Jews and Catholics Spar over Prayer

The prayer is simple.

"Almighty and everlasting God, you who wants all men to be saved and to gain knowledge of the truth, kindly allow that, as all peoples enter into your Church, all of Israel be saved."Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord our God illuminate their hearts so that they may recognize Jesus Christ savior of all men."

This is the updated version of the ancient Latin Good Friday prayer, supposedly adjusted so that it would not be offensive to Jews. It failed.

Jewish leaders responded immediately. "The wounds have been reopened." Past centuries of forced conversions and the denial of basic human rights to Jews have been dusted off and ushered into the present. The advances of Vatican II are lost and Jewish-Catholic relations are taken back 43 years.

The Associated Press cites Rabbi David Rosen, a key Jewish-Vatican liaison and head of inter-religious relations at the American Jewish Committee. He states his disappointment.
"It's pretty clear that there's no fullness of salvation outside the Church" under the prayer's language.

As Evangelicals, it's easy to wonder, Why all the fuss? Of course Jesus is the Savior of all men. He was Jewish. He instructed His Apostles to take the Gospel to the Jew first and then the Gentiles. What did the Rabbis expect the Pope to pray? Wasn't one of Jesus' last commands for His followers to make disciples of every nation?

I strongly believe these biblical realities, but before we turn away from the present controversy between Rome and Jerusalem, let's remind ourselves about a deeper misunderstanding. In this present controversy both the Vatican and the Rabbis think of faith in cultural, racial, and organizational terms. The Jewish leaders hear this as an attempt to annihilate them as a people, as their culture and traditions are destroyed. Christianity is viewed as another religion with its capitol in Rome and a totally different set of cultic forms to follow. The Vatican proclaims the need to be baptized into Mother Church.

In the first century, is this what Jesus meant when, at a major Jewish feast in Jerusalem, he stood and cried, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life?"

"Faith" as taught in the entire Scripture can never be forced. By definition it has to be the free choice of an individual made in God's image. It does not equal joining an alternative religious group. It means that you depend upon a person, and this is the person that all of us will stand before at the end of time. A Gamaliel-trained Pharisee put it like this,

"This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares." Romans 2:16

Do we actually believe that we can meet together in learned inter-religious dialogue, decide on the lowest common denominators in natural religious experience, and then declare that this yields peace and new truth about God?

As I near sixty, I become more aware that our faith has to do with what we believe about ultimate reality, and that we don't create or change reality by our discussion. A change or no change in an old Latin prayer will not alter who Jesus actually is or isn't.

I ask forgiveness from the Jewish people when Christians as an organization have used force to "convert " and murder them. I do hear their reasons for reacting when a Christian prays that they might have their eyes opened and the veil removed. All they hear is the reminder of Inquisitions and Pograms.

My prayer is that they will hear, "Father, forgivc them for they know not what they do!"

I crucified Jesus by my sin, but the great Serpent Slayer, the Deliverer promised in the third chapter of the Jewish Scriptures, forgave me so that the curse of death no longer stalks me.

For a sensitive but honest discussion about the conflict over whether or not a Jew needs to trust in Jesus as their Messiah check out, The Christian and the Pharisee: Two Outspoken Religious Leaders Debate the Road to Heaven By: R.T. Kendall, David Rosen