Tassels

Jesus wore tassels on his garments to show his devotion to God. But our portrayals of him try to disguise the fact that he was Jewish.

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A message delivered Feb. 9, 2025, at Edgerton United Methodist Church.

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Luke 8:43-48 (NRSV)

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, and immediately her flow of blood stopped.

Jesus asked, “Who touched me?”

When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds are hemming you in and pressing against you.”

Butt Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I noticed that power had gone out from me.”

When the woman realized that she could not remain hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed.

He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

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A seemingly minor detail in today’s gospel story suggests the theme for my message today.

Last Sunday, as we were concluding worship, I asked you to consider the tassels on the edge of my clergy stole – are they merely decorative, or do they have more significance than that?

You may note, for example, that the stoles worn by soccer fans – such as those for our two Kansas City soccer teams – have decorative tassels similar to those on my stole. Even your winter scarf likely has tassels.

But the tassels on clergy stoles are definitely more than decorative. They recall the command of Deuteronomy 22:12: “You shall make tassels on the four corners of your cloak.”

Numbers 15:39 explains why. “These tassels will help you remember the commandments of the Lord, so that you will follow them rather than the lusts of your heart.”

Some Christians today follow a similar tradition. We carry a special coin, or a pocket cross like the one inside this little bag, or a pocket Jesus like this one, to remind us that wherever we go, Jesus is always with us and we follow him alone.

The gospels remind us several times that Jesus followed the command of Numbers and Deuteronomy. Jesus wore a cloak that had tassels, or fringes, at its corners.

That’s what the woman in our gospel story reached out to touch. Some Bible translations wrongly suggest that she merely wanted to touch the “hem” of his robe. Not so! She wanted to touch the “fringe” of his robe. She wanted to touch one of the tassels hanging from a corner of his robe.

Why? Because the tassels suggested divine presence and divine power.

Why do some of our Bible translations try to conceal that? Why do they say that she merely wanted to touch the “hem” or “edge” of his robe? Maybe that’s easier because it requires no explanation of what the “fringe” or “tassel” is.

Or maybe it’s a subtle way of hiding the fact that as a faithful Jew, Jesus followed the commands of Numbers and Deuteronomy and wore tassels on his robe.

Maybe it’s a clever way of disguising the fact that Jesus was Jewish.

The tassels are called tzitzit. Any Jew, male or female, can order a set of four from Amazon for only $12 or so and hook one on the belt of the jeans they’re wearing. In this way they keep the gist of the commandment, wearing a tassel as a reminder that they are Torah faithful – children of God who owe their allegiance to God alone.

In all the portrayals of Jesus you’ve seen in movies, have you ever seen Jesus wearing a tassel? I recall one time only, and I can’t recall which movie.

In Matthew 23:5, Jesus chides scribes and Pharisees for wearing tassels that were ostentatious. He does not criticize them for simply wearing tassels because that’s what every Jewish man did – Jesus included. He criticizes them for wearing tassels that were too gaudy.

Usually in movies, the only ones who wear tassels are Jesus’ opponents. That’s a not-so-subtle way of telling you that all Jews are bad because a few were enemies of Jesus. That’s the sordid message that Christians have proclaimed for 2,000 years.

It’s a hateful message whose hateful legacy continues today. It is preached implicitly in many churches. But it is preached explicitly in more and more churches today by those who are openly – even proudly – Jew haters.

These haters may call themselves Christian. I tell you flatly, they are not. They are not Christ followers. They are Christ haters. They are anti-Christ. And we who do follow Christ need to do more than denounce the haters as fraudulent. We also must purge the hate from our own hearts.

Never forget that Jesus was a Jew. If we hate Jews, we hate Jesus. If we hate anybody, we hate Jesus, but especially we cannot hate Jews. Remember that the Bible, from beginning to end, in both Old and New Testaments, consistently declares that the Jews were and are and forever will be God’s chosen people.

God had to choose some people to be his model for other nations. Why did he choose the descendants of Abraham? It was not, Moses once said, because they were more numerous than other nations or more virtuous than other nations.

They were not chosen because they were special. Rather, they were special because they were chosen.

God told Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” to all nations. (Genesis 12:2, 26:4) They were blessed to be a blessing to others. Alas, the blessing of God often feels like a curse to those who bear it.

Some of the abuse stems from the slander that Jews are Christ killers. The notion is so ludicrous that I would not bother to repeat it except that so many people believe it.

Jews did not kill Jesus. Romans did. Yet you never hear Italians called Christ killers, do you? No, only Jews are labeled as Christ killers.

Why is that? Maybe it’s because a mob is reported to have yelled, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.”

How does the action of a mob make all Jews responsible? Who designated this mob as representatives of all Jewish people? What right did they have to speak for everyone? How are all Jews accountable for the actions of a few?

And, by the way, how does Pontius Pilate washing his hands absolve him of anything?

Parts of the New Testament, especially the gospel of John, sound venomously anti‑Semitic. That’s partly because we read these passages as outsiders.

