
From the fifth century, and possibly as early as the third, the Western Church has prayed the Solemn Collects or Solemn Intercessions on Good Friday, a series of bidding prayers or intercessions for the Church and for the world. It is traditional in the Solemn Collects to offer prayer for the Jewish people, as in this bidding and collect from the ACNA Book of Common Prayer 2019:
Let us pray for the Jewish people: that the Lord our God may look graciously upon them, and that they may come to know Jesus as the Messiah, and as the Lord of all.
Silence.
Almighty and everlasting God, you established your covenant with Abraham and his seed: Hear the prayers of your Church, that the people through whom you brought blessing to the world may also receive the blessing of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 570).
As we offer these prayers there are two (nearly) equal and opposite extremes to be avoided: anti-Semitism and Zionism. The former is uncritical, and theologically fallacious, condemnation of the first century Jewish people (and their descendants) as uniquely responsible for the death of Christ. The latter is uncritical, and theologically fallacious, support of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries state of Israel as the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham. Neither of these, anti-Semitism nor Zionism, have anything to do with the Solemn Collects.
We pray for the salvation of the Jewish people because they are the chosen of God through whom, in the person of Jesus Christ, salvation has come to all the world. We pray for the salvation of the Jewish people because they have been, from the calling of Abram, and are even now a unique and integral part of God’s redemptive plan. We pray for the salvation of the Jewish people because theirs is the rootstock — the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs (see Rom 9:4-5) — into which all the faithful in Christ are grafted. We pray for the salvation of the Jewish people because in the unsearchable judgments and inscrutable ways of God, a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in (see Rom 11:25, 33).
As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers (Rom 11:28).
In the Solemn Collects the Church prays for all those who do not believe in Christ remembering especially our elder brothers in the faith, the Jewish people. It is a good and biblical prayer.
