A man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, was just and devout,
“waiting for the consolation of Israel.”
Having lived long enough to see the newborn Jesus brought to the
Temple for Jewish rites, Simeon praised God, saying, “Mine eyes
have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face
of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of
thy people Israel.”
According to the American Religious Identification Survey in
2001, 81.1 percent of Americans are Christian, and another 1.4
percent are Jewish.
And if the 81.1 percent take their Bibles seriously, they will
recognize that in some sense they are Jewish, too — that this
Jesus who is their Lord and Savior is Himself meant to be Israel’s
consolation and its glory.
Is it any wonder, then, that the vast majority of the people of
this nation have a heartfelt affinity for the state of Israel?
And is it any wonder that the vast majority of Americans are not
terribly bothered by religious expression in the public square?
That they don’t see how an expression of faith that is offered in,
yes, good faith, in an inclusive manner, can possibly be a
problem, in a nation where the overwhelming majority of people
actually do share that faith in the first place and where
the most prominent minority faith is the root from which the
majority faith sprang?
OF COURSE, THE 17.5 percent of Americans who don’t share those two
faiths therefore do not automatically see reason to celebrate when
those faiths are invoked. But are they actually harmed by such
invocations? Of course not.
I have an secularist friend, for example, who actually argues
against “taking Christ out of Christmas.” Having a holiday
called “Christmas” that is full of warm wishes and full of a spirit
of giving does no harm to him, he says, and indeed the spirit of
the season warms him as well; but he does think it is outrageous
for his Christian friends to be made to feel guilty for openly
expressing their happiness.
That friend of mine gets it. What he sees is that one man’s
faith does not necessarily burden the unbeliever. One man’s joy
need not be another’s sorrow.
The genius of the U.S. Constitution is not that it tries to
repress faith, but that it encourages faiths of all kinds, or,
equally, an antipathy to faith of any kind, to be shouted from the
rooftops without fear of reprisal. And if perchance one of those
faiths is mentioned in the public square, it still burdens nobody
unless coercion is involved.
And, moving to the realm of foreign policy, when a heartfelt
affinity for Israel that may happen to be bolstered by religious
sentiment is based just as strongly on a shared civic
faith in representative government and the rule of law that
respects individual rights… well, how, pray tell, do those shared
affinities threaten anybody else? Does Israel try to force Judaism
on its neighbors? Do we Americans try to turn Middle Eastern
nations into Christian satrapies? Of course not. No more so, for
instance, than we do anything to try to force Muslims within
American borders to accept Jesus as the Son of God or to worship at
a Jewish Seder.
(As an aside, it might do a lot of Christians some good to share
a table at a Jewish feast. How such warmth and hospitality can ever
have been seen as a threat is a mystery indeed. And, to share that
hospitality is to make anti-Semitism a bizarre and foreign
worldview to any decent human being.)
Nobody, anywhere, is harmed or hindered by a faith that is not
forced on those who do not share it.
Even if we Christians believe that our Christ is a light not
just to Gentiles but also the glory of Israel, while the people of
Israel do not so believe that their glory has been realized in the
person of Jesus… well, so what? In our Judeo-Christian tradition,
we can all rejoice at each other’s rejoicing. Likewise in our
American civic tradition: One man’s celebration can be all men’s
celebration, for that which lifts our neighbors lifts us, too.
“In him was life,” writes St. John, “and the life was the light
of men.” To such a light, 81.1 percent of us say Amen. And the Amen
rings out for the other 18.9 percent as well, not through
compulsion, but in an offering of Joy.
Merry Christmas, Light and Life, to all.
