A godly heritage
A YOUNG couple came to see me to arrange for their child to be baptised. As in all of these cases, we hope we’ll see them most Sundays after the baptism, but the success rate is probably less than 50 per cent. In this case, the father was Jewish, but non-observant, and fully supportive of his child being raised as a Christian.
He was fairly quiet during our interview; so, concerned that he might not feel included in what was going on, I told him that three of my grandparents were Jewish (though not my maternal grandmother, which is deeply significant in Judaism), and asked if he’d like me to say the first verse of the Shama over his son during the baptism. “Yes, please,” he said, “I’d like that very much indeed.”
When the day of the baptism arrived, I reminded the congregation that this was a prayer that Jesus would have heard countless times, and which was central to his life. Then I placed my hand on the child’s head, and, in poor Hebrew, recited the words, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!”
I’m not sure that Deuteronomy has ever felt more alive for me.
Ritual abuse
WHILE I was raised in a secular home, I was always conscious of my Jewishness, largely because of anti-Semitism. I lived in an east London suburb, and, while there were very few Jew-haters around, they never completely disappeared.
That immortal ghoul is especially active at the moment, hiding under the guise of opposition to Israeli actions in Gaza. There’s nothing anti-Jewish about speaking up for Palestinian justice, or criticising the Israeli government — I do so regularly — but the one thing I can guarantee about those who claim that anti-Semitism is never involved is that they’re not Jewish. Spend some time on my social-media accounts, and you’ll see what I mean.
From a Christian point of view, while anti-Semitism is unusual, there’s often a lack of historical understanding, or a refusal to own it. Since the Holocaust, there has been a genuine and liberating attempt on the part of the international Church to rejoice in and emphasise the Jewishness of Jesus and the Gospels, but, tragically, that certainly wasn’t always the case.
We have to be aware and honest about past Christian participation in anti-Semitism, which was the central reason why modern Israel was created in the first place.
Dry humour
THIS is the six-month anniversary of my giving up drinking alcohol. I’m not sure when one slides into the alcoholism category, and, judging by how easily I’ve embraced abstinence, I don’t think I was there yet, but I was drinking far too much, thinking too often about my first drink of the day, and waiting until the day’s work was done and I could escape though wine and whisky.
I would have lunch with people, and realise that I was the only one ordering wine or beer; and then came the day when I walked past the recycling people on their rounds, and one of them held up a bottle and said, “Your neighbour really likes his drink!” That neighbour was me.
Friends keep insisting to me that I must feel so much better now. It’s almost treasonous when I reply “Not really,” and see their faces drop. Perhaps I’ll tell some innocent, sober lies in future.
Happy ever after?
OUR second grandchild is due any day, and the world will become a larger, more complete, but also more intimidating place. I know this from our four children, and how I wanted so much to protect them and then eventually had to let them go.
Lucy, our second child, is the mum of our new grandchild, and I remember when she was four years old and I took her to see The Nutcracker ballet, a yearly Christmas show in Toronto. There she was, in her party dress, with a perfect smile and enthusiastic expectation, leaning in as if magnetised to the dance, the music, and the fantasy.
Then it all ended, the audience applauded, and we left. At which point she began to cry. The tears bisected her miniature cheeks, and she was nothing but weeping and sorrow, and it was as if my life was collapsing before me. Why, Lucy, why? She had seemed so exquisitely happy.
“Because”, she said, in between gulps for air, “because it’s stopped and it’s finished,” — more agonising gulps — “and I don’t want the magic to be over. I don’t want the magic to end.” Now it was my turn to feel tearful. But I managed to reply: “Darling, I promise you, I promise you with all I have, that the magic will never end.”
Wish fulfilment
IT WAS an enormous promise to make: the earnest, naïve, audacious kind that, in the eyes of the child, only burnishes the mythical status of parents. But it’s also the kind that infers a kind of control that parents eventually come to realise they do not have. Because that child turned into the teenager, who became a young woman, who is now the beautiful, brilliant, accomplished person who is about to herself become a parent for the second time.
God forgive me, but what I will say once again, to her and to her new baby daughter, is that, while I get it wrong so often, while I fail so often, while so often I don’t understand, I’ll do all in my limited and weak power to make sure that the magic will never end.
And, meanwhile, my wife is spending a month with our daughter and her husband in another city to help with the new baby. I jokingly said to someone at church that I’ll be stocking up on tins of ravioli. Three days later, a large box of the stuff arrived in my office. Benefit of clergy? No complaints here!
Education for life
THERE has been a murder, a targeted political assassination, in the United States, and the accused is a vehement opponent of abortion, described by some journalists as “pro-life”. I’m not sure they appreciate the obscenity of that misnomer. Of course, the man isn’t typical of the anti-abortion movement, but I have to say that — in my experience in this area — I’ve not seen an abundance of love, compromise, and empathy. I know that, because I was once part of it, a period of which I’m not very proud.
A few days after the appalling murder, the British Parliament voted to stop women being prosecuted for ending their pregnancy, even after 24 weeks. I understand the arguments for the move, but I don’t think I’m alone in feeling uneasy. The argument has become so polarised, so lacking in mutual empathy, so politicised, and I can’t see this as the Christian approach. There has to be more listening and less talking.
Abortion rates can drop if we provide longer and paid parental leave; modern sex-education in all schools; strictly enforce child support payments for absent fathers; introduce a more radical taxation system and redistribution of wealth; work for greater gender equality; and further finance universal, public child care. The evidence proves that it works.
Problem is, most of the leadership of the anti-abortion movement is on the political right, and opposed to many of these very policies. Criminalisation of women’s choice is not only immoral but entirely impractical. I’m afraid that none of this wins many friends — on either side of the discussion.
The Revd Michael Coren is a journalist, and a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada.