Newer-Truer vs. Oldy-Moldy (Nitzavim/Va-Yelekh)

I couldn’t fall asleep last night.

My mind was doing that thing that happens when you least want it to—

When you most need it to quiet down.

It was trying to figure something out—at the perfect time: when everything else was quiet.

Why was I so uncomfortable?

What was I uncomfortable with?

I’m in the last stages of preparing for a wedding in Upstate New York.

Maybe you remember; I’ll be co-officiating with a Lutheran pastor.

Last night we all met to plan the ceremony in detail: the couple, the rabbi, the pastor.

This pastor is very kind and respectful towards me.

He’s generous.

He gives the couple options for wording.

And he me asked repeatedly if I was comfortable with various Christian pieces as he presented them.

I kept saying yes, of course, no problem.

I was trying to be generous, too.

But inside, a different truth was speaking up.

In the quiet and the dark, I finally figured it out.

It was that wording, “Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior.”

Don’t get me wrong; I’m okay with Jesus—many of you know this about me already.

But then it hit me.

“Our.”

“Don’t speak for me!” my insides scream out when I hear this phrase.

These words feel like they’re taking Judaism and Jews, and together, smashing us under a big thumb.

—Like a tiny little ant that got in the way.

The same is true with “New” Testament.

The Jewish “we” didn’t get the memo.

While the Christian “we” have the Newer-Truer testament from God, the Jewish “we” are stuck with our Oldy-Moldy one.

.

And the Very-Jewish-Jesus became the “Christ”—“the Anointed One,” the Mashi’ach, or Messiah.

But how can I ask a Christian pastor to take out something so central, so core, to their religion?

This week’s parsha—a double one—ends with Moses’ last words.

He is about to die, and he gives a kind of last testament.

He writes down all God has told him to.

The words he writes will serve as a witness—a testament—to the people’s bad behavior.

For they will stray again, even in the land flowing with milk and honey that God promised. and delivered, to them.

I had a long conversation with a close friend who’s becoming a Presbyterian minister.

She was happily shocked that a Lutheran would give any options for wording at all.

Truly generous of him, considering his heritage.

In searching for a common wording that could be comfortable for both Jews and Christians, my friend and I searched for a common truth.

We compared the beliefs of Christians and Jews regarding the Messiah.

And we came to a conclusion:

Jews and Christians both spend a lot of time imagining, praying for, waiting for, and perhaps most importantly, working towards a time when peace will reign on Earth.

A time when the Anointed One—the Christ, the Mashiach/Messiah—will come—in the future—whether it’s a first coming or a second coming!

The result is the same.

We are essentially praying for the same thing.

Yet, divisions—between the oppressor and the oppressed—along with dangerous beliefs—persist, adding more bloodshed as anti-semitism rises once again.

This Saturday night, the week before Rosh Hashanah, according to Jewish tradition, we stay up late into the night and pray.

We pray for forgiveness.

We pray for redemption.

We pray for Mashiach—the Anointed One.

We pray—for a good ending.

The Parsha this week leaves us with a cliff-hanger—not an ending at all.

There is a poem.

But we don’t get to hear it:

“Then Moses recited the words of this poem to the very end, in the hearing of the whole congregation of Israel: ”

We don’t get to hear how things end.

And we don’t even get to hear the first words of the poem.

Because the end is yet to be determined.

But what we do know, what we already have, are the Instructions on how to make a world of peace.

How we act, the words we use with and to each other, determine the end.

Maybe a good ending starts by finding language we can all agree upon.

So maybe we can start with this:

May the Anointed One, through our prayers and actions, bring peace on Earth and all that resides in her.

May we learn to speak our own truth for the sake of the other’s understanding.

May we learn to speak for each other in a manner that upholds the other’s truth.

And, perhaps most of all, may we be generous.

And let us say Amen.