Have you ever been involved in a family feud? Feuds between families are bad enough but feuds within families can be especially vicious. Jesus was a Jew. The first Christians were Jews. Christianity started as a movement within Judaism. What we've got here is an increasingly bitter fight between members of the same family.

So, for example, we read in John 20 that after Jesus’ death, the disciples go into in hiding “for fear of the Jews.” How’s that again? The disciples are Jews. They cannot be hiding from themselves. And they are not hiding from most other Jews. They are hiding only from those Jews who are the enemies of Jesus.

In the gospel of John, the word "Jew" is often a code word for an enemy of Jesus. But it doesn't mean all Jews, only those who are opposed to the Jesus movement. In fact, thousands of Jews were part of the Jesus movement. On the day of Pentecost alone, 3,000 Jews joined up.

But many more thousands did not, and some actively opposed the movement.

One of these was a man named Saul, whom we know today as the Apostle Paul. When he became a follower of Jesus, he became a target of his former allies, and their opposition eventually led to his arrest and execution. But who killed Paul? Not the Jews, though some may have wanted to. Paul died in one of the first Roman persecutions of Christians.

Naturally, Christians feared and resented persecution. Even though the Romans were doing it, many Gentile Christians blamed Jews for it. When the persecution ended and Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christians got a chance to get even. They have been getting even ever since – though, of course, there was never anything to get even for.

When Rome was persecuting Christians, it was widely rumored that Christians were cannibals. After all, they ate the body of Jesus and drank the blood of Jesus, didn't they? Sure sounds like cannibalism, doesn’t it? When Christianity became legal, Christians recycled this blood libel and used it against Jews. That’s what goes on at the Passover Seder, they said. Jews are eating babies, Christian babies.

There is a point during the modern Passover meal when participants open a door and invite Elijah to enter. That custom goes back to the middle ages, when many Jews left the doors of their homes open during the Passover meal so that anyone passing by could see that they were not eating the flesh and drinking the blood of children.

Sixteen centuries later, the Jewish blood libel is not dead. White supremacist groups continue to spread the lie, and it is believed today throughout the Arab world.

Well, at least they’re not accused of eating someone’s pets.

Much of the animosity toward Jews is rather subtle. Easter and Passover are intimately linked because Jesus died and was raised during Passover. But the early church found a way to break the link. The church decided to calculate the date of Easter so that Passover and Easter never coincide.

We wouldn't want anyone to think we were Jews, would we?

Why do you think Christians eat ham on Easter? The tradition likely started as a way to spite Jews, who are forbidden to heat pork products.

There are many other examples. And the awful fruit of generations of anti‑Judaism was harvested in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

After centuries of hearing that Jews were devils, the people of central Europe were suckers for Hitler's “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.”

Christians created the climate in which Nazi hatred of Jews could take root and grow, and Christians throughout Europe watched mostly in silence while six million Jews were murdered. In Europe and America today, some want to bury these six million – and five million others – even deeper by denying that those deaths even happened.

The heart of anti-Jewish prejudice is not the lie that Jews killed Christ. The heart of the problem is Christian pride. For some Christians, the very existence of Jews is inconvenient. It’s quite embarrassing, in fact.

Most Jews reject Jesus as Messiah because he didn’t fulfill all their expectations for the Messiah. And some Christians are deathly afraid that they might be right. So they have to demonize Jews, they have to demean Jews, they have to create the illusion that Jews suffer because God is punishing them. Whereas the truth is that Jews suffer because hateful humans persecute them.

If Jesus is God’s Messiah, why don’t Jews accept him?

The Apostle Paul wrestles with this question in the book of Romans, especially chapters 9, 10 and 11. They’re vintage Paul, very difficult to read, but enlightening as well.

Paul concludes that Jewish rejection of Jesus is part of God's plan – that just as God could use Jesus' death for good, so God also can use Jewish disbelief to gather more non‑Jews into the fold, and eventually to gather in more Jews, too.

Of one thing Paul is certain. God has not rejected the chosen people. The covenant that binds the Jews and God has never been revoked – for, he says, the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.

One day, one way or another, Paul says, all Jews will be saved. How all Jews will be saved, he does not claim to know.

He does know that Jews are the natural branches of the holy vine. We Gentiles have been grafted on the way a wild shoot might be grafted on to a cultivated grapevine. We should not be too proud that we have been grafted on, Paul says. Rather, we should marvel at God’s great love for us and all humanity.

Jews follow the Old Covenant, which has never been revoked. Their faith in the Lord our God is as valid as ours. We Christians have no cause to show anything but love to our Jewish brothers and sisters.

Rather, like the woman in our gospel story, we should not be afraid to reach out and touch the tassels of Jesus’ robe and be healed.

And having been healed, it is our duty to oppose all who promote hatred of Jews in the name of Jesus, or in any other name.

For God never defaults on a promise to anyone but is always faithful and is always calling us home.