Last week, Jews around the world sat down to what is called a Pesach Seder. It is a meal that we have at Passover that invites every generation of Jews into the story of God’s redemption of our people from Egypt.
We sat and told the story of our redemption as though we were there. We ate bitter herbs dipped in salt water to remind us of the bitter tears we experienced in slavery. We wept as we ate the pungent fresh horseradish and savoured the sweetness of the Charoset that reminds us that even the darkest moments are sweetened by the promise of redemption. We drank and we feasted, and we celebrated our freedom as we have done for thousands of years.
For many Christians, particularly evangelicals such as myself, the concept of embodied theology is a foreign one. We expect to hear words on a Sunday, to read words and to sing words. I remember, when I attended the University of Oxford, visiting a high Anglican Church, Pusey House, with my friends one evening. I was very sceptical of the whole thing – “Hocus, pocus!” I thought, dismissively. But as the Priest began to explain the liturgy – the incense recalling the pillar of cloud, the Gospel liturgy confronting again with the sheer uniqueness of Christ – I began to soften.
'Why are so many Jews atheists?'
"Why are so many Jews atheists?"I hear this a lot.