owning and challenging the legacy of anti-Jewish stereotypes in liberal theology...

This may come off as a rant -  the last thing I desire - as I hope to write a critical reflection on a well-intended survey of the role Mary and other women play in the gospel according to St. Luke for Advent. The article that caught my eye appears in Sojourners Magazine under the heading: "Advent: Hearing God in a Female Voice." The author, Joe Kay, suggests that in the time of Jesus as in our own era, "Female voices are widely ignored, marginalized, and muted by those who think that only males should be heard. The Jesus story turns all that upside-down. It places women front and center, right from the start." (See the full article here @ https://sojo.net/articles/advent-hearing-god-female-voice?sfns=mo&fbclid= IwAR0lecqbe2cruUcIbAsh WEB3ch8Z1O9PEUzvW7IwzqZfhgJY4Xjt33YOY2c) 

There is no question that the voices of women are denigrated, ignored, mocked, and vilified in our culture. Just this morning, the US President once again tweeted his attack on the young climate activist, Greta Thunberg, after she was named TIME Magazine's person of the year.

Violence against women continues to be a public health epidemic. Ugly and unfair double standards in demeanor, dress, vocabulary, attitude, morality, opportunity, and income are so blatant between men and women that the Republican majority in the Senate could easily confirm the appointment of Brent Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court without so much as a second thought. And while the "Me Too" movement has accelerated our slow march towards changing culture - and holding men accountable for their actions and attitudes - the gap between the realm of justice and our current dysfunction is incomprehensible.

So please don't mistake my concern: it is not with the author's solidarity with the cause of equal rights for contemporary women. Rather, I am distressed that in 2019 liberal theology still advances the false dichotomy between the so-called liberating practices of Jesus and the oppressive actions of First Century Judaism. It is one of the most egregious blind spots within our tradition. Not only is this fallacy a product of incomplete scholarship, it is also one of the ways the sins of our mothers and fathers unquestioned anti-Jewish stereotypes are passed down to the third and fourth generation. In the ground-breaking, Jewish Annotated New Testament, eds. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi-Brettler cut to the chase:

Out of ignorance many pastors and religious educators strip Jesus from his Jewish context and depict that context in false and noxious stereotypes... There are five major reasons for this problem. First, most Christian seminaries and divinity schools do not offer detailed educations about Judaism, whether at the time of Jesus or subsequently... Second, whereas a number of churches have guidelines on the presentation of Jews and Judaism, not all clergy know of the guidelines... Third, as church demographics shift increasingly to Asia and Africa, new forms of anti-Jewish biblical interpretations
develop. Christians from these areas lack direct memory of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and so may be less sensitized to the dangers of detaching Jesus from his Jewish tradition...Fourth, biblical studies does, appropriately, speak to contemporary issues. In this effort to deploy the biblical text for purposes of liberation, interpreters insensitive to the issue of anti-Jewish teaching sometimes present Jesus as the liberator from his social context, namely Judaism, which they depict as analogous to present day social ills... And fifth, and perhaps most pernicious, the problem of ahistorical, anti-Jewish interpretation in not always acknowledged. (Bearing False Witness: Common Errors Made About Early Judaism, p. 501)

Dr. Levine then carefully offers ten areas where anti-Jewish stereotypes remain in much of contemporary Christian preaching, teaching and writing. She has written extensively about these concerns throughout her career including in The Misunderstood Jew (2006), in conversation with Ben Witherington in their New Cambridge Bible Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (2018) as well as in Light of the World (2019.) Her fourth and sixth concerns in this summary offer places where balance could amplify the omissions of the Sojourners article:

+ The broad theological view that contrasts Jewish law with Christian grace.

+ The misconception that Jews follow Torah in order to earn God's love and a place in heaven. This equates Judaism with a religion of "works righteousness" rather than grace.

+ The misconception that views purity law as burdensome and unjust.

+ The belief that early Judaism "was so misogynistic that it made the Taliban look progressive by comparison, and that Jesus liberated women from this oppressive system."

+ Confusion over Jewish practices and teaching concerning divorce.

+ The "substantially vague rhetoric that claims Jesus ministered to the outcasts and marginals" of his day while the Jewish community did not.

+ The incorrect notion that all Jews wanted a militant messiah and rejected Jesus because he proclaimed a love for our enemies.

+ The inaccurate belief that early Judaism celebrated a distant and remote God while Jesus uniquely spoke of the Lord as his intimate "abba."

+ The insistence that Jesus objected to the "temple domination system" that overtaxed the popularization.

+ And finally the lie that Judaism was narrow and exclusive while the way of Jesus was broadly inclusive.

Clearly the Sojourners piece speaks in broad strokes to a general audience. It is certain that the author seeks in solidarity to link the challenges of contemporary women with the perceived problems Jesus addressed in his era. In our tradition, it is popular to do so to document our continued relevance and the deep wisdom of a biblical faith. The late Marcus Borg, those in the Jesus Seminar and Bishop John Shelby Spong worked hard at reinterpreting Jesus for a new world. In their writing Jesus became a mystical, social revolutionary who called out the oppression of his generation with a radical gospel of love. In this, Jesus offered modern people a way back into a broken and patriarchal Christianity. I resonate with their intent. The fundamental problem with it, however, is as Levine and Zvi-Brettler state: there is no historically accurate or theologically honest way to talk about "a feminist Jesus and a retrograde Judaism."

The New Testament, as well as other Jewish literature of the time, from the deutero-canoncial texts to Josephus and Philo to inscriptional evidence to early rabbinic sources, tells us the Jewish women owned their own homes (see Luke 10: 38, Acts 12: 12), served as patrons (Luke 8:1-3), appeared in the Temple (which had a dedicated "Court of the Women") and in synagogues; had use of their own property... had freedom of travel. Clearly it was not because of Jewish oppression that women joined Jesus. Perhaps some women outside of marital situations
were particularly attracted Jesus' movement given its possible focus on celibacy (Mt 19:22), non-privileging of child-bearing (Luke 11: 27-28) and alternative family structures ( Mk. 3: 35.)

It is simply false to state: "Then and now, those female voices are widely ignored, marginalized, and muted by those who think that only males should be heard." It is untrue that "the Jesus story turns all that upside-down (and) places women front and center, right from the start." And Mary's role is not a shocking alternative to a culture where "only men made the big decisions and women were treated more like property than persons." Rather, Mary joins a long cast of Jewish women liberators that include Sarah, Deborah, Rachel, Esther, Leah, Miriam, Hannah, Abigail, and Rahab. Indeed, Mary's song - The Magnificat - is a reworking of Hannah's ode of thanks to God in anticipation of Samuel's birth with echoes from Judith, Miriam and Deborah woven throughout. (See 1 Samuel 2: 1-10, Exodus 15: 19-20, and Judges 5: 1-31.

The article closes with an important insight that still needs amplification: over the years the Christian male hierarchy has not only erased and silenced the role of women in the Jesus movement, but continues to do so in the 21st century. An excellent corrective can be found in Cynthia Bourgeault's seriously documented study: The Meaning Of Mary Magdalene. My hope and prayer this Advent is that the feminine voices of God are given a new and honest hearing within the Christian community. To do requires owning the legacy of anti-Jewish stereotypes in our theology, liturgy, and worldview and reclaiming the beauty of the Jewish roots of Mary, Elizabeth, John the Baptist and Jesus himself.

credits:
+ Madonna: https://www.etsy.com/listing/675718261/madonna-and-child-reclining
+ Jesus of the Desert: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/173670129351462898/?lp=true
+ Christ Sophia: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/346003183845537302/?lp=true