is the resentment some feel over the fact that the Jews are God’s chosen people.  Why them?  Why not us?  Why would God choose some people over others?  After all, aren’t we all children of God?

This sermon isn’t about antisemitism, but it is about the idea that the Jews have an exclusive relationship with God.  Today’s reading from Isaiah offers a challenge to this thinking.  Let’s look at two verses in particular: Isaiah 49:6-7.  The Lord says to the prophet:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, “Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

Did you catch it?  “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Everything changes with Jesus.  Well, not everything.  Those who say that the covenant that God originally established with the Jews has been nullified due to the coming of Jesus are wrong.  (Read the third chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.)  That covenant remains.  However, the covenant that God establishes through Jesus is for everyone else — the rest of God’s creation.  This is why, in part, Paul writes (also in Galatians 3): “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

Christians are quick to quote John 3:16, but I am not sure that we read it as carefully as we should.  Yes, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.”  So often this is followed by a harsh warning: therefore, believe in Jesus or else.  But I only quoted the first half of the verse.  The second half reads, “that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  Now, read this in conjunction with the very next verse.  John 3:17 reads, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Did you catch all that?  God is not looking to condemn the world, but to save it through Jesus, which is why God came to us in the flesh.  You cannot save those with whom you are not in a relationship.  Therefore, God came to us in Jesus to create the widest possible circle: one that would embrace the Gentile world as well as Israel.  This was not done to condemn, as John makes explicit.  God gave us Jesus to save us through him.

Salvation.  That is a term that is used quite a bit in Christianity, and we are quick to think about it as simply the guarantee that you will go to heaven when you die.  Although that is true, there is much more depth to it.

You can only save someone who is in a dire, life-threatening predicament.  If I ran up to you on a streetcorner (when you are just standing there waiting for a bus or something) and I grabbed you by the shoulders, looked you in the eye, and said, “Thank goodness!  I saved you!” you would look at me as if I had three heads.  “Saved me from what?” you’d ask.  It wasn’t as if you were flailing in a lake or were hanging from a cliff.  You were just standing there, minding your own business.  That is how life works, but it isn’t the reality of the spiritual life.

When we look at ourselves spiritually, we quickly realize that we are hanging from a cliff.  We are holding on for dear life.  We were thrust there by our sins: those we willfully committed as well as the ones that we allowed to overtake us.  We are mired in it.  Claw as we might, we cannot pull ourselves up to safety.  In fact, the more we try the weaker we get.

What is really funny, is that when it comes to other aspects of our lives, we do trust those who can help us.  W.T. Aitken observes,

I believe in a physician when I put my case into that physician’s hands, and trust him to cure me.  I believe in a lawyer when I leave my case in his hands, and trust him to plead for me.  I believe in a banker when I put money into his hands and allow him to keep it on my behalf.

[Aitken continues] [And] I believe in my Saviour when I take Him to be my Saviour, when I put my helpless case into His hands, and trust Him to do what I cannot do for myself — save me from my sin.[2]

We are to trust that Jesus will save us, and we are to put our lives in his hands.  God has redrawn the circle he originally drew for the Jews to include us — even us.  At the top of your bulletin, I asked you to reflect upon a question: Have you ever been truly amazed that God loves us as much as he does?  That wasn’t just to give you something to ponder during the prelude.  It isn’t just a rhetorical question — neither were the two redundant questions that follow for emphasis: Have you?  Have you really?  I really want you to ponder this long after the postlude.  Has it sunk in that God loves us so much that he decided to enter a relationship with us?  It doesn’t matter what we do, or what we say, or what we bring (or don’t bring) to the table.  God’s love is all-encompassing.  God is crazy about you — so much so that he came here himself in the flesh.  Not only that, he suffered a torturous death on a Roman cross to pay the price for your sins and mine so that we may be part of the covenant that he established with the entire world — a covenant that stretches to the ends of the earth.

In the two verses that I focused upon from Isaiah, the prophet says, “Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”  May we rise in his name as well.  Amen.

[1] See Mary Markos, “Antisemitism Incidents Up 42% in New England, Mostly in Mass,” from 10 Boston (online): April 26, 2022.

[2] W.T. Aitken, “Saving Faith,” from Ministry 127 (online): 2023.