I'm willing to bet that no one has a favorite holiday story about time spent in an airport. The main thought that we have involving airports is that we spend as little time as possible in them. Of course, if we're dashing through an airport, desperate to make our connection, then and only then might we long for a few more moments in O'Hare or Jackson-Hartsfield.
The modern airport is like a mall or a motel lobby, an essentially anonymous place and to enter one is to be free of time or place. As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There is no there there.” Therefore, such places are also inhuman. And to make these empty places slightly more bearable, it is necessary to fill them with something. And here problems occasionally arise.
Recent reports of the controversy about the Christmas trees in a Seattle airport illustrate two problems: the illusion of a supposed “neutrality” of public spaces and the anemia of Christian-Jewish relations.
The rabbi's request that at least one menorah be placed among the multitude of Christmas trees apparently took the airport authorities by surprise. Surely we all love Christmas trees, don't we? It happens that I do love them, but I also realize that their power as a symbol comes from the fact that they are embodied within a specific story of a specific people. And not all people in America share that story.
But my primary concern is not how the civil authorities accommodate everyone who seeks access to the “public” space. The greater difficulty that this incident illustrates is Christian forgetfulness about our own origins — from Judaism. In this airport incident, the means of expression negates the very story that Christians and Jews share.
Luke Timothy Johnson has stated that the question for Christians is not how to think about Jews but “to think of themselves with reference to the Jews.” This cannot, of course, be done when we believe that the only story we share with Jews is that of the timeless global market and the public square. In this space, Judaism can only appear as an “other” with whom Christians are in competition.
In Romans 9-11, however, Paul makes clear that Christians' relation to Judaism is better described along the lines of “gift,” “election” and “promise.” He writes, “Remember it is not you (Gentiles) that support the root (Israel), but the root that supports you” (Romans 11:18). God gathered a people, Israel; Christians are made part of this people through the grace and gift of God, namely Jesus the Jew. While “hardening has come upon part of Israel,” Paul admits, this is providential, so that “the full number of the Gentiles” may come in (11:25). Both Gentile and Jew are bound together by the gifts and election of God, which are irrevocable (11:29).
Remembering Israel enables Christians to remember that the church is a people because God has grafted it onto the people Israel. In fact, the early church's Bible used two words to denote their gathering as God's people. One of these was sunogogas, a name obviously suggesting deep continuity with Jewish communities. The other name they used to describe their gathering was ekklesia, a political term used to refer to a public assembly called from time to time by civic authority. Applied to the early church, this ekklesia was called not by the town clerk but by God.
Further, this assembly, as Paul notes, was founded not upon the rights of individuals but on a shared identity as members one of another. In familiar passages (1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12), Paul even goes so far as to claim that God has given members certain gifts. (And by implication God as given certain needs to other members so that the gifts could be exercised).
But what does this have to do with the question of Christmas trees and menorahs on display in airports and malls? As a people, both Gentiles and Jews are called to a faithful remembrance and embodiment of the story they share about a God who would have a people in the world witnessing to his faithful promises.
Obviously the story diverges in crucial ways, but a faithful remembering will at least help us see how a substantial identity might be formed in relation to who God is, rather than in relation to airports and other placeless places.
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— Beth Newman is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. [email protected]