Renouncing Anti-Judaism during Holy Week
Dear Friends,
On Sunday, we turn toward Holy Week. At 9:00, 11:00 and 1:00, we’ll enact the special liturgy for Palm Sunday that begins with the Liturgy of the Palms, recalling Jesus’ humble entry into Jerusalem to cries of “Hosanna” from the people who lined the way. At 9 & 1, the service will also include a reading of the Passion narrative in the Gospel of Matthew.
The days of Holy Week lead us through excruciating details of the love, betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and burial of Jesus Christ, leading up the climactic celebration of the resurrection in the Christian story. As challenging as these details can be, contemplation upon them, together, invites a profound devotion and faith in the promise of new life.
Holy Week has also been historically problematic, for the ways in which details of the narrative have been turned against Jewish people and the faith of Judaism through centuries, and served as pretext for supersessionism (an idea that the Church has replaced Israel in God’s covenant, rendering Judaism no longer part of God’s saving purposes), persecution, and antisemitic violence.
Our friend and former professor, Dan Joslyn-Semiatkoski, an Episcopal priest, is the Director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Learning at Boston College. He has written extensively on this matter, in addition to working to develop alternative liturgies that seek to correct and repair the damage done by harmful language, slant, and perpetuation of stereotypes in the traditional rites.
Dan has argued in many places that anti-Judaism in Holy Week emerged from a long theological habit of defining Christianity over against Judaism—portraying “the Jews” as rejecters of Christ, as mis-readers of their own tradition, or even as collectively responsible for Jesus’ death. This dynamic becomes especially potent in the Passion narratives and Good Friday liturgy, where historically distorted portrayals have not only misrepresented Judaism but have also contributed to centuries of violence against Jewish communities, particularly during Holy Week itself.
The problem is both explicitly hostile and also subtle: embedded patterns in liturgy and language—what Dan calls “pressure points”—where texts, prayers, and dramatic readings can imply Jewish culpability, divine rejection, or a contrast between a gracious Christianity and a deficient Judaism. Even when unintended, these patterns perpetuate a theological imagination in which Judaism functions as a negative foil rather than as the living tradition from which Jesus and the earliest Christians emerged.
To every extent possible, we invite us to heed these warnings and embrace the good work available to correct and repair.
For the last three years, our Good Friday liturgy has been the alternate service approved for trial use by General Convention. It offers a new collect (prayer) for the Jewish people that honors their place in the story of salvation and acknowledges the harm done to Jews in the name of Christian faith, along with alternative readings from the Epistles. We also hear a sung translation of the Passion in John’s Gospel.
This year, our 11:00 Liturgy of the Palms will incorporate alternate language from a new rite developed and offered in some dioceses.
In the Anglican tradition of The Episcopal Church, we claim the axiom that our praying shapes our believing. It is our intention to guide the community in liturgical movements that might form and reform our ways of faithfully praying, thinking, believing, and living.
We pray that now, as we turn again toward the Way of the Cross, that God’s presence will be made known to us in love and fellowship with one another and all our siblings in the human family.
Together with you,
The Rev. R. Scott Painter, Rector
The Rev. J. Antonio Alvarez
Note: Remember that at 11:00, worship will center on the Liturgy of the Palms, waiting for the Passion to be contemplated on Good Friday. We will begin in the Courtyard, processing in witness with our neighbors from Rose City Park Presbyterian Church around our block, carrying palm branches and values-/faith-forward signs. (Be sure to bring your signs from home!)
