#lenten

[cerealkiller740]

1953 A&P Grocery Stores

[thesacredunknown]

Lent, Pisces Season & the Spring Equinox: A Time of Rebirth

Following Jesus and Christian Principles Without the Church As someone who grew up Catholic and now studies spirituality in a broader, more esoteric sense, I am constantly finding similarities and correlations between various religions and spiritual practices. Many of us who were brought up Catholic and no longer resonate with the Church have gone through some form of deconstruction. There was…

[thecoparoom]

Lenten Specials

Lakeland Ledger - Mar 7, 1956

[photoblogdujour]

This weird little alien spaceship beastie is a Lenten Rose. Rockrose, Primrose, Rosemary, Rose of Sharon, Christmas Rose, everything wants to be a Rose. A rose by any other name would look a heckuva lot different than a rose. Obviously roses have been so successful, but they forgot to trademark the name, and every other wannabe flower stole it.

[malta-tan-nanna]

Il-Mixghela tas-Siggiewi (source)

[thereddouglas]

And my follow-up to my previous illustration. This exchange came out of a suggestion from my spouse, and it made perfect sense for Kat's character. I also fired this comic off quick and dirty to get it under the wire before Easter.

Which is important because I have an Easter comic in the pipe, albeit one unrelated to this theme.

[nycfoodieblog]

[akeliciousmedia]

Ash Wednesday Kicks Off 40- Day Lenten Journey For Christians Worldwide

Ash Wednesday words and a cross formed out of ashes. There’s a dry palm leaf under them. Lent, one of the most significant periods in the Christian liturgical calendar, begins today, March 5, 2025, with the observance of Ash Wednesday. This 40-day season, excluding Sundays, is dedicated to penance, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, leading up to the celebration of Easter on April 20. The…

[most-splendidly]

Bumblebee on Lenten rose flower, Helleborus

[bibilium]

Discover the spiritual journey from Palms to Passion with our inspiring Holy Week sermon. Let us guide you through this sacred time of reflection and renewal.

[living-life-forte]

Mixed Mushroom Lasagna w/Red Wine

This recipe is a riff on one I learned in a cooking class led by Liz Sofo –a gourmet wiz in the Greater Toledo area–in the late 90s. A local gourmet shop had a wonderful demonstration kitchen, and Liz was a dynamic teacher who mixed storytelling and humor as easily as she whisked sauces. I hadn’t made this recipe in over 15 years, and with my newfound skills, I was able to make it my own. Though…

[thecoparoom]

Lipton for Lenten

1961

[skilasophia]

Lenten Ritual

Who is the most confident person you know? Myself: devoid of pleasure for 40 days. No drugs or alcohol or meat; pescatarian and clean. Feel the pain, and embrace mundanity. My dopamine levels are regulated and my body is cleansed (but I should watch less YouTube).

[aeshnalacrymosa]

Chag Pesach sameach to the Jewish people who sees this. I am Catholic. I am Christian. And I LOVE YOU!!!

Confronting our antisemitism during Holy Week

“Jesus of Nazareth, charged by the Roman authorities with sedition, dies on a Roman cross. But Jews ― the collective, all Jews ― become known as “Christ-killers.” Still haunting, the legacy of that charge becomes acute during Holy Week, when pastors and priests who speak about the death of Jesus have to talk about “the Jews.” Every year, the same difficulty surfaces: how can a gospel of love be proclaimed, if that same gospel is heard to promote hatred of Jesus’s own people?”

- Professor Amy-Jill Levine

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Holy Week is here, so I thought I’d remind myself and other Christians that it is imperative to resist antisemitic interpretations of Jesus’s Passion.

Holy Week has long been a dangerous time of the year for Jewish persons (See this article for the history of antisemitic hate crimes on Good Friday in medieval Europe, for instance). And the scriptures that we choose to read in our churches during this time fuels that antisemitism not only this week, but the whole year round. 

