“You can’t deny that the church has misunderstood the message of Good Friday and engaged in the very thing that they’re shown not to do. So there’s a reckoning that’s taking place,” said the Very Rev. Tyler B. Doherty, dean and rector of St. Mark’s.
The Lenten conversations at St. Mark’s are happening within a broader reevaluation by the Episcopal Church as it mulls changes to the Holy Week lectionary readings heard in its churches across the country — especially as world leaders have decried a resurgence of antisemitism.
In February, the Episcopal Church’s Prayer Book, Liturgy & Music Committee heard testimony online for a resolution to address the antisemitic impact of the lectionary readings for Holy Week. The committee will consider the resolution at the denomination’s General Convention, scheduled for this summer in Baltimore.
The resolution, which if approved by the committee could then be voted on by the General Convention, would direct the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to recommend revisions to the lectionary readings for Holy Week to “remedy passages that use language that has been interpreted as antisemitic while maintaining the meaning and intent of the original Greek texts,” it reads. It also would encourage the Episcopal Church to advocate for other denominations using the Revised Common Lectionary to consider similar changes.
Concern that some of the liturgies and familiar Gospel passages read each year during Holy Week — and particularly on Good Friday, when Christians remember Jesus’ crucifixion and death — can be interpreted as antisemitic or anti-Jewish isn’t new.
Levine, who is Jewish, was a witness at the February hearing and noted the most egregious text pointed out in the resolution is the reading for Good Friday from the 18th and 19th chapters of the Gospel of John
John’s Gospel merges different Jewish groups — Pharisees, high priests, the people — into “the Jews,” Levine explained. That leads to passages like John 18:36, rendered in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible used by many Episcopalians: “Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’”
Rather than debate whether the text is antisemitic, Levine told Religion News Service in an email, “I think it best that Christians acknowledge the text has been interpreted in that way, and then do something to prevent such impressions.”
At the hearing, she suggested the denomination consider not only changing its Scripture readings for Holy Week, but for the entire liturgical year. She’s encountered readings during the season of Lent that she said “undercut the value of Torah” and readings during the season of Easter, which stretches 50 days beyond the holiday, in which the Apostle Peter, who was Jewish, writes to his Jewish readers, “You killed the Author of life.”
“Changing the lectionary is the wisest move; it is also the most complicated given that lectionaries unite churches across the globe,” she said. “However, if we can move flags and statues from public display to museums, then perhaps the time has come to move certain lectionary readings from liturgical proclamation to Bible studies.”
What do you say? Do you support the idea of Christian sects (Episcopal or otherwise) modifying liturgy in order to address anti-semitic passages and interpretations?