The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor
Three days ago, a man drove a truck through the front of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The man was shot by a security guard before he could take any lives. The synagogue houses a school that has 140 students. There was an armed guard on site, because the Temple was prepared for an attack — not because they were doing anything controversial, not because they did anything that raised the ire of the community. It was simply because they are Jewish.
I preached on Jewish-Christian relations and antisemitism recently, but, in-light of what happened in Michigan, and what will surely and unfortunately happen again, we need to address this.
It hit me hard the other day. I have an old high school friend whom I follow online. She happens to be Jewish, and she uses various social media platforms to educate people on the rise and the effects of antisemitism. After this shooting, she wrote, “I will be going to my Temple this Friday night. I am afraid, but that isn’t going to stop me.” I applauded her resolve, and am grateful that nothing happened at her congregation.
It was then that it hit me. I have never been afraid coming here on Sunday. Yes, Christian churches have also been the victims of violence. Nine months ago, Brian Anthony Browning entered Cross Pointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan. Two months later, Thomas Jacob Sanford opened fire and then started a fire at the meeting house of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. And it not only happens in Michigan. In 2015, Dylann Roof killed nine people attending a Bible Study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof was motivated by racism.
That said, most Christians do not fear going to church the way my friend, Pam, feared going to her synagogue two nights ago. It may be because our culture shuns racial bigotry, but being antisemitic is fashionable. I see it everywhere. The overarching tone in academia today is that Israel is totally to blame in the conflict with Palestine. They say that such thinking is not antisemitic. They say that this is not an attack on the Jewish religion; it is a criticism of the government. All too often, though, the line between the two becomes blurred if not altogether eradicated.
Antisemitism us in the rise around the world. In an article published last year in The Times of Israel, Zev Stub, citing a new report published by the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel, Stub writes, “The year 2024 was a ‘peak year’ for antisemitism, with a 340 percent increase in total antisemitic incidents worldwide compared to 2022.”[1] According to Sophie Hills, “In the United States, about 2% of the population is Jewish, yet Jews are targeted in more than two-thirds of religious hate crimes.”[2]
I do not fear coming to church. I would guess that the threat of violence occurring within these walls crossed the minds of very, very few of you this morning. And so, you got up, got dressed, had breakfast, brushed your teeth, maybe you checked your email, and then you got into your car and drove here. It never entered your mind that someone would enter this sanctuary with a gun or would drive a truck through this wall. Would you come here each Sunday if these thoughts haunted you?
And so, we come. We open our Bibles and read the Scriptures for the day. We find a passage such as today’s Gospel lesson and find the following verse: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” On one hand, someone could say, “sometimes people’s souls are destroyed when their bodies are.” I get that. It is not uncommon for victims of violent crimes to feel as if their very souls have been assaulted. There are certainly people who can destroy both.
But Jesus is saying something else here. One way of thinking about this is to hear the words of someone whose life we commemorated two months ago: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King once said, “Don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them.” Powerful words. Profound words. Many philosophers, theologians, and psychologists argue that torturers not only deny the humanity of their victims; they deny their own humanity as well. According to that logic, when we hate others that same hate is directed to ourselves. We get what we give. King must have been reading Matthew’s words from today’s Gospel lesson when he said that.
It is easy to hate others when they wrong us. Yet Jesus tells us to forgive those who wrong us. In fact, he takes it to an extreme. Remember when Peter asked him, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” What does Jesus say? “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (In some translations it reads seventy times seven, for a total of 490! This is not about cheap forgiveness. It’s not an endorsement of that adage forgive and forget. You may find it difficult to forgive someone, but that does not mean you have to hate him or her.
As much as we need to pray for those who are the victims of antisemitism, we have to pray for the antisemite as well — to pray that the fire of God’s Holy Spirit will soften their hearts. Striking back is typically the way we respond to a violence perpetrated against us. It is a natural reaction. But we are called to rise above the natural and embrace the ethic of God: the supernatural. We are to follow the way of Jesus, who, in John’s Gospel, remind us, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23).
I understand that reconciliation is a two-way street. We can pray for people to change, but that doesn’t mean they will. We can’t make them. That’s in God’s hands. But we have to make sure we are not “afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” If we remain rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if we truly believe that the cross offers forgiveness for even the vilest sinner, then we have hope — which, in many ways, is the opposite of fear.
Hope. It is ours. The cross said fear; the empty grave said hope. We can choose to remain mired in fear or we can look at the empty tomb and choose hope. Nelson Mandela once said, “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” Alexander Pope wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” May your choices be rooted in hope, and may that hope it spring eternal in your soul. Amen.
[1] Zev Stub, “Global Antisemitism Surged 340% in Two Years, Report Finds” taken from The Times of Israel, January 22, 2025.
[2] Sophie Hills, “Antisemitism Reaches 45-Year High in US. It’s ‘The Canary in the Coal Mine” taken from The Christian Science Monitor, April 25, 2025.