When our Gospels’ various versions of the Passion narrative are full of inflammatory language about “The Jews” shouting “Crucify him!,” about the disciples (despite being Jewish themselves!) hiding away “for fear of the Jews,” it’s no wonder that we absorb an antisemitic message when we read those scriptures every year – especially when we aren’t given any guidance on the context as to why these texts were written this way or what to do about it.

So. How can we acknowledge and combat the antisemitism that has too long been entrenched in our communities?

________________

RESOURCES

First, let’s get educated on the basic facts about antisemitism in Holy Week’s typical scriptures, and alternatives to concluding that “the Jews killed Jesus”:

Article: “Who are ‘The Jews’ in John?” .

See this article from My Jewish Learning - “Who Killed Jesus?” .

You might like my sermon from last Palm Sunday that discusses antisemitism in the “triumphal entry” narrative and connects it to the perennial search for someone to blame when we feel afraid or helpless, including parallels to anti-Asian sentiments in this pandemic .

See also Jon M. Sweeney’s book: Jesus Wasn’t Killed by the Jews: Reflections for Christians in Lent

Next, let’s reimagine the stories we read during Holy Week in ways that don’t do harm to our Jewish neighbors! Replace the bad with good!

I most highly recommend Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine’s book Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week. .

Get a summary of and link to a pdf of her chapter on Palm Sunday and the “cleansing of the temple” (Jesus flipping tables) here .

And if reading a whole book isn’t your thing, Levine also has a video series where she talks about the Passion story – here’s the first video, just 9 minutes long

This quote from Levine in this article sums up the purpose of her scholarship as a whole:

“A number of Christian commentators feel the need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good. Instead of portraying Jesus as a Jew talking to other Jews, he becomes in their views the first Christian, the one who invented divine grace, mercy, and love, and all that other good stuff. Such views neglect the presence of these same virtues within Jesus’ own Jewish context. There should be no reason this Jewish Jesus is used to promote anti-Judaism.”

Finally, if you only have time for one resource, make it this article:

“Holy Week and the hatred of the Jews: How to avoid anti-Judaism this Easter,” also written by Amy-Jill Levine.

In this article, Levine describes how the anti-Jewish language got into the Gospels to begin with; how interfaith conversations today help stem the tide of antisemitism; and explores and ranks the 6 strategies Levine has seen people use when trying to resolve these problems with the New Testament. .

From least useful to most useful, she names these strategies as excision (just removing the problematic stuff and pretending it was never there); retranslation (changing up the way we translate problematic texts, such as changing “the Jews” to “Judeans”); romanticizing (this includes Christians holding their own Passover seders – read this part of the article to see why we should Not Do That); allegorizing; historicizing; and, best of all, just admitting the problem:

“We come finally to our sixth option: admit to the problem and deal with it. There are many ways congregations can address the difficult texts. Put a note in service bulletins to explain the harm the texts have caused. Read the problematic texts silently, or in a whisper. Have Jews today give testimony about how they have been hurt by the texts.

Those who proclaim the problematic verses from the pulpit might imagine a Jewish child sitting in the front pew and take heed: don’t say anything that would hurt this child, and don’t say anything that would cause a member of the congregation to hurt this child. Better still: educate the next generation, so that when they hear the problematic words proclaimed, they have multiple contexts - theological, historical, ethical - by which to understand them.

Christians, hearing the Gospels during Holy Week, should no more hear a message of hatred of Jews than Jews, reading the Book of Esther on Purim, should hate Persians, or celebrating the seder and reliving the time when “we were slaves in Egypt,” should hate Egyptians.

We choose how to read. After two thousand years of enmity, Jews and Christians today can recover and even celebrate our common past, locate Jesus and his earliest followers within rather than over and against Judaism, and live into the time when, as both synagogue and church proclaim, we can love G-d and our neighbour.’

___________

What do you think? 

Do you have more questions you’re wrestling with? more ideas on how to actually deal with our antisemitism, in Holy Week and beyond? more resources on this topic you’d like to share?

[xxblackechoxx]

Lenten Suffering? I think not

#Lenten #Suffering? #think #not #Lenten #Suffering? #think #not

[moundcity]

Chocolate Tahini Bites Lenten Sweet Treats