a-queer-seminarian:[ID: banners read Combatting Antisemitism  on Good Friday: Rejecting &am

a-queer-seminarian:[ID: banners read Combatting Antisemitism  on Good Friday: Rejecting & Replacing  the “Solemn Reproaches of the Cross” - listen on Blessed Are the Binary Breakers, a multifaith podcast of trans stories. A quote from Elizabeth Palmer reads, “Many times over the centuries, in many places, Christians bowed before the cross on Good Friday and heard or sang some version of these words: ‘I led thee through the wilderness 40 years, fed thee with manna, & brought thee into a land exceeding good, & thou hast prepared a cross for thy Savior.’ Then they’d leave the church, form a mob, and attack Jewish communities.” end id]_____________A quick impromptu episode of Blessed Are the Binary Breakers focuses on the history of antisemitism on Good Friday, with the direct example of an alternative liturgy to the “Solemn Reproaches of the Cross.”The “Reproaches” are coated in the blood of our Jewish neighbors. They should not be read or sung in our worship — but neither can we pretend this text never existed. I draw from Professor Amy-Jill Levine’s advice on this topic: Levine is a Jewish woman who has devoted much of her career to study of the New Testament, and she names “admitting the problem” as the most effective strategy for resolving problematic scripture. Rather than burying this document, we must grapple with it, teach its history to our communities and guide them in dissecting what in the text’s language is so violently antisemitic. My hope is that the alternative liturgy I wrote to replace and call out the “Reproaches” might serve churches as a jumping off point for conversation. Feedback is welcome, especially from those who listen to the whole episode so they have full context :)Here’s an excerpt from my alternative text – you can also read it in full here or listen to the full thing / read along in the episode transcript.I chose the children of Israel as my own…My covenant with them is eternal.My Torah instructs them well on how to love me by loving the stranger, the Other, the defenseless –Yet you claim your relationship with me negates theirs!You call their testament “old,” and claim the God you find there is bloodthirsty, barbaric, not the same God;Across the centuries you have listened to the storyOf how I was charged by Roman powers with sedition,died on a Roman cross,And then go out and blame “the Jews” for my death!You have coerced conversion,enacted or enabledhate crimes against them;You have shunned and slandered them,when you ought to have embraced them as your kin!When you reject and persecute my Jewish people,truly, truly you reject and persecute me. -- source link

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