Cue hand-wringing
Mar. 25th, 2010 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafIt's the Feast of the Annunciation (Lady Day).* I was going to write something contemplative about the Incarnation, but instead I am trying to work out what to teach the confirmation class about the Eucharist - or, more to the point, how to teach the confirmation class about the Eucharist. it possibly doesn't help that Youth Canon is obsessed with using talking about Passover as a way into it, and while the Eucharist as a sort of re-invented Passover is certainly important aspect of the sacrament (yay typology), I don't think it's a good place to start.
On a related topic, we are organising a youth Mass with a sort of Passover as the liturgy of the word (as an event for the youth group). It wasn't my idea, and I feel deeply, deeply ambiguous about it. On the one hand, it screams "appropriation" at me; on the other hand, Christianity did grow out of Judaism (and people who gloss over this fact usually turn out to be exceedingly nasty, see Marcionism and the particularly unpleasant pro-Nazi heretics the Deutsche Christen), but on the third hand, I know I would react badly to a non-Christian group performing something they labeled as a Mass. Of course, I can't imagine that anyone would want to; the relationship between Christianity and Judaism is complicated by the fact that Christianity stands in a different relationship to Judaism than to any other religion. Having become more conscious of the parting of the ways school of history, which sees - I think rightly - the early church as very much a way of being Jewish, and that in a way both Judaism as we currently know it and Christianity are descendants of the Judaism of the first century, I can see an argument for "eucharistic Passovers" being theologically appropriate.
But - and it's a big but - the relationship between Christians and Jews has been so poisonous historically, and largely because as soon as the Church got power we started misusing it - that I am uneasy about it. I don't, in fact, know how this looks in Jewish eyes (or indeed if there is a consensus amongst the Jewish community on that issue), but I am concerned that it would be seen as misusing something sacred and cause hurt and offence. And the church has behaved badly enough that we should have learned by now that we don't get to put our edification before the needs of other people, especially other people who we have previously wronged. (And I know that it's not the job of any Jewish people reading this to educate me, but I would like to know what Jewish flisties make of it. If, you know, you want to tell me).
On the other hand, if we can at least get it through our kids' heads that Jesus was a Jew, they will have learned something important.
But I'm still not sure we're doing the right thing.
On another note entirely, Bishop Alan had a good post about Oscar Romero. Morbid types like me tend to think that, never mind dying peacefully in your sleep, that really is the best way to go... But it's good to be reminded that the church gets things right at times, and Romero is one of the people who really did get it right. I wish they'd canonise him.
* And, not at all coincidentally, the date Tolkien chose for the destruction of the Ring and the liberation of Middle Earth. Typology, you can haz it.
On a related topic, we are organising a youth Mass with a sort of Passover as the liturgy of the word (as an event for the youth group). It wasn't my idea, and I feel deeply, deeply ambiguous about it. On the one hand, it screams "appropriation" at me; on the other hand, Christianity did grow out of Judaism (and people who gloss over this fact usually turn out to be exceedingly nasty, see Marcionism and the particularly unpleasant pro-Nazi heretics the Deutsche Christen), but on the third hand, I know I would react badly to a non-Christian group performing something they labeled as a Mass. Of course, I can't imagine that anyone would want to; the relationship between Christianity and Judaism is complicated by the fact that Christianity stands in a different relationship to Judaism than to any other religion. Having become more conscious of the parting of the ways school of history, which sees - I think rightly - the early church as very much a way of being Jewish, and that in a way both Judaism as we currently know it and Christianity are descendants of the Judaism of the first century, I can see an argument for "eucharistic Passovers" being theologically appropriate.
But - and it's a big but - the relationship between Christians and Jews has been so poisonous historically, and largely because as soon as the Church got power we started misusing it - that I am uneasy about it. I don't, in fact, know how this looks in Jewish eyes (or indeed if there is a consensus amongst the Jewish community on that issue), but I am concerned that it would be seen as misusing something sacred and cause hurt and offence. And the church has behaved badly enough that we should have learned by now that we don't get to put our edification before the needs of other people, especially other people who we have previously wronged. (And I know that it's not the job of any Jewish people reading this to educate me, but I would like to know what Jewish flisties make of it. If, you know, you want to tell me).
On the other hand, if we can at least get it through our kids' heads that Jesus was a Jew, they will have learned something important.
But I'm still not sure we're doing the right thing.
On another note entirely, Bishop Alan had a good post about Oscar Romero. Morbid types like me tend to think that, never mind dying peacefully in your sleep, that really is the best way to go... But it's good to be reminded that the church gets things right at times, and Romero is one of the people who really did get it right. I wish they'd canonise him.
* And, not at all coincidentally, the date Tolkien chose for the destruction of the Ring and the liberation of Middle Earth. Typology, you can haz it.